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Where Can You Find the Oldest Cat Door on Earth? Smithsonian Magazine
Can This Piston-Less Engine Save Internal Combustion And Pose A Threat To EVs? Top Speed
Why so many new products for adults look like they were made for little kids Fast Company
Parasites turn ants into zombies that adapt to temperatureInteresting Engineering
Climate/Environment
The big conservative talking point on climate now is that fossil fuel development is solving poverty and energy access, esp in Africa. A few key things to note:
1. Nigeria has the largest and oldest fossil fuel industry on the continent & lowest energy access rate in the world 🧵— Amy Westervelt (@amywestervelt) September 17, 2023
Africa’s Lands Are Targeted for Climate Action, but Who Owns the Land? The Elephant
Water
America’s largest water highway is in trouble, ominous for Midwest grain farmers The Star Tribune
‘It’s an emergency’: Midwest towns scramble as drought threatens drinking water Missouri Independent
#COVID-19
Places that are doing IPAC better than hospitals:
– my tattoo artist’s studio
– my massage therapist’s clinic
– my dentist’s office
– my house https://t.co/jG7bMJqf9J— Amanda Hu (@amandalhu) September 18, 2023
Switching off the cytokine storm EurekAlert!
Old Blighty
India
Nipah Virus in Kerala Live Updates: 42 more samples test negative for Nipah, says Kerala health minister The Times of India
Crisis in India’s Bread Basket Himal Southasian
What’s Driving Hindu Nationalism in Nepal? The Diplomat
China?
Trading Order The Polycrisis. On protectionism and interdependence.
How the ‘Unilateral Neoliberalism’ of the US Helped China to Weaponise its Economy for Geopolitics The Wire
China seeks to expand police power to collect biological information of suspects in minor offences South China Morning Post
Chinese police detain Evergrande employees after financial arm of indebted company fails to pay investors South China Morning Post
European Disunion
Poland, Hungary, Slovakia impose own Ukraine grain bans as EU measure expires Politico EU
New Not-So-Cold War
‘Biden’s phase’ of Ukraine war is beginning Indian Punchline
The Biden Administration is Providing Billions of Dollars of Weapons to a Regime Dominated by People With an Attitude Towards Russia that is Similar to Adolph Hitler Covert Action Magazine
Key GOP lawmaker voices support for sending long-range missiles to Ukraine The Hill
CNN Poll: Majority of Americans oppose more US aid for Ukraine in war with Russia Modern Diplomacy
Because Ukrainian nationalists and DC’s uniparty wouldn’t accept Ukraine’s constitutional commitment to neutrality; the elected President overthrown in 2014; the 2015 Minsk accords; and an April 2022 peace deal with Russia, the comedian elected on a peace platform is now a proxy… https://t.co/Xr3aPF5aec
— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) September 18, 2023
NATO Chief: ‘We Must Prepare Ourselves for a Long War in Ukraine’ VOA News.
The key mistake that Western policymakers are making right now is thinking that they have a meaningful choice in the matter. https://t.co/2u1S4qricb
— Armchair Warlord (@ArmchairW) September 17, 2023
***
Ukraine is firing shells faster than can be supplied. Can Europe catch up? CNN
Production of key munition years ahead of schedule, Pentagon says Defense News
U.S. HELPED PAKISTAN GET IMF BAILOUT WITH SECRET ARMS DEAL FOR UKRAINE, LEAKED DOCUMENTS REVEAL The Intercept
Erdogan’s UNGA visit strained by Sweden’s NATO delay, Turkey’s F-16s sale Al-Monitor
Syraqistan
Saudi Arabia pulls out of Israel normalization talks: ReportThe Cradle
Will Israel’s High Court defy the far-right government? +972 Magazine
Imperial Collapse Watch
– Spend $500 billion developing a stealth fighter
– Engineer it to be as hard as possible to find
– Lose one
– Ask the public to help you find it https://t.co/7ASigX2ib8— Big Serge ☦️🇺🇸🇷🇺 (@witte_sergei) September 18, 2023
Spook Country
CIA Official Questioned Over Wuhan Cover-Up Took Job at U.S.-China Consulting Firm Lee Fang
2024
Top Democrats’ Bullishness on Biden 2024 Collides With Voters’ Worries New York Times. The deck: ‘Party leaders have rallied behind the president’s re-election bid, but as one top Democratic strategist put it, “The voters don’t want this, and that’s in poll after poll after poll.”’
WATCH: Fmr. Pres. Trump “won’t say” if he would send U.S. troops to Taiwan if China were to invade, if re-elected.
Trump: “Only stupid people are going to give that answer.”@kwelkernbc: “But you don’t take it off the table?”
Trump: “I don’t take anything off the table, no.” pic.twitter.com/nHTgX3Bcx6
— Meet the Press (@MeetThePress) September 17, 2023
Biden again says US forces would defend Taiwan against Chinese aggression CNN. From 2022, still germane.
Gagging Donald Trump: Why Smith’s “Narrowly Tailored Motion” is Neither Narrow Nor Wise Jonathan Turley
GOP Clown Car
Man groped by Lauren Boebert during frisky ‘Beetlejuice’ date owns gay-friendly bar that hosts drag shows New York Post
Democrats en déshabillé
Some Democrats Are Trying to Preemptively Outlaw a Billionaire Tax Jacobin
Whose Fault Is It? How Things Work
Healthcare
Medical Debt Is Killing Our Patients MedPage Today
Police State Watch
New Orleans DA Fights ‘Terrorism’ on Streets With AI Spycraft WSJ
Our Famously Free Press
A few thoughts on the Russell Brand furore Jonathan Cook
Brand’s thoughts on the matter:
This is happening pic.twitter.com/N8zIKLbJN2
— Russell Brand (@rustyrockets) September 15, 2023
AI
Tech
Apple continues to use our own mortality as marketing The Verge
Supply Chain
Silk Road vs Spice Route: IMEC and its Implications Modern Diplomacy
Class Warfare
America’s Short-Lived Safety Net Has Almost Fully Unraveled The Nation
Poverty made an alarming jump. Congress could have stopped it. The Hill
What Happens When Wall Street Buys Most of the Homes on Your Block? New York Times
***
***
Stimulants may be driving a “fourth wave” of the overdose crisis, with deaths at an all-time high Salon
Communities across Appalachia band together for first-ever 13-state Narcan distribution event AP
The Bezzle
First Celebrities Settle Lawsuits Over FTX Deals Decrypt
Requiem For Royalties: NFT Exchanges Abandon Recurring Compensation For Artists Forbes
Antidote du jour (via):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
170 comments
Comments are closed.
RE: Switching off the cytokine storm EurekAlert!
That was for me an interesting read, thank you. I hope luck for a project like this. SARS CoV 2 is not the only pathogen inducing cytokine storms. If all those other pathogens converge in the same MAPK and it can really be blocked temporarily and specifically that would indeed be good help for treatment of several diseases. Thank you for the link!
This news is interesting to me too. I have a friend recently diagnosed with liver cancer (metastasized from a very rare form of melanoma in her eye). Until recently, her cancer would have been untreatable and she would have had less than one year to live (she’s 50). Instead, she is about to undergo treatment via immunotherapy. The drug is Kimtrak (sp?), FDA approved last year, still considered clinical trial in Canada. She has to undergo the first few treatments in hospital because of the potential for immune system overreaction – ie cytokine storm. Her treatment plan is complicated by the fact that she also has rheumatoid arthritis, itself an immune system problem. The developments described in this story are too late to help my friend but here’s hoping they become practical treatments for people soon.
Immunotherapy is now improving Cancer therapies by a lot. Expensive but it seems to work quite well. Particularly in lymphomas which were quite intractable.
My friend’s treatment is in the 10s of thousands of dollars per weekly dose. Luckily (and surprisingly) her insurance plan is paying for it. And because it is so new and still somewhat experimental in Canada, the hospital’s research side would have paid for it if insurance hadn’t.
