What birds can teach us about the ‘biological truth’ of sex The Transmitter
The Sex Lives Of Common Vegetables Noema
Ice Age Humans Were Experts at Wielding Fire, Study Finds Science Alert
‘Mini ice age’ possibly led to end of Roman Empire, suggests unusual rocks in Iceland Interesting Engineering
How the Roman Empire Lost its Gods History Today
Is our universe the ultimate computer? Phys.org
Student Rescued From Mt. Fuji Returns to Find His Phone, Needs to Be Rescued Again Gizmodo
Climate/Environment
On Compost London Review of Books
Pandemics
U.S. health officials inject new uncertainty into approval process for Covid boosters STAT
Vitamin D Nasal Spray: A New Hope for Smell Loss Treatment in COVID-19 and Beyond Forward Pathway
It’s #NationalSenseOfSmellDay so of course we asked @DrAllyLouks what her favourite smells are 👃
Dr Louks from @Peterhouse_Cam went viral after posting a picture of her thesis on the politics of smell in prose.
Explore more 👉 https://t.co/IzhfRUsAwi pic.twitter.com/gnalbjoU8L
— Cambridge University (@Cambridge_Uni) April 26, 2025
China?
Today, it is necessary to revisit On Protracted War. Beijing Daily (Sinocism translation).
Yan Anlin on the Drawbacks of a Timetable for Taiwan Sinification
European Disunion
India – Pakistan
Pakistan defense minister says military incursion by India is imminent Reuters
The Pahalgam abyss Indian Express
O Canada
Canadian voters return Liberals to power under new leader Mark Carney Anadolu Agency
Mark Carney says he’s a pragmatic outsider—but he’s a banker selling yesterday’s failed ideas The Breach. From February, still germane.
Old Blighty
UK and EU to defy Trump with ‘free and open trade’ declaration Politico.
Is Keir Starmer being advised by AI? The UK government won’t tell us NewScientist
Syraqistan
US Navy loses $60 million jet at sea after it fell overboard from aircraft carrier CNN
This is an extremely serious incident for U.S. Navy.
It would mean hostile missiles or drones got past the carrier’s layered defenses (fighters, AEGIS ships, CIWS), showing potential gaps in U.S. naval protection.
A group like the Houthis forcing a $13 billion carrier into… https://t.co/YvSuVvuNgr pic.twitter.com/njlVSUNwUf
— Clash Report (@clashreport) April 28, 2025
The elephant in the room is the fact that the modern US Navy doesn’t actually own enough missiles to fill the battle line’s VLS magazines more than once – ergo there was no point maintaining capability to reload them.
I wrote a post on this last year. See the first reply. https://t.co/QPne46oKbj
— Armchair Warlord (@ArmchairW) April 29, 2025
***
Netanyahu at JNS Conference: Israel will maintain military control over Gaza, will not install PA Ynet
REPORT: Biden Officials Admit They Never Pressured Israel for Ceasefire, as Israeli Leaders Boast of Playing Washington
“God did the State of Israel a favor that Biden was the president during this period… We fought [in Gaza] for over a year and the administration never came to… pic.twitter.com/2k6ISAmyfn
— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) April 28, 2025
Israel wipes out entire families in Gaza; over 94 percent of last week’s victims were civilians Euro-Med
***
The US empire is on the side of fascists, sectarian supremacists, ethnosupremacists, ultranationalists and mass killers everywhere. Amerikkka. https://t.co/xCxth6eHzH
— Dan Kervick (@DanMKervick) April 29, 2025
New Not-So-Cold War
Trump wants a permanent Russia-Ukraine ceasefire, White House says Reuters
Russia Rejects Trump’s Freeze Of The War In Ukraine Moon of Alabama
🇺🇦 Meanwhile Ukraine announces wave of murders and terrorism in Russia immediately after Putin’s ceasefire announcement.
“In the event of a freeze in hostilities being declared, Ukrainian services must intensify their activities in the Russian rear and carry out a whole series… pic.twitter.com/lPDM6bHRcx
— Zlatti71 (@Zlatti_71) April 28, 2025
Donald Trump, Not Barack Obama, is Responsible for Ukraine’s Dramatic Military expansion between 2011 and 2021 Larry Johnson
SITREP 4/28/25: Russian Vise Tightens as West Dawdles and Dallies with “Ceasefire” Sham Simplicius
Brief Frontline Summary – April 28, 2025 Marat Khairullin Substack
Russia Is Freaked: Why The Army’s Monstrous AbramsX Looks Unbeatable 1945. Back to the wonder weapons. Hopefully some tank mavens can comment.
“Liberation Day”
Trump has deal to ease auto tariffs, U.S. Commerce Secretary says. The Detroit News. A “deal” with who?
The Tariff Revenue Is Coming In Policy Sphere
Trump floats income tax cut to ease tariff impact The Hill
April is the Cruelest Month Phenomenal World. “Diversification and dedollarization in the world economy.”
