How Rats Took Over North America Scientfic American. Gearing?
The Solar Eclipse Record from Santa Elena Poco Uinic Maya Decipherment
Climate
Geoengineering Test Quietly Launches Salt Crystals into Atmosphere Scientific American
California emits more of this little-known greenhouse gas than all other US states combined The Hill. Sulfuryl fluoride.
The Carbon Divide: The Material Basis of Polarisation Green European Journal
The Ecological Crisis of Capitalism and Human Survival Monthly Review
Pandemics
Whooping cough’s back — and it’s Covid’s fault Politico. Not immune dysregulation but “vaccine hesitancy.”
China?
US, China need ‘tough’ conversations, Yellen tells Chinese Premier Li Channel News Asia. The deck: “The US Treasury Secretary has made the threat of China’s excess production of electric vehicles and other clean energy products a focus of her second visit to China in nine months.” Excess with respect to what? Thread:
Some think China's car production capacity is about 2x Chinese domestic demand. In other sectors — like batteries – Chinese capacity is more like 4x domestic demand.
11/ pic.twitter.com/c8qIBlJGck
— Brad Setser (@Brad_Setser) April 6, 2024
More on “overcapacity”:
Back to my post yesterday on how China's "industrial overcapacity" actually is a buzzword for competitiveness.
This 👇 is part of the equation: Chinese manufacturing is an order of magnitude more robotized than elsewhere, which means much higher productivity and lower prices.… https://t.co/JgM7rdN4FD
— Arnaud Bertrand (@RnaudBertrand) April 7, 2024
US and China agree to start new talks on ‘balanced’ economic growth France24
Yellen warns China of ‘significant consequences’ if its companies support Russia’s war in Ukraine FT
Aukus weighs expanding security pact to deter China in Indo-Pacific FT
China’s maternity services put on notice as the country faces an ‘obstetrics winter’ South China Morning Post
Myanmar
Myanmar military loses border town in another big defeat BBC
Syraqistan
Pelosi joins US Democrats call for Biden to halt arms transfer to Israel Al Jazeera
House Armed Services ranking member: Israel’s strategy is ‘not working to their advantage’ Politico
* * * US braces for possible retaliatory attack from Iran: Report. Commentary:
Iran backs Hamas.
Iran backs Hezbollah.
Iran backs the Houthis.
Iran is helping Putin in Ukraine.It all comes back to Iran.
— AIPAC (@AIPAC) April 4, 2024
AIPAC to US: “Let’s you and him fight.”
Elon Musk’s X pushed a fake headline about Iran attacking Israel. X’s AI chatbot Grok made it up. Mashable
* * * 200,000 worshippers perform Tarawih prayers at Al-Aqsa Mosque despite Israeli restrictions Anadolu Agency
Concerns UK’s UNRWA defunding decision based on ‘claims made through torture’ The New Arab
Tracking The Urbicide in Gaza ArcGis. Interactive map.
Class destroyed: The rise and ruin of Gaza’s revered universities (photo essay) NBC (Furzy Mouse).
Dear Old Blighty
New Not-So-Cold-War
Military briefing: Russian ‘glide bombs’ pound Ukrainian troops and towns FT
OPINION: The Unseen Crisis: Russian Soldiers’ Desperation on Ukrainian Front Lines Kyiv Post
* * * Edward Luttwak: Time to Send NATO Troops Simplicius the Thinker(s)
NATO Wants to Show Support for Ukraine, but Only So Much NYT
* * * Zelenskyy aims to convene Peace Summit with up to 100 countries participating Ukrainska Pravda
Russia presses for answers from West over Nord Stream blasts Reuters
Peter Pellegrini: Russia-friendly populist elected Slovak president BBC
South of the Border
Storming of Mexican embassy in Quito ‘an invasion’, Ecuador’s ex-president Correa tells FRANCE 24 France24. Commentary:
U.S. support for Ecuador's security:
☑️Facilitated delivery of 20,000+ bullet proof vests
☑️Donating $1+ million of critical security & emergency response equipment
☑️@FBI personnel to support Ecuador's National Police & Attorney General’s OfficeMore ➡️ https://t.co/MmmqYqAajY
— Brian A. Nichols (@WHAAsstSecty) January 23, 2024
O Canada
Leaked documents show Alberta to dismantle health provider, may sell off care homes CYV News. Meanwhile in Edmonton’s Winspear Centre concert hall:
So, I don’t remember a designated “coughing room” existing at performance halls in prepandemic times
H/T to my local Still Coviding FB Group for this find.https://t.co/zEz5cK2g7Q pic.twitter.com/AlvP4TLSjI
— Amanda Hu (@amandalhu) April 7, 2024
2024
Trump campaign raises more than $50 million at Florida fundraiser: ‘historic’ haul FOX. Let’s wait for real numbers.
Donald Trump’s Insatiable Bloodlust MoDo, NYT (Furzy Mouse).
Baltimore bridge salvage: ‘This is a game of Jenga you don’t want to lose’ BBC
Noisy Law: Scaling Without A Modulus (PDF) Cass Sunstein, SSRN
B-a-a-d Banks
A bank failure shattered trust in this Kansas town. Only honest talk will heal it. Kansas Reflector
Digital Watch
Tough luck, bosses, AI is coming for your job, too The Register. I’ve never understood why this use case wasn’t top of mind…
* * * What we know about the xz Utils backdoor that almost infected the world Ars Technica. From last week, still a good roundup.
Everything I Know About the XZ Backdoor Evan Boehs
What can be done to protect open source devs from next xz backdoor drama? The Register
Groves of Academe
The US is experiencing a boom in microschools. What are they? The Hill. Presumably easier to ventilate. But also yet another assault on public education (and the very notion of a “public”).
Zeitgeist Watch
Disney Day Drinkers Club (Yes, That Exists) Feuds With Epcot Over Trashy Mascot WSJ. From January, but how could I have missed this?
How Raw Milk Went from a Whole Foods Staple to a Conservative Signal Politico
Imperial Collapse Watch
Liberal Blindspots Phenomemal World
Class Warfare
What’s Wrong With the Economy? It’s You, Not the Data WSJ
Nail technicians join forces to raise prices BBC
A store owner caught well-dressed women shoplifting—then posted the videos to TikTok The San Francisco Standard
The Reckoning: From the Second Slavery to Abolition, 1776-1888 – book review Counterfire
The New Science on What Ultra-Processed Food Does to Your Brain WSJ
Evidence, rationality, and ignorance: Agnotological issues in COVID-19 science Revista da Sociedade Brasileira de Medicina Tropical. From 2020, still germane.
Antidote du jour (Henry D):
And:
Henry D writes:
This is Ophelia. As a puppy she was rescued from a rescuer after she apparently destroyed a nice rug and sofa from inside her crate one afternoon and they gave up. To say she was hyperactive, high anxiety would be putting it mildly. I found that if I ran her ~ 10 miles daily she would calm down enough to be around others, though she still remained terrified of loud noises. In Atlanta we would get summer thunderstorms rolling through in the afternoon. She would panic jumping the fence to seek shelter and I would often get calls such as she was in an unknown neighbor’s car and they couldn’t get her out or hiding in a store such as Kroger a few miles from my home. Fortunately, she was not aggressive at all, but no one with any sense was going to pull on a frightened German Shepherd. One afternoon she was at my girlfriend’s house during a thunderstorm and jumped the 6 ft fence, somehow got on the other side of I-285 and on the way back managed to cross 4 lanes of rush hour traffic, but got trapped against the median and subsequently hit by a car. An amazing Vet tech saw her, pulled over in the rain in rush hour traffic and rescued her. Anyone who has driven I – 285 in Atlanta during rush hour knows what a crazy heroic act this was. She had lost her tags by this point so it took a week to track her down, by which point they had done surgery to repair the damage and wouldn’t allow us to pay because we hadn’t had a chance to approve it. After that I got permission to bring her to work teaching with me and she grew into an amazing dog. Her life “ended” when my neighbor, a police officer, was practicing shooting and she panicked, got out of the fence and headed to friends house down the road. Apparently at the same time a cougar and her cub were also spotted crossing my neighbors yard and she was never seen again. Mysteriously 6 months later a white German Shepherd was found in the woods several miles from my home. It turns out she was less than a year old, but had been surviving on her own in the woods and at that point looked and acted very much like my lost 14 yr old dog. Because she was so straggly and misbehaved they weren’t able to find anyone to adopt her so the saga began anew.
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
308 comments
Comments are closed.
The Letter
A LETTER
(melody borrowed from The Letter by The Box Tops)
At last here’s the turning of the weather vane
Sanctions and boycotts in the fast lane
No more free Shalom justice like a poem
England’s lawyers have published A Letter
The slaughter in Gaza simply has to end
Israel’s gonna lose their every friend
Lawyers made it known we don’t stand alone
England’s lawyers have published A Letter
They have written A Letter
Saying Britain can’t be part of Israel’s war
The whole world will answer we must cut out this cancer
We can’t do this no more
Straightaway, yes!
Israel isn’t England’s suzerain
What they do to Gaza is so insane
No more throwing stones reap as you have sown
England’s lawyers have published A Letter
They have written A Letter
Many thousands more will now sign it for sure
When the lawyers turn back every honest man jack
Knows we’re shutting the door
Walk away, yes!
At last here’s the turning of the weather vane
Sanctions and boycotts in the fast lane
No more free Shalom justice like a poem
England’s lawyers have published A Letter
England’s lawyers have published A Letter
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/mar/30/uk-government-lawyers-say-israel-is-breaking-international-law-claims-top-tory-in-leaked-recording
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/03/former-supreme-court-judges-say-uk-arming-israel-breaches-international-law
Up next for Israel: triple-secret probation. Also, Biden is working on a slightly more disapproving tone.
Nice work, as usual.
Don’t forget the sternly worded letter…
No sweat. AI will knock one out for you. AI would run my back office.
Maybe some four letter words would be more effective.
The only four letter words Biden says to Bibi are “Will” “Send” “More” “Arms”.
Have Yves write it!
“Zelenskyy aims to convene Peace Summit with up to 100 countries participating”
Say, does anybody remember the time that Imperial Germany organized a peace conference in Switzerland back in late 1918 and sent out invitations to a hundred countries to attend – but did not send any invites to the Allied Powers? Good times.
Just in passing, is there any way that you can short Zelensky on the stock market by the way? Is Las Vegas taking any bets here?
FanGhoul is what you want, and current odds are Zellensky +340 to be in power for the next year. Conversely the other side of the line is +115
Bet $5 Get $150 in Bonus Bets!
FanGhoul … nice!
We also need odds on Macron and the number of dead Frenchies if he sends in his tripwire bait.
Over/under 1000.
Pompadours didn’t count back in the day of Pompidou, but now they do.
Does Macron’s hair-do get a little tustled?
Something is off. Based on your odds you’d be gauranteed to win money if you put down the same amount on both sides
Lately I think it’s best to think of Zelensky’s “announcements” happening just after he comes up from the mirror with the straw still in his hand, and his PR people saying, Yeah!, as they feel that sensation in the back of the throat.
Do you think Zelensky believes he will be alive in 5 years?
Joint World Bank, UN Report Assesses Damage to Gaza’s Infrastructure
https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2024/04/02/joint-world-bank-un-report-assesses-damage-to-gaza-s-infrastructure
Highlights:
“Over a million people are without homes and 75% of the population is displaced”
“With 84% of health facilities damaged or destroyed”
“The water and sanitation system has nearly collapsed, delivering less than 5% of its previous output”
“92% of primary roads destroyed or damaged and the communications infrastructure seriously impaired, the delivery of basic humanitarian aid to people has become very difficult”
If it is a genocide, but no one at the newspapers of record call it a genocide, is it a genocide?
Give everyone at the NYT and elite uni administrators a “Profile in Courage” award!
It is a genocide and when newspaper editors try to cover that up they become an accessory after the fact. Agreements beforehand to cover up facts make them co-conspirators.
The present political class has shown itself to be quite open to killing, starving, or displacing millions of people in broad daylight. It would do us all a lot of good to see a few thousand newspaper editors, politicians, civil servants and lobbyists at least tried for their part in all this. The consequences of not doing so will embolden the next generation of technocrats to even greater heights of depravity, probably against their domestic populations.
Wasn’t it ever thus?
No real media pushback came against the Iraq sanctions in the 90s, despite Madeleine Albright’s infamous line about half a million dead being a price worth paying.