In the case of my father-in-law, who got Merkel cell carcinoma, immunotherapy worked a treat at first. Then it didn’t. They tried another immunotherapy, but apparently if one does not work, then others are not likely to either. It didn’t. So: does not work for everyone, hopefully helps enough cases.
No one had made any promises of total remission. There are apparently cases when that has happened but few cases with a type of cancer that few people have means the numbers are not high. The hope is that the lesions don’t grow with the treatment. There is a plan B but I think it is a more traditional chemo drug and not very promising.
If anyone is interested in a little history: cytokine storms were what made the 1918-1920 flu pandemic so deadly. The second wave could cause bacterial pneumonia, which was the major cause of deaths, but the cytokine storms would cause the young and healthy infected to also die. That’s what (fictionally) happened to a young character in Downton Abbey.
RE: Production of key munition years ahead of schedule, Pentagon says Defense News
Not enough for Ukraine. For next spring 57.000 shells/month makes 1.900 per day while Ukraine is firing 6.000 – 8.000 per day (per the correction in the article). Quite possibly what is produced by 2028 doesn’t matter any more for Ukraine.
The production increase that’s been achieved in the US is realistic and probably sustainable. The goals DoD has and its claims will only be believable when they’re realized.
And even if they hit the 100k/month by 2025, it’s not enough not soon enough. It will require two full years of that production level to simply replace what’s already been (officially) sent to Ukraine. One would think that DoD would make sure to hold a lot of stock in reserve in case it has to fight a war, but I’m not at all sure that it has. For example, the US probably needs at least 5 million shells in reserve in case of war with Russia, China or Iran. I’d be willing to bet total US stocks are <2M now and there’s a good chance that the stocks are a lot less than that.
The US fighting a peer will futz around with refueled Air Force and Navy then revert to threatened nuclear escalation blackmail from subs to freeze the conflict when it goes against us. That approach doesn’t work when we are the aggressor. Begs the question why as an island with benign neighbors we have an army not to mention a light infantry (Marines) whose replenishing hardware, as Col. McGregor notes, would simply be sunk in transit.
Direct nuclear peer warfare, over the Fulda Gap, was on the agenda from 1947 through the end of cold war.
NATO and Warsaw Pact forces in central Europe would attrit until one side went nuclear…. to prevent a breakout!
Why hold a few hundred thousand soldiers hostage to a few days of grinding war when it is likely to go nuclear?
Musk is opposed to tripping up on nuclear war and got in trouble with the media!
It’s been a long time, but IIRC it was widely believed that NATO would lose a conventional war with the Soviet Union, and that ultimately the U.S. would accept this rather than risk an escalation to a full nuclear exchange. So why wasn’t there a war? Maybe the Soviets didnt think it was worth the risk, or maybe they weren’t the tomorrow-the-world demons we always said they were, or…
“‘Biden’s phase’ of Ukraine war is beginning Indian Punchline”
As they say, F around, find out (family blog). I don’t think the war hawks are going to enjoy finding out.
The latest report is that the Big Z is not supposed to be getting them, or at least not on his charm tour to the US, due to the belief that Blinken et al (consistent with a recent Blinken speech) are trying to push Ukraine to the negotiating table….which Zelensky rejects and Putin ridiculed (Blinken even suggested that Russia should seek to open the talks, when the US didn’t even deign to respond to a draft Russia treaty in winter 2021 regarding Ukraine and European security, and then the UK and US broke up the Ukraine-Russia peace talks in late March 2022, which had made substantial progress). In other words, the US is trying to find an off ramp while making it look like it was all Ukraine’s doing and desire.
Putin in the same speech already said the US is a co-belligerent, not using that expression but it amounted to the same thing.
Sadly Bhadrakumar is uneven. He has some very insightful pieces and then ones like this. Russian experts criticize his lack of current knowledge about Russia. He seems not even to read recent Putin speeches that are in English on the Kremlin website.
Makes sense. I take Bhadrakumar as a sort of geopolitical whiz (for obvious reasons) so I didn’t really question much about the piece. As for ATACMS, it always seemed like it would be a sort of move of desperation by the US wanting to show results. What frankly worries me is 2024’s elections, given that election season makes tempers hot and decisions quick, which could potentially give war hawks even more leverage than they already have (Biden isn’t exactly a peaceful sort of politician anyway).
But any politicians who aren’t utterly deranged like Baerbock have already smelled the way the winds are blowing. The Ukraine Project is a lost cause, and any further “investment” in it is simply throwing resources away, and cause for further embarrassments (like the Challengers fiasco). Here is to hoping cooler heads will prevail.
Baerbock is astonishing. I think her particular psychopathology is believing that she’s a rabid American neocon family member of the Kagan clan. What kind of diplomat says that China is a dictatorship and therefore Putin must be defeated by waging war on Russia? A bonkers one.
She is a one-woman wrecking ball as far as German – Chinese relations are concerned. As Foreign Minister, it is a catastrophic mistake to call the President of China a dictator and you are not suppose to stoop to this level of idiocy in international politics. Old Joe does it but he is old, addled and senile. I do wonder who her audience is here. She has already said that she does not care for what voters want. So the question is if she is doing this to please an internal faction of German politics or whether she is doing this to please neocons on an international level to show that she is a player.
Baerbock is nothing more than a telltale of the level of dysfunction … and sheer self- mutilating craziness … that is the present German government.
> I do wonder who her audience is here.
Cases like Elizabeth Holmes or Anna Delvey show that aesthetics and style can get you a long way if the audience/market wants what you’re selling, even if what you’re selling is preposterous when you take a moment to think, e.g. “clean coal” power plants, “clean diesel” cars, CDO ratings, NFTs. The key message in F for Fake is not that fraudsters need a market but that markets attract fraudsters, especially when they get really big and hot, like the market for authoritative-sounding moral justification for war.
Baerbock sat on the Germany-Taiwan relations group of the Bundestag, so no surprise about her opinions. The expressing of those opinions publicly is an incredible diplomatic faux pas, especially with the depth of economic interconnectedness between Germany and China. Not even Hitler insulted foreign leaders in this way. Seems she has a desperate need to attest her fealty to the US Mafia State Godfather, she certainly is a wrecking ball for German foreign policy independence.
Xi has been head of China for around 11 years. Angela Merkel on the other hand was the leader of Germany for – checks notes – 16 years!
So how exactly does one differentiate between a “dictator” and someone who is merely the head of a different political system? It better not be simple longevity, or it might turn out that Baebock is a lying hypocrite!
Der Spiegel reports that the German ambassador to China was summoned to the Chinese MoFA on Sunday. I guess we’re going to see a formal apology, or explanation, or something like that.
https://www.spiegel.de/ausland/china-bestellt-deutsche-botschafterin-in-peking-ein-a-b9e56263-3d5b-4635-94ea-138f5349ed76
He typically does give very careful and well informed readings Here, he points out at the top that the Biden Administration is pushing Ukraine to negotiate with Russia, and not saying
1. The US wants the hare-brained idea of ceasefire first, hopefully leading to a frozen conflict, while Russia does not stop prosecuting war while negotiating and would never accept a frozen conflict
2. Russia won’t negotiate with Ukraine. It might take a few meeting just as a matter of form but that won’t go anywhere anyhow. Russia would negotiate with the US. if the US would get over itself. That means again that the most that is likely to happen even if things got that far is some exchanges where the two sides talk past each other
3. The US thinks it needs ATACMS for China and it does not have a lot to begin with
4. The US knows all ATACMS might do is kill/terrorize Russian civilians, which contrary to fantasies of Putin overthrow will only increase Russian resolve
5. Therefore the most that might happen on the ATACMS front is a very few delivered to placate Congressional hawks and deny them a talking point in the 2024 elections.
Zelenskii has less authority at home than the family dog. Wearing a shock collar turned up to maximum current.
Surely Russia knows that.