Goldman Sachs Is Advising Countries Scrambling to Please Trump on Tariffs WSJ
New Goldman-Sachs analysis estimates that US tariffs on imported inputs could raise US manufacturers’ production costs by 5-15%, thus making them less competitive vs foreign producers (especially in overseas markets): pic.twitter.com/RGPCFYbqN2
— Scott Lincicome (@scottlincicome) April 28, 2025
Trump 2.0
‘Glaring Example of Misplaced Priorities’: GOP Unveils Plan to Give $150 Billion More to Pentagon Common Dreams
The GOP’s proposed cuts to FEMA and Medicaid reveal the paradox of red state dependence Fortune
The group chats that changed America Semafor. Commentary:
Most interesting part of the Semafor group chat story is this tidbit about tech’s centrism-to-right wing partisan pipeline. Centrism is just a means of laundering right wing partisanship. pic.twitter.com/5CN1bfjvsr
— Lee Hepner (@LeeHepner) April 28, 2025
DOGE
Musk’s Trump ties could wipe away $2.3 billion in legal exposure Musk Watch
MAHA
RFK Jr. autism data project stokes alarm over motives Axios
What’s the Deal With Autism Rates? Cremieux Recueil (Neutrino). A deep dive.
Big Brother is Watching You Watch
Your Brain Data Is for Sale, Senators Warn Gizmodo
Milwaukee police consider trade: 2.5 million mugshots for free facial recognition access Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Police State Watch
Faceless Feds at War With America Ken Klippenstein
Immigration
Trump to sign executive order to target sanctuary cities The Hill
The ‘Necropolitics’ of the American Borderlands Inkstick
Private prison companies positioned to benefit from increased deportations Open Secrets
Groves of Academe
AI
Maga’s sinister obsession with IQ is leading us towards an inhuman future Quinn Slobodian, The Guardian
GPT-4o Is An Absurd Sycophant Don’t Worry About the Vase
OpenAI upgrades ChatGPT search with shopping features TechCrunch
Duolingo will replace contract workers with AI The Verge
Researchers Secretly Ran a Massive, Unauthorized AI Persuasion Experiment on Reddit Users 404 Media
Our Famously Free Press
Reality Check Where’s Your Ed At?
Mr. Market’s Mixed Emotions
Botox sales slip as consumer sentiment wrinkles Sherwood
Tesla up more than 9% after Trump administration relaxes self-driving regulations Sherwood
Healthcare?
When Hospitals Ditch Medicare Advantage Plans, Thousands of Members Get To Leave, Too KFF Health News
Oracle engineers caused days-long software outage at U.S. hospitals CNBC
Antitrust
“America First” antitrust enforcement is not regulation, DOJ official says Reuters
House GOP Proposes Eliminating Key Antitrust Law BIG by Matt Stoller
Class Warfare
Tens of thousands of LA County union workers are now on strike LAist
Antidote du jour (via):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
Donald the Showman
(melody borrowed from Frosty The Snowman written by Walter “Jack” Rollins and Steve Nelson, and recorded by Gene Autry and the Cass County Boys in 1950)
(The more American voters learn and read about Trump’s Narcissistic Personality Disorder, the more they will perceive that there is no one in there to grasp our reality, or to govern our nation, only an old showman mumbling and bumbling along as he pretends to himself that he is a Stable Genius, which he is not. His increasingly obvious dementia, and loss of ability to fully grasp the concepts that words represent, only adds to his ongoing dilemma.)
Donald the Showman is a vacant, shattered soul
Narcissistic type who must strike a pose as he feeds an endless hole
Donald the Showman can’t let facts get in his way
When he’s idolized he tells extra lies just get through one more day
His inner life is tragic—it’s an endless battleground
He can’t keep track of what he’s said so his pile of lies will just astound
With Donald the Showman shuck and jive is all you’ll see
He’ll lead you astray then he’ll walk away, for his words are just debris
(musical interlude)
Donald the Showman shows dementia every day
Of the lies he’s spun he remembers none for his brain is in decay
For his inner image is The Genius In Command
Castles in the air, and he lives up there acting out as Superman
He can’t back down, he can’t slow down, his supply cannot stop
He cannot bear being in his skin so he spins just like a top
For Donald the Showman must be awesome all the day
As he lives a lie in his own mind’s eye ’cause that hole won’t go away
His inner life is tragic—it’s an endless battleground
He can’t keep track of what he’s said so his pile of lies will just astound
With Donald the Showman shuck and jive is all you’ll see
He’ll lead you astray then he’ll walk away, for his words are just debris
Bumpety, bump, bump, (bumpety, bump, bump)
Watch disasters grow!
Bumpety, bump, bump, (bumpety, bump, bump)
Donald is the show!
That one is a real banger, as the kids like to say. Thanks!
Mini Ice Age Roman Empire
Correct address:
https://interestingengineering.com/culture/mini-ice-age-roman-empire-end?group=test_a
“Russia Is Freaked: Why the Army’s Monstrous AbramsX Looks Unbeatable”
Is it going to be as good as the M10 Booker light tank? And then this happened-
‘As the 101st Airborne Division prepared last year to receive their first M10 Bookers—armored combat vehicles designed specifically for infantry forces—staff planners realized something: eight of the 11 bridges on Fort Campbell would crack under the weight of the “light tank.”’
https://www.defenseone.com/policy/2025/04/army-made-tank-it-doesnt-need-and-cant-use-now-its-figuring-out-what-do-it/404877/
So, how many bridges will support the weight of that monstrous AbramsX?