There was some pushback against the 2003 Iraq war (in the UK at least) but only after it became clear how much citizens were against it. The lies and pro-war propaganda at the time were very clear and were only called out by tiny groups like Media Lens. Even the liberal press faithfully regurgitated bs about Niger yellowcake, 45 minutes etc which were unbelievable with even cursory investigation
Raqqah, Libya, the list continues. And of course the earlier unacknowledged Anglo crimes were numerous.
All that’s different now is that more citizens see the destruction on social media, and Israel/Palestine is high profile. The majority of the media doesn’t seem much changed, although formerly war-queasy organisations like the Guardian have become more bloodthirsty. If the genocide in Palestine was happening somewhere less well known it would pass unnoticed.
And even citizen outrage is selective. I spent years watching friends eyes glaze over when I told them that British weapons were being used by a British ally (Saudi) to commit horrible crimes including forced famine in Yemen.
The legacy media’s function is to support the Empire. It has been doing this since it began.
It was always in broad daylight, just this time more people have noticed.
Yes. So much for that exceptional “Shining City on the Hill”. This is beyond embarrassing—it is Shameful.
They showed that about themselves when they stealth-okayed the Interahamwe Holocaust of the Tutsis in Rwanda.
And when they passively-accepted the ethnic cleansicide of the Rohingyas from out of Burma.
And when they are carefully looking-away-from the ongoing resumption of genocide against Darfurians by the RDF and its Janjaweed Militias in West Darfur today.
” And so it goes” . . . as Kurt Vonnegut used to say.
Only when convenient to TPTB.
It’s THE plan, not an accident. Make Gaza unlivable.
Temporarily unlivable. Then full of prime beachfront real estate, for selected buyers only.
Extensive landscaping will be required for the prime beachfront properties lest selected buyers be disturbed in any way following their move-in dates.
From “The Dunes” by Shane MacGowan:
The mounds they built upon the shore
They seemed to point to heaven
They seemed to point to heaven
The wind and the rain, they worked their way
The dunes they are all uneven
The children kicked the sand around
And the bones they were revealed then
And the bones they were revealed then
Around 15 years ago, I was affiliated with the Surfing4Peace group that brought surfboards, wetsuits, and instructors to Gaza to bring the people there much needed stoke. Kelly Slater was a major contributor to the effort. It pains me to witness the obvious forced Gaza displacement from what the financial class deems to be prime real estate by the Israelis. Below is a link to the Gazan surf club in “better” times.
https://gazasurfclub.com/
Then we’ll be hearing pious statements about how the residents voluntarily chose to leave, which means that Gaza belongs to Israel.
“Selected” in strict accordance with the Israeli state’s ethnically-determined criteria.
Henry D – these are gorgeous pics of your Ophelia, a wild spirit!
and how beautiful she sent her successor, Ophelia II
i love this saga
good vibes to you and your pack
Yes. Beautiful dog. Thanks for the story.
This.
Best of luck and lots of love to Ophelia2. Your guardian angel apparently looks a lot like you and knew exactly who you needed and who needed you, sweet girl.
Thank you, Henry D, for devoting so much time and effort to the dogs.
I have to pipe in too- great pictures Henry, and what a story. Pretty remarkable chain of events. And a shout out to that vet tech as well! So many of them that I have met are completely devoted to their work, never fails to impress me.
What a beautiful tribute to a spirited companion!
Henry D what a wonderful story – been a dog person since a kid – you are a wonderful person as well as those that helped with her – btw, i also like cats too –
Mine didn’t survive a car strike; well, did, but your life quality isn’t great with a broken spine.
Thank you for the kind words.
Sorry for the late response ,which likely no one will see, but I was helping with the Agrarian Sharing Network’s Propagation festival. Working to get anyone who wants a fruit tree in their yard for less than $10 and I just made it home. We’ll be in Eugene Oregon next Saturday stop by if you’re in the area there’s still nearly 100 varieties to choose from.
Pelosi joins US Democrats call for Biden to halt arms transfer to Israel , Crank up the mighty Wurlitzer. Color me skeptical concerning team blue’s newly discovered conscience. Note the call for an “investigation”.
Investigation, huh. There’s a big surprise.
They must be so angry with Israel right now. Not about the genocide, Israel treating the Palestinians like so much garbage is SOP, but the continued choices that play massively badly on social media that hurts them where they live now.
Thus the culling and “curating” of social media. Turns out many people do indeed believe their lying’ eyes. I see a lawfare campaign coming against Musk. It’s no wonder “Elon Musk says Trump ‘came by’ while he was eating breakfast, did not ask for money”, (CNBC). I believe they are being careful not to convert Musk’s financial empire fungible by establishing a hard link. Speculating here of course.
Eggs Benedict Donald?
From the dive-thru no less.
More like a ‘Drive By’ breakfast.
Elon gated, this conversation.
Ouch! Elon as the ‘gatekeeper’ is the ultimate “eu-fame-ism.” Consider it an ellipsis and connect the dots.
“I am but the lowly porter at the fane of notoriety.”
Speaking of fanes; is entering the Temple a Twelve Step Process?
Sounds like an Intervention is coming soon.
Musk is just another oligarch like the rest.
I doubt they will stop sending arms – they’ll just launder them through a third party. The spice must flow!
Ooh additional kickbacks and more donor support for the middleman. What a Win Win!
Had a good laugh over that one too. All Pelosi cares about is donor money and her stock
Portfolio. There isn’t a moral bone in her evil body.
To be fair, she seems to care for her freezer stocked with ice cream as well.
At some point, you’d think it might occur to people like Pelosi that if Israel treats her neighbors like she does those in Gaza, Syria, Iran, Lebanon…how might a greater and closer Israel treat the United States or any other nation should she no longer need us? How would Israel treat Americans should Israel one day be sharing our border?
Look no further than the ADLs recent drive to engage in lawfare to shut down free speech on college campuses. Where American’s rights, freedoms, or opinions become problematic for whatever the latest middle east land grab/population cleansing project is, the Israeli state will bring its influence to bear in curtailing those rights.
It’s all becoming a bit late Roman Republic really.
We don’t even need to share borders to find out: USS Liberty.
‘Bad Doge!’ {as she hands it pork}
Moral midgetry. Pretending to give a [familyblog] while couching the call in enough weasel words to make poultry extinct in North America.
Liberal blindspots:
“Fossil fuels give individuals the ability to make choices and buy items without relying on others. One doesn’t have to work as part of a group to hunt for food each day. Instead I can go on my own in my car down to the supermarket and buy what I want. That is a lot easier than having to work with my neighbors to build a different world. And one’s consumption can be used as proof of one’s status. So fossil fuel-enabled individualism in the West is seen as sacrosanct, as it enables freedom from constraints of social obligations.”
Well this is what you get after so many years of “Be Your Own Brand” and now “You Do You.”
Compare with Aurelien: The Revolt of the Outer Party:
> TS: One big socio-economic trend of the last fifty years has been the divide between those with college degrees and those with a high school education.
> The effect was to create a new caste in society: the Credentialed, who had degrees (sometimes several) but very varying standards of actual education.
> Unable to form or mobilize coalitions with working and middle classes, parties of the left have been locked out of power in much of the continent.
> The PMC as a whole, like Orwell’s Party, has no ideology as such. Likewise, is only interested in power, and its ultra-liberalism makes any kind of effective alliances impossible.
See also:
Taleb: Never use terms such as progressive or conservative without reference to a rate of change Progressive and conservative are ill defined terms, verbalistic labels. It is required to specify a rate of change for every specific domain. Rationally progressive means embracing progress by accepting a certain rate of change deemed optimal. Too high a rate of change cancels the gains from previous mutations; while too slow a change leads to misfitness.
Frederick Douglass: if you teach that [slave] how to read, there would be no keeping him. It would forever unfit him to be a slave.
Taleb has cut to the bone on this, as well as the challenge, observing and calculating delta.
Progressive: 1-5 bombing campaigns per session
Conservative: 10-15 bombing campaigns per session
The PMC have an ideology, keep housing an asset. Take Northern Virginia. It’s a dump. There is nothing redeeming about it. What happens if the federales engage in a major revision of government jobs? Kaboom!
Except for a few small points, those bedroom communities go bust.
From your keyboard to God’s ears! I had hoped that the WFH trend would destroy DC and fed jobs would spread throughout the country. Changing a lot and being a powerful economic and social force in our country. But no. No, we’re going to cram people back into DC so they work in old buildings and suffer through amazing traffic. What a pity.
aye.
it really does take a village(i hate that That Woman hijacked the phrase)…or at least friendly mutual aide with one’s neighbors.
the myth of the Rugged Individual, alone against the world, is silly randian libertarian mythology.
even mountain men came down to the flat for likker, flour and sugar(and gunpowder and shot).
all that said, i consider myself an Anarch, in the Ernst Junger sense(but with a perhaps more humanitarian sensibility,lol)
and on the side of the ancient Coolerator fridge in the Wilderness Bar(unplugged but still works afaik) it says “Think Like a State”…which is a shibboleth that helps to identify visitors of a certain libertarian(small l) bent….and helps engender discussions about microstates, and the like.
when i tell such people that, i’m all for texas secession…they are usually shocked…pointing to the large portrait of FDR, etc…but then when i go on and say that when texas secedes, i’m seceding from texas…literally all of them have been actually mouth agape,lol.
even so…i maintain cordial relations with my nearest neighbors.
i help them…or drop off produce…so that the relationship is already established, for when the balloon goes up(or gets shot down, as it were).
i think its cool that randian libertarians think that I’m extreme.
and now that ive had time to read through the rest:
“The left and center left have very little to say about freedom, which is a big problem. If acting on climate change means sacrificing what little freedom I have left, then what value is that to me? I hear this a lot among the working class; this idea that the few remaining freedoms are going to be taken away from them by the same credentialled class.
This is connected to the question of place. About half the American adult population still lives within fifteen miles of their parents. I know plenty of people here in the UK for whom that’s the norm. For the middle class, in contrast, it’s normal to uproot oneself and go where the work is; place doesn’t matter. But it does matter to the working class. They understand climate change very much in terms of what’s happening to the trees in my street, what’s happening to the river down the road. This doesn’t help progress on climate change, but it reveals that it’s those immediate experiences of the environment rather than global atmospheric concentrations of CO2 that affect people’s ideas about climate. There’s a big divide between this strong, long standing connection with place and those working at the UN, IPCC, World Bank, concerned with the global.”
same issue as with the farmers protests, yellow vests, truckers in ottowa, and for that matter the stuff here recently about white rural rage…the front row kids cant understand,lol….
governing exclusively from 30000 feet is never gonna meet with local approval.
but with all these dictats handed down from “our betters”, local perspective….let alone local effects, personal effects…is never even contemplated.
its fine to want to do away with big pickups, or whatever…but an electric vehicle wont haul manure, for instance.
in my experience with rural folks…extensive…its the top down quality of a given policy that irks the most.
last time we had actual protests out here, it was over a new slate of city ordinances, lifted entirely and verbatim from much larger towns down the road.
things like a ban on animals in the city limits were ignored…and various provisions about parking rv’s and boats…to trucks being worked on in the front yard…all were met with outcry and derision.
because the alternatives were expensive and cumbersome.
those provisions are still on the books, but they aint enforced.
people keep goats and chickens in town…to feed themselves.
people work on their own vehicles…and it sometimes takes a while.
people want to store their large investments on their own place…that they supposedly own…not be forced to rent a space somewhere.
the folks who ramrodded these rules were shocked at the backlash…but they relented.
many of them admitted to me that they had indeed got out over their skis….their dreams of becoming more like frederickburg, texas would take a lot more time than they had envisioned…and the People(res publica) would have to be consulted and convinced…in conversation(con=”with”) over time.
this anecdote is the whole problem in a nutshell, as i see it.
I have found that both at work and around home, I get along fine with just about everybody. We are all pretty much struggling to get by. Treat people with respect. Listen to them – you find that you agree on way more than you disagree. Especially now that more people realize that Democrats/Republicans are not going to do anything for us.
Except when the rich people show up and start buying properties where you live. They don’t seem to inhabit the same world – well, I guess they really don’t. All the problems we struggle with – they pull out a check book and make it all go away. And yeah, if they don’t like how your place looks (their property vales may be affected?), that’s when the place where you’ve lived for the last forty years gets strange.
You do know that the great ‘Anarch’ Jünger converted to the catholic faith before he died?
