Lambert and I, and many readers, agree that Ukraine has prompted the worst informational environment ever. We hope readers will collaborate in mitigating the fog of war — both real fog and stage fog — in comments. None of us need more cheerleading and link-free repetition of memes; there are platforms for that. Low-value, link-free pom pom-wavers will be summarily whacked.
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–Yves
P.S. Also, before further stressing our already stressed moderators, read our site policies:
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Rebuilding collective intelligence Red Pepper
Mutual Aid Groups That Arose During COVID Gather to Build Power Regionally Truthout
Climate
Youth-Led Climate Change Lawsuits Are a Tactic to Hold Governments Responsible Teen Vogue. Held v. State of Montana. A similar case, Juliana v. United States, is hung up on standing. NOTE Climate Case Chart looks like a useful resource.
River Cruise Ship Evacuated After Possible Battery Explosion Maritime Executive
#COVID19
As I keep saying: “Democidal elites” is a parsimonious explanation.”
Biden’s infection and the horrific reality of “forever COVID” WSWS. Should be “horrific, constructed” reality.
COVID Is Evolving Fast. Why Isn’t Our Response to It? (interview) Eric Topol, New York Magazine
Anthony Fauci wants to put Covid’s politicization behind him Politico
* * * An immunoPET probe to SARS-CoV-2 reveals early infection of the male genital tract in rhesus macaques (preprint) bioRxuv. Press release. From the Abstract: “Remarkably, a robust signal was seen in the male genital tract (MGT) of all three animals studied. Infection of the MGT was validated by immunofluorescence imaging of infected cells in the testicular and penile tissue and severe pathology was observed in the testes of one animal at 2-weeks post-infection…. We provide direct evidence for SARS-CoV-2 infection of the MGT in rhesus macaques revealing the possible pathologic outcomes of viral replication at these sites.” I’m sure the Biden Administration’s crack Anti-Covid marketing team will hop right on this.
* * * Austria mourns suicide of doctor targetted by anti-COVID vaccine campaigners Reuters
Monkeypox
Biden administration falls into blame game with local authorities over monkeypox response The Hill
Monkeypox Virus Infection in Humans across 16 Countries — April–June 2022 NEJM. From the Discussion: “Transmission of monkeypox virus occurs through large respiratory droplets, close or direct contact with skin lesions, and possibly through contaminated fomites.”
China?
No mention of Taiwan on US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s Asia tour list South China Morning Post.
China Threatens To Retaliate For Pelosi’s Taiwan Trip By Letting Her Return Safely The Onion
China announces military drills in Taiwan Strait Deutsche Welle
Nancy Pelosi’s long history of opposing Beijing BBC
* * * South China Sea claims:
South #China Sea territorial claims https://t.co/Q1iEPSERvi #MapPorn pic.twitter.com/BmErkxstwf
— MapPorn (@MapPornTweet) July 30, 2022
China’s claim — modulo issues of raw power — is loony tunes. As is Vietnam’s. Interesting to see, however, how hemmed in China is by Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Taiwan, and to the north, the Korean Peninsula and, of course, Japan. Perhaps the Taiwan flap is more about China’s access to the great waters of the Pacific than anything else. (Yes, of course there are tiny islands in China’s way too, which we seem, not unsurprisingly, to be being stupid about.)
A Shrinking China Can’t Overtake America Foreign Policy
India
A Swelling Mountain of Bills Plagues India’s Power Industry Bloomberg
Syraqistan
Iran can export car parts, gas turbines to Russia Tass. Turbines like this?
⚙️ 🇮🇷🇩🇪🇷🇺 Ultramodern Iranian turbines are replacing German Siemens turbines in Russia.
Germany cedes its place to Iran as a supplier of power plant parts pic.twitter.com/EphPXbmlWQ
— AZ 🛰🌏🌍🌎 (@AZmilitary1) July 30, 2022
Iran Is Trying to Play the Saudis Against the US. It Won’t Work. Bloomberg
New Not-So-Cold War
Volodymyr Zelensky calls for evacuation of Donetsk region to escape “Russian terror” Le Monde. “Ukrainian deputy prime minister Iryna Verechtchuk had previously announced the mandatory evacuation of the entire population of the Donetsk region.” Operation questions: How many people are left, how many will be willing to leave, how they will be evacuated, and where they will go. One thing we can be sure of: Ukraine will be quite happy to mix evacuating civilians with retreating soldiers (and perhaps that is the real point of the order).
* * * Regime Instability In Kiev? Gordon Hahn
Nord Stream gas row deepens as Gazprom airs new complaints on turbine Euronews
* * * Lloyds To Insure War Grain Ships In Ukraine Sea Corridor gCaptain
Ukraine Needs Solutions, Not Endless War The National Interest
Russian Offensive, Ukraine Inflation Crisis, Blinken Talks to Lavrov, Pelosi Flies to Taiwan (video) Alexander Mercouris, YouTube. Shout-out to NC at 5:00.
Biden Administration
Sinema indicates she may want to change Schumer-Manchin deal Axios
SEC Enriches Fraudsters, Lawyers as Secrecy Shrouds Tips Program Bloomberg Law
Capitol Seizure
Democrats hope DOJ holds Trump accountable after Mueller disappointment The Hill. Any stick to beat a dog.
2022
Midterm Misery for Biden as Key Economy Gauge Flags 30-Seat Loss Bloomberg
The Utah Independent Who Just Might Have the Formula to Beat Trumpism Politico
Boeing
Boeing Gets FAA Clearance to Restart 787 Dreamliner Delivery Bloomberg
Sports Desk
Ex-Gov. Phil Bryant Subpoenaed In Welfare Fraud Case Involving Brett Favre, USM Mississippi Free Press (DCBlogger).
Zeitgeist Watch
Ticket bought in Illinois wins $1.337B Mega Millions jackpot Star-Telegram
Think Your Street Needs a Redesign? Ask an AI Bloomberg. Don’t ask it anything. Kill it with fire. (I must note, however, that the DALL-E rollout has been very effective as marketing.)
Imperial Collapse Watch
What Presidents Say Does Not Matter. It Is The Execution Of Policies That Counts. Moon of Alabama. With shout-out to NC.
We blitzed it London Review of Books. Oil geopolitics. Well worth a read.
Most US F-35s temporarily grounded as ejection seat issue threatens jets worldwide Air Force Times (Re Silc). You’ll need an ejection seat when the F-35 catches on fire, so this is bad.
Guillotine Watch
Intel Cuts Fab Buildout by $4B To Pay Billions In Dividends Semianalysis (MP). “It’s a disgrace that Intel has decided to cut fab buildouts while begging the US government for subsidies through the chips act and committing to growing their dividend.”
Class Warfare
Bank Of America Memo, Revealed: “We Hope” Conditions For American Workers Will Get Worse The Intercept
Eddie Dempsey talking pure sense (video) PoliticsJOE, YouTube (MarkT).
Please tell me this is a parody:
this is so good pic.twitter.com/ZHg9U2oXjG
— ST (∞, ∞) (@seyitaylor) July 30, 2022
Unpicking the link between smell and memories Nature
Moral Panics Come and Go. Sex Bracelet Hysteria Is Forever. The Ringer
Artemis is with us London Review of Books
How a near-death experience could change the way you live NPR. News you can use!
Antidote du jour (via):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
238 comments
Comments are closed.
Great humour in the editorials today!
Thank you!
> Great humour in the editorials today!
Yes, I felt chatty today, for some reason. Normally I believe in being more austere. Thank you!
For Sci-Fi fans perhaps:
https://link.medium.com/tJFoRiMu7rb
A little summer frivolity from Cory Doctorow.–
Tim Powers’s books have a way of sticking with you. I started in 1985, with Dinner at Deviant’s Palace, one of the most memorable post-apocalyptic novels you could hope to read, full of “eyeball kicks” (stellar, memorable, wildly imaginative imagery), like the horse-drawn muscle car featured in John Berkey’s cover for the original Ace Books paperback.
I’ve found myself chatty lately also. These days, when you find a kindred spirit, conversations flourish. There is so much of substance to talk about.
Re: Monkeypox transmission
Will this be the same information as to transmission? Respiratory transmission compared to contact? The mask controversy again?
Here’s from the CDC:
After zoonotic transmission, monkeypox spread from person to person is principally respiratory; contact with infectious skin lesions or scabs is another, albeit less common, means of person-to-person spread. African rodents and primates may harbor the virus and infect humans, but the reservoir host is unknown.
Well the results section in the paper states:
“Overall, 98% of the persons with infection were gay or bisexual men, 75% were White, and 41% had human immunodeficiency virus infection; the median age was 38 years. Transmission was suspected to have occurred through sexual activity in 95% of the persons with infection. Transmission was suspected to have occurred through sexual activity in 95% of the persons with infection. ”
The two statements aren’t contradictory but on the what-to-do to reduce incidence aspect, they lead to startlingly different actions in terms of individual behaviors and ought to lead to different public proselytizing.
Near death experiences. I dunno but it was good the father improved and was / has recovered. Well thankfully I have none to speak of. Brings to mind this catchy tune from the Mighty Mighty Bosstones…catchy song with a great horn section.
I’ve never had to knock on wood
And I’m glad I haven’t yet
Because I’m sure it isn’t good
That’s the impression that I get
griffen, Read “Proof of Heaven”, by a Neurosurgeon who didn’t believe any of it. He went overseas for a conference and came back with meningitis or something. He was in the hospital he worked in, attended by other doctors and Neurosurgeons he knew…he was flat line brain dead for 6 days! Then he sat up, and decided to write what he experienced down before he thought about it. I’ve been reading about these experiences for something like 55 years. The stories are all so similar, it seems there must be something to it. Six days of flat line brain dead is a record! Nobody has done that and not woken up as a vegetable! At least, that’s an assertion in the book. You can “dunno” all you want, there is no convincing unless it resonates inside your being. The only true proof, at least at our level, will be if that’s what we wake up to, after our final moments of “the breath of life” leaves us. The good neurosurgeon also started a website for “Proof of Heaven”, I forget the dot whatever, but if you’re curious, you’ll find it.
I’m doing a search, and just casual looking through book reviews and the wiki page as well. The reviews seem to belie that if some readers had doubts about his experience, those doubts may still persist. As with topics like this, others mileage may vary. And also I prefer to keep my views on this matter pretty close to the vest.