It looks like that asswipe was on CBS 60 minutes (of propaganda. I noticed his mug as I was flipping channels but I refused to tune in. Whats low liives he and CBS management are.
The Ukrainians also brought out a law making it illegal to negotiate with Russia. I think that law was called the Burning Your Bridges While You Are Still Standing On Them Act of 2022.
The Ukrainian Rada knew full well what their American masters wanted from them, and, like the good dogs that they are, obliged.
I think that the language you are using in this and other messages violates the basic principles of this platform. Please, stop.
Great points. The “future war with China” angle really is important and I should have taken it into account. The constant string of news of the complete failure of US arms production goes to show how dire the situation really is, and ATACMS really do seem like they might be needed.
I do recall Brian Berlectic arguing that most stuff given to Ukraine would be unusable in a war against China anyway because that one is to be a naval war, which takes different technology from a land war like in Ukraine. I don’t really know anything about weaponry and their use cases, though, so I’ll trust wiser opinions.
On the China Land War front, Russia’s latest rapprochement with North Korea effectively blocks both South Korea and Japan from becoming land war proxies for America. The Vietnamese are playing their traditional game of wary “neutrality” while the other land neighbours of China are lying low so as to not excite China’s “notice.” India and China seems to be a special case. No matter the status of the Himalayan border ‘crisis,’ China has never claimed suzerainty over India proper. So, sometimes, a little bit of “strategic ambiguity” can hold conflict at bay for as long as is desired.
The problem with a naval war in the Pacific I see is that naval wars are generally either force projections or economic wars gone ballistic.
As for force projection here, how much “influence” can even the “mighty” US Navy have over a strong and combative Chinese military? Events here would have to graduate up to nuclear exchanges for such a scenario to have a serious adverse effect on China. The results for the American Homeland after such an escalation do not bear contemplation.
As for an economic war between America and China, well, with China being one of America’s main goods suppliers, that idea lurches fully into the realm of lunacy.
Stay safe.
Stop kidding yourselves. Russia really does not want this war, and has been desperately trying to avoid escalation.
The neocons are betting that Russia will continue to show restraint. Unfortunately, Russian reluctance to escalate even as the West has ignored red line after red line has caused the West to lose all fear of Russia.
Is that really the case? Sure, Putin has proved himself to be the most dovish politician in Russian politics (I mean, there are folks arguing for nuking Ukraine), but by now he seems to have hardened his stance (as that Palestinian “meme” song of the start of the war went, “Harden your heart, O Putin!”, and I suppose he heeded their call). The immense production of industrial goods realized by the “accidental” protectionism caused by sanctions made Russia’s position a lot stronger long-term. On the diplomatic side, it has mended historical rifts (such as the China-Russia relations, very strained during USSR days), made the West into a pariah, consolidated public opinion in Russia, and overall seems to be paying strong dividends (one should be reminded that BRICS was originally a Russian initiative, according to the official history of the bloc).
If he, and the Russian public, were reticent at the start, they are no longer. What is important to recall is that no one wants nukes being slinged, and the Russians see, despite everything, the Ukrainians as a brotherly people co-opted by the folks with curious tattoos from Lvov. They obviously don’t want to kill them all, despite the West’s best efforts to do so.
For better or worse, most Russians are consumers, and Russia is a consumer society. Russians are in favor of the war, as long as it does not affect them too personally. Russia also does not want to admit that the West loathes them and looks down upon them and never will let them join their club.
For their part, Ukrainians have been convinced that the war is their ticket to The Golden Billion, The Magical Land Where (unlike ukraine) Institutions Basically Work. If the price of admission to that Island Of The Blessed is hating their brothers and their own parents, so be it.
DC appears to assume that Russia’s restraint knows no bounds and thus poking the bear repeatedly will never trigger rage and action. This is foolish and it is foolish to think that because Tony B says we are not a co-belligerent that we are therefore not a co-belligerent. He is fond of words, our Tony. By any measure I would use, the US and the NATO nations that have given targeting data, conducted off shore surveillance, sent serving personnel in mufti and/or mercenaries by whatever name you choose to call them, supplied munitions, tanks, fighting vehicles, etc. ad infinitum are co-belligerents and subject to retaliation. But I forget … the Combined west is a rules based order and the rules are mutable … as in Calvin Ball. Assuming immunity from retribution because you say so is not a policy but a wish.
So what retribution will Russia inflict, and what will be the Western response?
I’ll bet it starts with satellites. That would be a big step that doesn’t involve a direct attack on the people or territory of the US or NATO, yet inflicts real damage on enemies of Russia.
I have yet to be dissuaded from a US first strike scenario. Would the above bring it on? The US so-called leadership is collectively irrational, at best, so any response might as well be selected randomly.
Why DC reminds me of school kids. Because that behavior is so typical of a cheap bully.
If you do not react to their needling, then you are weak and they can do whatever they want.
Rage up against them, and they go crying about how mean you are for hurting them.
All true, not that it makes any difference.
Force Is the language that sociopaths understand, but it also is the only language that they understand.
Is decimating the Urkraine ground forces to the tune of 71,000 killed in a few months seem like restraint? It appears to me that the war of attrition is working. Russia has a history of diligence, if not patience, in conducting it battles. The US tempting fate against a nuclear armed Russia in an existential conflict is pure folly; and death and destruction in the US.
I have said it before that the sociopaths would gladly eliminate 99% of life on earth, if that meant that they were granted dominion over whatever remained.
I was too kind.
The sociopaths would gladly eliminate 99% of life on earth, if that was what it took so that the Other Team did not win.
I wonder about that. Ukraine gave Russia a chance to demonstrate what their hypersonics will do. I suspect the Pentagon noticed that even if the most hardcore neocons didn’t.
Two points about ATACMS: Are they more than high tech accurate V-2?
They can be intercepted.
Not equal to counter force or counter value objectives of a strategic bombing campaign, too few, too small warheads. While reliance on long range bombing is suspect even if the USA would facilitate a 1943-44 8th Air Force style campaign.
The WW II Strategic Bombing Study had a group of study members, Galbraith one, who questioned whether the value and cost of the bombing of Germany was justified, if optimal.
Finally, the Germans have a similar system seems to ready to donate.
> Are they more than high tech accurate V-2?
More like Tochka-U. Ballistic, longer range, better CEP (at least on paper), similar payload.
I find articles like “can the piston-less engine…” to be very frustrating.
First, it contradicts the magnitude of the size and scale of hydrocarbon consumption that is not easily displaced. Even if it works, it will take decades to transition to any of these technologies, and that implies there are no economic disadvantages.
Second, they imply that there is a technology bailout that will magically save us. There isn’t.
And third, where will the hydrogen come from? Hydrogen is a really crappy fuel source.
I’d thought the premise was: one more burn-anything turbine range-extender on BEV or PHEVs (beating NSU’s Wankel’s biggest issues?) Micro-turbine EV utility vehicles, were dumped as Biden’s cartel chose 1970s technology from favored ICE makers, doomed-to-failure products. It honestly stinks of subtrafuge, that our innovative start-ups are crushed & Asian components boycotted, to serve oilgarch funders?
https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a35130726/mazda-mx-30-confirmed-usa/
Biden has a penchant to pick losers cuz he’s one himself.
It was interesting to me that they at least admitted that some/much of the information in the article was based on press releases from the company developing the technology. Happens all the time but few reporters admit what they’re up to.
Here in Bavaria the LIdl grocery chain is phasing out Flugobst which means fruit and vegetables flown in. They are doing this to decrease global warming. No one says by how much. And overall by taking away the income source of African farmers they are simply going to make it mandatory thta they move to Germany with their families to survive and their lifestyle will be converted to the western high C02 lifestyle thereby eliminating any possible CO2 benefit of decreasing air shipments of blueberries. flowers etc. from Africa. The government wants us all to spend many tens of thousands of dollars on heat pumps to decrease gas and oil and wood heating. If this is to occur Germany will eliminated enough C02 to equal one day of China’s production and perhaps two days of the US production in a year. Meanwhile does anyone know how much CO2 is being produced in the US war on Russia? It would really help to know what magnitude of C02 prduction is decreased with various measures. Did Joe Biden emptying the reserve reservoirs of oil before the midterms to lower the price of gas lead to increased gas purchases in big SUVs and if so how much C02 or global warming was caused? Sadly I am no mathematician.