Wow! Talk about a strategic waste of time and resources. My gut reaction is that someone(s) on the Army Requirements Oversight Council who said it didn’t need to fit onto a C-130 or be airdroppable had financial reasons to make that call. Otherwise, how in the world would one approve a build project for a system like this for an airborne unit? Did they think they’d pre-mail those armored vehicles to the drop zone?
re: Russia Is Freaked: Why The Army’s Monstrous AbramsX Looks Unbeatable 1945.
The “1945”-text is literally a joke. It has zero info on the actual tank, only idiotic ad-lingo and not a single argument supporting the headline. Wasn´t aware “1945” is this bad. Embarrassing.
So obviously there is no “Monstrous” and no “Unbeatable” anywhere on the horizon. Why should there?
By the way: the article “Russia Is Freaked: Why the Army’s Monstrous AbramsX Looks Unbeatable” is just a compendium of wishes — I learned nothing about what the AbramsX is and can do. For guffaws:
“US defense spending doesn’t have big margins for waste. For programs to survive, they must deliver on time, cost, and performance.”
mmmbwwahahahaha!
“Stealth is cool. Tanks are useless if they are survivable.”
I do not even understand what he means.
The Russians have the most modern tank on the planet, the T-14, with the biggest gun, a fully automated turret, plenty of electronic gizmos, and fancy active/reactive/proactive or whatever it is armour.
They also seem to have concluded from their experience during the SMO that it came either too late, fully equipped for the battles of the 1990s, or too early, without having the chance to incorporate the requirements of drone warfare from the 2020s (Nagorno Karabakh, Tigray, Ukraine) into the design. So far, the T-14 appeared only episodically amongst second-line Russian units.
Comment on what exactly? The article is as vague as it can be, and nothing specific about Army’s Monstrous AbramsX was said, except that is supposed to be more akin to what Russian tanks already are (“active protection system, lighter weight, more survivability, and of course reduced logistical burdens as well for the Army”).
The AbramsX was unveiled 3 years ago – it seems to simply have the status of a private initiative by the manufacturer, GDLS, to show what can be done with the existing chassis. It has the same sort of status of a concept car in car shows. It was completed before the lessons of Ukraine were established. Its not, so far as available information shows, an official pentagon project, more likely an attempt by GDLS to show that there is plenty of life left in the Abrams basic architecture. It may be that existing Abrams customers like the Saudi’s could take it on if the Pentagon passes on it.
The M10 Booker is a strange beast – it seems to be a design in search of a role, as can be seen by the contortions around its nomenclature – its been called everything from a light tank to a mobile gun with every variation in between. It does seem to fulfil a role as heavy infantry support – we’ve seen in Ukraine the difficulties faced by both sides in flushing out foxholes and trenches – even the Russians have had to resort to individual soldiers throwing mines rigged with timers. But when something like this ends up so heavy its basically a tank with a fairly weak gun, you’d wonder what the point is.
Thanks for that. I referenced you recently but didn’t wanna “make work”….. Twas to do with planes and you’ve said lots of sensible stuff about how China are “not there yet” re COMAC.
I just wondered how trump’s insanity will help China try to reverse engineer Airbus stuff since they are NOT gonna be buying American. Interesting times.
Short version: Comac is a dud. It’s basically 1980’s technology at 2020’s prices. And the design is too dependent on existing international supply chains for key parts which means that both Airbus and Boeing have been able to prevent it being built at scale. Its very similar to the Airbus 220 series (both are based on the now dead Bombardier design), but the 220 is cheaper and much better.
My guess is that China thought the best option would be to build a sort of Kia to the Ford and BMW of Boeing and Airbus, but forgot they’d be competing with second hand Fords and BMW’s at cut prices too. Airbus managed to break into the then Boeing/Douglas duopoly by making a generational leap in technology. The Japanese tried this with the Mitsubishi SpaceJet but got the market badly wrong by aiming at the Regional jet market instead of going directly head to head with the big two. Turns out nobody wants to spend money on a very cool and beautifully designed 100 seater when you can get a bigger Airbus or 737 for the same price.
The Sukhoi Superjet is a beautiful design which has proven to be a deathtrap that makes even the Max look good in comparison. Someone one day will find out what exactly went wrong – most likely it was political pressure to put it into production too early. Lots of people died because of that.
Airbuses have been built in China for years, and despite numerous attempts, they’ve never been able to get the core design secrets of Airbus. They forgot that the French are the absolute masters of international trade dirty tricks. The big problem for China is that they’ve simply been too overt in their industrial espionage. Russia has basically given up co-operating with China in most sectors (they recently pulled out of the joint venture with Comac to produce a bigger aircraft, the 929, to nobodies surprise), they just sell them the tech instead, it’s easier that way and they have more control over what they lose. The Chinese have also been taken for a ride by companies like Ryanair, which pretended they were interested in order to force better deals with Boeing.
So China is in a complete bind over commercial aerospace. Making commercial airliners is very, very hard, and doubly so as both the US and the French fight very dirty to keep their advantages (against each other as well). The Brazlians have done exceptionally well to hold their little specialist corner (regional jets – Embraer). But they’ve thrown an estimated 85 billion dollars at Comac with little to show for it but an inefficient mid sized jets that they have to force their own domestic carriers to buy. They will keep trying (they have some new larger jets in the pipeline), but it will be years before they can break in.