I’ve got a parallel source worth mentioning. Nikki Sixx, bassist for the band Motley Crue, infamously flat-lined after a heroin overdose. They dosed him with adrenaline to bring him back, after which he says he just continued apace with the drugs. That experience is the inspiration, if you will, for the tune Kickstart My Heart.
Here is the trailer for the series Surviving Death:
https://youtu.be/Cq5V9SgO1_A
The story of the surgeon who drowned but was revived with no brain damage and stories to tell is fascinating. Including foretelling the premature death of her young son.
The low to no levels of brain activity in NDE’s correlate with the effects of psychedelic experiences. Bernardo Kastrup explains:
https://youtu.be/lNpYdiYvL0s
Contra materialist accounts of the roots of consciousness, psychedelic events demonstrate much lower levels of overall brain activity although there is a small rise in one area, I understand. If the brain was producing the mind one would expect visions of heaven, unearthly patterns of light and color, and my personal experience on salvia divinorum of being a thousand feet tall and orbiting the Earth (and that was *peanuts* compared to when I turned to look at the Sun) to correspond with an explosion of brain activity. Quite the opposite, which lends credence to the notion that the brain filters out experience as opposed to creating it and NDE’s/psychedelics lower that filter.
I don’t see the the grounds for the “If the brain… one would expect…” claim. Brains might work in unexpected ways.
For the medicos reading NC, this paper was published last fall.
The Use of Hydroxyurea in the Treatment of COVID-19
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8647674/
From the Abstract:
Results
In all presented cases, patients reverted to their baseline respiratory health after treatment with the hydroxyurea protocol. There was no significant difference in the correlation between COVID-19 and hydroxyurea. However, deaths were extremely low for those taking hydroxyurea.
“In sickle cell disease, hydroxyurea increases fetal haemoglobin concentration in patients by increasing nitric oxide levels. The increase in nitric oxide leads to activation of guanylyl cyclase, therefore, increasing cyclic guanosine monophosphate (cyclic GMP). This rise in cyclic GMP activates gamma-globin gene expression and gamma chain synthesis, which results in the production of fetal haemoglobin [5]. The resulting increase in fetal haemoglobin led to providers adding hydroxyurea to the COVID-19 treatment protocol, further explained in the Clinical Observations section.”
Hhhmmm… nitric oxide. We’ve had back-and-forths here re: the use of nitric oxide nasal sprays (NONs) to prevent and treat Covid-19. Here’s a study on NONs as a treatment, published earlier this month, that I think was linked on NC, but perhaps is worthy of review:
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lansea/article/PIIS2772-3682(22)00046-4/fulltext
> The Use of Hydroxyurea in the Treatment of COVID-19
n = 9. Glad the doctors are in the punching, but…
re: Anthony Fauci wants to put Covid’s politicization behind him.
quoting SNL’s Church Lady…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puwoUKhZQbg
Fauci just wants to do a Mario Draghi and bail out now before everything turns to crap. It is going to take years to do an honest damage assessment of all that he did as “America’s Doctor” going back to the early days of the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
Fauci can feather his comfy bed with a few greenbacks, as was covered recently in Links. After such a long term serving in his chosen profession and delaying retirement, he gets a nice annual pension for his efforts. I can’t honestly say I knew about him or his efforts prior to this whole pandemic starting in 2020. Then again, prior to the pandemic my impressions of the CDC would have been influenced by the rare episodes of the Walking Dead I watched.
Of course Fauci wants to put politicization behind him now that the GOP plots to probe him after the midterms
Where was this 6-12 months ago?
Probing Fauci. I don’t like the optics.
There are jokes to write here, but let’s keep this conversation clear and open in the daylight.
GOP plots to keep their phony baloney positions, much like the Gov and Hedley Lamar in Blazing Saddles.
Hedley Lamarr: This is the bill that will convert the Centers for Disease Control into the Anthony Fauci Memorial Center for Pharmaceutical Subsidies.
Anthony Fauci: [standing up proudly] Gentlemen, this bill will be a giant step forward in the treatment of the underperforming pharmaceutical company.
Working link for “Iran can export car parts, gas turbines to Russia” article at-
https://tass.com/economy/1456639
That is a serious, serious piece of precision machinery that turbine. But when you stop and think about it, the implications of that turbine are fairly profound. So Iran not only has the technical and engineering expertise to design that turbine and the industrial need for such things to be built, but they also have the educational facilities to turn out trained people who can conceive, design, plan and build such machinery. A quick shows that they are actually a pretty advanced country that still values old fashioned things like education, engineering, science, mathematics, etc. How about that!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran#Education,_science_and_technology
The Golden Age of Islam (600-1200) was largely based on Arabic translations of Persian translations of ancient Greek science and philosophy. I don’t think they ever really gave up on this respect for and building upon this knowledge and understanding.
9th century Persian scientist Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī, head of the library of The House of the Wisdom in Baghdad gave as algebra (al jabra) and, well, algorithms (al-Khwārizmī).
Recommended…
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Greek-Thought-Arabic-Culture-Graeco-Arabic/dp/0415061334/ref=asc_df_0415061334/?tag=googshopuk-21&linkCode=df0&hvadid=344376933271&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=15972368782792872069&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=m&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9067729&hvtargid=pla-575741350928&psc=1&th=1&psc=1
Makes you wonder what the nation and people could have been right now, if not for that stupid US grudge over the oil deposits.
victors (and their heirs) write the history books.
So the West’s view of Persia is through skewed Greek and Roman eyes (Parthian wars).
Want a real shake up of the world order to blow neocon heads? how about a north-south economic corridor of Russia-Iran-India. It’s happening and eventually will incorporate China and Pakistan too.
It does look like Mackinder’s “Heartland,” doesn’t it.
“Heartland”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Geographical_Pivot_of_History
Not the Mongols. I will eschew analysis of the ‘consumptive economy’ of the Mongols, but word is that when they invaded Persia, they left a wasteland that didn’t recover until industrial technology, as measured by population.
Agree with your analysis, and word is half of Taiwan’s trade is already with true China. (source isn’t my favorite, but was recommended by the chieftans here.) ((Alex something.))
Englishmen write the history books, for obvious reasons. To declare oneself victor is true, in a sense.
Went to a radical catholics birthday party where they had a pedantic rant on population statistics. -digression- where they were arguing about religious populations. I listened politely and pointed out that ‘white’ (a spurious idea) people only add up to 8% world wide, which I had learned from a comic. Only recently.
I don’t go for racial politics, but it did stop me for a minute to learn that. And alot of those are the types of white we excluded in the 30’s and 40’s and before. Italians, Russians, Swedes…
I hear we used to call Swedes square-heads, because of course we did. Shame. I drive by a condo housing-unit called Swede ville.
The others aren’t very well named either. Princeton Reserve etc.
India is the joker here.
Recently there were an article about Pakistan’s inability to acquire LNG for their power plants, because they were outbid by European buyers that would even cover the contractual penalties for the suppliers.
That got me curious, and i found out that Iran have long been trying to get a pipeline built over the border.
But Iran wants to expand that pipeline to supply not just Pakistan but also India.
And multiple times India was shown interest, but then pulled out of the project.
At least one such pulling out was related to India getting a US offer to help build nuclear power plants instead.
But more recently it seems China has shown interest in getting the pipeline laid all the way to them.
All in all, it seems India has either been courted by, or courting, both sides. Perhaps in order to score better deals.
Yes it is.
Following on even more seriously is the ability to respond to a damaged turbine. Turbines need to be protected against all kinds of things. Too much moisture, loose parts, oil leaking past the glands, spinning up too fast, not responding to load correctly, etc etc. They are delicate pieces of essential equipment that are easily damaged. If Iran has the ability to ship turbines like this and they can turn around repairs quickly, that’s a game changer.
One of the reasons why people said we needed to hold on to sanctions for the long term was to starve Russian fuel operations of required spare parts and repairs. But if the options for Russia already exist outside of the western aligned suppliers then there is no leverage available regardless of how long the sanctions are maintained. It wouldn’t surprise me if the assessment that Russia had no other options besides Siemens or the like wasn’t based on actual data. It was just more lazy assumptions from the same people who thought Russia wouldn’t cut people off from NG as a response to sanctions.
STEM graduates per country. I posted this a couple years ago on NC, so here it is again (from 2016 data, but I doubt much has changed):
https://www.statista.com/chart/7913/the-countries-with-the-most-stem-graduates/
Iran is number five on the list. On a per capita basis, Iran (population 80m or so) is far ahead of USA.
Maybe they actually compensate their stem graduates enough to live on.
Look on the bright side. The reason that Starbucks stores are getting unionized is because most of the baristas have $200,000 in student debt.
A friend that works at a SF bay area Trader Joe’s told me that the store’s entire produce department has masters degrees or better.
Most of them in the humanities i suspect…
Vegetative Studies?
PhDs in rumination.
Most of the best and brightess STEM grads in the US go to Wall St where they figure out how to make profit from financial churn.
I’m old enough to remember when many Wall St types had to get real “first” jobs like driving a buss because Wall St jobs didn’t pay too well.
If the rest of the world figures out that STEM people benefit their country when they MAKE REAL THINGS (rather than the Wall St BS) and make that happen, well, the rest of the world wins, and America continues to go down the tubes.
At one point Wall Street traders used fast boats in the harbor to get early news of ship contents. These days they co-locate their algo servers next to the stock exchange’s to minimize latency. The technology may have changed, but the gluttonous greed is eternal.
Iran probably hasn’t crapified their public education like we have.
… and Iran has 3x’s FEWER citizens than the US.
Having to do without Western tech support (either b/c of sanctions or because they couldn’t be trusted) probably has done wonders for Iranian engineering ingenuity.
Once again, latter-day Persia (Iran) is a big thorn in the side of latter-day Rome (USA).
U.S. sanctions are only serving to accelerate development of a successful Russia-China-Iran-India barter bloc. They have resources, technology, and most of all determination. They can easily create their own version of SWIFT and other infrastructure.
The U.S. can’t even build an F-35 without a reliable ejection seat. Finland will soon discover that Russian gas is much more important to them than F-35s.
Modern (post Cold War) US ejection seats owe a lot to the Soviet design which were much better than West’s. Curious if US was able to internalize everything that the Russians had sold when the Cold War ended.
Intel might need to update their corporate name and equity ticker if this performance keeps up. Also, when I watch CNBC cover the company the remark is always how exceedingly pleasant the company CEO, Gelsinger is to speak with. That’s nice and all but it does not help his company perform.