His whole stick after the war consisted of stylizing himself as a great world sage in order to make people forget that he was basically just a reactionary asshole who was too much of a snob to make common cause with the Nazis.
yes.
i actually do get all that.
i also reserve the right to like the Forest Passage while still hating nazis
jeez
this isnt hard
Unfortunately, I can’t understand how one can overlook the fact that the whole stick with his ‘Anarchentum’ is nothing more than an epigonal remake of Nietzsche’s Übermensch, and with this an anti-egalitarian aristocratism that has a lot to do with the longing for order, the climb out of one’s own petty bourgeoisie and the pandering to the ruling class (who was always the audience of his sordid ‚wisdom‘)
And it’s even funnier that this appears in a thread about the PMC, because there has rarely been an author who is more popular with the ( predominantly) right-wing PMC than Jünger.
Apart from that, he is simply a bad writer (especially his work after the Second World War), who was stylized as a classic thanks to the hegemony of the bourgeois press.
As Heinrich Blücher, Hannah Arendt’s husband, said: “He belongs to an elite, the elite scum (dem Elitegesindel)”.
Jeez …
The People, No:
“The spectacle of great, passionately aroused masses is one of the most important signs of our entrance into a new era (an era, in which, according to Jünger, “the social question has been worked out in broad regions of our globe. The classless society has developed it into more of an element of foreign policy than anything else”). Within these hypnotic spheres there reigns, if not unanimity, then certainly a single voice – because to raise a dissenting voice here would lead to uproar and the destruction of its owner“
(Der Anblick großer, leidenschaftlich erregter Massen ist eines der wichtigsten Zeichen dafür, daß wir in ein neues Zeitalter eingetreten sind. In solchem Bannkreis herrscht, wenn nicht Einhelligkeit, so doch gewiß Einstimmigkeit, denn wo hier eine andere Stimme sich erhöbe, würden sich Wirbel bilden, die ihren Träger vernichteten.)
Der Waldgang (‘Forest Passage’ is a rather weak translation; the same goes for the translation of “Wirbel” with uproar, because it implies an agenda of the masses, which the more adequate translation with ‘vortex’ would not; and the term “Bannkreis” – hypnotic spheres – makes this obvious)
and btw: what do you think is meant by the “questionnaire” (Fragebogen) on which poor Jünger’s fate was supposed to have depended? Ernst von Salomon, who was involved in the assassination of Rathenau, wrote a book of the same name that became one of the first bestsellers in post-war Germany.
Jünger was such a victim of the Allied brainwashing of the Germans that he had to wait until 1949 for his diary from the Second World War to appear, which, strangely enough, immediately became a bestseller (in the entries from the Caucasus, one searches in vain for more details on the extermination of the Jews by Einsatzgruppe D, which acted together with Heeresgruppe A).
After that, the poor outcast had to wait until 1959 before he was awarded the Große Bundesverdienstkreuz (Germany’s Presidential Medal of Freedom).
And even worse, he had to wait almost until his 100th birthday for Kohl and Mitterand to visit him. What an Anarch …
That article doesn’t even address the more alienating effects of the “tech” of the last 20 years.
So blindspots…yes indeed.
EX: As a teen-ager, I used to hang out with friends the carbon spewing car…forging bonds and alliances in a real way. In the moment, together, attentive…
With converstions unfiltered and away from corporate surveillance…
I think this speak of something deep in the mythos of USA.
That the people coming over from Europe, where the land had long been divided among the “lords”, found they now had a land of open abundance. With a knife and a musket one could now feed not just oneself but whole family, and nobody would string you up for being a poacher.
And this continued into the “wild west” image of the cowboy that could at any time hop on his horse and head off towards the sun.
And after WW2, the horse was replaced by the motorcycle and the car. But much of the image remained, as often the young men in the Hollywood movies would sport stetsons and like as they sped off towards the sun.
But just as all this was revving up, the OPEC oil shock happened.
And ever since, the nation may well have found itself in a bewildered state as the mythos more and more diverge from daily reality.
“I think this speaks of something deep in the mythos of USA.
“That the people coming over from Europe, where the land had long been divided among the “lords”, found they now had a land of open abundance. With a knife and a musket one could now feed not just oneself but a whole family, and nobody would string you up for being a poacher…”
Quite interesting.
But they had to get rid of the natives first…
A Canadian explained it thusly:
A european’s most precious asset is his home. If SHTF, he can go back there, hole up, ride it out if he can.
An American’s most precious asset is his car. If SHTF, he can go someplace better
And the wealthy have both castle and RV. And then Zuck has half an island and lotsa grub.
Most people would assume that the USA is a nation. And most people would see a nation as “a large type of social organization where a collective identity, a national identity, has emerged from a combination of shared features across a given population, such as language, history, ethnicity, culture, territory or society”.(Wikipedia)
But the USA is no longer a nation according to this common definition. There is no longer a collective identity. The country has splintered into competing languages, histories, cultures, agendas.
The people who fund the political parties of the US, and thus control the governments, are the rich. Their money is in overseas tax havens. They might own US home and land and business assets, but they also own assets across the western world. Their loyalty is not the the US, but to their money, and they would dump the US in a heartbeat if it didn’t serve their interests.
The people who govern the country are beholden to the rich. The rich are not interested in anybody in the US who doesn’t make them money. So neither then are the politicians. Politicians in the US are no longer interested in the poor, the unskilled, the disabled, the sick, all who have been jettisoned.
Many of the US bureaucrat hawks are immigrants and children of immigrants. Their bodies might be in the US, but their minds are still in the “old country”, festering with grudges and a burning need for revenge on those who caused them or their ancestors to immigrate. Nuland is a well known example.
Then you have the people whose only loyalty is to their religion, and the power their religion wields. AIPAC and all its fellow travellers fit here. For them the US is just a source of free money and unlimited weapons to keep them in their rightful place as God’s only chosen people with domain over wherever they want.
Then you have the PMC, who have been the handmaidens of the rich and powerful, running their businesses and making them money. The PMC are trained by universities in skills and obedience for just this purpose. The rich have rewarded the PMC with money, but also importantly they have let the PMC wallow in the delusion that the PMC is the most moral, the most intelligent, the most superior, the most evolved class in society. The rich are just in the process of delivered the PMC the huge shock of finding out that they too are disposable. That is one of the main purposes of AI, to cut down wage costs.
So the US is not a nation. Biden and Trump are just the natural outcomes of warring agendas of the rich in a country denuded of cohesion, meaning and community.
Trump is using MAGA as his siren song to the non-PMC voters who have been looted by the PMC and the rich.
And Biden is using the PMC delusional bubble of superiority to win over all his PMC voters. But the Israeli genocide is causing some cognitive dissonance in the PMC (the most moral people on the planet), that perhaps genocide of women and children is not so moral, but let’s hear the other side of the argument anyway.
It might take a while, who knows. But the process seems too far gone to reclaim what the US once was. The US might slide slowly into the apocalyse, or it might be like bankruptcy, very slow and then very quick. But as a nation, the US is done.
Good appraisal.
I have encountered many businesses and many families in which the members roundly despise each other, but they stay together because of the money and goodies on offer.
It’s when the money runs short and the goodies are no longer so plentiful that the knives come out and old gripes get rehashed.
Also: “Then you have the PMC, who have been the handmaidens of the rich and powerful, running their businesses and making them money. The PMC are trained by universities in skills and obedience for just this purpose. The rich have rewarded the PMC with money, but also importantly they have let the PMC wallow in the delusion that the PMC is the most moral, the most intelligent, the most superior, the most evolved class in society. The rich are just in the process of delivered the PMC the huge shock of finding out that they too are disposable. That is one of the main purposes of AI, to cut down wage costs.”
Keep in mind that you can run a substantial business without inherited capital, but you cannot run so much as a hot dog stand without managers.
“Edward Luttwak: Time to Send NATO Troops’
The fact that this nitwit is high on the Washington totem-pole and advising Presidents and the military tells you all you need to know why so many things are going wrong. Regardless. One part interested me-
‘Romania is preparing a new law on defense, according to which it will be possible to deploy troops to the territory of other countries to “protect Romanian citizens’ in response to “hybrid threats” ‘
Now I take that legislation to mean the Romanian-Ukrainians living in the Ukraine. So here is an interesting scenario. Suppose that Romania and the Russian Federation make a secret agreement that if Romanian soldiers enter the Ukraine, so long as they stay in the Romanian-Ukrainian part of the country, that the Russians will not attack them. But if they leave that enclave, not only will those troops be attacked but also the ones in that enclave. NATO, suspecting this agreement, orders the Romanians to move to and occupy Odessa. So what might the Romanians do then? It’s not like Romania and the Ukraine have good relations after all-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romania%E2%80%93Ukraine_relations
I take it more open ended than that.
There are ethnic Romanians (Moldovans are for all intents and purposes indistinguishable from the rest of Romanians – half of historical Moldova is part of Romania) in Northern Bukovina (now Ukraine), in R of Moldova, in Transdnistria, as well as in Budjak (south of R of Moldova, was part of it but was taken and given to Ukraine, so that a slavic polity (RSS Ukraine) will control part of the Danubeexit to the Black Sea).
Let the dices fly high. What is good for the goose (Russia protecting Russians) is good for the gander (Romania protecting Romanians).
I do not know if the Russians have changed their stance or not but several months ago they were saying that if Romania took back the part of the Ukraine where their people lived as did the Hungarians, that it would be no skin off their nose.
It was Medvedev, whose role seems to be the most ardent maximalist for now.
I doubt Russia would appreciate the complications right now, though. Gagauzia, and autonomous area in Moldova has already stated they will declare independence in case of Romanian take over of Moldova.
And even if not going into how many Moldovans would actually welcome Romania, it would make the status of Transnistria way more hotter that Russia would hope. I think they’ll need another 8-12 months until they’re ready to deal with that situation.
You think that with Medvedev, that he is playing bad cop to Putin’s good cop? If I recall correctly, the guy used to be an ardent Atlantasist years ago but that was then and this is now.
100%. Controlled opposition. Medvedev is a “convert”, and converts are by and large nuts. Anyone more extreme will be doubted.
He won’t challenge Putin but becomes an outlet for people who want blood.
The Chechen guy (I can’t think of his name) seems like he puts out Putin’s “stronger” views. He’s relatively restrained.
that Chechen guy . . . is Ramzan Kadyrov.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramzan_Kadyrov
Here’s a bunch of images of Ramzan Kadyrov, in case anyone wants to go url diving.
https://images.search.yahoo.com/search/images;_ylt=AwrFEisPIxNmP3kEae5XNyoA;_ylu=Y29sbwNiZjEEcG9zAzEEdnRpZAMEc2VjA3Nj?p=ramzan+kadyrov+image&fr=sfp
Kaydrov is a real piece of work.
That expression is usually seen as an insult or deprecation. Just to be clear, is that what you intend?
Well, that sounds like the sort of instability Russia would welcome in western Ukraine. Stop at the river now, and let the Romanians, Poles, and Ukrainian Nazis fight each other, instead of uniting against them again.
If you are referring to Medvedev’s map, it hands Northern Bukovina to Romania, but not Budjak (which is marked as Russian). Instead Romania gets an oblast north east of Moldova, which has never been part of Romania.
My interpretation is that the map represents the maximalists goals at the time, and the rest was divided between Poland, Hungary and Romania whether it made sense or not.
“Instead Romania gets an oblast north east of Moldova, which has never been part of Romania.”
Are you refering to Zakarpatia? I think that was suggested for Hungary to take.
No, I am refering to Vinnytsia Oblast. Zakarpatia is marked for Hungary on the map.
Here is an article in Euractive that includes a fairly good image of the Medvedev map.
Vinnytsia Oblast was as far as I can tell not part of the Romanian occupied areas during world war 2, and doesn’t appear to have any significant Romanian population. So I figure Medvedev drew the map of the maximum Russia wants – eastern Ukraine as Russian and Kiev as a city state – and then partitioned the remaining areas. No foreign power having any reasonable reason to want Vinnytsia Oblast, he handed it to Romania.
Notably, Budjak and the rest of Odessa oblast (Transnistria Governorate under Romanian occupation during world war 2) are not handed to Romania but to Russia.
Yes, I raised the issue of Budjak and the fake map attributing it to Ukraine in 1922 as a Lenin present in many instances and many sites. The RT users are especially quiet about that. Or Martyanov ones…
The Russians should have consulted their ethnic maps first: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanians_in_Ukraine
The Rev Kev:
What really popped me in the eye in that Luttwak sending in troops thingy was this: “The British and French, along with the Nordic countries, are already quietly preparing to send troops — both small elite units and logistics and support personnel — who can remain far from the front. The latter could play an essential role by releasing their Ukrainians counterparts for retraining in combat roles.”