In a perfect world those African farmers would get their income from selling to locals rather than have the produce airlifted to Europe.
I think that we can assume that they currently also see to locals. and that selling to said locals does not sufficiently sustain them.
Yeah the whole thing is groan. A diesel engine can potentially run on hydrogen if you get the setup right, and just about any other gas or dust that will go bang in the presence of oxygen.
In the end though, more efficient engines will just spark more usage as the unit cost of operation drops.
Yep.
https://www.dw.com/en/german-railway-firm-ushers-in-new-era-for-hydrogen-trains/a-64070343
Hydrogen is a really crappy fuel source.
At the risk of inviting ad hominem, a guy who claims to have helped reverse engineer ufos disagrees. According to Lazar the problems are political. He’s apparently been driving around with proof of concept in the trunk of a ‘vette that kinda suits him.
This has been doing the rounds for years. Might have even seen it here first, back in the pre-crash days when NC was getting cross-posted at Daily Kos:
https://youtu.be/Ytg23mDd1a4?si=NyEjNQIbXb-wxLDi
First Celebrities Settle Lawsuits Over FTX Deals Decrypt
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
MLB was fortunate that the FTX imbrogliowe happened in the off season, allowing them to do away with not 1, but 2 FTX logos on what we are led to believe are impartial judges uniforms this season, as if it never happened.
In fact the umpires last season only sported 1 MLB patch, outnumbered as it were by 1’s & 0’s in the numismatrix.
I don’t hang with younger adults all that much typically, but after Burning Man 7 of us got together and camped out for 3 nights in the eastern Sierra and one in particular, a 33 year old male computer dude, regaled with tales of how everybody he knew was in crypto, and when I dared lightly naysay its prospects, it had nearly the same effect as going to a evang megachurch with a bullhorn and exclaiming that they are wasting their lives away being history majors in a brief period once upon a time a few thousand years ago.
So, I decided to back off and turn into a potential backer, and he then told me all of the good cryptos to buy and the ones to avoid. I hesitated to ask the ad hoc shoeshine boy for any other tips, why lead him on?
Getting back to beisbol been berry berry good to me, as i’m the average age of an MLB fan now in kind of a dying sport that demands your attention at least 162 times when you’d rather be doing something else in the spring through to early fall.
Did MLB embrace FTX in order to get younger fans interested, or was it strictly Benjamins?
Most hardcore baseball fan I know gave up after his team got caught in a cheating scandal. My team was, for much of my adolescence, a bunch of losers but then they got bought by a billionaire and start winning pennants again but the money sucked the joy out of it for me so I gave up on them decades ago.
The more you know about American sports, the harder they are to watch.
Baseball died for me the day Rick Monday homered off Steve Rogers to kill the Expos the first time around, which spared me the agony of the strike that finished them off for good about a decade later.
‘- Spend $500 billion developing a stealth fighter
– Engineer it to be as hard as possible to find
– Lose one
– Ask the public to help you find it’
Hummppph. On D-Day in WW2, Allied aircraft for that day had black and white stripes painted on them to aid in recognition. Perhaps they can do the same with these F-35s but I would recommend using red and white stripes. After all it works for Wally-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Where%27s_Wally%3F
It’s either that or putting an image of an F-35 on the side of milk cartons or putting up ‘Lost’ notices at the local supermarket billboard. The weird thing is that one of the purposes of the F-35 is to spy on the friendly air forces that buy these things yet when one goes MIA in America, it just drops off the map.
The Edsel of the air is the grift that keeps on giving…
Imagine other countries pulling a fast one circa 2001, with the RNZAF getting rid of fighter jets, when offered a sweat deal on F-somethings by you know who to replace their aging fleet?
There is talk about bringing in New Zealand into AUKUS. You think that the kiwis would be leaned on to buy these turkeys? Doing a quick check I see that an F-35 would be lucky to make it to Oz much less anywhere useful. They were smart to dump their fighters as they are so isolated, no invasion force could even afford to pay the fares to go there.
Maybe they are planning for an antarctic resource scramble?
The Edsel got a bad rap. Launched in a mild recession with an unpleasing design, it was in my limited experience driving one a well- engineered soundly constructed vehicle. It was capable of 105 MPH, more I am sure, but I took my foot off the gas at that point. Oh, you could drive it in the rain and on any sort of road. I grant you the F-35 is faster when you can get it out of the hanger.
Nations are signing up for F-35s and planning to retire their existing aircraft — it could turn out to be the biggest disarmament program of all time.
F-35 AI system ejects pilot, heads for freedom?
I thought all the defects were in the plane already?
Have they checked the ocean?
Guys on the Russian TG say there’s nothing new under the Sun.
===
On 4 July 1989, a pilotless MiG-23 jet fighter of the Soviet Air Forces crashed into a house in Bellegem, near Kortrijk, Belgium, killing one person. The pilot had ejected over an hour earlier near Kołobrzeg, Poland, after experiencing technical problems, but the aircraft continued flying for around 900 km (600 mi) before running out of fuel and descending into the ground.
===
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Belgium_MiG-23_crash
The Cornfield Bomber 58-0787 Lands Pilotless… without Lt Gary Foust F-106A 58-0787
A 1970 event where the pilot of an F-106 lost control of his aircraft, ejected, and the ejection stabilized the aircraft that then flew to a soft landing in a snow covered wheat field.
The aircraft was later returned to service. A college classmate had worked on it during its later time in service.
Picture of an F-35 on the side of a milk carton?
Laughing my socks off – thanks
Maybe the pilot flew over the Bering strait and ejected when he had a problem with the controls.
My family farm is in the neighborhood. Lots of swamp to sift through. I’ll keep an eye out.
New Not-So-Cold War
Key GOP lawmaker voices support for sending long-range missiles to Ukraine
Why not ICBM’s? – “An intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) is a ballistic missile with a range greater than 5,500 kilometres (3,400 mi)…Early ICBMs had limited precision, which made them suitable for use only against the largest targets, such as cities.” Wikipedia
We can start with the old versions that Wikipedia says were best used on large cities and move to the newer more precise ones. The Kremlin, Moscow, all of Crimea and Russian naval bases.
It’s only fair that Ukraine has the SAME weapons Russia has, otherwise it’s not a fair fight. And besides it not like we have worry about Russian retaliation because Russia never retaliates againt the US or NATO or almost never against Ukraine leadership because Russia is run by 11th demensionals and that’s a good thing.
All we have to do it setup a bunch of ICBM’s in NATO, import a “Ukrainian” who pushes the button and say Ukraine did it, and do that over and over again. Ukraine would only be doing what Russia is doing to Ukraine with all her missiles.
It’s only fair.
Are we sure the US ICBMs even work? By the F-35 standard, for all we know they may be unable to fly. Maybe if they gave nukes it would just be embarrassing.
I think i read something recently suggesting Pentagon, or the sub-contractors, has long since scrapped all the tools and plans that would be useful for maintaining them ICBMs, so now they have to invent them anew.
There was an article a coupla weeks ago describing the problems with starting up Javelin missiles (?) production after the last one had been produced a decade or more ago. They were literally running around and blowing cobwebs off old tools and they were tracking down old guys and retirees to come back to the plant to work again as they were the only people that had any experience with building them.
That was Stingers.
===
“Stinger’s been out of production for 20 years” (q) Wes Kremer, the president of RTX’s Raytheon division.
“We were bringing back retired employees that are in their 70s … to teach our new employees how to actually build a Stinger,” Kremer said.