Between AMD taking share and the seeming inability to deliver new product, and now practically begging for subsidies from the CHIPs Act, Intel just is not your father’s version of the company. Heck I remember the 1990s when seemingly every year the chip/CPU for PCs was exponentially better than just two years before. I defer to PC or engineer types on that front.
As well as AMD is doing I’m the CPU realm, AMD and Intel aren’t corporate equals and haven’t been for a long time. Intel still fabs and assembles its own CPUs but AMD has been fabless for a long time now. (Global Foundries had its beginning as AMD’s last fab, Iirc.)
Because Intel still operates fabs and researched its own fab technologies, Intel is much more fitting as a “national champion” type company.
I tend to agree with the last sentence. Yet, if they or any non-software engineering and tech companies are going to be “national champions,” the companies and nations are going to have to take an interest in retaining institutional knowledge within the country for the nuts and bolts of industrialization.
This part:
“We will do doing an objective deep dive on the 1,054 page CHIPS Act that recently passed, but it doesn’t even prevent Intel from continuing their plans of purchasing semiconductor manufacturing tools from a new Chinese supplier….”
It’s a special kind of idiocy to keep thinking this is anything like the 19th Century China that can be rolled over when the Chinese know that the USA treats its own working class as the true mortal enemy and existential threat.
Issues like retention of highly specialized toolmaking seem more a governmental responsibility because manufacturers in such situations have limited options to make a toolmaker stay in the US. The most obvious option, of course, is just outright purchasing the toolmaker. Yet, if Intel had tried to purchase a key chip toolmaker, I expect it would be subject to heavy antitrust scrutiny that could make any such transaction not even worth the bother…
So I guess my fundamental view is government needs to get serious about industrial policy at this point–as a last chance to start moving things in the right direction.
So in the end, government may well have to function as a protectionist buyer of last resort. Something i think even Keynes advocated. And a line of thinking that is very much compatible with MMT.
I might not say “in line with MMT”…MMT describes this process as something that happens so could be used for any necessary purpose but which is in fact only used to prop up corporations and fleece the commons.
So it’s not MMT per se, it’s socialism for the rich. And yes, see the chips act, it’s a done deal and there will be more deals done to bail out the worst of the worst who can’t be bothered investing in their own businesses.
related from D Baker
https://cepr.net/the-semiconductor-bill-and-the-moderna-billionaires/
“As a result, according to Forbes, we had created at least five Moderna billionaires as of last summer. Undoubtedly many other well-placed people in the company pocketed tens or hundreds of millions. While the origins of rising inequality may be a mystery to many economists, it really shouldn’t be very surprising to anyone who follows the news.“
My main point: there wasn’t one at all in the USA. A “national champion” might need some “national” team support…if that’s the idea.
Intel has fallen too far behind to ever recover. They will be playing catchup for the foreseeable future. Andy Grove must be spinning in his grave. Aside from Gelsinger, the entire board of directors needs to be ousted.
Intel has stumbled before.
At one point they bet on something called VLIW for future CPU designs, resulting in their Itanium product line.
The basic thinking was that software compilers could be smart enough to optimize the hell out of the code for such CPUs.
AMD instead bet on extending the venerable x86 to 64-bit.
In the end Intel had to go to AMD, cap in hand, and ask for a license to that extension, for use with a continuation of their own x86 line that had been developed as their Israeli division almost as a back room project.
Similarly AMD has stumbled, like when they figured the future was to do floating point on the GPU. Thus they put a scaled down GPU on the CPU, creating their first APU, reducing the on-CPU floating point unit in the process. It didn’t catch on, and left AMD with a boondoggle of a design that nearly bankrupted them (why they sold off their fabs).
The added irony is that Nvidia would then go and get the world interested in GPU computing, the result in part being cryptocurrencies.
Nah, their corporate name and ticker are perfect signifiers of their true line of business as total information awareness enablers.
On the other hand, they’ve had analysts on who questioned whether Intel can pull off a turnaround, and weren’t at all optimistic. I’ve also heard advice given, to people who want exposure to chip producers, to look at Intel’s competitors. As the phrase goes, when you’re losing CNBC…
Volodymyr Zelensky calls for evacuation of Donetsk region to escape “Russian terror” Le Monde.
Military Summary noted the high cost of an estimated 220,000 of which 70,000 are young folks leaving one’s home and having to pay rent by moving towards western Ukraine to live somewhere else – and still in the path of oncoming Russian troops – w/o a job. Not to mention the logistical problems of doing this while retreating from advancing Russian forces, to which MS could only express bafflement. Young people are being targeted for this, so that Ukraine can have a future to fund Western fueled wars against Russia.
Regarding Euronews reporting on Russia’s gas turbines….is it now customary for Western firms like Siemens to provide updates to it’s customers service (in this case Russia/Gazprom) thru news articles by sharing account information with Western reporters who then write articles on those customer accounts? Also, Euronews thought it a good idea to write the European Union’s opinion on the technical conditions of the turbines in Russia and Siemens. I wonder how the EU has acquired the relevant technical and customer knowledge to express an opinion on this, and why Euronews thinks the EU has this knowledge?
Regarding: China hemmed in. China is out of touch on her sea boundary claims, but it looks like she’s stepping up pushing back on Taiwan. It’s not unreasonable she may anticipate American Angis missiles (w/nukes?) soon stationed there to protect against Iranian I mean North Korean attack….”The UK and its allies must learn the lessons of Ukraine and supply defensive weapons to Taiwan, Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said. She told MPs that Ukraine should have been given arms to resist Russia earlier and the same mistake should not be made in Taiwan.”
Regarding evacuations, there were news already several days ago that mayor of Kramatorsk organized evacuation buses, but only 300 or so citizen left. The rest preferred to wait for the “Russians” (as in family and kin from “occupied” Donetsk). Partly because they’re really not that pro-Maidan, partly because Ukrainian state does not help or support internal refugees in any way or form.
Donbass evacuees to western Ukraine will have no shelters, food, work or relatives. They’d need to rely on Red Cross and the goodwill of strangers who look down on them as “koloradi”, “moskals”, “vatniks” or “katsaps”. So most think it’s worth the risk to let the front pass by, because on the other side return to some “normal” seems actually possible.
There was also news about an official checkpoint in Zaporozhye where hundreds of civilians travel every day from Ukrainian side to Russian side. One just need to come up with an excuse of going to see a sick relative or having to check one’s property – and pay $400 – to pass the line of contact. Very popular with military age males, since the price of crossing to Poland is 3 to 4 times as much.
Totally agree on your take. I was putting together a comment but yours is much better. This amounts to a war crime and it may be that Kiev will use these people as ‘hostages’ in future negotiations with the Russians – unless the Kiev government fully collapses first. In Kiev and Washington, they probably call this draining the swamp but without a civilian shield, the Russians will have no reason to hold back on their full firepower against Ukrainian formations.
My thought was a conscription pool, which I suppose is similar to taking hostages/human shields.
Duran just quoted Ukraine Ministry of Intregration saying purpose of (semi) forced evaluation is to protect people especially young from lack of heating fuel this winter and asked viewers to comment on that. Unfortunately perhaps in the heat of live reporting he missed the obvious which is if them remain where they are, there will plenty of heat food and restored pensions when Russia/Donbas takes control in about a month or two, while if they move west they are much more likely to face problems of scarcity the Ministry of Integration very deceptively refers to.
For ‘evacuees’ I read hostages. They will need some human shields to cover their retreat.
During the 1999 Kosovo crisis, the Serbs “evacuated” a number of Albanians, sometimes for legitimate reasons, sometimes just sending them over the border into Macedonia where a NATO force was waiting. Had a ground invasion been carried out (which was being discussed at the time) then hundreds of thousands of refugees would have been a massive complication for NATO. A few years later, I was told, by someone in a position to know, that JNA doctrine during the Cold War was actually to drive large numbers of their citizens into the path of the invading Russians, mixed, no doubt, with some plainclothes special forces. The whole idea was to slow the Russian advance down, while the territorial forces deployed in the heart of the country.
I wonder if something similar might not be contemplated here. If enough refugees can be persuaded to clog the roads, get into buses mixed with military convoys and such, life could become quite complicated for the Russians. It could turn into a well-organised humanitarian crisis.
And potentially a photo opportunity worthy for western media: “Ukrainians flee the nasty Russians”. The fact that in this region they are likely to be Russian leaning (especially if they did not leave already) will be ignored, of course.
My first thought was, how many of these evacuees will be allowed back should Kiev retake control of the region?
To be a bit crass, the situation is starting to look akin to Palestine.
As many as the Germans in Breslau or Poles in Lwow, no doubt
Liz Truss is trying to beat Pelosi as the harbinger of WW3.
First wave feminists must be proud. we did it ladies, women can be incompetent as any man!
Imagine this scenario which could take place well before your midterms. So Air Force One lands in London’s Heathrow Airport and off steps Madame President Kamala Harris – to be met by Prime Minister Liz Truss. Bet nobody had that on their bingo cards at the beginning of the year. But if we are to be honest, this is all on third wave feminists.
I agree with you both that Truss and Harris are incompetent, but the lads in charge are not much better as Yves and Gonzalo Lira discussed. Trudeau? Macron? Sanchez? At fault is clearly the process by which our super-duper “leaders” rise to the top with no knowledge of the real economy, while thinking that all it takes to win is a successful social media campaign.
First wave were suffragists, 1920s. You may mean second wave … Sixties, radfems, etc
No. I mean the third wave feminists who got going in the 1990s. Probably Hillary Clinton would be seen as an icon to them which was why so many of them lost it so bad when the clown won in 2016-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-wave_feminism
Meme-ist memorialization waves ;p /s
1st Wave – Rosie the Riveter – We want to be equal to men.
2nd Wave – Fish riding bicycle – We don’t need men.
3rd Wave – Rachel Maddow – We are men.
4th Wave – Lia Thomas – We are women.
;p /s
Corollary to the 4th wave meme:. Men are not women.
More like “we are birthing persons”…
menstrual people.
5th Wave — Liz and Kamala — Avoid altogether the word “woman.” ;p /s
I seem to recall some coverage of the post-election protest of some retirement age lady, all dressed up in a pink kitted hat and a sign, saying something like “Why are we doing this, again” in an exasperated tone.
I am convinced that Hillary and entourage thought they could ride the wave of intersectionalism that was washing over social media all the way to the white house, because they thought they had the workers vote secured purely down to their party affiliation.