I realize that we live in Scoundrel Time.
But what Luttwak is proposing in the snippet above qualifies as a White Feather Moment.
The French and the Finns can show up and run the military’s Taco Bells and hope not to be bombed.
The sooner these people end up in prison, the happier we all will be.
>The sooner these people end up in prison, the happier we all will be
I would be much happier with them actually showing some real courage in their beliefs, grab a gun and head to the front lines if they feel that strongly about it. And THEN have Russia introduce them to warfare for real. Effing chickenhawk desk jockeys.
Anybody who has spent even 10 minutes looking at drone footage of the savagery of the fighting in Ukraine would run the other way if they had any sense.
Modern weapons are demonic in and of themselves (Hellfire missile); adding drone warfare capabilities adds in a personal, sadistic element that is truly shocking and horrifying.
I wonder how many military surplus drones will end up in the hands of u.s. police, criminals, and terrorists.
In a sense you don’t have to worry as most of the drones being referred to are barely modified civilian and commercial models.
Small military drones are still on the drawing board at this point and will probably focus more on autonomy to overcome problems the people you mentioned don’t really have: range, jamming, insufficient pilots. So they will be genuine drones rather than the RC copters we’re seeing in Ukraine at the moment.
It would be quite the spectacle if Norway ends up sending troops, after our prime minister publicly nixed the idea some weeks back
Sadly the only real alternative come election is even more gung ho globalist/atlanticist.
WWIII is coming. The West has already sunk so much into the Ukraine project that it cannot be seen to lose, even if that means the end of us all.
Looked this guy up on Wikipedia – he’s 81 years old. Don’t want to be ageist (I’m only 31 years younger), but as another old man said, “Come on, man!”
So then I looked up a half-remembered line, and found this quote:
George S. McGovern:
Yup, that’s my sentiments in 2024. So it goes…
I will share this from Ernest Hemingway:
“There never was a good war or a bad peace.”–Ben Franklin
Zelenskyy aims to convene Peace Summit with up to 100 countries participating
This is a joke, right? And if not, that “up to” is doing a lot of work there. Perhaps Grenada will make it. Maybe Liechtenstein.
Sounds like a fundraiser to me.
Maybe they can save the youth center by putting on a show.
LOL. Wasn’t it Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland?
Now we can have fun figuring out who’s Mickey and who’s Judy!
He aims at 100, expects 80, and will get 60, with 40 promising to help, and 20 actually giving him some money, so he can by more homes.
lyman alpha blob:
As I have noted, Andorra and San Marino make up the Teensy Axis of Evil, so they will not be attending.
But Freedonia will, and they’ll bring the potatoe salad.
Don’t forget the Duchy of Grand Fenwick!
¨up to¨ means ¨not more than¨
No, the whole thing is intended as a demonstration that the West will only keep doubling down.
There is a tale that the American people tell
Don’t care if it is true ’cause I love it so well
Hegemon make money day & night
The people were cool with it well ’cause it treated them so right
Oh-oh-oh, Hegemony sing
Oh-oh-oh, make Dollar king
And they wanted Dollars near and far
We found our way by Bretton Woods four score ago, lucky star
We’d tell them of their greenback joys, they’d tell us what we owed
They loved to see $’s come, they’d hate to see $’s go
Oh-oh-oh (Hegemon), Hegemon print
Oh-oh-oh (Hegemon), make the money-go-round mint
We was makin’ our way home on a dark and stormy night
When we heard a cry for help, We saw in Gaza a flashin’ light
When we tried to feed the famished and offered them a hand
The Israelis said, “You’re dead to me” as they took a pirate stand
Oh-oh-oh (Hegemon), Hegemon AIPAC ring
Oh-oh-oh (Hegemon), give ’em everything
“Hegemon, it’s over, the fiat lady sings the last song very well”
She caused a big commotion ’cause their gotten gains went to hell
Came along a Donald, he said, “Hegemon, hello”
“I’ve always wanted to trump Dollars, climb aboard, don’t let go”
Oh-oh-oh (Hegemon), Hegemon sink
Oh-oh-oh (Hegemon), make something else king
The results were a bit tragic, they bid supremacy goodbye
The billionaires fled into havens, or they stayed up in the sky
And all the people when they wish upon a star
See the Donald and the Hegemon who tell ’em where they are
Oh-oh-oh (Hegemon), Hegemon sink
Oh-oh-oh (Hegemon), make something else king
Oh-oh-oh (Hegemon), Hegemon sink
Oh-oh-oh (Hegemon), make the loss leaders drink
Oh-oh-oh, oh-oh-oh
Oh-oh-oh, oh-oh-oh
Oh-oh-oh, Hegemon sink
Jolly Mon, by Jimmy Buffett (RIP)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RWLnBAHWHE
Quote from one of the links:
“…Cormac McCarthy said that people write instead of blowing up the world. The anger is in part a product of working-class resentment against the middle class who is complacent about the status quo, and vicious when its privilege is threatened. The anger is also about being lied to. The lie being that the liberal middle classes of the global North are the carriers of the light, the masters of our future, the saviors of humanity. But liberalism is now destroying the foundations of life. “
I was thinking last week about why the anger at the liberal middle classes is stronger than at the conservative middle classes who are just as vicious when its privilege is threatened. I suspect the lies are part of it. Malcom X famously said something about that didn’t he.
It’s because liberals are supposed to be the good guys or so they constantly tell us. For decades, they have promised us nice things, like a decent life in which we don’t have to be terrified about basic survival, and they have not delivered.
We see their hypocrisy, their lies. Then they call us stupid racist fascists and a variety of other names when we call them out for the frauds they are. It doesn’t foster positive feelings toward them. We are literally sick and tired of it.
Conservatives, we don’t really expect anything from. They are what they are and for the most part don’t pretend to give a [family blogging].
Just my 2 cents, which is worth a lot less these days so I need to buck up buckeroo and get in line because complaining will get Trump reelected, don’t you know.
“It’s called vote shaming. We endure it every four years.” One of my favorite finster quotes.
The Finster aims to please.
“It’s because liberals are supposed to be the good guys or so they constantly tell us.”
I’m reminded by the quote from MLK:
“Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”
I suffered the same response when I forwarded the “White Rural Rage” article linked yesterday to my TDS liberal friends.
Bravo, Lena! You have nailed it. Thank you for your eloquence.
Because the PMC is the hegemonic class.
It’s from ‘Liberal Blindspots’. Please see the bassmule comment above, and response to it. The ambiguity in the word Liberal, from politics to economics, is causing some problems in thinking critically about values.
Yup. I’m thinking “PMC” when I read “middle class” in that quote from CM. This fascinates me because I’m not sure we have yet a truly clean definition of PMC.
I really go for individuals, which are more or less part of the managerial class.
Myself and a colleague we are suppose to look into the vulnerabilities related to climate change and point to necessary adaptations.
And when we point, with tons of evidence, that there is a huge information gaps on the state of aquifers, and that there are issues with sea water infiltrations in wells, we are told to take a walk…
Never mind overconsumption and overpopulation (the carrying capacity of the place has been surpassed in terms of food and water, a bit like Australia).
A practicable strategy that might scale. The middle part is a verse from the story of now. I’m sorry to hear it. The last bit will certainly get sorted sooner or later.
‘the carrying capacity of the place has been surpassed in terms of food and water, a bit like Australia’
About the same time that article came out suggesting the America should aim for having a population of a billion people living there, there was one that came out saying that the population of Oz should be about 100 million people. I don’t know what reception that they thought that they would receive to this idea but it went down like a lead balloon. Blind Freddy could tell you that the place could not support that many people as so much of it is desert.
that makes me think about texas’ population in my own lifetime.
almost tripled.
and with the current invasion of urban and suburban eclipse peepers….town looks like austin, traffic-wise.
…and i remember when one could drive around austin outside of traditional rush hours…and not be in a perpetual traffic jam.
same with houston, for that matter.
the old county judge was quoted in last weeks paper, saying they expect as many as 20k extra people in my county for this weekend.
there are some, of course, who relish this….they own bidnesses, and are making bank.
these are, generally, the same folks i referenced above, who pushed for frederickburg-like city ordinances…blind to how the rest of us felt about such disruptions.
we’ll see what this place looks like on tuesday, after the hordes have left.
“there are some, of course, who relish this….they own bidnesses, and are making bank.”
Funny how that tension crops up again and again all over the world.
I’ve seen “PMC” defined as broadly as someone with a bachelor’s or higher college degree.
Speaking as someone who has one, I’d say bachelor’s degrees are a dime a dozen. To really be “PMC” you need at least a masters and/or a position that has some special licensing/credentials. At minimum an upper management-type job. Just sitting at a desk all day doesn’t really make you “PMC”.
Email jobs.”Knowledge work”.
Building a fence is work. So is writing a poem. Why not respect both?
Ask the PMC, not me.
US, China need ‘tough’ conversations, Yellen tells Chinese Premier Li Channel News Asia. The deck: “The US Treasury Secretary has made the threat of China’s excess production of electric vehicles and other clean energy products a focus of her second visit to China in nine months.” Excess with respect to what?
Exactly. The US has an excess of cars. Cars all over the place on dealers lots for sale a dime a dozen rows and ailes of cars just sitting there just like in the 2010’s. That’s why you can’t find any for sale and have to wait weeks to get one you don’t particularly like or want and if you don’t take that random one they offer to sell you at an even more inflated price, it’s permanent UberVille for you.
Yellen is threatening to cut trade w/China if China does not help take down Russia, and could not care less how it affects US citizens. She probably has no clue what kind of impact it will have on most non elite Americans. Yes this can hurt China but not w/o hurting the non elites all across the United States.
And “Tough Conversations” – China told the US this. It is a general paraphrasing of a part of The Duran’s reading of China’s readout. Tough words from China to the US:
“It is crystal clear to everyone that the United States caused the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza, and that the United States is bogged down and growing weaker from these conflicts, not Russia. Now the United States asks help from China to end these conflicts but only so she can divert resources to start a conflict with China in Taiwan.”
I am still the guy that would not go into a WalMart because I thought supporting a store that was gutting American manufacturing, gutting local stores and economies while paying crap wages was a poor trade off. All I ever heard was but they have cheap stuff! Now Yellen is over working with China to make the cheap stuff go away. And what did America get? The richest family in the world, a blown up manufacturing base, and millions of older workers that cannot retire but can no longer work.
And I totally agree with you on cars. Right now, car dealers are panicking because they cannot sell cars but that has a lot to do with the incredible price increases since covid started. And now lots of the junk car loans are going bad:
Delinquency rates at highest level in almost 30 years
https://www.bankrate.com/loans/auto-loans/subprime-auto-loan-delinquencies-surge/
After that, it will be subprime garden shed loans going bad because Americans were buying garden sheds to live in – oh, pardon me, I mean tiny homes.
I cannot imagine what kind of thinking even backstops Yellen’s trip. It’s a complete waste of time unless it’s just to convince the American PMC that everything is under control. The Chinese government has worked long and hard to get to where it is, and is now thoroughly aligned with Russia, and further pressure of any kind will only further strengthen the alliance. Anything Yellen will do will will perform just like the “economic sanctions” did on Russia – completely backfire. And let’s face it, America’s trade polices (or complete lack of any except rich people get richer) since all discussion of the “trade deficit” stopped (late 1990’s?) have de-industrialized America – these are fundamentally what Yellen and her cohorts have done.
What’s required is what Yellen is incapable of doing. Enacting polices and plans to revive American and EU infrastructure/manufacturing in cooperation with the BRICS. But Yellen is Wall St and all Wall St is doing is squeezing the last drop of blood out of the American working class.
Actually once those cars get “repossessed”, people will need to get shopping carts and tents, because they’ve been sleeping/living in their cars. I’m seeing ads for a neat addition to the car – a tent that can be attached to the open back trunk. I guess they sleep in the tent add-on since the back seat is their storage area. ON SALE NOW.
They are the new hobos and can move on a dime. But it’s hard because the families students have to do their homework and parents have to go to work each day.
There are more and more companies doing some kind of pickup camper module lately. With ever more elaborate Rube Goldberg like slide and fold mechanisms allow for beds and kitchens.
That or ways to turn a van into a camper, including one video i wish i could relocate showing a young lady filing some paperwork on a laptop before taking her cup and stepping outside to enjoy the lakeside sunset.