I think that focusing on Boeing in the trade war is a poor decision by China. There is a huge backlog of orders worldwide, so Boeing will find buyers for their 737’s, while instead they are disadvantaging their own domestic carriers as Airbus won’t be able to step up demand, and neither will Comac. My guess is that those cancelled orders were probably surplus anyway – domestic demand in China is still very weak and foreign travel from China is below expectations. So to an extent they are making commercial decisions to cancel orders which were probably not wise purchases in the first place.
China is not particularly good when it comes to cutting their losses when things go wrong – especially when so much national pride is tied up in it. So Comac will keep on spending billions and producing more aircraft for the foreseeable future. But it will be a very long time, if ever, that they succeed in the market. My money would be on Russia being more successful in the long run – they have a more self sufficient aerospace base, more experience with commercial aircraft, and possibly a greater pool of potential buyers once the current hysteria blows over.
Many thanks for answering….. You confirmed lots of things i suspected.
I’ll be curious to see what China does from this point onwards…. The 737s they’re receiving were ordered 10 years ago…… Will they wait for Airbus?
There is something like a 10 year waiting list for A320’s. But for individual airlines there are always options, such as leasing or buying up older aircraft. My suspicion is that the tariffs simply gave cover to cancel orders that they didn’t want anyway.
Thanks.
So moral of the story is the French were right all along…… You would think those Reform idiots going on about 1066 might have learnt something…… ;)
I worked for an engineering company in the 1990’s. The US company I worked for had built half the Shanghai subway, then got kicked out (making a huge loss) as soon as its local staff worked out the key methodologies. When China opted for HSR, everyone knew the same thing to happen to the outside competitors – the key tech would get copied and resold around the world. The French and Germans (the maglev in Shanghai is mostly Siemens technology) opted out, the Japanese took the bait and so lost their railway tech lead to China and have never really recovered.
The battles between Airbus and its ‘local’ staff in China are the stuff of legend. Somehow, they’ve managed to make their aircraft there without losing key technology. The Chinese were forced into a deal with Bombardier, which led to the 919 (it owes a lot to the Bombardier C-series). Bombardier then got promptly destroyed by the US through tariffs, and essentially bought over on the cheap by Airbus (the C-series became the 220). It’s a very ruthless business and Airbus have succeeded by being more ruthless than everyone else.
Not to forget ARM’s Chinese subsidiary went into open revolt. I suspect IP was at the heart of it….
http://www.theregister.com/2022/04/29/arm_china_ceo_ousted
“when something like this ends up so heavy its basically a tank with a fairly weak gun, you’d wonder what the point is”
So engineers in the USA come up with a light tank that is as heavy as a main battle tank, with a smaller gun, and with an unfavourable profile.
Meanwhile, engineers in Germany came up with the Puma IFV, a beast that weighs as much as a T-72, costs as much as main battletank, and is so fragile and unreliable as to be unusable in realistic conditions.
Meanwhile, engineers in the UK came up with the Ajax AFV, a vehicle weighing as much as a T-72 but with a much smaller gun and protection, and plagued by so many problems (noise, vibrations, suspension, clearing obstacles), as to make it unusable in practice.
All those concomitant fiascos point at a loss of know-how in the Western military industry: people there no longer know how to make feasibility studies, how to specify requirements, how to design complex system, how to manage and control procurement. They do not know what they have to do, and how to do it; at least, this is my intepretation.
The Booker seems very similar in concept to the Russian Sprut-SDM1 – essentially something the size of a IFV but with a gun big enough to provide support to infantry units. The latest Sprut-SDM1 variant was apparently put into production in 2023, but so far doesn’t appear to have been used in Ukraine. So it may be that it’s one of those concepts that everyone comes up with when infantry complain about the lack of hardware, but ends up not being practical in reality.
“…you’d wonder what the point is.”
To keep the slop flowing at the government/DoD feeding troughs.
With that said, how many pigs does the US DoD have wearing lip stick these days…? The more I learn the more crazy it all seems.
Label me unimpressed. The future of land warfare lies with drones, unmanned vehicles, AI, long-range missiles, EW, sophisticated computer hacking, etc. Until the electricity goes out (or all the satellites get whacked), in which case we’ll quickly revert to young men shooting guns at each other, backed up by old-school artillery and tanks and APCs (and horses and bikes). The idea of some kind of game-changing wunderwaffe super-tank is simply ludicrous. Here is a description of the ABramsX:
https://armyrecognition.com/military-products/army/main-battle-tanks/main-battle-tanks/abramsx-mbt-main-batlle-tank-technology-demonstrator-data
Note that it has a 120mm gun (the Russians have been using 125mm since the 1970s) and a three-man crew (ditto). Plus a few hi-tech gee-gaws, but nothing really new. Oh, and it weighs ‘only’ 60 tons (vs roughly 45-50 for the T-90, depending on the version). In UKR, the Russians are using upgraded T-72s (T-72B3M) which seem to be performing quite OK. Not wunderwaffe, but they get the job done.