But then Trump stepped up and waxed lyrically about a border wall and tolls on Chinese goods that would force a onshoring of industry and jobs for everyone.
Third-Wave feminism has also been referred to as Goldman-Sacbs feminism. It was concerned with getting rich-and-powerful-wannabe women through the Tiffany Glass Ceiling.
As a satirist said, Third-Wave feminism believes that the Mexican Drug Cartels should have an equal number of Drug Queenpins among the Drug Kingpins.
Peter Principle? Promoted to their highest level of incompetence!
More like Karen Principle. Badger your way to a seat of power you are completely unsuited for…
They “I WANT TO SEE YOUR MANAGER!”D their way to the top!
Randy as a Karen in the latest South Park special really nails it!
Karen and Brandon go to brunch…
I Might have posted this the other day, but still relevant:
A fascinating book, “How will Capitalism End” by Wolfgang Streeck. It has nuggets like this one:
“After a certain amount of time, it may no longer be possible to stop the rot: expectations of what politics can do may have eroded too far, and the civic skills and organizational structures needed to develop effective public demand may have atrophied beyond redemption, while the political personnel themselves may have adapted entirely to specializing in the management of appearances,rather than the representation of some version, however biased, of the public interest.”
This was a really smart book.
God save the U.K. and the world from Liz Truss. What a misguided person. Promoted way beyond her level of competency.
Gordon Hahn on collapse of Ukraine government. Many, many intriguing details.
This tactic (which isn’t even a tactic) didn’t work in Iraq:
We truly are dealing with people who have attended a couple of Powerpnt presentations in which the words “strategy” and “tactic” were thrown around. “Our Strategy for Getting Rid of the Employees’ Dental Plan.”
They know neither strategy nor tactics.
But please, I am ready for my Vogue cover now…
Supposedly Ukraine also raised the conscription age to 70 from 65.
This does look very much like the “Volkssturm” militia set up by the Party at the very end of the World War Part Two. It’s a sign of desperation and impending collapse. This Winter in Europe is going to be epic in it’s malign effects on that benighted place. Food shortages, heating shortages, and a wave of refugees from the East armed with military grade small arms, plus who knows what else in the “things that go boom” category.
Europe might need their armies right at home the keep the peace this winter.
Meanwhile, because the Ukrainians are unable to find any military targets, they used their MLRS launchers to spray petal mines into the city streets of Donetsk. Though small, those light-green petal mines pack a helluva punch and you won’t believe what they can do to a human foot. Kids can mistake them for toys or curios and the local forces were using a tank to explode those mines safely-
https://www.bitchute.com/video/APKyfJ60weAD/ (5:38 mins)
America has a long history of “taking care” of children during wartime. When you are Top Dog, you never apologize.
https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/vietnam-war-girl-ap-photo-phan-thi-350031
That is downright evil. MRLS were “banned” because undetonated sub-munitions were as dangerous as land mines, and now the bastards are turning that into a use all its own.
Time and time again i wonder how humanity go to his stage of development.
Speaking as a former artillery officer, the undetonated ICM submunitions were intended to function as “area denial” weapons.
I honestly have no idea if they were designed with a 10-ish % rate of non-detonation, but it was deemed useful.
There were(are) even FASCAM rounds where all of the submunitions were delayed detonation- a minefield laid by field artillery. These were by design.
The petal mines being used here are from the latter sort of munitions.
Air burst cases full of individual anti personnel mines with a wing shape that allows them to drop slow enough to prevent detonation on landing. The more modern versions have a time so explode randomly up to 48 hours later. The ones being used in Donetsk are the older forever dangerous variety. A few cases have been shown where they failed to distribute their loads.
Someday people will question why a video like this could only be viewed on a renegade, underground video platform. I find myself less and less able even to interact at all with people who apprehend reality solely through the regime-censored “information” channels. Ceci nést pas une pipe. Today we are assured that Russia committed a horrific “war crime” by killing 53 POWs, but a brief scouring of the uncensored channels clearly show the remains of U.S. HIMARS missiles in the rubble. My question is: can they win in the long term? The people who have engineered a complete detachment from observed reality and convinced a large portion of humanity to believe the most ridiculous falsehoods? Men give birth? Zelensky is a champion of democracy? The vax is working great? “Joe Biden” is in charge? Honestly, are we really going to have to have another Enlightenment to rid us of these priests of war and death?
Two approaches for de-mining those petal mines. First the high-tech version-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIlE9Wh_5xw (13 secs)
And then the low-tech method which is also impressive-
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/m8A19Soh1qU (11 secs)
A third approach using a vehicle more readily available in the area https://twitter.com/snekotron/status/1553762296777801731
And a brick variation on the low-tech method
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/SBYDnCO5W5I
The nominal reason for shrinking the patently corrupt and bloated Maidan bureaucracy was to “conserve government resources.” Which translates to me as “to ensure a bigger pot for Elensky and his close chums to loot.” I am not finding much on what percent of the well over $100 billion dumped on the Ukraine burn pile is disappearing into offshore accounts and pricey real estate for the few, or surfacing as mordidas to the Western political class and its owners. But it has to be huge. https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/03/billions-dollars-ukraine-gone-missing-yet-us-ukrainian-politicians-push-money/ And I believe it has been confirmed that some Ukies have indeed sold Combined-West-provided weapons systems and hardware to the Russians, or just on the global weapons bazaar that will facilitate “terrists” getting their hands on shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles that will add a new frisson of danger, beyond viruses and suicidal pilots, to air travel.
I see that actual scientists who study the “progress” of human-induced climate destruction are tacitly of the opinion that climate collapse is er reversible and fatal. And there’s so many opportunities for voyeuristic horror these days — from the pictures of pustulent male genitalia and perinea in published science articles on the rapid spread of “monkeypox,” like early days of HIV via sexually prolific males, with more democidal reprise of both the HIV and “droplet/fomite” .gov response to Covid, to a video of a Russian soldier being taunted by Ukies while he crawled and whimpered with a pitchfork speared into his back.
What an effing sh!tshow the human-impacted world is these days.
Yeah, i always atleast scan and many times read any scientific papers in the Links. I really really wish I hadn’t scanned the paper about monkey pox in yesterday’s Links.
If I’m not mistaken, Mr. McPhee, shrinking the bureaucracy has long been one of strings attached to IMF loans keeping Ukraine afloat, with privatization of state-owned enterprises as the “solution” to this particular condition. I don’t have a complete list of the targets, but saw recently that the Ukraine Sea Ports Authority is among them. (FYI, USPA was key in the government’s decision on Feb 24 to shut down commercial shipping at Black Sea ports.) Although Z and his “close chums” could benefit via insider information, pulling strings, etc., I’d wager that Ukrainians won’t be getting the biggest share of the loot.
After hearing Mercouris remarks on the economic situation on Ukraine and reading the very informative piece from Hahn one can only wonder for how long Zelensky will be able to retain power in Ukraine. Regime change could occur anytime now in Ukraine and possibly very soon. If, for instance, by the end of August the battle of Donbass is finished as Mercouris projects and Russia is seen as able to proceed to the Dnieper the forces mentioned by Hahn might act then. The only worry (for Zelensky himself) is if he will be able to run and hide fast enough to avoid being counted as another victim of the war. He is in a very bad situation and will only pile mistakes as the one you signalled in your reply onwards to his end as head of state (and possibly as a living human).
Not pretty.
He will retain power as long as DC and Moscow both think he is more valuable in office than out of it. That said, it seem Moscow is running out of patience with trying to get a negotiated peace.
DC has already signaled indifference. Jake Sullivan said Zelensky should be afraid for his personal safety. That is an invite for him to be assassinated. The US is saying it can’t or won’ protect him.
So was he scoping out possible escape routes during his recent harbor visit?
Makes one also wonder if the increasingly unhinged actions are in order to not get a bullet to the neck from his “bodyguards”.
All in all, glad i am not in his shoes.
Emily Watson. Artemis is still with us.
Definitely worth a read.
The Alicia Stallings whom she mentions has to be A.E. Stallings, who recently did a wonderful translation of The Nature of the Things by Lucretius. It is a version of this central philosophical work that is jaunty and easy on the eyes. I recommend it to you.
It isn’t hard in the Mediterranean world to see that the “old” gods haven’t gone away. It isn’t only Artemis who is still with us.
And the erotic and dribbling cakes near the end? They have been around for centuries. All it takes is a quick search of the WWW to persuade you that sometimes cannoli alla siciliana aren’t just long and sweet pastries.
And there’s that scene in the Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa in which Prince Fabrizio speculates about the various Sicilian pastries: Saint Agatha’s breasts. And others.
In the film by Visconti, Burt Lancaster raises an eyebrow at the heavily laden table, knowing all to well his own foibles and those of others.
DJG, since you mentioned Lucretius, I’ll take the opportunity to say thanks for your recommendation of a book which I finished recently, Curzio Malaparte’s Kaputt, which David has commented on as well. For those who haven’t read it, it’s a fictionalization of the narrator “Malaparte”‘s WWII encounters both with the grisly reality on the ground and the high-life of the Nazi elite among whom he circulated.
It surprised me to read that it was a best-seller when it came out in 1944, it’s hard for me to imagine something this harsh attaining that level of popularity today. But as a look at the rot in Europe, it feels timely.
It surprised me to read that it was a best-seller when it came out in 1944.
Is it so surprising? Everyone had just lived through an event in which it was eventually reckoned that an estimated 40,000,000-50,000,000 people died globally.
J.G. Ballard once said that after growing up in Lunghua prison camp, he never had any illusions that the facade of human civilization was anything more than a flimsy stage set that could be dismantled at any moment. He also said his time in Lunghua was in some ways the best of his life. Make of that what you will.
You’re right, in the context of those times it makes sense that it could be popular. It was more a feeling of distance today from a world where lots of people would be willing to look hard at such ugliness.
Didn’t know that about J.G. Ballard, interesting.
Thanks to you both. It is the reading suggestions made by the moderators and commenters which make Sundays here such a pleasure. That is another reason why I will miss the work of Jerri-Lynn.
I have checked my library for each of these suggestions and they are not available, but they do have Diary of a foreigner in Paris by Curzio Malaparte and The battle between the frogs and the mice : a tiny Homeric epic by A. E. Stallings, which was mentioned in Artemis linked story. They will have to do for now.
You can find Kaputt online at archive.org.