That would be #vanlife, methinks.
“The US has an excess of cars. Cars all over the place on dealers lots for sale a dime a dozen rows and aisles of cars just sitting there just like in the 2010’s. That’s why you can’t find any for sale and have to wait weeks to get one you don’t particularly like or want and if you don’t take that random one they offer to sell you at an even more inflated price, it’s permanent UberVille for you…”
This is superbly expressed.
The Ford employee parking lot I pass irregularly, which was temporarily used for finished vehicle storage, has been cleared of inventory and reopened for employee parking.
TL;DR “Know your place!”
And if you think that the United States will quietly allow itself to be supplanted as hegemon….
My black humor appreciates a comment on the AIPAC tweet. The comments were almost uniformly negative and several pointed out the same thing that Lambert did. But one person had a novel approach. To paraphrase, move Israel to the Ukraine, that’s the ticket.
Genetically most modern Israelis came from this region anyway so they should feel more at home. There may be a bit of bad luck in that Israel is a habitual attacker of her neighbours as seen right now but in the case of Russia, they shoot back.
Three state solution. Since the Baltics states are all dead men walking demographically, migrate the Zionists to Lithuania, make Latvia a part of the multi-confessional democratic Palestine (thus giving Palestinians Schengen visas that will help them get educated while their schools are being rebuilt). Estonia can take in all the Western criminals and propagandists, let’s please get some decent security fencing around Estonia (to be renamed Natonia).
If anybody gets feisty, Russia can just cut off their gas and electricity until they behave.
Why not? Vilnius was practically a Jewish city before the Holocaust, no?
And very Polish too.
So was Odessa.
“move Israel to the Ukraine”
An alphabet agency adjacent contractor told me half a year ago that the people he worked with were telling him (off the record) that the war with Russia was meant to depopulate Ukraine so that the Russian Jews could return and have their own country.
We talked for a while about why they would have told him that. I doubt that was anyone’s intent to begin, but it’s possible they’re already busy rewriting their motives.
What? Madagascar isn’t good enough?
I like your idea but how about moving Israel to (barren) west Texas into a small strip of land as big as the Gaza. If they start fighting the Texans they won’t last long. In the meantime they enjoy the climate they’re used to.
How Raw Milk Went from a Whole Foods Staple to a Conservative Signal
Did it really do that though, or is this just another attempt by corporate media to keep people at each others’ throats?
I drank raw milk exclusively for the first 18 years of my life, not because of any political bent, but because it was, for my dairy farming family, essentially free. Although I have never ticked the box for a Republican, I am now apparently a Trump loving member of the GOP. Does every [family blog]ing thing in existence now need to be labeled either pro-Trump or anti-Trump? When will this stupidest of all timelines end?
I’ve come under pressure lately by drinking Kefir-which sounds vaguely Islamic, I feel your pain.
… sounds vaguely Islamic …
Prolly cuz a kafir is someone who does not believe in Islam. A Christian or other non-Muslim.
As opposed to a fakir, who will drink kefir, but not with a kafir or a kofer unless they are fakers.
So, you’ve hit the nail on the bed?
It’s exhausting to keep abreast of the latest revisions to the signalling protocols. At least I don’t feel a need to deploy them myself.
My family and the neighbor dairy farmer had a mantra they’d chant as he sold us raw milk back then: “It’s just for the cats. Yep, just for the cats.” It got to be a family tag line when one was breaking the law. Here’s a link. The Amish are our seed corn.
Who remembers this scene from Nuts in May, the Mike Leigh comedy?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pxN2BADHwk&t=481s
How about putrified meat?
Yesterday, wondering how scavengers like H. erectus not only survived, but thrived, I stumbled upon How did Ancient Humans Preserve Food? .
I am not a prepper, so I wonder if a hide poke of baby food could also be anaerobically fermented, given a dash of (raw) mother’s milk?
Fascinating article.
Does every [family blog]ing thing in existence now need to be labeled either pro-Trump or anti-Trump?
Yes, I think so. Everything must go through the Trump prism. It’s a test. If you don’t spend every waking hour hating Trump, you might be a Trumper. If you say something bad or criticize Biden or the democrats, you might be a Trumper. If you don’t worship every little thing team D does, you might be a Trumper.
Everyone needs to get with the program and vote Biden – democracy is in peril (I was told that just the other day) – it will be the end of the world as we know it if Trumps gets back in. We can already see it happening don’t you know – how many people did Trump kill with COVID, plus the train derailments, the ship that hit the bridge, the airline issues – they are all because Trump.
Vote blue no matter who.
Yes to everything you wrote. Even when I call attention to the genocide in Gaza, I’m told that I’m helping to reelect Trump. The TDS is so bad, it’s like talking to brainwashed zombies because that’s what they have become.
Someone I know who is pretty much a rabid “prepperista” recently replied to a TDS sufferer he was arguing with, which was almost a ‘free comedy show’, that he now cuts a T in the tip of his bullets so that the PMCs he shoots remain dead. The alternative method is silver bullets, and that is getting expensive.
As others above have noted, there is an incredible amount of anger percolating just under the surface of American society now. Anger, let it be noted, on all sides. The “deplorables” I meet are angry at how they feel that they have been cheated of decent lives by the ‘elites,’ and the PMCs are angry that the ‘deplorables’ have the nerve to complain about how the elites are running things.
I think your second paragraph is spot on Ambit. You said it better than I ever could.
To me, the big question is; how will this all end up?
I’m pretty cynical, so I won’t speculate.
Sounds like a class war, so long as at it can be so defined. Not that I have any interest in that. I’ll just be over here with my books, telling anyone who’s interested what they’re about.
I get the same sense of simmering anger from representatives of both classes; it is rarely classified (no pun intended) as class resentment/rage – but it could be!
Just about sums up a recent film that was released in late 2020..”the hunt”. Just happened to finish watching that one yesterday. No spoilers but it was an interesting take on this subject and “hunting” for sport.
I diagnose it as fear. Fear breeds anger. It takes a leader to combat fear. Or to engender it…at present it seems all the engendering is being done by the wokies.
In the end it is Wall Street and their security apparatus attack dogs that are doing it, in order to keep attention away from their ever more painful looting of the nation.
Oh no, that’s not anger that’s resentment.
Having personally lived in a tent even though working a full time job in Lafayette Louisiana, I can testify that resentment is but a point on an escalation curve. Endure ‘resentment’ long enough and you graduate into the anger phase.
To my way of thinking, anger comes about when one realizes that nothing that he or she does make any difference to the outcome. When dealing with impersonal physical causes of the discomfort in effect, acceptance is indicated. The material world has no agency, and thus also no culpability. Persons, on the other hand, do have agency, and thus can be blamed for their decisions that inflict negative outcomes on others. That is where the anger comes in. The evil one is enduring came about due to a choice by those with the power to affect outcomes.
Rational people do not wish to be themselves evil. Their reaction to evil is anger. Resentment suggests the desire to become like those being ‘resented.’ This violates the requirement of rationality in one’s thinking. To resent evil people is irrational. To be angry at evil people is rational.
Stay safe.
Same here. I was told it is NOT genocide, then they got real mad. TDS is off the charts bad – and they call them (the Trumpers) a cult. I think brainwashed is the correct word. The ones I know only read and listen to what they want to hear – everything else is fake news. But we are the dumb ones. But that’s part of their fun (hate). To these people anyone who isn’t totally on board with what they think, and I mean totally, are stupid red neck hick evil Trumpers.
They have made it a binary purity test.
I am repeatedly told by the TDS brigade that “Biden wants a ceasefire but he has no control over Netanyahu!” So I ask, “Are you saying that Biden is Bibi’s powerless puppet?” Then they get really angry.
It was the same with Obama. Ask if Obama would to exert politico force to some end (single payer, say) and the answer would be “The President is not a dictator!”
Team Blue can do no wrong. Team Blue and their followers always, always, always have an excuse or someone else to blame.
I should know enough not to talk or read what these people say. It is probably unhealthy, but I can’t. It’s like watching a train wreck, you can’t look away. But in a twisted sort of way, it’s kind of entertaining.
Where else can we find and watch people who think they are magnitudes smarter than everyone else, twist themselves into mental pretzels defending the indefensible.
These are the same people who, starting with Russiagate, to the Ukraine war, to Israel/Gaza, among with other things have been wrong on facts for almost 8 years.
From the can it get worse department; not too many years ago many of these people were anti-war. Now I am hearing them chirp about going after Iran (due to recent developments).
So yes, it can (and no doubt will) get worse. At least they serve one good purpose – they are the canary’s in the mine for what inhuman things TPTB will do next.
O the excuses, the excuses…..
While T has Jered as a son in law, dreaming of developing beach front Gaza, he really gives me the impression that is far more averse of killing people, of any skin colour or religion, than Biden is. Especially when the whole world can see it.
I agree, Trump has always seemed squeamish to me, which is odd considering his promotion of wrestling in the past. This aspect to him also made the ‘pee tapes’ highly questionable.
Yeah, donald trump is one helluva guy. Like the zionist Jews, he’s the g.d. apple of God’s eye.
Secular puritanism?
I was told by a newly converted Bidender that he did not want to vote for Trump because we’ll get a dictator. I said we have one already. I heard crickets in response.
lyman alpha blob: Yep, from the absurd aqua and mauve cows up top (since when is red *not* the color of revolution?), the article is opinions about opinions.
There is one hard fact: “To be clear, the CDC’s own study says raw milk is estimated to have caused three deaths from 1998-2018 while oysters cause 100 deaths every year.”
This means that raw milk is almost always safe. You point out that you drank raw milk from a family farm, and the article fails to address changes in dairying that mean that “modern” dairy farms engage in practices that your family and its smaller operation would have considered unhealthy. That’s the issue here.
Notes on the raw and the cooked: Here in the Undisclosed Region, cheeses made from raw cow’s, goat’s, or sheep’s milk are a normal part of life. I enjoy toma de lait brusc, which is a hyper-local cheese, a tad whiffy, from raw cow’s milk. In the U S of A, the status of cheese made from raw milk–which is quite safe–has been in some limbo for years, so far as I know.
Yet as someone brought up in the U S of A, there are some things I won’t eat raw because the U.S. food processing / distribution system has been so skeezy for so long. Here in the Undisclosed Region, minced raw veal is one delicacy I won’t try. Yet I have tried salsiccia di Bra, made in a nearby town from raw veal, and eaten raw. I’m still alive.
In one of my favorite stores, I became curious about “potato salami,” another local recipe. What I learned is the one eats salam de patata raw–and that it contains pork. I’m an American, sez I. The people at the shop then explained a way to cook the salam–to the squeamish American.
The article did inadvertently mention the real issue, but glossed right over it to promote the culture wars instead.
“By the 1920 census, America had become a majority-urban country. People moving to cities still wanted to drink milk, and the market provided — with smelly, bacteria-infested urban dairies.
~snip~
New York City was first to mandate pasteurization in 1910. Other cities quickly followed suit, and states began to ban the sale of raw milk as well. At first, the added cost of pasteurization would have frustrated the dairy industry, but eventually the additional standards came to be appreciated by the industry’s biggest players. After all, pasteurization gave them an edge over smaller dairies that couldn’t afford pasteurization machinery, while simultaneously allowing them to have low cleanliness standards without risking harm to the consumer. ”
That is the crux of the issue – filthy farms are the cause of bad milk. When you milk just 60 cows, clean their stalls twice daily, and brush the caked manure off their tails on a regular basis (that last one being just one little procedure my family used to perform), you produce quality milk. When you have cows never let outdoors and wallowing in their own filth, well I really wouldn’t want to drink even pasteurized milk from one of those, if I were able to know ahead of time where it came from, which, with rare exceptions, we of course aren’t allowed to know when buying from the grocery store.
Speaking of those rare exceptions, they are likely to get rarer. There is a small dairy farm near me that sells its own milk locally in grocery stores. They bottle (not carton – glass bottle) the milk from their own herd themselves and you can return the bottles to get your deposit back. Old school. It’s been in the current owner’s family for something like 7 generations – a couple hundred years anyway. I have purchased from them for nearly one of those generations myself – almost 20 years.
Now the state wants to use eminent domain to put a highway through it. Apparently people from away can’t get to the Maine beaches quick enough in current conditions and might stay in Massachusetts
instead. Jesus wept.
We can’t have both capitalism and truly nice things. The time to pick one is nigh – if we don’t, we’ll have neither.