There’s also the small matter of how many of these alleged supertanks the USA can actually build. The latest info I can find is that USA cranks out 60-120 Abrams per year, which admittedly is an increase from the previous 12 annually. As for the ABramsX likely price tag…..crickets.
“Student Rescued From Mt. Fuji Returns to Find His Phone, Needs to Be Rescued Again”
Japanese authorities have stated that if they have to rescue him for a third time, they will just drop him into Mt. Fuji instead.
Why Women Live Longer
Just off the Inca Trail and what a walk it was…
So lush and so much Inca stonework along the way to Machu Picchu, I’m blown away by what they could accomplish, anything constructed by Native Americans in the USA is strictly kids play in comparison.
We were only a few miles in when we spotted a dead snake on the trail, and our Peruvian guide informed us it was a Bothrops, responsible for the most deaths of any snake in the Americas, which didn’t give us a warm and fuzzy feeling over the next 25 miles, lemme tellya!
I’m impressed with the Peruvian people, nice folks, and in our brief time in Cusco, I saw but 1 homeless person in a country a lot poorer than the USA.
Free range dogs are everywhere, we had a beautiful chocolate lab follow us to our first campsite 6 miles in, and dutifully ate our dinner leftovers, you get the feeling this wasn’t his first rodeo-
B. Asper also known as the Fer-de-lance. Not something you want to get bit from.
Happy trails and watch where you step!
Look for the native Peruvian Naked Dog. An icon of Peru. We have a very well-loved one here. They’re kind and gentle with an odd sense of humor that comes from being such a primitive race of pariah. The barking is just a front so they can get you to cuddle lol
My then partner and I came back from Chile in 1971 through Peru. We were not traveling tourist class. We took the train from Puno to Cusco with the campesinos and their animals. At Machu Picchu, the hotel was too expensive so we slept under a bush. Thankfully, no snakes encountered, but a number of Llamas, one which nearly knocked me off a ledge when I was taking a picture.
Re: “Milwaukee police consider trade: 2.5 million mugshots for free facial recognition access”
Myself and others went in front of the Fire & Police Commission to talk about this. The FPC used to be a policymaking oversight body until the city de-fanged it as a part of a deal in which they’d recieve a share of state revenue to bail them out financially. The MPD representatives presenting there made sure to remind us that they weren’t asking for permission; they were informing us out of the goodness of their hearts, begging the question of why they’d even bother. I suspect their motives had to do with negotiating the terms of the deal with this company. Anyway, while we were there, one officer was texting his friends, and someone caught a look at his phone, on which he said something to the effect of ‘should we tell them they all [concerned members of the public, presumably] are having FRT (facial recognition technology) used on them right now’.
Maga’s sinister obsession with IQ is leading us towards an inhuman future?
I dunno, but applicants for China’s civil service need an IQ of 140 to be competitive*, higher than you need for a PhD in theoretical physics.
Says stable genius Donald Trump, ““People say you don’t like China. No, I love them. But their leaders are much smarter than our leaders. And we can’t sustain ourselves like that. It’s like playing the New England Patriots and Tom Brady against your high school football team.”
RE: What birds can teach us about the ‘biological truth’ of sex
And? All of this has been known for quite some time. I really don’t see the point of trying to tie it into the social issues of the day. What I find most annoying about this entire controversy is that many 21st century USians seem to feel as if they have just discovered all this when in fact the biological issues have been known and the social issues discussed for many thousands of years. Heliogabalus would like a word with those who don’t remember history.
lyman alpha blob: Aha! You make the mistake of thinking that USonians should read Dead White Men like Sappho or Plutarch or Korinna or Aristophanes. We all know that presentism rules and that feminism didn’t exist until Virginia Woolf wrote about a room of one’s own in 1928, in English.
Wait until one of these peeps chances on the Bakkhai by Euripides. Imagine the shock!
The article is interesting as a discussion of research, but it also was highly reductionist. In spite of the baroque tone of Anglosphere culture these days, much of the public discussion is reduced and insipid. In line with much vulgar thinking in the U S of A, there is an implication that sexuality and gender are all about hormones: Just add a few drops of an androgen to an egg, and voila!, the complications of sexuality and gender are revealed. The students are nonplussed~!
Well, thousands of years of writing, especially poetry, indicate that understanding human beings isn’t as simple as sorting people into “races,” as USonions do so well (genetics to the contrary) and denying what we see and how we interact (woke as religious belief).
No offense, but, Sappho as a dead white man? Intentional irony?
Intentional irony?
of this we can be certain
Thanks DJG. Since you mentioned Euripides, I will take the time to promote the book I read on my recent trip, Glorious Exploits by Ferdia Lennon. I can’t recommend it highly enough, especially for fans of the classics. It touched me personally since I not only love that part of the world, but it reminded me of a young woman I once knew and lost touch with over the years.
Besides being a rollicking read, it also showcases what you mention in your last paragraph above and in another comment a few days ago discussing an article from links about the shock that not all human remains from “Phoenician” settlements across the Mediterranean matched DNA from Tyre and Sidon – people have been traveling and mixing and warring and loving since the dawn of time. This one has characters from Greece and Persia and Ireland (I think – the origins of that character are not made explicit) all coming together in what is modern day Italy.