And speaking of divinely ordained parental blood sacrifice of one’s own child, I am particularly fond of Galina Vroman’s retelling of the story of Abraham and Isaac, Thine Only Son—And Mine. In this version, Abraham is a delusional, God besotted old coot and it is not through God’s reversal of his previous filicidal command as it is portrayed in the Jewish book of fairytales, but the result of Sarah’s crafty intervention that Isaac’s life is spared.
B has covid again. I thought he just recently got over it.
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/07/30/biden-tests-positive-for-covid-again-will-restart-isolation-despite-no-new-symptoms.html
He did – about a month ago. Now he can ‘learn to live’ with what he pushed on hundreds of millions of others (Kamala seen gleefully rubbing hands together offstage).
At least Kamala isn’t Gavin, not that there’s much difference, imo.
Not a National Model—a National Warning
https://www.city-journal.org/gavin-newsoms-california-is-a-warning-not-a-model
Gavin Newsom is pushing the environmentally destructive Delta Conveyance project. This involves constructing a canal to drain water from the Sacramento Delta to southern California.
“The project would cost between $16-40 billion, with 65% of the tab picked up by Southern Californians living in the Metropolitan Water District, and cause mass destruction of Delta communities and ecosystems during both construction and operation.”
At the same time that California has a water shortage, Gavin Newsom mandates that cities across California construct an additional 2.5 million new housing units. Where will the water come from? This is on the heels of Newsom signing SB-9 and SB-10, which eliminate local control and end single family zoning across the state. These bills were designed by California State Senator Scott Weiner, who is a poster person for real estate developers. The bills were advertised as a way to address the affordable housing issue but voters and city councils saw through the bs and overwhelmingly opposed the bills. Newsom nonetheless signed them into law two days after the recall election. (there was no viable opponent to Newsom and instead of focusing on Newsom’s corruption, the recall campaigns attacked the popular mask mandate and Covid guidelines).
I wonder if the Californians moving to Florida are moving to the parts of Florida which will be under seawater as the ocean level rises.
I guess the “no new symptoms” part of the headline can be used to further move the goalposts of the “mildness” of the public health situation.
“Sure, you can test positive only a month after recovery, but you won’t be sick!”
I can’t wait to hear this statement word for word from my liberal friends in the coming days.
Yes, you’ll just be infective, an asymptomatic carrier.
I watched Bill Maher on Friday once again dismiss Covid, this time by noting that Biden got it and is now fine. Apparently not.
That NPR article about Long Covid is horrifying. The estimate is that already 4 million Americans are so hobbled by it that they can’t work (and millions more may have some lesser form), and the last figure I saw estimated that Covid infection of any severity entails a 23% chance of coming down with Long Covid. This is beginning to get more media attention, but still not nearly enough, IMO.
Maher is a professional im3e(ile on wheels. Here he is clumsily “debating” Taibbi re: Russiagate:
https://youtu.be/WZJ5xg2fYwc
It’s actually painful to watch. He is the epitome of smugnorant, with those Upper West Side patrician tones. He uses straw-man arguments, asks questions then ignores answers, rapid fires questions to try to sandbag Taibbi, and still thinks he is a legitimate commentator. He’s a PMC pornstar.
It’s more the smug of wealth and comfort from doing comedy. Born in NYC, but grew up in New Jersey.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11065467/COVID-reinfection-rate-treatment-Biden-taking-40-not-2-marketed.html
It’s the same familiar tune:
– We’ve got this miracle drug that’s been tested!!!
– Only very few people have had reinfections!!!
– Ok, we have had a lot of reinfections, but at least they are not hospitalized.
And they still try to blame all these fast mutations and variants on the unvaccinated.
He has Paxlovid rebound. quite common amongst the vaxxed and boosted. Because of the way the immune system responds to the vax differently to Omicron, it takes the vaxxed longer to clear the virus. 5 days of Paxlovid isn’t enough, virus comes right back.
And for those that denigrate “untested treatment regimens”, Paxlovid has NO testing on the vaxxinated. And the rebound redosing? No testing on that either. You can MSU when you are Pfizer, apparently.
Could B’s widely noted seeming cognitive deterioration reflect long Covid symptoms?
‘The Middle Class Course’
Naturally, I assumed the purpose of the (satire) “course” was so that the wealthy could learn to pass as middle class, then mingle comfortably with the Simple Folk and be able to smooth over those awkward moments in conversation with the less fortunate… like, say, the dozens of workers who provide the services that keep their estates running and the minions of middle management… should the occasion arise.
How many NC readers were expecting a Biden rebound Covid infection after hearing he was taking Paxlovid?
How many are “shocked I tell you shocked” that the story is that it is rare?
Oh and that Biden’s isolation still means a team and a photographer.
And in a just world Fauci would be suffering the worst of long Covid and a little Monkeypox and all in forms that have little insurance coverage. So he would be facing multiple horrible symptoms, medical skepticism, and bankruptcy within a year. But our world is neither fair or just. (Hell he kept his job after AIDS, that alone makes the lack of justice clear.) sadder still, I am not sure he will face any reputational rebooting in a world where Albright and McCain get state internment and Bolton is back in government.
in a just world Fauci would be suffering the worst of long Covid and a little Monkeypox
That would mean he has actual human blood coursing through his veins. There appears to be some debate on this.
I’m not surprised that Biden either got COVID again or had one of the infamous rebounds from Paxlovid.
But I’m shocked that we’re hearing about it. I can think of no better way to destroy confidence in our system. Even with the best care and all the money in the world you can still get rapid, repeat, COVID-19 diagnoses. So what’s the point of your average citizen getting boosted?
Well, I’m not your average citizen as I am immunocompromised, but I can give you some reasons why one might still choose to be boosted.
Cancer specialists in my area (WA state) are now offering Evusheld, a monoclonal antibody given in two separate injections, to severely compromised cancer patients. According to the nurse who contacted me, Evusheld is showing signs of being highly effective at preventing covid in such patients. I thought about it awhile and then called to say sign me up.
Unfortunately, I had only one shot of J&J and no boosters. To receive this life-saving prevention shot (a bit of sarc here), one must be fully vaxed and double boosted. And I’m not going there. But someone else might… Still waiting for Novavax to appear at the county health department… Or a good nasal vaccine.
Dr. Daniel Griffin in his Clinical Updates on This Week in Virology has repeatedly made the point that Evusheld is sitting on shelves and being allowed to expire rather than being given to vulnerable patients who are then also being allowed to expire. I’m currently in a dispute with my doctor over being allowed to take Evusheld. I’m thinking that maybe I better call Saul, or rather the real world equivalent of same.
I do enjoy listening to TWIV but they’re clueless on policy. They’re also in a somewhat walled garden when it comes to data. Although they talk to Dr. Paul Offit a lot and I like listening to him. He often shares his thoughts on why he votes “No” on the various panels he’s on. I wish we had him in charge of things instead of people like Fauci.
You need to be fully vaccinated to get Evusheld??? The whole point of having the monoclonals was to give people options besides the regular course of vaccines, and provide them with passive vaccination. They’ve been aimed at immunocompromised people this whole time! This is madness!
Evusheld is the only thing right now that seems to work for the ill. I have not had a critical patient in some time, but Evushled does seem to keep the high risk out of the hospital.
As for the other drug Paxlovid. I have so many patients asking now for the Ivermectin-Fluvoxamine-Steroid approach that I have about equal numbers in both arms. Furthermore, there are so many Paxlovid failures ( either no improvement at all after the whole 5 days or stopping the drug because it makes them feel so bad) that many of these failure patients demand the Ivemectin approach. The triple drug therapy seems to work much better than Paxlovid. Much quicker. And seems to have the added benefit of not having rebound. And the patients don’t have to stop their other life saving meds while taking it.
This is all case studies and anecdotal. However, doctors are talking – especially about the Paxlovid failure.
How we desperately need real head to head studies and not show trials meant to torpedo a generic drug. We also desperately need complete transparency with all the proprietary data on any of these meds. That is the exact niche that the NIH is supposed to fill. That is until the royalties started years ago.
Just encountered some Paxlovid confusion or is it double talk? I’m not sure.
What is ‘Paxlovid rebound’ and how common is it?
“(NEXSTAR) — Pres. Joe Biden has tested positive for COVID-19 again, just over three days after he was cleared to exit isolation, the White House announced Saturday. The positive test represents a “rebound” case after treatment with the anti-viral drug Paxlovid, WH physician Dr. Kevin O’Connor said in a letter.
O’Connor said Biden, who initially tested positive on July 21, “has experienced no reemergence of symptoms and continues to feel quite well.”….
But this article then mentions Fauci’s case and provides a link to an article that states:
“After finishing his course of Paxlovid, Fauci claimed he tested negative for COVID-19 on antigen tests for three days in a row. But on the fourth day, he again tested positive. He also began to experience worsening symptoms.”
So among those who experience rebounds some are asymptomatic and some aren’t. I don’t know what to make of this.
But not to worry because “Data from Pfizer now shows the rebound is happening in about 10% of patients, which is relatively small.”
I guess small is in the eye of the beholder particularly if you end up dosing millions.
Audio Book: Dean Spade – Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During this Crisis (And the Next), Part 1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjA-ohid–A&t=103s
The Bank of America story has a nice Adam Smith quote:
«The memo is an uncanny demonstration that the economist Adam Smith was right when he described the politics of inflation in his famed 1776 work, “The Wealth of Nations.”
“High profits tend much more to raise the price of work than high wages,” Smith argued. “Our merchants and master-manufacturers complain much of the bad effects of high wages in raising the price. … They say nothing concerning the bad effects of high profits. They are silent with regard to the pernicious effects of their own gains. They complain only of those of other people.”
Thus, exactly as Smith would have predicted, Bank of America complains loudly about the bad effects of high wages in raising prices, but appears to be silent about the pernicious effects of high profits.»
There is blindness in a sector of the manager class. In the Yves-Gonzo interview yesterday she mentioned early retirees professionals who are qualified to greet at Wal-Mart and prefer to exit the labor force altogether. That is not the whole story by a long shot. I know at least one anecdotal data point where the pro got shoved out early, then a couple years later they called him up and offered to give him his old job back and let the bygones be gone.
Very high paying job and he said no thank you. He would have told them to shove it but he was holding some hope they would offer him a promotion. Which he would have gotten even more joy in declining.
The planners just might have too much scarcity in their models. If they had studied their Marx they would know that productivity gains lead to instability!
Notice how pandemic money could only be accessed through BofA’s ATMs, with them collecting a fee from tax payers?
