Monday, June 23, 2025

Coffee Break: Nihilists at Google Wrecking Existing Business to Chase AI Growth

Nihilism on the part of Alphabet’s CEO explains Google’s willingness to risk its search business and the open web itself to chase OpenAI.

Trump Backfire: How the 2018/19 US Tariffs Against China Boosted Exports and Employment in Mexico

How a Trump 1.0 tarrifs backfire illustrates fundamental flaw in how Trump goes about doing things.

Links 6/23/2025

Breaking: Fordow Attacked Again; Trump Talks Up Regime Change, Brays About Iran Nuclear Site Success as Israel Taking Increasing Toll from Attacks, Iran Puts Pieces in Place for Strait of Hormuz Closure; UPDATE: Iran Media Claims Attack on US Base in Syria

Iran updates, with the big underlying pressure being Israel’s decay path and US failure so far to arrest that.

Proxy Fighters in the Fog of War

Examining the potential role of Turkey, Azerbaijan and nonstate actors bordering Iran in the destabilization campaign.

At Antarctica’s Midwinter, a Look Back at the Frozen Continent’s Long History of Dark Behavior

Sunlight is beginning to return to Antarctica, but are there warnings for us from the “Madhouse at the End of the Earth”? 

Links 6/22/2025

The Sunday Morning Movie Presents: In The Soup (1992) Run Time: 1H 33M

In The Soup is a funny movie about a starving artist and a happy-go-lucky mobster who want to make a film together.

The Senate GOP’s Great Western Land Heist

A buried budget clause could force the largest public land sell-off in modern history, without a vote, a hearing, or a warning.

US Attacks Iran: Start of a Long War? Update: Iran Parliament Votes to Close Strait of Hormuz

And so the US war against Iran begins, with showy strikes against empty nuclear facilities. What next?

Links 6/21/2025

Michael Hudson: Why America Is at War with Iran

The neocon logic for needing to defeat Iran and break it into ethnic parts

NATO’s Procurement Corruption Scandal Might Delay Its Rapid Militarization Plans

Yves here. Yet another example of European values in action! A corruption scandal in Aisle 5! While this procurement abuse is not all that big an impediment to European NATO members bulking up their armed forces, say compared to voters not being on board with baked-in social spending cuts, the lack of an industrial base, […]

Coffee Break: Healthcare and the State of Science, Plus Baseball and Abundance

Part the First. How Did the United States Get This Healthcare System?  I distinctly remember the first time this question occurred to me, because as the child of a union household a visit to the doctor or the Emergency Room (trees were made to fall out of) was never a problem.  I was twenty years […]

ICE’s Rap Sheet Grows With Continuing Defiance of Congressional Oversight at Facilities, Attempt to Write Its Own Rules

ICE is becoming even more high-handed in its defiance of legally mandated Congressional oversight rights.