I might have a copy of the Bakkhai at home and if I don’t, I will hunt one down. The book specifically mentions it and after reading Fedia’s book and your comment, I feel the need to re-read it.
lyman alpha blob: And if you haven’t had a chance to take a trip to Siracusa, you should indulge.
The setting of the city in its bay is astounding, and the layers of history are intriguing. The site of Lennon’s novel, the Latomie, is still there, and they can be visited, I believe.
https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latomia
There are two shrines to Santa Lucia, famous Sicilian saint.
And what food.
And evoking your trip. Plutarch, Life of Timoleon, on the goddesses joining his expedition from Corinth (mother city) to Siracusa (daughter city), mixing things up >> “When the vessels were equipped, and his soldiers every way provided for, the female priest of Proserpina had a dream or vision wherein she and her mother Ceres appeared to them in a travelling garb, and were heard to say that they were going to sail with Timoleon into Sicily; whereupon the Corinthians, having built a sacred galley, devoted it to them, and called it the galley of the goddesses. Timoleon went in person to Delphi, where he sacrificed to Apollo, and, descending into the place of prophecy, was surprised with the following marvellous occurrence. A riband, with crowns and figures of victory embroidered upon it, slipped off from among the gifts that were there consecrated and hung up in the temple, and fell directly down upon his head; so that Apollo seemed already to crown him with success, and send him thence to conquer and triumph.”
I really don’t see the point of trying to tie it into the social issues of the day.
Another virtue-signaling exercise. Some people are simply in love with their own goodness – and unfortunately they feel the need to make us aware of it too.
I would also add that the complex reproductive system of birds has nothing to do with the Biden administration encouraging children to mutilate themselves before the age of majority or forcing women to compete with men in sports. This is what has created the aversion to trans politics in many decent people.
ChatGTP and sycophancy. It seems as if they stole the product features from the Shake Weight motivation voice.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7chgwMijEws&pp=ygUXc291dGggcGFyayBzaGFrZSB3ZWlnaHQ%3D
So, we are walking to the restaurant at our nice hotel in the Sacred Valley and and American couple is just ahead of us, and I inquire where are they from, and a lady my age says New Orleans, and then asks where we are from, and I say California, and she looks at me and says
‘I’m sorry’
I was taken aback by this unwarranted attack, how polarized we have become, thinking the worst of a state when overseas on neutral ground.
I wonder what she would have said if you had told her that you were Canadian.
Given the original reply I’d suspect she’d have suggested they get together after the border is removed post annexation.
Don’t take it personally.
I’ve been the butt of that joke for many years as I was born and raised in NJ.
Although it’s always been IN the USA, not abroad…
Yeah 1996 in my first project going through hand written hospital notes by consultants I had to avoid transcribing “NFN”
(Normal for Norfolk). They’d been told to stop doing that years before but medical friends told me it persisted well into 1980s.
It’s part of why a Brit will NEVER get access to their “other” medical record which contains a mixture of sensitive stuff but also comments by clinicians about you. Mine almost certainly says “he’s a whistle blower….. don’t eff with him…..bloody annoying git”. At least I HOPE it says all that ;)
What exit?
Sorry.
LOL 98…
Before he became famous Springsteen was playing a gig in San Francisco. In between sets he goes into the bathroom and the guy next to him says “you guys are pretty good. Where are you from?” Bruce says “New jersey” and the guy says” What’s that !!!!!”
Oh well. That is what you get for being “nosey”. sarcasm! LOLOLOLOL
Just a heads up: some in AZ seem to hate California as my friend who lives in Mesa says a Trump wall needed on the CA border to keep the Californians out. Seems many in the desert state blame the neighbors for the sprawl and ever rising cost of living–the thing the arriving Californians are of course fleeing.
Here in SC we maintain a more balanced view and see CA as “nice place to visit, wouldn’t want to live there.” Here some wonder if we should wall out the arriving Yankees. Hard to find a good julep these days.
One good thing in regards to the draft, was it gave everybody a chance to get know one another and not live via stereotype.
My version of the draft would be mostly community service-
In Trump World we are the Land of the Stereotype and that includes the Dems who like to stereotype MAGA or maybe the Russians.
It’s a human tendency as old as everything. In our next AI World the machines will no doubt take care of these human frailties /sarc
Still I believe you will concede that CA has a few problems. Which are probably mild compared to all the things threatening New Orleans.
They used to call us the land of fruits and nuts, not really sure if it was in regards to humans or food though.
The almond industry looks to be wiped out by Trump’s actions, as most of it is exported, and I’m not really saddened by the news, its a nasty monocrop that devours water
I’ve lived in many states, the last one being California. I always diffuse the situation by referring to it as “That state that shall not be named” which usually gets a laugh. We left CA because I could no longer take the BS so a compassionate “I’m sorry” is a welcome statement, not an attack.
The “I’m sorry” coming from someone who resides in New Orleans is kinda funny. It’s a unique city with a rich history but the last time I was there had my car broken into the first day and was repeatedly warned of such dangers by everyone from the hotel staff to waiters.