Why any American would continue to use
The Bank of War on America is beyond me.
BofA is middle man now for many state unemployment insurance programs. They have been for a number of years. The unemployed in Cali, for example, don’t get a check. The get a BofA ATM card. It was going on long before the pandemic.
That silence is criminal.
When left to their own devices, as demonstrated throughout history, people, not all, can have tendencies toward selfish and cruel behaviors. They rationalize cutting corners, treating employees poorly, dehumanizing them, polluting and many other Bad Things. It is even worse when they get subsidized and the playing fields get tilted more than they already are.
When all sides or all parties or all impacts or all benefits or all costs are not examined, because they are willfully hidden, that is a clue as to where to look next.
Nice!
‘Moral Panics Come and Go’
‘Much of the panic of the sex bracelets saga centered on the idea that children were being corrupted—not by the jewelry itself so much as by one another and the nascent internet, corners of which, then as now, were widely misunderstood by older generations.’
That about sums it up.
Did the author mean Jon Hamm’s daughter in ‘Mad Men’? Jon was in an episode of ’30 Rock’ but as Tina Fey’s boyfriend. The episode was called ‘The Bubble’.
“River Cruise Ship Evacuated After Possible Battery Explosion”
Fortunately there was a film crew nearby that managed to record everything that happened. You know, they should really rethink using those batteries-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_llweWuB3RY (2:10 mins)
Disappointing. Guess I cynically thought that an iceberg might have been involved. \sarc
Nope just engine failure on a new launch, and a need to evacuate all the passengers. And on the video clip, that was a good film, just for the record.
That wasn’t a real riverboat explosion. That was Hillary’s Presidential Transition Team meeting the day after the election in 2016.
Re; Biden-covid– seems so long ago:
[30-seconds]
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ciwyYnwYFaQ
‘China’s claim — modulo issues of raw power — is loony tunes.’
It is and it isn’t. As a territorial land grab, then it is looney tunes. But when you look at that map, you can see that that without it, that it leaves the US (& soon NATO) the easy option of pinning the Chinese Navy against their coastline. But with that territorial claim, US & Allied navies cannot ignore it and so are constatntly sending ships that way in Freedom of Navigation exercises far, far from the Chinese coastline. The strain on those Navy ships is all on those ships, especially in light of the fact that the Chinese Navy outnumbers them. So in this way, the Chinese have achieved defense in depth and forced hostile forces away from their coastline and having them wear their people and ships out.
The US Navy, while it ostensibly as 12 carriers, can’t send all 12 carriers to China at the same time. Some are in long-term maintenance, some need to hang out near Europe.
At most the Navy could send 4 – 5 carriers but that’s only after a few weeks’ worth of notice. But by that point Taiwan will be under a PRC no-fly zone. And the PLA Navy would be happy to test its new toys against the US Navy. Would the White House/Pentagon really be willing to put 5 carriers in harm’s way over Taiwan?
Not holding by breath for western sanity in Taiwan….if we had sane leaders, we would not have had the Ukraine war 6 months after the Afghan debacle.
Aren’t aircraft carriers essentially obsolete at this point anyway?
From: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/05/is-this-the-end-of-the-age-of-the-aircraft-carrier
Yeah they have been more or less known to be sitting ducks since the Falklands War, if not before, when Argentina showed how easily they could sink British ships using inexpensive Exocet missiles.
In effect an anti-ship missile is a kamikaze plane without a pilot.
And frankly, hypersonic is just a distraction. Fire enough of them at once, and they will overwhelm even the CIWS.
Man, you gotta see the Admiral’s and the Captain’s Quarters on a Ford class carrier.
Sweet.
Status symbols for admirals with D11ks measured in Millimeters.
Being locked in a water tight compartment as the ship sinks toward the ocean floor will be the fate of many of the 5,000 sailors on board if they go to War.
The Chinese claim to all this undersea territory is about strip-mining all the fish out of that part of the sea and strip-mining all the oil, gas, and any other valuable thing they find out from under it.
We taught them well. :)
WSWS
So they are defending the “vaccines” that they so enthusiastically pushed while admitting that over 600,000 lives were not in fact saved? And this is all Biden’s fault? The article rambles on but never explains what measures are going to provide the “zero Covid” result that they seem to think is so easily available.
The point, I think, is that 610,000 dead Americans under Biden’s misleadership is an unacceptably high figure, and one that is the tragic consequence of political incompetence rather than a scientific inevitability.
I didn’t think the piece was assuming a first time reader. They link to a “how to end the pandemic” webinar in the last paragraph you describe but that lacks a neat textual explainer too. Maybe it’s elsewhere on their site, but nevertheless if you’re curious, GM has I believe explained repeatedly here that there is an algorithm that succeeds in attaining elimination every time it is implemented, most notably in China. It’s essentially TTIQ en masse, including robust mass testing, and locking down where the disease is endemic in order to break chains of transmission (if the disease is endemic and prolific, then the lockdowns have to be longer. If the virus barely has a foothold, lockdowns are seldom longer than a week or two). Various Chinese governments have handled it imperfectly with varying degrees of success (western-aligned Shanghai most notably: too slow to act, and a pointlessly thuggish and draconian lockdown to boot) even under immense pressure from a world determined to undermine them and see them fail. They have various shortcomings in other areas too (poor masking, poor messaging on the nature of the disease). Anyway, if the rest of the world adopted China’s technical approach, SARS2 would cease to be an issue in the developed world in a matter of months, certainly less than a year. Developing world would of course take longer.
Technically it’s not only possible but quite straightforward (and in fact the vaccines could have made it even easier in early 2021 when they were first used and more relevant; future strain-matched vaccines, or inhaled or intranasal vaccines could do the same, but on their own neither will end the pandemic, and covid vaccines are now politically toxic anyway so uptake will never be as high as the first wave, I don’t think). Politically? Unlikely, and certainly the US will be the last country in the developed world to do it; first it requires considerable social spending – especially paying people to temporarily not work – when of course american/western political life has been dedicated to dismantling the social safety net etc for the past 50 years, and second because non-negligible swathes of the population have apparently been brainwashed into thinking that disease containment or “zero covid” is some kind of extremist, freedom-hating tyranny. It is, of course, the exact opposite, and it is freedom from dangerous infectious disease that has characterised standard of living advances of the last 100+ years (reflected in the fact that Covid now represents the first time a preventable infectious disease has been one of the leading causes of death since the 1930s). Some even argue that it is a pseudo-scientific, pie-in-the-sky technical impossibility which is particularly insane; either you believe in the germ theory of disease or you don’t.
Biden said (it’s available on Twitter) that someone like Trump who had allowed 200 or 300K Americans to die under the later’s watch was not fit to be President. And yet more people have died under Biden’s first year than Trump’s last year.
>Ticket bought in Illinois wins $1.337B Mega Millions jackpot Star-Telegram
I do not envy the winner one bit. Money has now become another of his or her problems. How to get rid of such an unmanageable sum? How to avoid squabbling among friends and family who are unhappy with the size of their gift? How to discern friends from opportunists? And, not least, how to guard oneself from falling into a state of inertia and dissipation, with all the vices and temptations of the world at one’s fingertips? All of these traps and more await big lotto winners and many have fallen into them.
I’ve never bought a lottery ticket in my life. Not my thing. Besides, I don’t like the way the prizes are structured, one humongous prize and a few little ones. Much better, imo, to give out many modest prizes (say, a million dollars or so) to many people. Share the wealth.
With apologies to NC ticket-buyers, I quote Stendhal on lotteries (yes, 19th century France had lotteries):
“Certain disappointment and a happiness sought for only by fools.”
Taken to the logical extreme, the result would just be refunding everyone’s lottery ticket cost. People play the lottery to dream.. more modest prizes–even if there’s more of them–don’t make the dream any better.
I have a friend who would agree with you (we’ve talked about it). He told me he spends $200 a month on tickets hoping to hit the big one. He’s aiming for $50 million or so.
I give him credit though: He dreams only about how much fun he would have giving the money away.
He’s been buying regularly for two years now. So far, only Stendhal’s disappointment.
mathematically, the friend is better off spending all $2,400 at once on one day for one game.
a bit counter-intuitive, but that’s how the probabilities work.
A testament to extent of innumeracy and economic desperation amongst the masses
Where else can you buy temporary hope for one dollar? It’s a small price to pay for a dream. Leave them alone.
Even the price of a dream is rising faster than the median wage.
Powerball and Megamillions costs $2 now. And they both have suffered from “shrink-flation” as the odds of winning the grand prize are even more mind-boggling against each wager than 20 years ago, 1 in 300+ million.
The Lottery is the only chance most Americans have for a comfortable retirement.
Or healthcare.
Testify, brother.
I hope the winner of the jackpot reads the recent Bloomberg article about the shyster lottery lawyer from Long Island.
It truly enrages me that the state govts sanction, endorse and allow appallingly misleading ads about lotteries.
Truly, stealing from the poor and innumerate when it’s their job to at least warn them of the fleecing that lotteries entail. And regulate them so they offer odds as good as or better than in Vegas roulette.
Mildred M
Someone here on Vancouver Island was asked what the first thing she would do would be if she won a major lottery. She quickly answered:”change my phone number!”
“Now Russia cuts off gas supply to Latvia amid growing energy panic in Europe after supplies to Poland, Finland, Netherlands and Denmark were axed – and some cities go dark to save power”
This is actually Latvia’s fault here. They were by contract required to pay for gas with rubles and I assumed that they were doing so on the quiet through a separate entity. Wrong. Looks like what they were doing was to get their gas by buying it off other countries so maybe Germany? Poland? Unfortunately Aigars Kalvitis, chairman of gas company Latvijas Gaze, told the media ‘Latvijas Gaze is buying gas now, but we don’t buy gas from Gazprom because we can’t pay Gazprom. We have another supplier’ and mentioned that they were paying in Euros. With the cat out of the bag, the Russians said that this was a breach of contract conditions and shut Latvia off-
https://www.rt.com/business/559877-gazprom-halts-gas-supply-baltic-state/
“Putin’s weaponization of gas supplies” i.e. demanding payment in Rubles?
Therefore the U.S. has weaponized it’s exports when demanding payment in dollars…
How tragic that the U.S. government has declared war on its own citizens by sanctioning food and energy which only enriches the donors to the Democrats like energy cos. and food middlemen that are making b beaucoup bucks off the peons stateside.