Just asking for a friend, is it really necessary to drink milk from cows? I know back in the day it was a boon, but that was when you had your own cow and you worked Little House In The Prairie style for every calorie.
Well, it most certainly is not the Milk of Human Kindness any more.
“I’m driving 6 hours through New York’s Adirondacks to see the 2024 total solar eclipse from Potsdam. Here’s why.’
Astronomers know centuries ahead of when there will be a solar eclipse and when. What is the bet that several years ago some of them scouted out this zone and selected the best vantage point and away from any expected crowds and leased out some cabins. And I bet that they brought in their own food and even their own fridges as well as generators. PPPPPP.
Old style astronomers used to be a bred of their own and a couple made some side money hustling pool. Surprised? Lots of night they could not make any observations as the sky was clouded over and some observatories had a pool table set up. Combine this with people who live mathematics & ballistics and a few became expert pool players after so many hours playing.
I will be in the ADK, somewhere, but, just took Potsdam off the list. But, please, America, go to Potsdam, have fun, and make sure you don’t have to be home soon afterwards. Traffic will be a b****h.
Spot on about the traffic, Benny.
Thales of Miletus is said to have made some money, but not when predicted a solar eclipse, but when predicting some whether and impact on olive crops.
I was chuckling. Spent 4 years in Potsdam at one of said universities(with a few summer classes at the other) and couldn’t wait to get out of town. Haven’t been back since.
Will be watching from campus here in town. The Astronomy dept has set up a nice program. A friend took a long weekend and will be watching from tippy top NH.
NYT must have some bad poll numbers for Biden, because MoDo is especially shrill about Trump’s supposed “bloodlust”. Clearly one of the symptoms of TDS is the inability to see the actual slaughter being perpetrated one’s own candidate of choice.
Maureen…wasn’t there a comparable article posted in Wapo within last few weeks. I want to recall it was a lengthy column on the coming Trump dictatorship, as according to Robert Kagan. Horrible dreck. David Frum I’m sure is on this beat as well of course.
Meanwhile in the real world…my dang car insurer is jacking up the rate of insurance for the next six months billing interval. And that’s on a nearly 15 year old Accord !
Actually you’re wrong about this , inflation is down so your experience of your bills going up isn’t supported by the hard economic data, you’ve just been convinced by the media to have bad vibes about Bidenomics.
/s hopefully unnecessary
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/12/business/insurance-inflation.html
March 12, 2024
Insurance Costs Are Pushing Up Overall Inflation
Insurance costs are on the rise for various reasons, adding to overall inflation.
By Jeanna Smialek
More like the rate of headline inflation is decreasing.
The little touches like including a “sarc” are always welcome… routinely there might be a lengthy comment thread if or when I neglect to include one…
It’ll reach the point of inflection if this trend holds say into 2025…paying an insurance premium that is reaching towards or nearing the value of the thing being insured…time to check the finer details. Added…pushing the comments in total to a daily record ?
“Actually you’re [right] about this…”
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/29/business/economy/auto-insurance-inflation.html
February 29, 2024
Auto Insurance Spike Hampers the Inflation Fight
Costlier vehicles and repairs are pushing premiums higher even as the increase in U.S. consumer prices is tapering overall.
By Talmon Joseph Smith
Job growth, wage growth and business growth are all lively, and inflation has steeply fallen from its 2022 highs. But consumer sentiment, while improving, is still sour.
One reason may be sticker shock from some highly visible prices — even as overall inflation has calmed. The cost of car insurance is a key example.
Motor vehicle insurance rose 1.4 percent on a monthly basis in January alone and has risen 20.6 percent over the past year, the largest jump since 1976. It has been a huge hit for those driving the roughly 272 million private and commercial vehicles registered in the country. And it has played a part in dampening the “mission accomplished” mood on inflation that was bubbling up in markets at the beginning of the year.
According to a recent private-sector estimate, the average annual premium for full-coverage car insurance in 2024 is $2,543, compared with $2,014 in 2023 and $1,771 in 2022…
Plus damage to cars from climate events (AGW and expanding into the wildland-urban interface), and crazy drivers (Going up since COVID, either due to brain damage, or due to people wanting to flout any reasonable restrictions)…
It is kind of remarkable that she could write such a thing at the same time their old codger is killing children by the truckloads.
Daily news activity:
What, fill in blank here, is still alive?
That could be a fun past time , albeit a bit morbid….but I’ll be willing to add to that list.
Dick Cheney, former VP. For many reasons obviously but it’s been over 20 years since his economic comment that “US deficits don’t much matter…”. Let’s see how it looks if we cross the $40 Trillion boundary in a few short years.
https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/national-debt/
A trillion here, a trillion there, pretty soon you’re talking serious money.
Not too sure I am comprehending in full what Secretary Yellen is hoping or plans to achieve. Don’t outcompete the US manufacturer base, is that really a conversation to be having in 2024. I guess so since she went that direction.
Imagine the corresponding discussions from the world of sports.
NY Knicks to the Jordan led Bulls. Can we just keep the MJ scoring down this series?
Golfers to Tiger Woods circa 2001 – 2008. Please do let us win some of the time? Just one golf major will do wonders for most of us!
This country is led by fudging morons.
The White House is led by a guy who plays a “tough guy” on TV. Much of our foreign policy establishment is composed of Orientalists, but they are starting to see the limits of US power and need a win before the Orange One.
At the start of the SMO, there were and couple of articles proposing a Cuban Missile Crisis resolution where the US concedes but gets a pr win. I think the US is willing to concede as long as Biden gets to sit in his car with sunglasses. We just fail to see Khruschev was ousted, so Xi and Putin aren’t giving Biden a PR win they don’t get too.
I think the message is “MJ let us win this one, and we promise not to draft the player who can extend your team’s run… Yes, we know we would be picking after you.”
Joe Joe the fighting man
from the streets of Scranton
He’s done what he can
Jill is his minder
She stores the meds
He bleeds blue
He don’t like Maga-Red
He’s the champ for “Democracy!”
Til the day he’s dead
He sits in his sports car with sunglasses and twiddles his thumbs trying to remember his wife’s name.
Re: Kyiv Post article…
Anyone else thinks it’s odd that a person with no described military experience, logistical expertise, or even self-described time in war zones is accusing people who condemn Ukraine as being “keyboard warriors”, while they allegedly review drone footage from the safety of the UK? It’s enough to make me miss Mr. Friedman’s taxi drivers.
Makes me wonder if merely observing that because Russia has a logistical advantage, a materiel advantage, and many times more people who can be soldiers, puts you in the category of “keyboard warrior”?
And of course these boosters still don’t have an answer to these easiest of questions. If Ukraine’s highly scripted combined arms counter offensive failed when they had more arms, more support, and more fighting men, why should the West continue to support them when they have unarguably less of everything and Russia is more organized and aggressive? This is beyond the disgrace of applying the sunk cost fallacy to human lives. This is some bizarre fetish the Naughtzis have about throwing good money after bad in an attempt to kill their poor countrymen. For the sake of Ukraine we need to stop supporting this war.
It’s about election year… and the new FDR can’t go out like this, so stalling to spin it. I imagine the Nazi types don’t have much to look forward to either.
I feel rather guilt free in missing a cloudy day in Buffalo, or how the celestial event was later described, right up there with Evel Knievel’s Snake River flub.
I’m looking at a sunny day on the left coast Monday, 41% of totality-which sounds more akin to a minorality, but you go with the eclipse you have-not the one that’s overcast & over hyped.
Caution must be taken…don’t stare directly without those glasses ! Here on the eastern coast the timing is supposedly right for viewing between 2pm to 4pm, in South Carolina.
Early schedule for a happy hour on Monday says I (!). My TPS report filing isn’t going anywhere.
I’ve got my Monster Chiller Horror Theatre 3D welding glasses, care of Count Floyd (RIP)
I’ll be on chair 14 @ Mammoth looking up^
“It is noteworthy that most welding glasses are not suitable for looking at the sun, and using them can be risky for your eyesight”
(sorry, comments with link are getting vaped)
We were in Mineral King for the 2017 model, which was around 72% totality and said glasses worked just fine-I may have misspoke by calling them welding-whoops, in fact we parked at the ranger station and there were a dozen people milling about-tourists & NPS employees, and I passed around the glasses for everybody to have a look at the oddly proportioned Yin & Yang overhead.
I know how to ski by Braille and could find my way around a QWERTY blindfolded if blinded by the light, I suppose.
Still, Do Not Look at the Sun for more than a few seconds at a time. Even with “Solar Shades”. Eye damage is permanent; there is no known medical treatment of any kind!
we use the full welding hood, if that matters.
but none of us have been interested enough when these things happen(like the partial last fall) to simply “stare”.
I’m as or even more interested in how it’s going to affect the behavior of the local fauna.
with the partial eclipse last year, my critters didnt even register it, as near as i could tell.
in this current Thing, i reckon the many, many, many extra vehicles out here will have a bigger impact on our animal neighbors.
I didn’t think of that. I had some romantic vision of a scene blanketed in complete silence. I’m on the fringe which I’ve heard may get me a cup of coffee if $1.99 is included.
ii mean, chickens, et alia, moved towards their houses….but then they went back to doin chicken, et alia, things.
same with sheep.
almost no effect.
4 minutes of total occlusion.
the hype lasts longer.
In the partial eclipse last year the birds fell silent, as if a thunderstorm was overhead or twilight had come early. They started chirping again once the partial darkness was overcome by the sunlight. The dogs cats, squirrels, etc carried on as usual.
Due Dissidence guys on Jimmy Dore satirizing the MSM and its fear mongering about tomorrow’s eclipse. / ;) utube, ~6+ minutes.
Liam Neeson Warns Of Cannibalism & Orgies During Eclipse!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6JS7dGNam8
That was funny. Liam and the dangerous “eclair”! Thanks for the link, flora.
Scarry Kids!!!
As a kid I used two black film slides together to see an eclipse and it seemed to have worked. But who sees film slides these days?
We used x-rays, because apparently that was the sort of thing you’d have lying around the house.
Our nearby rustbelt city, Syracuse, ranks #2 in cloud cover behind Seattle. Monday forecast cloud cover forecast went from 20-30% Friday to 60-70% today. But not a solid blanket like last week. Maybe we’ll see totality… of not. Investing in a hotel room and transportation to watch an eclipse in the Great Lakes region would alway be a gamble.
Go with my plan… when the moment comes, close your eyes for 3 minutes over easy.
This morning in my path of totality it is mostly cloudy. Tomorrow is supposed to be partly cloudy. As far as I can tell, the hundreds of thousands who are expected to arrive have yet to materialize. Maybe they are in the Walmart parking lot across town.
Ha. My wife is on a train out of NYC. According to her, you will find them there.
I’m in the Great Lakes Region, Ohio to be exact. Our little NWO town is right in the sweet spot of totality. County of around 20k+. They have commercialized this to the hilt. Party’s, bands, people getting married (over 140 and counting). No hotels to be found (they gouged them, imagine that).
Warning of traffic issues, all police and emergency people on duty doing 12 hour shifts. Some are guessing we will get tens of thousands of visitors. Some people are renting out spare rooms, other securing their property with rope to keep people out.
They have hyped this to the hilt. We’ll see what happens. Wish I had a police scanner.
The 2017 total eclipse was mostly in the back of beyond in Oregon/Idaho/Wyoming, etc.
I remember reading of 14 hour traffic jams, this one is in more populated areas~
I wonder what would happen if astronomers announced that a meteorite was going to hit in the middle of the desert in a non-populated part of Arizona with the force of a small nuke. You think that tens of thousands of people would swarm to his area to watch the “fireworks” and bring their kids to see the “show”?
We’re conditioned to not only anticipate the crash-but desire it. Hollywood has a lot to do with our tendencies, as they’ve supplied much fodder from the hand of make believe.
By the way in Arizona, rim-seats for Meteor Crater #2 Boogaloo are fetching $15k in feverish pre-mark it demand.
reports of fires and wrecks are up on my scanner…as well as various injury/ailments from misadventure…and thats just 2 days since the ravening hordes arrived.
the fires ive heard so far have been locals burning brush, as is usual…and the city folks freaking out about it.
of course, all this coincides with wildflower season…superbloom, this year…
the flowerpeople every year end up using up our ration of antivenin…because they dont know to watch for rattle snakes, apparently, when getting that perfect picture of plant reproductive organs.
my youngest is working at the coffee shop right now…says its worse than yesterday….even at 8am…with even more folks arriving.
i’ll maybe take a run through town in the morning, just to see whats up.