===
https://www.defenseone.com/business/2023/06/raytheon-calls-retirees-help-restart-stinger-missile-production/388067/
There’s been a similarly eerie article about building icebreakers just recently. (If it’s already featured here, my bad. My memory has more holes than a sieve.) The last heavy icebreaker was commissioned in the 70s, the last medium one, in the 90s.
===
U.S. officials are racing to procure new polar icebreakers because one of only two that the Coast Guard now sails has reached the end of its life, and the one assigned to the Arctic is out of service for maintenance every winter.
Out of practice, U.S. shipbuilders have had to relearn how to design and build the specialized vessel, say officials in the industry and the government.
===
https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/to-build-ships-that-break-ice-u-s-must-relearn-to-cut-steel-da8c797f
Thanks for that. Last night I just could not remember which missile that it was. Would you believe that I made a comment a coupla months ago on this situation arising as a joke? And yet is has come true in real life but hopefully those retirees are making out like bandits. So the question arises. As these things are mostly hand made because of forty year old practices, why are they not designing its replacement which can use modern manufacturing methods instead.
I was personally involved in an effort like this associated with spare parts for an old military aircraft. DoD hadn’t ordered any of the parts for over 15 years so the tooling, drawings, test procedures had all been mothballed and since the company had been sold in the interim and the new company had “cleaned house” both physically and of people, it was a huge scramble. It took over a year to produce any parts and they were super expensive since they to reverse engineer a whole bunch of stuff.
The US will continue to double down. ATACMS are baked in the cake while Russia continues to dither.
Any time you read that the “Administration is considering” a new escalation, that means that the decision has already been made.
“Ultra-wealthy people are working remotely from their superyachts and running their businesses from the high seas”
This may or may not be true. But I am willing to bet that these very same people still gather together in big blow out parties from time to time because what is the point of being a ultra-wealthy if you can’t show your wealth off or nobody recognizes you by face, especially on social media.
The ultra wealthy crave exclusivity (they have a 317 foot long yacht-we have a 900 foot long cruise ship) and its unlikely a dinghy will show up on the high seas asking politely if they’ll share their Starlink password.
Over 100 years since Veblen published his theory, and nothing has changed…
Billionaire yachts seem like prime targets for pirates…
This happens in the movie Triangle of Sadness. Interesting exploration on society and power.
checked out the trailer…too over the top for my taste
looks like a waste of a great moment for a more Renoir Rules of the Game style
take or some such; I wish. Just a quarter teaspoon to the gallon of Holly Bolly wood make a
big difference
My niece knew a billionaire. He rented a warship to protect his yacht.
“China seeks to expand police power to collect biological information of suspects in minor offences”
The Chinese police have some catching up to do. They need their own version of the UK’s Criminal Justice Act 2003 where-
‘Under the Criminal Justice Act 2003, the police now have the power to take and retain a DNA sample of any person arrested for any recordable offence, regardless of whether they are even charged or, if charged, subsequently acquitted.’
‘Biden’s phase’ of Ukraine war is beginning
In the YouTube interview at the end of the article, Douglas McGregor when responding to Glenn Diesen appears to be a bit exasperated when talking of Russia’s response or lack there of, to US and NATO escalations by frequently saying Russia is “sitting on the fence” and other examples including an exasperated tone of voice. Glenn was mostly silent looking like a lectured first grade school boy as McGregor displayed his impatience with Russian failure to act, as if someone had thrown warm milk into his face. And this:
McGregor: “I think the incentive for Russia to exercise restraint is no longer that great. I think the inducement to act is enormous. So I would expect action. There is no shortage of Russian capabilities. The chess board belongs to them.” That got a Medusa Gorgon stone face look from Glenn Diesen followed with a polite thank you and closing comment.
Russia has a known history of sitting on the fence too long to her considerable detriment even in this war, alone.
Any signficant Russian advance is going to cost a lot of men and equipment. And waiting a few months until there is more clarity as to how this next US election is going to go down seems to be prudent. The war is extremely expensive for Russian. Normally their military budget is a tenth of that of the US. The US is spending 150 percent of what Russia’s entire military budget is. Given the defensive lines they have prepared time it seems is on their side. Wars throughout the world are more often won and lost and fought by briefcase toting Ivy League lawyer lobbyists buying politicians in Washington.
Putin himself said it – it does not matter who wins the US election, as the policies will not change.
Von Moltke the Elder, he of Franco-Prussian war fame, believed that it was best to wage war on the strategic offensive, but on the tactical defensive. You seize something your opponent Must Have, then dig in & let him bleed himself white trying to get it back.
Mr. Putin & Mr. Shoigu have both recently commented to the effect that Ukraine’s “mobilization resource” is nearly exhausted. I suspect that they’re not upset at the present course of the war, staying focused on their strategic war aims & not being distracted by headline-grabbing incidents inevitable in the course of a modern war, as the accomplishment of their war aims slowly approaches.
Well said!
Wars are not fought with money, they are fought with weapons and resources.
Americans are always in a hurry and cannot understand why others, apparently, aren’t. That explains McGregor’s impatience.
Mercouris speculated yesterday (or said some speculate) that Russians might have not been interested in reducing Ukrainian artillery near Donetsk fast because the constant shelling of the city keeps support in Russia strong. Speculations can we make a lot of them.
I doubt that most Russians care that much, one way or the other.
Russia has nothing to gain by wrapping up the war quickly in Ukraine. The war in Ukraine is a sideshow: Russia is really at war against US over Western Europe. Even totally obliterating Ukraine unless that has some sort of impact on DC, Berlin, or Paris. Unless Europe is about to turn or Washington is ready to talk about the big picture, Russia has no reason to stop.
Russia is not indicating it has the material capacity to wrap-up in Ukraine. TASS still often reports significant increased production in vague terms, without defining particular values. If ruble value is declining, TASS might as well report,
“We’re getting worse at producing things cheaply.”
As coy as the MoD is with data, the State also owns Rostec, Russia’s biggest armament manufacturer, which in the interest of investment reports no substantial increases in employment nor earnings which would correspond to TASS claims. Russian manufacturing indices do not show a significant increases in the type of machinists that would produce items like weapon components. Russia’s private sector could glowingly report enormous surpluses in gear without actually increasing production of the actual key systems (latest-gen cruise missiles) needed to succeed. Figures for 2022, as a function of the above, suggest a treading of water in Lake Conflict.
Note the Russian 2023 internal security budget is larger than the defense budget, which are unusual books to keep if winning the war one started were possible. Or while insisting aggressive NATO expansion is of concern. Or while insisting on an exponential increase of war materiel. Or while mobilizing large amounts of troops with incentive packages, ballooning operational costs.
Finally, Russia seems to have lost 2 S-400 batteries, recently. The export price of each is $500 million. After replacing those, a sub, a destroyer, three to 5 landing ships, a bulk carrier, etc., massive increases in defense spending next year are needed for the Kremlin to just break even. Not a coincidence that last night, as seen by European civilian aviation radar, Russian bombers flew round-about from Murmansk to the Caspian Sea to fire their missiles, a sign that air superiority, granted by the recently shacked counter-missile batteries over Russian territory, is no longer a given.
Some of your points seem a little off to me,
Where are you getting your information about how Russia is not indicating a material capacity to wrap up their SMO? RUSI (Royal United Services Institute) was reporting last year that they had ramped up production to the point where NATO could not keep up. Recent bombing of air defenses and the efforts made to countervail them are not a sign of permanent disability, as shown in their flexibility in the face of other attacks elsewhere at different points in the conflict.
The potential problem with the Ruble, as reported by the Duran guys, has been addressed by allowing it to float in order to reach a sweet spot wherein they can balance their domestic and foreign expenditures to best effect. Their alliance with OPEC has made the price of oil and gas go up, filling their coffers to the point where they are seeking ways to spend their surpluses.
Given the propensity of the West to use internal forces for coup attempts it sounds natural that they would spend more on the internal security budget than on the SMO. Russia is the largest country in the world, composed of Republics that may not always be a natural fit. If they feel surrounded and infiltrated, that would be a natural response. They don’t need any more Chechnya’s at the moment, and I have no doubt that there are neocon plans in the works for plenty of them.