Wow. Latvian Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkēvičs really got wound up about this happening. He is now demanding that the Russian Federation be designated a state sponsor of terrorism-
https://www.politico.eu/article/latvia-russia-ukraine-war-state-sponsor-of-terror-edgars-rinkevics/
I don’t think that Latvia’s Foreign Minister knows how diplomacy is supposed to work.
That review in LRB’s by the Iranian/UK professor is great.
Re; No mention of Taiwan on US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s Asia tour list
Bad link? It appears Peolsi may be not be stopping in ROC/Taiwan:
I’m leading a Congressional delegation to the Indo-Pacific to reaffirm America’s unshakeable commitment to our allies & friends in the region. In Singapore, Malaysia, South Korea & Japan, we’ll hold high-level meetings to discuss how we can further our shared interests & values.
https://mobile.twitter.com/speakerpelosi
She may have realized that her grandstanding would have given her republician adversaries a “win-win” and possibly even have cost her her skin, whatever went down.
I don’t know what she was hoping to get out of this visit. Hopefully this episode will get the neocons to tone-down their rhetoric for a bit while they try to figure out another means of putting the screws to China.
Didn’t blinken state that the US engages regularly in strategic ambiguity.
This fits right in with that loony policy.
pelosi is a high level member of the legislative branch of the u.s. government. “Legislative” refers to making american “laws” to address american issues.
Diplomacy is a responsibility of the executive branch.
When so-called “legislators” are not in washington, they should be in their districts among their constituents, determining what needs to be addressed at the federal level on behalf of the americans they were supposedly elected to “represent.”
Instead we get taxpayer-financed globe-trotting by worthless congressional lifers in search of some sort of relevance, and avoiding their “voters” who would surely tear a few congress people well-deserved new ones if given half a chance.
The globalists just happen to live in the USA, doesn’t mean they represent them
When Pelosi needs an interpreter, she can always summon Feinstein’s, er, driver. They probably share much.
It was a publicity stunt to begin with. No one pays attention to congress critter travels. Had to hype it some. Also, there is nothing to stop one of the eager Pelosi Taiwanese counterparts from showing up in one of the other countries she visits to have a chat. And, she may sneak into Taiwan on the return trip conveniently missing her home flight and having to divert to Taiwan.
Glenn Greenwald’s latest. Rumble goes after Google for violating US antitrust law.
Court Rejects Google’s Attempt to Dismiss Rumble’s Antitrust Lawsuit, Ensuring Vast Discovery
An unusual and significant court ruling entitles YouTube’s main competitor, Rumble, to obtain long-hidden internal documents on Google’s search engine manipulations.
https://greenwald.substack.com/p/court-rejects-googles-attempt-to
This requires that the Pakistanis and Indians come to terms. The peace pipeline runs from Iran through Pakistan to India.
China and India need to come to terms over the headwaters in the Himalayas. I don’t know how that happens.
How do Russian exports line up with India’s needs and vice versa.
Western elites have down their best to tear apart tbe American Empire in 30 years.
Just wondering what the over and under was on European leadership realizing that:
1. They needed Russia more than Russia needed them
2. Wishful thinking aside, they had no means of forcing Russia to supply anything especially fuel.
3. There are no work around like US fuel, or buying from the one country they allow to buy from Russia
4. That the US didn’t care, had no answers and fully expected them to take almost all refugees from Ukraine adding to their obligations to feed, house and keep alive the populace.
5. Their citizens think eating, and not dying from the weather is more important than keeping America happy and supporting a war in a highly corrupt state they can’t find on a map.
We’ve been seeing foundation crumbling, still they are still denying reality. So the bet isn’t over yet but…
The US seems hell-bent on following the European examples.
Cut off energy production. Germany, so US
Piss off producers. Russia, so irritate Saudi Arabia
Ignore their own citizens, leaving them to roast and then freeze. Germany, again, so Texas, etc
Demonize farmers, reduce food supply and increase food insecurity. Netherlands, so US gearing up
Strategic Brain Trust response
Sell off surplus to big global rival, China
What comes next?
Buy Mayo Pete an electric car fleet to keep up with Euro exemplars.
Brunch
“Bank Of America Memo, Revealed: “We Hope” Conditions For American Workers Will Get Worse” The Intercept
The whiplash effect of narrative economics:
Whenever the Fed pops up with threats of strong interest rate increases or someone threatens to utter the dreaded word “recession”, the bizarre counter argument is that the the unemployment rate is low. Things are great. People have money to spend. Apparently, that’s just political campaign rhetoric.
Meanwhile, the worst kept secret is that radical ideology of the establishment is most reflected in this BofA memo: “we hope” working Americans will lose leverage in the labor market…”
“Meanwhile, the worst kept secret is that radical ideology of the establishment is most reflected in this BofA memo: “we hope” working Americans will lose leverage in the labor market…”
In related news, I believe Lambert covered this in Water Cooler the other day, but can’t find the link. Here is a different one: Cuellar is pushing a bill that would expand gig work to jobs covered under fair labor laws.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJ0rfIOVsPQ&t=376s
I have never really seen the point of deindustrialization and turning the populace into serfs. If the end game has you sitting in a New Zealand bunker twiddling your thumbs just so that you can have a few more bucks in an account you can’t spend anywhere, that doesn’t seem like a very good trade.
Having a billion in the bank doesn’t represent a billion dollars worth of productive capacity…it represents power. Money is just another form of power.
And really, that’s lower-class American workers. Is anyone in the PMC, especially those at BofA, going to be happy with a less than 7% raise in the next 6 months? My company has a mid-year end to the fiscal year, so yearly raises are set now. 7% would probably need to be the bare minimum raise. 10% would need to be the “OK, I get a small performance bump.”
Bank of America might have well written “we hope to have a civil war.” Most of the American classes from the middle-middle to the homeless have getting worse for at least two decades (depending on the class) with the upper middle class next; it is a good way to start a rebellion with the impoverished middle class leading the starving masses.
This might seem a non sequitur, but I want to make a connection with today, the Fall of the Roman Empire, and the American Revolutionary and Civil Wars. I saw a documentary on the Visigoths and their ultimate fate, IIRC, the narrator said “when you have been forced to bury your family dog…” (see scene of starving refugees and a dog burial) to explain the rage causing a fairly peaceful tribe of refugees to destroy the last truly effective Western Roman Empire’s field army and inflicting on the city of Rome its first sack in eight centuries.
All three of them followed similar broad patterns even though they were very, very different. The elites greedy, then stupid, then repressive or backstabby, label their victims as barbarians, manless, or weak, they underestimate the now enraged victims who a have a guerrilla war inter-spaced with a few large battles, the elites lose the battles followed by them losing the war.
The Visigoths, the Colonists, and the North did not intend to fight a war. But they felt compelled. The upper classes decide to lead their nation into war, which they could do because the lower classes were just as angry. The Romans, the British, and the South, just before their respective wars began, did not think that the Visigoths, the Colonists, or the North/Federal government would be any real problem and that those barbarians or weaklings had no reason to complain. As if destitution and hunger, economic hardship, or armed gangs of slavers kidnapping people were not good reasons.
Look at today’s situation where the moneyed ones want evermore without reason, the general population including a growing percentage of the educated middle class are either joining the poor or seeing that it might happen to them and soon, with a dysfunction, corrupt, and increasing oppressive government that only considers the well being of those moneyed interests; In part, we did not have a war during the Great Depression because we had representatives and senators arguing in their chambers agreeing on the crisis, if not the solutions when the New Deal legislation came for a vote.
I do not see our (however many grand) parents generations as more virtuous, but they certainly seem more wise or less foolish. They listened and they saw and they acted to keep society going even if they did not like the changes. But I do not see our current leadership listening. They seem to be like the British just before the American Revolution, which had a very strong and loud opposition to the actions of government that led to war, but they refused to change until it was too late. It is a sadness for we have been luck so far in that when things get bad we have the leaders and the reforms needed to save our country. The Roman Senators and the next lower class, the Equestrians, eventually were able to assassinate or otherwise block all the reformists and their actions, which ultimately led to the series of wars that collapse the Republic and created the Empire; I think our equivalent classes are doing the same with the same ultimate results. Although it could lead to civilizational collapse instead instead of a new political economy.
None of this is hidden. It is a pattern that one can see constantly in history, but for some reason the well educated analysts that the financial institutions employ seem unable to see what is really there.
i think this story has legs. you might want to include it in your next links post.
it’s about saudi arabia declaring peak oil production of 13 million barrels per day in 2027. much earlier and much smaller than everyone was hoping for.
RE: Ukraine Needs Solutions, Not Endless War
“The United States has the tools and experience to make it happen.”
No, it can’t.The US threw neutrality out the window the minute they started arming Ukraine before the war erupted. How would a UN intervention work anyway? Russia would have to approve since it sits on the UN Security Council and there is no chance of that.
What the authors seem to be advocating is a US-led intervention under the guise of the UN like the Korean Civil War. This outcome would only escalate the armed conflict in a manner in which these lightweights claim they want to avoid. They’re just too stupid to realize it or they are acting in bad faith.
Well they got a column out of it anyway–gave the authors something to do.
I’m just glad (if true) that Pelosi not going to Taiwan. But one might have always suspected that this was a bid for attention, not war. And hey the Chinese were willing to scramble the jets. She must be really important! /s
What I find most surprising is how little, if ever, I read any news story in the NY Times about Libya, Syria, Iraq, or Afghanistan, for the most part. Our latest ill conceived imperialism and confrontation with Russia seems to have pulled the curtains on these other foreign policy failures. Quite the magic act! Soon Americans will again forget where these countries even are on a map, if that hasn’t happened already.
Perhaps Pelosi will get us into a war with China as well!
Kim Iverson on why she left Rising recently:
https://youtu.be/vlYdJLj3TLI
If you haven’t been following this, it’s essentially be because the producers caved to demands from Fauci’s handlers to yank her from a panel she was scheduled to be a part of. She has been a vocal and pointed critic of his bungling of the COVID response from early on. Bully for her, I’m subbing her channel ASAP.
Thanks for this jr. I would have paid to see Kim grill Fauci, but it wasn’t to be. Good on her and I wish her luck.
This is another example of how our press works, and not in a good way. No matter what people think of KI, she was talking about things that need talked about, like the clip she showed where the other two were still telling us the vaccines worked – no they are not – at least how they were being sold.