I was in your neck of the woods a year ago and really enjoyed all the wildflowers growing roadside and in the fields. I was a little surprised to see that what you get in April in TX are the same plants sold as annuals here in the northeast in June, and for a lot more than free!
yeah.
march thru july is my favorite time of year out here.
and like i said…superbloom this year.
ill check my email(after what? a frelling month?lol) and see if i can send pics, yet.
fixin to debrief my youngest , who worked at the coffee shop all day.
(and next time you or any of the other NC oldtimers are down this way, look me up(Lambert)…i have space for visitors, however alien(Pace commercial—“New England?!?!”))
Can’t do a road trip tomorrow. Wanted to go to Lake Champlain a little north of Burlington but won’t because I’m eating kefir, sauerkraut, cottage cheese and miso and staying close to a bathroom because antibiotics because big toe cellulitis because subbed it breaking up a dog fight three weeks ago. I’ll find a live stream to watch and see what I can see from here in Boston. In 2017 I got some photos. They were fun to take but it’s weird how proud I am of them relative to the way better ones I can find on the internet.
That sounds miserable, Tom. I hope you feel better soon.
“Yellen warns China of ‘significant consequences’ if its companies support Russia’s war in Ukraine”
Yellen is just a sad little person. What she is saying to the Chinese is that don’t you dare offer any support for Russia – which is kinda late in the game – or else we will punish you with yet even more sanctions than we are throwing against you right now. But the Chinese must know that if she is still Secretary of the Treasury next year when the US comes gunning for China, that Yellen will go to Moscow and say don’t you dare offer any support for China or else we will punish you with yet even more sanctions. The strange thing about this whole article is that both Yellen and Blinken see no problem with them telling other countries that they are not allowed to trade with each other. Two countries that are superpowers and so far as I know, don’t even use US dollars to trade with each other anymore.
Appears that Yellen/US thinks it can persuade China to do what Japan did in the 80’s(?) – neuter it’s rising star economy so as not to overtake the US. But China is not a defeated nation nor dependent on US “protection” like Japan was.
Here is a paraphrasing of Duran’s reporting on the Chinese readout from yesterday:
“It is crystal clear to everyone that the United States created the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza and is bogged down in them and growing weaker from them – not Russia. Now the United States asks for China’s help to resolve them, but only so she can have the resources to create a conflict with China in Taiwan.”
Nice.
American defence policy is getting to be like Australia’s defense policy. So right now we are gearing up to fight China in order to protect our trade routes – with China. Same with America-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgspkxfkS4k (1:40 mins)
Time for a third “opium war”?
I’m waiting for Graham Chapman to come out of the sky and declare the skit over as being too silly. I’m not going to critique Yellen who is just following orders. Once you tell your “enemy” that there is a future of sanctions they will, like Russia, prepare for them. The Empire is just shooting itself in the foot with this silliness–but if you know Washington you also know that there is no other path other than understanding that the entire administrative state more more Monty Pythonite every day.
Re MoDo–A sampler from this extended rant on Trump/Macbeth
and
But wait. Jan 6 was a “bloodbath”? One can certainly object to Trump’s World Wrestling stye trash talk but describing an event where the only person shot was a Trump supporter as a bloodbath may require investigation of MoDo’s brain more than Trump’s.
Meanwhile an actual bloodbath, as opposed to the imaginary version, is taking place in Ukraine and another in Gaza. One might almost suspect that the TDS-ers zeal to make Trump Macbeth or Hitler or some other villain is them zealously scrubbing the gore off their own unclean hands.
Macbeth, with its witches and supernatural elements, is not exactly the most psychologically subtle of Shakespeare’s plays. Orson Welles even made a voodoo version in the 1930s. MoDo’s riff isn’t very subtle either. She probably has a Trump doll squirreled away somewhere–bristling with pins.
These people are high on their own supply. The real authoritarian bloodbath was in the Philippines during Trump’s term, actual death squads, associated with their president, committing extra judicial killings. Scores of them. It’s disturbing how stupid our liberal elite actually are.
All true, but when you control the narrative, facts don’t matter.
Why does EV overproduction abroad matter when their isn’t all that much demand domestically?
Even if you flooded the domestic market with cheaper EVs, I don’t think it would create a buying frenzy.
I don’t get it.
At estimated 10,000 per car (like that will ever happen here, after import duties, if they could be imported) I’m guessing they’d sell very well. Too well. The public would wake up to the fact that we have no infrastructure to cope with that amount of charging and electric demand, and the virtue signaling politicians who are mandating the bans on gas cars would have to retreat or deflect. Or get to real work.
Yeah the lack of infrastructure is why I didn’t think cheap EVs would be all that popular, you need a car to get anywhere in the states and gambling on a charging station is very unappealing.
I think Hybrids are the better option at present since you get to use the existing infrastructure and any charging station you happen to stumble upon.
A small cheap EV would be very popular as a second car with the ICE car for long trips It’s likely most current EV owners usually charge them at home. Here in SC we have Teslas but hardly any charging stations.
Tesla’s emphasis on range was a reaction to an earlier California/GM experiment with electric cars where the failure was blamed in part on the lack of it. But many Americans spend their time in cities rather than the spread out West so short range is less of an issue and therefore fewer batteries and weight and better initial low cost more of a thing.
Biden’s threats to Chinese EV serve as proof that Detroit and its workers see them as a threat. Gen Joe is very worried about losing Michigan.
Agnotological Issues related to Covid. Wish I had written and published this. I began studying ignorance as a process and its uses in 2017. At the beginning of the pandemic, I began collecting articles, news reports and quantitative data about responses in USA and abroad. Although I have yet to really compile and analyze, the bottom line is: the strategic use of ignorance as outlined in this article spreads illness, causes loss of life, and negatively impacts the “economy.”
Have you considered how ignorance can be well planned, as in the pandemic? Seems well planned to me. And, who’s ignorant, the planners or the “planned”?
Re: geoengineering
Well, that’s where the money is–pouring buckets-full in the search for nonexistent solutions…
Looks like the California Coastal Commission has been dutifully bought and have signed-off on Musk’s rocketry hobby to pollute our evening skies with human created noctoluminus clouds. Just the past week, we have been treated to two such displays.
https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/science/story/2024-04-06/spacex-rocket-launches-san-diego-sky
Somehow that article reminds me of the old “Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea” episode where they surfaced at the Arctic only to find that the sky was on fire-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zmzk0Qxrwc (45:23 mins) – first 5 minutes.
Ralph Nader @ Common Dreams
The Mutually Reinforcing American and Israeli Empires
China?
Decades ahead of the west in advanced manufacturing and a growing number of technologies. The dysfunction and corruption in the west renders it unable to field competetive players on its own, and one of the best strategies that could keep western companies in the game, partnerships with Chinese firms, gets nixed by shortsighted US pols– I’m specifically thinking of the Ford-CATL project which would have meant billions of dollars invested in US manufacturing for the production of EV batteries, killed because it’s Chinese.
I’ve been watching the progress of a Chinese company for about four years. Most people think that it’s an aircraft or drone manufacturer, but it’s not: it’s a software company that also produces eVTOL aircraft. The aircraft are a byproduct of their business, a shiny-object that captures public imagination, but secondary to their core products which are software used for automated airspace management (think air-traffic control). Still, although not their primary focus, they’ve managed to become the world leader in the eVTOL industry.
There is nothing comparable to this anywhere in the west… a multi-billion dollar market, commonly referred to as the “low-altitude economy” figures prominently into China’s five, ten, and 15-year plans, and it’s not even on our radar.
EHang receives production certificate for self-flying air taxis
The certificate, issued by the Civil Aviation Administration of China, is the world’s first PC granted in the global eVTOL industry, marking a significant leap towards mass production for the eVTOL aircraft and the following commercial operations, according to the company.
https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202404/07/WS661289cba31082fc043c0957.html
Again, “air-taxis” is a misnomer if taken as a representation of the whole, of which passenger transport is but a small segment– logistics will see much greater use. “Big sky, little aircraft” works for uncrowded, less-travelled skies, but when it comes to tens of thousands of sorties daily above any given urban-area’s skies, the only way that happens is by use of automated airspace management. The USA cannot compete because we use tech from the 1950s and have no plans to update or modernize our infrastructure in any significant way.
This is an example of just one market that will be impossible for the USA to sanction or boycott its way to competetivness or profitability.
“Decades ahead of the west in advanced manufacturing and a growing number of technologies…”
Really interesting and helpful comment all through.
Many of us do not want any part of this. I would and will fight any attempt to commercialize our air space for parcel delivery. We have FedEx, UPS, and various other small players.
China can have this dystopian future.
It’s OK, you need not worry: this advancement in logistics will only be evident where there is an economy to serve.
1) I appreciate the response, not knowing how to approach such prejudice.
2) As for the technology advance, we have a self-navigating low altitude transport plane that will serve far beyond rapid transport of a gift on a forgotten birthday. This is the beginning of self-navigating land or water transport of supplies and personnel for emergencies, rescue missions from forests to deserts, fire-fighting or police missions, and on…
https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202404/07/WS661289cba31082fc043c0957.html
April 7, 2024
EHang receives production certificate for self-flying air taxis
By Qiu Quanlin
Guangzhou – On Sunday, EHang Holdings Limited, the world’s leading urban air mobility technology platform company, announced that it has successfully obtained the production certificate for its EH216-S passenger-carrying pilotless electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft…
Decades ahead of the west in advanced manufacturing…
[ Even on a conceptual-developmental level the gains in advanced manufacturing that have been made are critical to recognize because the thinking and writing of Western economists repeatedly stressed that China had gone wrong by the emphasis on manufacturing production. The emphasis was supposed to be software.
Robert Solow was forgotten by Western economists but remembered by the Chinese. Work on manufacturing, even in agriculture work on seed production. Seed production is a form of manufacturing!
That is why investment is so emphasized by the Chinese, no matter Western advice to the contrary. ]
Poor sobs. Don’t they realize that the future is financialization and not manufacturing? /sarc
Re AIPAC –
Israel nuking Iran hurts Hamas
Israel nuking Iran hurts Hezbollah
Israel nuking Iran hurts the Houthis
Israel nuking Iran hurts Putin
It all comes down to Israel nuking Iran
Waiting for Israel to just do it and get it over with. Who would stop them?
Israelis are already committing genocide. What’s a few nukes between mortal enemies?
Pakistan has already offered nukes to Turkey, just in case.
To ‘recover’ the Dome of the Rock from the infidels in Tel Aviv and thus become the Defenders of the Faith, Turkey would be very tempted to demolish Israel.
And what is America going to do about it? Go to war with NATO?
This situation can quickly devolve into real American Pogroms. AIPAC may control the Congress, but it does not control the Public.
“And what is America going to do about it? Go to war with NATO?”
knocked over my coffee with that one.
what a frelling world theyve given us.
Sorry. Hope the keyboard is all right. (Yum. Well cooked venison. Me like!)
The United States would lead the chorus of excuses for Israel if they did.
You made me cry when my job said goodbye
AIn’t that a shame, my tears fall like rain
AIn’t that a shame, you’re the one to blame
You broke my heart, now a computer is playing my part
AIn’t that a shame, my tears fall like rain
AIn’t that a shame, you’re the one to blame
Ah, yes you are
Farewell, goodbye, newly hired scribe
AIn’t that a shame, my tears fall like rain
AIn’t that a shame, you’re the one to blame
You made me cry when my job said goodbye
AIn’t that a shame, my tears fall like rain
AIn’t that a shame, you’re the one to blame
Ain’t That A Shame, performed by Cheap Trick
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7r06d_zl4tc
“What we know about the xz Utils backdoor that almost infected the world”
I notice that there is no mention of who was behind this scheme. I would bet that it was a State actor so maybe Russia? The US? China? Israel? The UK? The key to this is if they start throwing around accusations or, like the NS2 pipeline explosions, they just shut up about it. If the later, then somebody from a western country got caught with their hand in the cookie jar.
What about Microsoft or Apple?
More likely Microsoft. Microsoft’s business model is increasingly threatened by linux; Apple’s, not so much.
Jia Tan was the pseudonym of the person or persons behind the exploit. Which makes me think… probably not China. Apparently they left some breadcrumbs that may potentially be followed up on… or not if those breadcrumbs lead to inconvenient conclusions.
Staying mostly true to the original here. Modified a bit to fit the times.
Know Your Rights
(Original Song by The Clash, from the album “Combat Rock”)
This is a public service announcement, with guitar!