The fear and stereotypes the rest of America has for California and New York – the two places that have been my home the majority of my adult life – is ridiculous. In the decades I’ve lived in LA and NYC (often in poor neighborhoods) I’ve experienced very little danger. I feel safer in those places than I do in the so-called heartland. Not even close to the same type of dangers in my experience. But the amount of “why do you live there?” “be careful” and other comments I’ve gotten from friends and family over the years is wild. They really think these places are dystopian hellscapes when they’re actually quite lovely.
Geo, it can happen even within the same metropolitan area. The stereotypes of the East Side of Cleveland that are held by those in the ‘burbs, especially the western ‘burbs, are over the top.
I’ve learned to limit my response to that question by avoiding state and country and simply reply San Diego. The city seems to only conjure up images of Shamu, surfing, and sun. More often than not, I am told how nice it would be to visit and that I’m lucky to live there.
It doesn’t bum them out when I tell them that Shamu no longer is part of Sea World, the surf is good most days but not epic, and the sun disappears in May and June. On the whole, the conversation remains cordial with no fear that I represent a political extreme of any sort.
“Trump wants a permanent Russia-Ukraine ceasefire, White House says”
‘The president has made it clear he wants to see a permanent ceasefire – first to stop the killing, stop the bloodshed.’
Meanwhile and at the same time – ‘Sixty-eight people were killed by a US airstrike on a detention facility for African migrants in Yemen’–
https://news.antiwar.com/2025/04/28/sixty-eight-reported-killed-by-us-airstrike-on-african-migrant-facility-in-yemen/
Taking a leaf from the Israeli playbook, he is just killing civilians and bombing civilian infrastructure in order to make their military quit fighting.
AbramX (the 737MAX of tanks), production cost $24m.
Armata T14, production cost $4m
The kicker is they can even make ammo for the T14
re: Irish group Kneecap investigated.
From Caitlin Johnstone on Medium:
Zionism Is The Single Greatest Threat To Free Speech In The Western World Today
https://caityjohnstone.medium.com/zionism-is-the-single-greatest-threat-to-free-speech-in-the-western-world-today-ffff5f3a3521
flora: I enjoyed the article about Kneecap in the Daily Mail for its barely controlled hysteria. Whatever happened to stiff upper lips?
My knowledge of Kneecap came through my YTb feed, which includes a number of videos related to languages, especially Italian and French. Kneecap, and its involvement in preserving and expanding Irish, popped up. The story of Kneecap and their relation to Irish is worth seeking out.
As a writer, living at a time when so much of the arts is résumé-padding, grubbing for money, and social-media self-flatter, I’ll take this: “The group’s ‘Farewell to the Union’ tour in 2020 was promoted with an image of then prime minister Boris Johnson and former DUP leader Arlene Foster strapped to a rocket on top of a burning bonfire, as two band members crouched at the bottom holding a petrol bomb ”
If people want to know what it will take to get an effective social movement going in the U S of A (see today’s posting on the United Front again Trump), it is going to take more groups like Kneecap and fewer meditations on the powers of Taylor Swift.
Also, their manager Dan Lambert. He also runs a fan-owned football club and a café. He used to be an Irish diplomat. He’s some man for one man.
http://Www.x.com/@dlLambo
I recommend this:-
Will the Humanities Survive Artificial Intelligence?
Archived: https://archive.ph/RojUn
Original: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-weekend-essay/will-the-humanities-survive-artificial-intelligence
I wouldn’t go as far as the author of this piece does, but primarily because I haven’t yet tried to go as far in using these tools.
Yet once starts digging in with them, one sees they can become tremendously powerful, for good and evil — potentially as powerful as something like the development electricity generation or even of language itself.
Spoiler alert: I recommend the movie “Outside the Wire.” Actor Kevin Mackie plays a very humanoid robot with AI who reveals at the end that he sees the future of mankind threatened by intelligent machines like himself.
Additionally, the movie, released in 2021, is set in war-torn Ukraine being used as a proxie by the US to weaken Russia. Art imitating life or life imitating art?
ACPAL: a very humanoid robot with AI who reveals at the end that he sees the future of mankind threatened by intelligent machines like himself.
But AI as we have it now is not intelligent machines as most SF has had it. That’s the point and what the article goes some ways towards getting at. It’s machine systems simulating intelligence — and only limited aspects of it.
Yet those systems have instant access to an archive containing much of what humans have ever discovered, said, and thought. And it turns out those simulations of intelligence in conjunction with that archive sometimes achieve very powerful results.
Bazarov: Whereas before the crackpot was restrained in that they’d actually have to write something–which takes time and effort–now the LLM will write what they want to hear and … will reproduce great hordes of petty Friedmans
Of course. So what? These systems are tools. They’ll serve the idiots when the idiots use them, just as they will serve everybody. This is banally obvious.
Alternatively, when not in the service of idiots, these systems can enable real-world possibilities like this —
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Demis-Hassabis
Sir Demis Hassabis (born 27 July 1976) is a British artificial intelligence researcher … and co-founder of Google DeepMind … In 2024, Hassabis and John M. Jumper were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their AI research contributions for protein structure prediction
How extensive has that protein structure prediction been?