People are still dying. People still believe the wrong thing about the vaccines – yet they are still being lied to. So let’s censor the people telling the truth. Yea, that’s the ticket.
They are complicit in peoples deaths IMO, and should be treated accordingly. This stuff really ticks me off so I will shut up to save my blood pressure.
The shameless Fauci figures it’s better to be revealed as a coward than a fraud.
And if Kim Iverson has him shaking in his boots, imagine how he’d do against IM Doc or GM.
Thanks for the comments guys. That’s one fight I’d pay to see!
I would pay to see that.
Im guessing you all didn’t see her early videos before she was on rising. She was a complete minimizer from the get go. Its just a cold! Authoritarian gov making me wear a mask, etc. Never gonna hear me defending fauci or the cdc, but fraudsters and opportunists abound.
“Midterm Misery for Biden as Key Economy Gauge Flags 30-Seat Loss”
Oh no! Just when the Democratic super majority was about to wrap up its long list of accomplishments for the American people;
World peace, National Health Care, resolving the Covid pandemic, resolving homelessness, especially for veterans, ending labor exploitation of the undocumented, ending the fentanyl epidemic, rebuilding our infrastructure, stabilizing our economy…
now those damn Republicans will reverse all that!
Don’t forget “codifying” Roe v. Wade which, apparently, costs more cash to do than the billions they’ve already collected by promising to do it for the last 50 years.
We’re really, really gonna get after that this time if you just send more money.
Notice how Demolish and Democratic have the same root?
Seeing more and more “Fuck Joe Biden” stickers on cars. Also,
FJB, a chrome logo added to vehicles. I thought it was a model of Toyota, until I saw it on a Ford.
The Democrats must have a suicide urge, watching the Lezpoc press secretary flounder around with her 3 ring binder is absolutely cringeworthy. I am ashamed to admit I am an American when I travel now.
> Notice how Demolish and Democratic have the same root?
They doh’t (see demolish and democratic). Don’t make shit up.
For the cinephiles:
I’m VERY pleased to have found one of the best films ever made, in full, for free on Youtube. It’s Rikyu, about the 17th century tea master and artistic mentor to Hideyoshi:
https://youtu.be/Ol40iOucyOI
I’ve been hoping someone would put it up and someone did only a month ago. They don’t make films like this anymore.
Thank you! I saw this in Honolulu when it first came out and hadn’t been able to find it again.
Austere. Sublime.
I haven’t watched it again, that’s for tomorrow, but I still remember the shades of blue from the laundry scene to this day. Here is a video about the politics of the tea ceremony and Rikyu’s role:
https://youtu.be/oVHJpnPXWYE
Correction: late16th c.
Double thanks.
sublime is the perfect word.
ty for the link jr.
My pleasure!
Samurai Tea Sunday.
Whew. I’ll never look at a Tea Ceremony quite the same way!
Thank you jr. I never knew such a film could exist.
This link is NOT to Rikyu but to Death of a tea master.
If you want to see more, there were actually two films about Sen no Rikyū released in 1989. This one @jr mentions is directed by Kumai Kei, while the other by Teshigahara Hiroshi. Kumai’s film won a Silver Lion at the Venice FF. While the Teshigahara version is of course worth watching (as is anything he directed), be warned that the DVD transfer is not very good quality. There’s a BluRay out in Japan, tho of course no EN subs.
India Punchline’s M. K. Bhadrakumar:
“1/5 Russia seems to have proof that Kiev eliminated Ukr POWs lest they divulged sensitive details on Mariupol operations. Moscow demands UN/ICRC investigation, has evidence Kiev used HIMARS, which probably explains Pentagon’s evasive stance on who committed the war crime.”
They are showing pictures of the exploded shell on Youtube. If it does prove to be true that these HIMARS are being operated by US crews using US satellite targeting then those war crimes trials are going to get a whole lot more interesting.
I don’t see that at his site? Where did you find that?
Sauce. MKB’s thread finishes by summarizing the unusual special statement from the Russian MoD.
Anecdote:
My partner is watching a show about a Russian chef opening a swanky place in Moscow. I am not interested but it’s noteworthy that when Putin’s name got mentioned, the music suddenly became dark and threatening. Good-think music!
Sharing because I thought others on NC would appreciate the data on this site. Apparently there’s over 600 wildfires active in the US right now, covering about 5.5 million acres. Seems to me that nature has given us a great metaphor for where we are as a country right now.
If you are watching the McKinney fire keep in mind that the rains do not usually come until mid October, it’s just starting to warm up and all the firefighting crews and equipment are rested ( Or were) and in good repair.
Yreka ( Where I was born) has an evacuation order for the West part of town which tells me they hope to stop the fire at Highway 5.
There is no containment and that area is extremely rugged country, If they knock it down before it consumes 250K acres they will be doing very well. indeed.
It’s going to be a long hot summer.
.
https://t.me/rybar/36459
Interesting developments in Kosovo. Looks like United States is organizing another hotbed of tension.
as I wrote several weeks ago, no one seems willing to admit that WWIII has started.
I’ve been wondering in the last few days if the idea is to crash the west…that european safety net has to go after all…
nothing else makes an sense to me.
Could be. Neoliberalism demands that only wealthy people get safety nets in the form of taxpayer bailouts – while everybody else does not even get a pair of boot straps. And having Europe just sit there with all those social safety nets for their people would just be a target to get rid off. Same way that the UK’s highly successful NHS system has to be destroyed lest it give people in America any funny ideas.
Blinken and Scholz were in Kosovo this past week…asking Serbia to recognize Kosovo and sanction Russia…
“”British in recent months have also brought ATGMs to Kosovo…Germans are actively lobbying for entry of self-proclaimed republic into international instances and delighting Kosovo authorities w provocative statement in style of “Serbia will be forced to recognize Kosovo.””
Some of the returns and excess inventory will be donated to charities or returned to the manufacturers. Others get recycled, buried in landfills or burned in incinerators that generate electricity.
the carbon burned to ship stuff then it ends up in landfills and incinerators, its a crime in itself, free traders should have to pay for these crimes
https://www.yahoo.com/news/retails-dark-side-inventory-piles-142336506.html
“With consumers cutting down on discretionary purchases because of high inflation, retailers are now stuck with more inventory than they need. While overall spending rebounded last month, some major retailers say shoppers are buying less clothing, gardening equipment and electronics and focusing instead on basics like food and gas.”
Nature:electric ship
Even that medium sized ship would have the equivalent of about 65000 ev worth of battery at 80 kwh per car.
Would be interesting to see the GHG emissions compared between the two.
‘Nichelle Nichols, Lt. Uhura on ‘Star Trek,’ dies at 89′
When Nichols was thinking of leaving Star Trek, Martin Luther King asked her personally to stay because of the effect her role was having for young black girls in giving them hope-
https://www.npr.org/2022/07/31/1114792935/nichelle-nichols-dies-star-trek
What a world
As a 10 year old white suburban boy when the series aired, I had no clue that Ohura or Sulu were anything other than heroes we planetary exploring naïf kids thought might happen in our lifetimes.
So for a few short years during that ( late boomer) generation, the kids had no clue Ohura or Sulu were just showing us what a harmonious future could look like absent identity politics.
Roddenberry had a helluva time in casting. On the bridge he had an Asian guy (retconned in Reagan’s America to be an American), a black African woman, a Scottish guy and the studio was certainly not happy about having a Russian guy on the bridge. But when it came to Spock, who was an ‘alien’, the studio asked that he be kept in the background and more or less kept out of sight in filming. Maybe they thought that he was an’ illegal alien.’
I recall reading somewhere that from the get-go the network thought Spock looked too demonic (i.e., Satanic) and that in one instance Roddenberry et al found the network marketing types had airbrushed Spock’s eyebrows in some publicity collateral, to try and make him look “nicer”.
The article doesn’t mention Nichols’ role in an important episode of an earlier series, The Lieutenant, also produced by Roddenberry, that concerned racism in the military. It was censored by the network and thus pivotal for the creation of Star Trek.
It still boggles that Roddenberry was on the LAPD before entering television to try and address social issues.
Roddenberry’s background was more of a pilot than a LAPD cop and where he survived three airplane crashes. Probably he went into the police force to support him while he learned to become a writer and having a father that was in the LAPD would have helped him get that job-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_life_and_career_of_Gene_Roddenberry
An amazing story
https://thegrayzone.com/2022/07/30/zelensky-militants-convicted-child-rape-torture-military/
Glory to the heroes….
Carolinian: There are OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) reports for the years since 2014 that go into this much detail and even more on torture, with investigation of such side scams as confiscation of churches that maintained ties with the Orthodox church in Moscow and supression of dissident opinion.
The elites in D.C. are trying to cover up all of this–and dare I mention Hunter and Pals as part of the looting, pillaging, and abuse?
Thank you for the Eric Topol interview! It’s the best thumbnail about the current and future state-of-play of Covid that I’ve seen. Will be forwarding it to many I know who rely on the MSM.
The Bohemian Grove camp out is this week, the BNB’s and Hotels fill up with high end hookers, security people and dope dealers, near 70 private jets are parked at the local airport ( A Gulfstream 5 isn’t nice enough to park near the tower), the nearest wine shop always lays in a lot of expensive wines on consignment ( $5K and up per bottle, WAY up in some cases.)
Lots of Money,lots of very powerful people and a tradition of Omerta among the locals that work there for a week every year.
The security is low profile, but very competent and pervasive.
At least as good as camp David.
A quite substantial monsoon is going to put the hurt on Hwy 395 in Owens Valley over the next few days with major flooding expected, this right in the middle of the tourism season.
That’s after it causes flooding in Death Valley NP when it’s over 100 degrees!
Usually storms come from the west, but this one is coming from the south & east, a backdoor model.
We could see potentially something akin to the recent Yellowstone flooding with a major driving corridor cut off, as all the moisture is coming down as rain and will be hitting the higher climes, using the mountains as a long ramp down into the Owens Valley.
We’re supposed to catch the edge of that storm in Sonoma County early tomorrow morning.
Localized showers and lightning are predicted.
The water will be welcome,the lightning not.
Reformulated booster coming in September. Supposedly targets BA.5.
How much testing has been done? How have they circumvented the various variants ability to produce no immunity? And if this is so good why the vague order of millions of doses, that might cover one state.
Just call me cynical
And that’s what the COVID braintrust said here back in December, I think. NC: Next year’s news, today!
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/07/ba-5-shows-covid-is-evolving-fast-we-need-to-fight-back.html