Know your rights! All three of ’em!
Number one, you have the right not to be killed
Murder is a crime!
Unless it was done by an Israeli settler
Or you’re an aid worker, oh know your rights
And number two! You have the right, to food money
Provided of course, you don’t mind a little,
Defoliation, defenestration, and if you cross into Gaza,
An IDF death-squad operation!
Know your rights … these are your rights!
[Musical interlude]
Oh, know these rights!
Number three!
You have the right to free speech
As long as … you don’t rely on dumb tech bros platforms!
Know your rights … these are your rights
Know your rights … these are your rights
All three of ’em
Ha!
And it has been suggested in some quarters, that this is not enough!
Well … get off the streets … run!
Original Song
I hope the Chinese EV batteries are better than the ones they make for e-bikes, which tend to catch fire.
I don’t think all e-bike batteries catch fire. Remember the time Li batteries in phones (samsung) and laptops caught fire? We have not heard about those kinds of events anymore.
I was thinking a bit about AI being used by the FBI and other “Security” agencies and realized that false positives are a good thing.
For their budgets, which is what matters.
It’s going to be an interesting next few years for the survivors, so many systems are in the process of collapsing that it’s impossible to tell which will be the first to set off the cascade of failures.
My bet is that it will be Health care and the “Educational” system to start, sending sick kids to school in the midst of a pandemic doesn’t leave a lot of road left to kick the can down.
I wish I had known Ophelia’s human when the dog was still alive. I have a friend who lives on twenty beautiful acres about fifteen miles outside of Athens. It is a full on rural place, with only one other house anywhere close. Ophelia might have been safe there. If it looks like the new dog will have trouble surviving in the city, the admins have my permission to give you my email so maybe we can meet and figure out how to get the new pup to rural safety if need be.
More about the Calmara app:
https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2024-04-07/calmara-claims-it-can-detect-stis-doctors-say-its-a-disaster/
An AI app claims it can detect sexually transmitted infections. Doctors say it’s a disaster
‘There are so many things wrong with this app that I don’t even know where to begin,’ one doctor said about Calmara, which says it can identify sexually transmitted infections from photos of penises.
“What’s Wrong With the Economy? It’s You, Not the Data” WSJ
It’s not all about what people can buy right now.
It’s about what happens in those times when there is no cash flow…
Yahoo comments moderation AI/human rejected my one word comment of “yes” for violating community guidelines in response to the following
Just an interesting measure of where things are
Wrongthink will not be tolerated citizen. Please contact your designated chatbot supervisor for re-education.
A Russian publication… perhaps a more realistic of the Ukraine war: past, present and future? A long read, well worth the time. From a comment at MoA.
From “Special” to “Military” Lessons from Two Years of the Operation in Ukraine (Ruslan N. Pukhov, Russia in Global Affairs)
It was founded by the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy (SVOP), Russian International Affairs Council, Higher School of Economics – National Research University.
” Future historians will have to explain why Moscow considered this feasible, even though the Ukrainian army had been waging a continuous “minor” war in Donbass since 2014.”
Ukraine was prepared to cut a deal w/Russia within months, having been thoroughly defanged. In this sense the SMO was a success.
This is not a Russia/Ukraine conflict, this is a Russia/NATO conflict.
and Russia will win, indeed, has likely already won.
If it doesn’t it’s because it has spread to WW status, which no one will win. A war of attrition it is not and will not be, imho.
That Russia did not recognize from the outset that this was a conflict with NATO is truly astounding naivete.
That you have not recognized from the beginning that Russia is winning (sadly, at no small cost to its soldiers) against whomever you wish to call its opponent is astounding ignorance and seemingly desirous of a nuclear confrontation that no one will win and which would have been the result if Russia had gone in full bore as you apparently hoped for and endlessly still do.
I don’t hope for nuclear confrontation, and claiming that I do so wish is a strawman argument that you constantly revert to.
However I also recognize that reality is indifferent to what I may wish for. Actually, your entire paragraph is a string of strawman arguments.
Mirror, mirror…
Random fun fact. From Cummins Inc. Offer to Exchange Up to $N shares of Common Stock of ATMUS ect…, prospectus dated 14 February 2024.
Risks related to macroeconomic and geopolitical conditions
Bullet one, “public health crisis, including the spread of a contagious disease, such as COVID-19 and other catastrophic events;”
Also discusses the last of the China lockdowns in early 2022 hunt business.
I wonder how common these kinds of disclosures on Pandemics were in disclosures prior to 2020? I should probably read more of these, but it isn’t entertaining reading.
New 15 year study reveals that the majority of gender confused children….wait for it….outgrow that confusion if left alone:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/wellness/15-year-long-study-shows-the-vast-majority-of-kids-grow-out-of-gender-confusion/ss-BB1l4WL2
This has been Israel’s policy since at least 1980. The country is too small and weak to do anything militarily on its own, and too politically isolated to form alliances with most of the countries in the region. Rather than change their own behavior, they seem to have settled in on getting economic, political and military aid from the US taxpayer.
This has worked for them surprisingly well thanks to the corruption of the US political class, allowing a country with the population of New Jersey to punch far above its weight on the world scene and occupy a vastly overinflated mindshare in the US dominated parts of the West.
I have no idea why Americans continue to hitch their wagon to this particular star; hopefully this is the beginning of the end.
Israel recognizes that the time window when America would automatically fight whatever war Israel wished is starting to close.
What can be done about backdoors in open source software?
How about we stop “improving” the technologies. No more new features or updates (except ones to counter recently added malware like this case, the need for which will be moot if we stop letting Persons “improve” things).
This should be an advertisement for open source programs though because it shows that malware will be found unlike that imbedded by the makers in Big Tech’s products.
Tech is good enough, how about we focus on the lifestyle changes.
Oops, they did it again. Not sure how Boeing can keep enduring with these incidents.
https://twitter.com/CollinRugg/status/1777036154069774747
What are the alternatives? This is what Boeing knows. They will get bailed out. Biden won’t send out the DoJ and the transportation secretary is on paternity leave. It’s the same with insurance rates. No one will qct so boom straight to the moon.
Last year my electric went crazy,cand state legislators and the governor said it was nuts. The bills plummeted. Fear drives corporations.
https://metro.co.uk/2024/04/06/virgin-atlantic-jet-collides-british-airways-plane-heathrow-20598734/
Chaos at Heathrow as two aircraft collide on the tarmac
Since we need all the help we can get, may I suggest a bonus inorganic antidote?
Turns out the Italy’s Mt. Etna is blowing smoke-rings! Some amazing videos: here and here!
i did this, today, in the giant dutch oven over a fire at the Wilderness Bar:
https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1016943-persian-spiced-lamb-shanks
but i substituted enormous deer shanks(that i cut right over there) and had to modify the spice mix/curry a bit, based on whats on the rack.
mint and lemon gremolata…basmati rice….lard/olive oil, and celery and carrots and carrot greens, rosemary,mint,garlic leaves and onions off this place.
turned into a complex dish…with the butterysmooth cinnamon in the uppermost part of yer sinuses….tumeric and dill in yer jowell cheeks…cardamom towards the front of yer nose…etc.
this gets added to the list.
Re: Desperate Russian Soldiers
We have them on the lines! For God’s sake man send Zelensky more money!
Was the honeybee thing really exaggerated? A couple of years ago I was talking to a guy who sells honey at the farmers market, when I asked him about the bees (he collects honey from several different areas and farms in central WA) he was almost in tears talking about how they weren’t doing well.
the wild, prolly all “africanised”, bees around here havent got the memo, i guess.
i know of four bee trees within easy golfcart range.
ive visited each in last week.
hung out with them.
all abuzz, as it were.
If the memo was written for and about the docile and semi-docile European honeybee, why would the memo even be relevant to “africanized” bees?
because all the bees in the south are africanised by now.
ask any beekeeper south of mason dixon, at least.
evry beekeeper i know says, “assume theyre africanised”…and recommend capturing local hives when they swarm, and then maybe requeening the next year.
rather than buying a whole hive or whatever.
reasoning being, theyll be africanised within the year anyway.
A Song on the End of the World
By Czeslaw Milosz (Translated by Anthony Milosz)
On the day the world ends
A bee circles a clover,
A fisherman mends a glimmering net.
Happy porpoises jump in the sea,
By the rainspout young sparrows are playing
And the snake is gold-skinned as it should always be.
On the day the world ends
Women walk through the fields under their umbrellas,
A drunkard grows sleepy at the edge of a lawn,
Vegetable peddlers shout in the street
And a yellow-sailed boat comes nearer the island,
The voice of a violin lasts in the air
And leads into a starry night.
And those who expected lightning and thunder
Are disappointed.
And those who expected signs and archangels’ trumps
Do not believe it is happening now.
As long as the sun and the moon are above,
As long as the bumblebee visits a rose,
As long as rosy infants are born
No one believes it is happening now.
Only a white-haired old man, who would be a prophet
Yet is not a prophet, for he’s much too busy,
Repeats while he binds his tomatoes:
There will be no other end of the world,
There will be no other end of the world.
Warsaw, 1944
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49451/a-song-on-the-end-of-the-world
. . . ” “The US Treasury Secretary has made the threat of China’s excess production of electric vehicles and other clean energy products a focus of her second visit to China in nine months.” Excess with respect to what? Thread: ” . . .
” Excess with respect to what” is a very fair question. Because America could be accused of “excess capacity” for corn and soybean production relative to the amount of cornsoy that Americans eat domestically.
If the AmeriGov accuses China of “excess production capacity” for E-cars and E-panels over and above its own domestic consumption needs, then the ChinaGov could accuse America of “excess production capacity” for corn and soybeans over and above its own domestic needs. So, how to accuse China of excess capacity without being accused of hypocrisy? There is no way to do that without such a counter-accusation.
How to step off that hamster wheel of accusation and counter-accusation? Accept the fact that waging Trade is waging War by other means and that a country trapped in the iron spiderweb of Forcey FreeTrade Agreements and Organizations has no legally permitted way to defend its internal economy and society against Mercantilistic Export Aggression perpetrated against it by its trading enemies. A movement based on the acceptance of this fact would accept that China has zero obligation to follow any rule or care about any hard-steps-avoiding accusation of “excess capacity”. It is the AmeriGov’s obligation to accept the basic fact that Trade IS War and that Forcey FreeTrade is designed to tilt the Trade-as-War battlefield against America’s existence and survival as a free or at least free-ish non-colonized country.
Currently America is occupied by a regime which supports Forcey FreeTrade against American Survival. We would need a revolution to destroy the Forcey FreeTrade Occupation Regime from power and from existence in order to replace it with a Pro-American Survivalist Government devoted to taking America out of the Forcey FreeTrade System so that America can pursue National Economic Survival in One Country.
And if Trump can successfully paint himself as the Pro-American President who will do that ( whether he really means it or not), then Trump will win by a Nixon in ’72 landslide. If he can’t, then he won’t; and the election will revert to merely being a measure of ” who hates whom the most”.
reversing what bill clinton did, will be almost impossible under conventional means.
Israel pulls out almost all troops from Southern Gaza
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/4/7/israel-pulls-out-troops-from-southern-gaza-as-attacks-enter-seventh-month
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/07/israel-withdraws-troops-from-southern-gaza-for-tactical-reasons
https://archive.is/wMDxV (Haaretz) Why Is the IDF Withdrawing From Southern Gaza?
There’s interesting nuggets in each of the three articles.
According to the IDF it’s for tactical reasons and to prepare for a Rafah assault. But it’s also one of the Hamas conditions for a potential ceasefire. I would assume even if Israel was leaning towards ceasefire Israel would still be threatening the destruction of Rafah as a negotiating ploy.
So…..potentially hopeful?
Israeli expectations of operations in Gaza has not gone to plan I would say.
Well geez, so much bad advise about the eclipse it makes my eyes hurt just reading it. At least it’s time for bed and I can use them again tomorrow.
I was delivering newspapers during an eclipse when I was about 13 I’d guess. It was only going to be about 30-40% where I lived but we were looking up and shading our eyes while we made the rounds. Some old guy, me tonight, said, “Hey, don’t do that. You’ll ruin your eyes.” He went and got two pieces of cardboard and gave them to us. One had a small hole in it and by holding the holed sheet over the solid would cast a picture of the sun, showing how much had been eaten by the Great Spaghetti Monster and how much remained. Not as exciting as burning out your eyes but much safer. Good luck.
Indeed, I thought everyone knew this.