Your points sound like they are largely composed of wishful thinking rather than an analysis of how things have been progressing to date.
I think he is taking from Perun, who always has some assumption constructed from thin air, that then adds like spice to his facts.
You seem to have “oddities” in pretty much every paragraph:
First: several officials and company reps have stated that they are producing now in a month what they produced during the whole of last year. Yes, it doesn’t give numbers, but it indicates increasing production.
Second: just 10 days ago in Kommesant newspaper Rostec’s HR director said that last year the company hired over 30,000 new employees, all to fulfill “defense orders”. This year they’re short of 23,000 skilled machinist (due to extremely low unemployment, assumes the newspaper). That would mean that in two years Rostec is trying to double the workforce related to military products. Russia doesn’t really have a private defense industry sector.
Third: military and war takes about 40% of the current budget. And that does not include internal security. So, if that takes more than 40%, then there’s less than 20% for all the rest, and we can assume Russia will implode in the next few weeks when hospitals stop working, bureaucrats walk off, bridges start to collapse and so forth and so forth. Or, we may reconsider you claim with “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”.
Fourth: we have seen claims by Ukraine that they have managed to hit parts of S-300 batteries (in general consisting of at least 12 vehicles). Russia has about 2000 of them, so they are not in a hurry to build new ones. A few months ago Shoigu stated that Russian Navy will receive 12 new ships by the of this year, and quite likely twice that amount in 2024, so the “increase” need is already in the system. Russia actually has very extensive ship construction program going on.
All that said, Russia probably doesn’t have the capacity to wrap-up Ukraine. Depending on the definition of “wrap-up”, of course. Russia still has to keep majority of her armed forces securing the borders and guarding against NATO.
Nothing Russian can or will do will turn western Europe. The US could pre-emptively nuke The Hague and Eurocrats would mewl about how it was justified.
Don’t believe me? Look at the response to the destruction of Nordstream? The US committed an act of war against Germany, and the German response was for Scholz to scurry off for a photo-op with Biden while Europeans stared at their shoes and mumbled something about how they were bad slaves who deserved to be beaten.
Even if Europeans freeze and starve this winter, The People Who Matter in Europe will not do so, and that is all that matters.
For what it’s worth, if there’s a rasputitsa this autumn, Russian units have mostly tracks while Ukrainians ar either on foot or have wheels. So in principle, the Russian can literally run circles around the Ukrainians. And with the low overcast and rains for 2 to 4 weeks, neither the drones nor the satellites can provide very good situational awareness. According to RUSI the equally vaunted and maligned Battalion Tactical Group* can operate 3 days before it needs resupply.
On the other hand, something I read today from Awful Avalance regarding Kim’s visit got me thinking. According to him the Russian Pacific Fleet got a valuable gift from North Korean leader (but refuse to say what it is). So, what would Russian navy think is valuable? How about a shared naval base in Raseon or Wonsan? That would allow the Russian Pacific fleet to spread it’s assets, have shorter distance to Chinese waters (for training, of course) and maybe put some pressure on South Korea and Japan.
I think this would be called “lateral pressure”. As in “if you escalate in Ukraine, we’ll escalate… well, you’ll find out soon enough.”.
* yes, I know BTG was a temporary construct and that we don’t really know the current organization of Russian mechanized troops. Regardless, no matter how they are organized, a battalion will still remain the smallest operational unit. If anything, they will have more capabilities than BTG, being backed up by divisional logistics.
Volodymyr the Showman
Was a stand up happy soul
With a green shirt on and a brown nose
And two eyes on the goal
Volodymyr the Showman
Is a neo-liberal fairytale they say
He was made of all show, hoping for go dough
How he came to DC one day
There must have been some magic
In that oft worn green shirt they found
For when they placed it on his shoulders
He began to dance around
Oh, Volodymyr the Showman
Was alive as he could be
And the President says he could get more aid
Just forget about you and me
Volodymyr the Showman (showman)
Knew the political heat was hot that day (hot that day)
So he said, “Let’s run, and we’ll have some funds
Now before I melt away”
Volodymyr the Showman
Had to hurry on his way
But he waved good-bye, saying, “Don’t you cry
I’ll be back again for more arms some day!”
By this time next year Big Z will be singing a different song-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8scSwaKbE64 (2:43 mins)
“Silk Road vs Spice Route” is a thinly disguised press release no doubt sourced by the usual spooks. I particularly enjoy the warnings of the “debt trap” posed by Belt and Road — as if the former colonial possessions have been well served by 75 years of US dollar diplomacy … *eyeroll*
So here we are in the midst of year 4 of a global Pandemic, with a virus for which some evidence, and certainly a potentially powerful narrative, exists the an American adversary since the Obama administration, engineered a dangerous level three pathogen, which leaked or was released into the world, and arrived in America to begin infecting people. I can think of no better casus belli for nationalists and virulent racists than this.
Instead, we have a bi-partisan policy of mass infection without mitigation, with no nationalist calls that I’ve seen that we ought to by rights treat this as a Chinese attack on American citizens.
What a strange timeline, that this has been ripe for the pickings… and nothing happened. In so far as we’re not in a hot war with China, this is certainly a good thing. Perhaps the armchair warriors aren’t as stupid as they appear, and understand on some level that even a limited war with China would be a complete disaster for the United States. Or continuous mass infection of Americans is such a disgrace that no mention of it can be made, since Washington does seem keen on getting into a war with China over Taiwan.
Still, that SARS-COV-2 wasn’t used as a cause for war is puzzling. It could have been propagandized easily by our state media as a cause for war, much like 11 September.
The neoconservatives aren’t proper hawks in that risks to their lifestyle is the greatest threat. It’s like baseball fantasy camp for them. Highschool sports injuries caused less by freak incidents but long term wear and tear opening people up to injuries they wouldnt sustain 30 years ago and poor nutrition are clearly having an effect on potential US manpower.
So occasionally they like red baiting, they want to make sure MSDNC is free to broadcast their views or fancy parties are still held. Imagine if conscription took the cast of Hamilton! In the end, war with China will require shared sacrifice, and we’ve squeezed the lower 80% to a breaking point.
Are you saying the Pentagon was a US adversary since Obama? That would sure explain a lot. And of course Trump used Covid to agitate against China, which made it temporarily forbidden. Discovering the US funding and direction of the work in the Wuhan did not seem to change the utility of this arrow in the anti-China quiver.
u.s funded faucci’s lab in china he developed covid.
re: Russel Brand: The Economic Case For Cancel-Culture: It makes headlines, it makes views, it makes money. And it seems the hunger for aghastitude only increases.
It had the look and feel of a prisoner shot in the back attempting to escape, in a pre-crime mutually agreed upon by the UK media in a coordinated attack and abetted by scamp followers in maim stream media elsewhere.
I never liked Russell Brand much as an actor or celebrity and although I agree with many of his current positions I can barely stand listening to him — his messiah-style schtick leaves me cold.
And if (as has been asserted) he was friendly with Jimmy Savile in any way that is just horrific.
Having said that, I do wish the corporate media would pay as much attention to hunting down Jeffrey Epstein’s clients and demanding release of the videos and other data as they do Russell Brand and his self-confessed sexual escapades with consenting partners.
For as many people I want to burn in hell for their complicity, I tend to give a fair number of people a pass on Savile. There are lots of people who casually knew him who didn’t have a clue.
I worked with someone who was convicted of having child porn. They weren’t able to tie him to any actual abuse, although he did plead out all charges by admitting to psychological sexual problems so I’m not sure how deep the investigation was. We didn’t work around children often, and everyone I knew was deeply shocked. No one had an inkling. His wife was even shell shocked. (And no she wasn’t a good enough actress to carry it off if she wasn’t.) My point being that this is not cocktail or water cooler conversation stuff. There are a lot of people who know but pretend, people who should have known but didn’t, and there are even more people in the lives of pedophiles who never were in a position to know and would have no clue.
>Russel Brand: The Economic Case For Cancel-Culture
I’m not sure where that comes from but as for:
Jonathan Cook’s A few thoughts on the Russell Brand furore
Brand is an anarchist, I mean that in a good way. He may find coherence in anti-authoritarian sentiment on what is simplistically called the right wing. The authoritarian Democrats (it is silly to call them the left) are one of the problems. But he is about as far from right wing as one can get.
I like him.
I wish I saw more signs of people asking themselves how someone like Brand ended up as the face of opposition to neoliberal warmongerong. There’s more than one way to have controlled opposition.
“Poland, Hungary, Slovakia impose own Ukraine grain bans as EU measure expires”
When Big Z heard this, he blew a gasket. The Ukrainians are talking about taking Poland, Hungary, and Slovakia to the World Trade Organization (WTO) as soon as Monday to show that ‘these actions are legally wrong.’ The EU lifted tariffs and quotas on Ukrainian goods last year to support its war effort against Russia but it is sinking in what having the Ukraine in the EU would actually mean. Brussels may rant at Poland, Hungary, and Slovakia but those three countries are seeing too much cheap grain flowing into their country and undercutting their economy to just sit back and let it slide. They keep on saying that the Ukraine has to go into the EU for all its efforts but I would expect Turkiye to go before them.
Thanks for the Turley. From yesterday he takes on the fuzzy “facts” of the Stop Cop City movement. To wit, the activist shot during the clearing operation did in fact own a gun and the gun was at the scene. And while many choose to disbelieve the forensic report that said this gun shot a state trooper in the abdomen, the person the dead man’s family chose to do their own autopsy has a history of ethics violations that provoked an investigation by the AJC.
https://jonathanturley.org/2023/09/17/murder-they-wrote-rep-bush-and-tlaib-publish-nation-column-accusing-police-of-covering-up-killing-of-protester/
And “old growth”?
It was a prison farm meaning crops were grown there and trees removed.
https://www.fox5atlanta.com/news/gbi-gun-used-to-shoot-trooper-at-site-of-atlanta-public-safety-training-center-bought-legally-by-suspect
Turley’s link also debunks the argument that the issue is training center versus public parks since most of publicly owned land surrounding the site will still be made into park land. So a movement being sold as an environmental protest is really and has always been a defund the police effort such as those sponsored by George Soros. And it has been militantly so, not simply non violent. By skewing the facts those activist newsletters promoting this may have lured some young people into very big trouble indeed given the counter reaction by Georgia authorities. And some of those authorities are Democrats which is why hopes that Garland may get involved seem unlikely.
The answer hasn’t changed in the 20 days since the Water Cooler referred to a similar piece “The World’s Oldest Cat Door Has Been Letting Working Cats Enter the Cathedral Since the 14th Century”—mysteriously sans link and publication title but presumably referring to this piece in My Modern Met. I was kind of hoping it had or that there might be some intense academic debate brewing but unfortunately not.
Yes, we’ve had this link several times. And, while we are on that topic, it is not “Devon County”, it is just Devon (like the “London Times” is just the The Times).
Child #2 just joined the Exeter cathedral choir so we get to see a lot of the catflap. Yesterday was the Bishop’s farewell service. You might be interested that, in a flash of the Mediaeval living among us, the procession into the cathedral was led by the Bearer of the Dogwhipper’s Rod, followed by the Taperers, the Processional Cross, various Banners, the choir, the headmaster of the cathedral school, multiple Virgers, the Dean, the Lord Lieutenant, the Chapter, various lay canons, prebends and so on, the Bishop’s Chaplain, the (legal) Chancellor, vice-Chancellor and Registrar (in full bottomed legal wigs and lace), various guest Bishops and finally the Bishop. The full procession occupied two lengths of the nave. I had never before seen the unity of Church and Court and Executive power in person. It was fascinating as a one-off but imagine having lived like that preWW2 when it all *mattered*….
The bishop entered in full regalia, mitre, crozier and cope and vestments of cloth of gold. The bishop’s last act was to lay his mitre upon the altar, kneel, hand his crozier to the Dean to keep safe until his successor and leave bareheaded and barehanded (but fortunately not bare naked!). We apparently won’t get another one for two years. Apparently the wheels of God’s HR grind exceedingly slowly….
Thanks for the Covert Action history of Ukraine. It really puts the fight to recapture “their” land into perspective.
Hey
If you are in South Carolina please look out for a crashed F-35B
The pentagon seems to have lost one.
That really was a very good, if disturbing, article. What a horror show.
The sordid history of anti Russian official Ukraine is tuned to the 60 Minutes interview where Zelenskii tosses out the Munich 1938 card.
Interesting because like Russian speakers in east and south Ukraine Hitler used “abuses” of Sudetenland Germans to meddle in Czechoslovakia, another stitched together state.
Likeness to 1938 ends there. Putin has no obvious motive for liebensraum, and the presence of US nuclear tripwire mean no career unless you are in the US military industry complex.
The author cites Wiki at one point so, that’s not so good. It does have some useful information but omits much. I suppose that is inevitable for any short piece
> The Centrist Dads won’t save Britain Unherd
Cat Boyd and David Jamieson were bemoaning Centrist Dads on a recent ConterCast: From The Grave.
Speaking of Conter, the most recent sermon is astonishing. 10 minutes of back-to-back truths about the EU and how it relates to real politics, real economy, and real people.
Free, Hunter now!
Hookers for Hunter shout ‘Let him go!’
I heard it was only a little dent in their business…
A pun comes to mind here but as this is a family-friendly blog, I cannot use it.
Yes. I was thinking it was a “piss take” myself.
Let the bandit be, Ladies and gentlemen, Michael Kenyon.
“Austin church holds AI-generated service, uses ChatGPT”
Just wait until that Austin church installs ChatGPT into their confession booths. It’ll be great. They will finally get rid of those pesky humans right out of their church-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0YkPnwoYyE (2:49 mins)
Nigeria is quite the mess.
Just look at the number of free trade zones there:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_free-trade_zones#Nigeria
Re: Erdogan’s UNGA visit strained by Sweden’s NATO delay, Turkey’s F-16s sale
The story is a good example on how Washington treats any foreign leader as a supplicant.
So Erdo has the audacity to point out that since Congressional buffoons like Lindsey Graham won’t approve the F-16’s he wants, the Turkish parliament has a similar right to have a say on Sweden’s NATO membership bid, which looks to be 86-ed.
That sounds like reciprocity to me, a normal feature of diplomatic relations. But that’s not the way this dying empire rolls, they want to boss every country around like the hired help.
Turns out that Erdogan gave the OK to Sweden’s entry into NATO and releasing those Azov prisoners and he got nothing for his troubles. No IMF loan, no F-16s, nothing. All he did was to p*** off the Russians and made it look like he had been suckered by the west. The F-16s Biden backtracked after only a day or two.
I’m simply astonished at how the beltway cabal acts in bad faith, then expects others to just forgive and forget. Remember Lavrovs’ “not agreement capable” remark? It really should be the winner for best line of the century.
To Erdogan’s credit, he is holding Sweden’s bid hostage to force the bad actors to act.
Even Mexican cartels and mafia bosses exhibit better ethics than Biden, Graham, Blinken, and the rest.
Lavrov and staff has really demonstrated a flair for dry wit in recent years.
Is the deal good for me today? No? Well then, that’s the end of it. Whatever the meaning of ‘it’ is.
They will never change, only option is to change them out.
The eu says, well, ok, we’ve got a bad master. But he feeds me, I’ve got mine… so, he’s still the master.
Thanks to the great follow-up, Naked Capitalism team. For the first time I’m starting to feel somewhat informed about what’s going on out there. The coverage of Latin America, however, is a bit limited, could you recommend some portals or bulletins on the subject? I consult Resumen Latinoamericano, but sometimes they border on a certain propagandistic monotony. If the recommendations come from outside the NC team, go ahead.
I suppose it might suffer from the same “propaganda-itis” as Resumen, but Telesur has a non-mainstream reporting on issues. Specifically about Brazil, Brian Mier’s Brasil Wire (spelled like that) often has excellent deep dives, though posts are infrequent.
Here’s one I lost others the great computer melt down.
https://venezuelanalysis.com/
Great site! Thanks for sharing.
I follow Joshua Collins on twitter, who does a lot of independent on-the-ground reporting in Colombia and sometimes Venezuela:
https://www.piratewireservices.com/
Geopolitical Economy also has a Latin America section to consider.
Folks, did anyone see this seemingly interesting article: The Supreme Court Will Rule on Censorship by Matt Taiibi? I tried to use https://archive.md/. to see it, to no avail. It’s an important story to follow and NC has covered it extensively. Well, I’ll try again.
I’ve been using archive.ph but it seems that browser choice is an issue. My older Firefox build goes into a captcha loop when I try to access the archive, but my old Chrome browser can still open the links.
re: AI
The Klausinator thinks AI can do away with pesky elections. No need to worry my pretty little head over making difficult political decisions; AI can predict the outcome ahead of time. / ;)
From Jimmy Dore, utube, ~4 minutes.
This Is The WEF’s REAL Plan!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00g51_PfZrM
Here’s the other Dore video mentioned above. Klaus Swab seems baffled the little people aren’t happy with his plans. (You will own nothing and Klaus will be happy. ) / ;) utube, ~6+ minutes. (an older WEF clip.)
“A Revolution Against The Elites!” – WEF’s Klaus Schwab Openly Worries
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QAcvmT63Hg
Feral hogs are so 2019. Get with feral cows!
Feral cows are not omnivores.
But they are flatulaphones!
RE: Why so many new products for adults look like they were made for little kids Fast Company
Answer was something to do with nostalgia for things from childhood, like the Easy Bake Oven, making younger adults “happy,” and willing to open up their wallets.
But I can’t help thinking that there’s a connection with the article on boebert’s adolescent behavior at the theater. Ostensible “adults” (and an elected “representative” in government ferchrissakes) behaving like overindulged high school freshmen in public.
Act like a child and get marketed to as one. “Capitalists” don’t miss a trick.
Unmentioned in the Fast Company article is my personal pet peeve, “adult” vitamins as gummies. Come on, honey, you have to take your vitamins. See, they’re just like candy.
jeezus h. christ.
Whatever works; I can’t swallow large vitamins, so if a gummy is the only vehicle available for me, that’s what I’m stuck using. (Fortunately 1-a-day minimal vitamins I can swallow and they make chewable vitamin C, so no gummies here yet.)
Then there’s the huge success of Barbie and–to me–the career of Wes Anderson. The Millennials want their Mommie back [ducks]
Whereas Boomers just took a lot of drugs for their anxiety.
Or it could be that product design moves in phases, and often loop back on itself given enough decades.
For example a whole lot of Apple products while Ives worked there used design cues from 60s Braun products.
And i think for a while recently kitchenware was sporting the same kind of bright colors that i kinda recall was the latest fashion around the 60s-70s.
And i did have a moment maybe a decade ago when a pair of young ladies passed me by, and i was struck by how they could have walked right out of a 80s music video. Same kind of hair and wardrobe from back then.
That said, the behavior of an increasing number of people, in particular in positions of power, seem almost like that of petulant kids.
What do you expect in a country full of “Disney adults”? I’m astounded by the number of people I know who go on vacations there and have no children. But perhaps I’m biased – hated that damn mouse as a kid and still do.
RE: “Lost” F-35
Reward ought to be at least a couple million, doncha think? The pentagon’s loaded.
Well I don’t have it even though I live in SC. Apparently the pilot put it on autopilot before ejecting and they say it could be anywhere. It may appear in Putin’s next May Day parade.
Yep. Then NATO can give it the call sign, “Flunker.”
The wreckage of the plane has been found 80 miles from Charleston in woods near Florence, SC which downstate below Columbia.
We used to drive through there on the way to Myrtle Beach where the F 100s would roar across the surf with afterburners alight. Perhaps the Pentagon should go back to those.
Maybe Russians hacked into the F-35’s computer, ejected the pilot, and auto-piloted the plane to Cuba where it is now being inspected by Russian engineers.
The F-35’s flight range using its internal fuel is said to be 1,350 miles. How slowly can it fly and still remain airborne? I don’t know the answer, but it would seem that unless the autopilot has called up aerial refueling, the plane is on the ground by now. No?
Or in the ground. And that ground might have a mile of water above it.
I would think if it grounded above sea level within 1300 miles of the pilot somebody would have noticed.
https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2023/09/14/congress/gop-veterans-speak-out-00116080
Video at the link.
Further to the apparent diplomatic problems between Canada and India affecting the projected economic agreement plans:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-indian-government-nijjar-1.6970498
Trudeau Accuses Indian Government of Involvement in Killing of Sikh Leader
I seem to recall a certain someone who was accused of rape precisely at a time he was exposing undesirable news…only for all allegations to have been shown to be made up…cant quite recall who that was now…
Careful, or the Euro Stasi will acquaint you with “The Beast of Belmarsh.”
Re VOA article NATO Chief/Ukraine
In the link, NATO chief declares, “…we must recognize if [Ukrainian] President [Volodymyr] Zelenskyy and the Ukrainians stop fighting, their country will no longer exist.”
It’s a good thing those humanitarians at Raytheon are on point looking out for Z and his people. bold is my doing
https://www.defenseone.com/business/2023/08/ukraine-could-get-5th-gen-amraam-weapons-3-years/389919/
Quotes from Defense One:
Ukraine will receive a new variant of the Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missile in three to five years, according to weapons-builder Raytheon Technologies…Paul Ferraro, president of Air Power at Raytheon, told reporters Thursday…the next-gen AMRAAMs are “wildly different, both hardware-wise and software-wise,” than the current missile, Ferraro said…“I can tell you that the capabilities that are in this missile and have been exercised and tested in the flight test program show outstanding ability to perform its mission in the most stressing environments that we understand will be faced both today and in the future, and it also lends itself to…continual software based upgrades to keep pace with any emerging threats,” Ferraro said.
Oh good, continual software based upgrades, gee like the alerts I get to upgrade to a more robust data plan? (snarc obvs). And what will the opposing military forces/planners do? Sit on their thumbs and not improve upon detection systems of today that seem to be playing the part of the car that squashes frogger?
Why did Angela Merkel shut down Germany’s nuclear power plants? Merkel likely realised war is returning to Europe and nuclear power plants would represent an unacceptable risk/vulnerability. Fukushima exposing magnitude of risk (a reminder of Chernobyl) and impetus to address the vulnerability.
Poland, Hungary, Slovakia impose own Ukraine grain bans as EU measure expires Politico EU
And the terrible thing is, this grain is all they have to sell. For or part, we should be buying if only to dump in the ocean and not disturb markets if not to give to the starving. Why? To give them more hard currency. Currency which we print until the presses run hot, anyway and has an incremental cost near zero.
What passes for political in the west is a shame. Small minds lacking big thoughts.
Further to this, in this article:
CNN Poll: Majority of Americans oppose more US aid for Ukraine in war with Russia Modern Diplomacy
. . . and this, I feel, is only because it’s been so poorly presented.
Amfortas the Hippie . . . on the off chance you don’t go looking at yesterday’s tractor discussion, this may help you learn more about attachments;
https://www.goodworkstractors.com/product-category/attachments/
. . . believe me in this is nothing else, on God’s green earth there is nowhere with more sheer human inventiveness on display than tractor attachments.
Two of the first things you’ll need;
1. A quick hitch. Many brands. Pick one. If it were me, I’d ask around with your neighbors to see what they favor, then get the same one. Trust me, this will pay off.
2. A box blade for doing road work (drives)