In July 2022, it was announced that over 200 million predicted protein structures, representing virtually all known proteins, would be released on the AlphaFold database … AlphaFold3 was released in May 2024, making structural predictions for the interaction of proteins with various molecules. It achieved new standards on various benchmarks, raising the state of the art accuracies from 28 and 52 percent to 65 and 76 percent.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demis_Hassabis#AlphaFold
So an AI researcher just won the Nobel for chemistry, by delivering working models of how over 200 million proteins fold where previously some researchers in the field — molecular biologists, biochemists, etc — spent decades trying to determine just a single structure.
That’s interesting, isn’t it? It certainly seems like something that an intelligent person might want to take on board, at least. Don’t you think?
To conclude: With all due respect, both you, ACPAL, and you, Bazarov, resort to cliches — in ACPAL’s case, SF cliches; in Bazarov’s case cliches about neoliberalism, Tom Friedman, shlock American mentalities, and all the other things we already know — rather than actually thinking about what kind of tool AI might be and become.
Because it’s a powerful tool, for good and bad.
I found the AI-conversations excerpted by the author to be rather schlocky, even cringe-inducing, like something out of an advertisement (just missing the sentimental music)–in other words: the kind of whimsical stuff that attracts young people and perhaps humanities professors having a mid-life crisis.
The fact that the LLM even uses “I” is getting cute.
Hand-wringing about whether LLMs will destroy the humanities is funny when they’ve already been destroyed by neoliberal capitalism, which has hollowed them out from the inside and produced zombie “thinkers” or “influencers” like Tom Friedman, an idiot nonetheless celebrated as an intellectual for utter dreck like the “The Lexus and the Olive Tree” already in 1999!
The issue with the “humanities” as represented by the standard American “cultural studies” professor or whatever is that they’re writing at Friedman’s intellectual level–not, say, at Walter Benjamin’s or Frederic Jameson’s. It’s immensely shallow stuff, peppered with gobbledygook. What worries me is not LLMs making those professors obsolete but rather automating and augmenting them, such that the proportion of prose in existence is deluged by Friedmanite “musings”–the equivalent of real physics being drowned out entirely by the fake LLM-stroked crackpot theories quarantined to the r/hypotheticalphysics reddit page.
Whereas before the crackpot was restrained in that they’d actually have to write something–which takes time and effort–now the LLM will write what they want to hear and tell them that it’s amazing and groundbreaking. It will reproduce great hordes of petty Friedmans, voracious for recognition they’ll get only from the LLMs, a lucrative addiction soon-to-be-cultivated by the companies who own these systems.
This is overwrought. Sexual differentiation in mammals is -not- diverse in this way, and even less so in primates. The way it works in birds is really not relevant.
Matthew: Interesting point. I did suspect that not much info would transfer to humans, as fascinating as birds are.
And a problem for humans: Most species of birds are monogamous.
Oh, well. We don’t want to take metaphors too far.
Had the geese across the road for 3 months.
Inadequate night light…so a fox got a few.
Last week, since grass in fallow bed behind house was knee and hip high, i moved them there.
One male kept escaping back to across road. Took me 6 days to find his well hidden hole in fence.
Turns out, his wife was one of the fox casualties…and he was returning to guard her remains.
This had a bigger effect on me than i anticipated…and im all teary eyed talkin to a gander about loss as i dri e him back to the rest of the herd.
” it gets a bit easier dude…”
I find articles on sex differentiation, that claim rare problems aren’t rare, irritating. One thing never addressed is why there would be an increase in these? Apparantly, pthalates–and no doubt other chemicals–not only affect sex differentiation but also cause various genital malformations.
I have a copy of this book but haven’t read it yet – Count Down:How Our Modern World Is Threatening Sperm Counts, Altering Male and Female Reproductive Development, and Imperiling the Future of the Human Race.
From the blurb –
“In the tradition of Silent Spring and The Sixth Extinction, an urgent, “disturbing, empowering, and essential” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review) book about the ways in which chemicals in the modern environment are changing—and endangering—human sexuality and fertility on the grandest scale, from renowned epidemiologist Shanna Swan.
In 2017, author Shanna Swan and her team of researchers completed a major study. They found that over the past four decades, sperm levels among men in Western countries have dropped by more than 50 percent. They came to this conclusion after examining 185 studies involving close to 45,000 healthy men. The result sent shockwaves around the globe—but the story didn’t end there. It turns out our sexual development is changing in broader ways, for both men and women and even other species, and that the modern world is on pace to become an infertile one.
How and why could this happen? What is hijacking our fertility and our health? Count Down unpacks these questions, revealing what Swan and other researchers have learned about how both lifestyle and chemical exposures are affecting our fertility, sexual development—potentially including the increase in gender fluidity—and general health as a species. Engagingly explaining the science and repercussions of these worldwide threats and providing simple and practical guidelines for effectively avoiding chemical goods (from water bottles to shaving cream) both as individuals and societies, Count Down is “staggering in its findings” (Erin Brockovich, The Guardian) and “will serve as an awakening” (The New York Times Book Review).”
Despite not having read it, I have tried to keep away from plastics and as many chemical additives as I can. A near impossibility, but I endeavor to regardless.
Thanks, Lyman Alpha Blob! I’ll look for that! I found ‘Our Stolen Future’, is another. I first heard of this in 2000 while watching a PBS special about research in England. They said it had been ‘forbidden’ to discuss in the US until recently. The book mentions phthlates (sp?) causing fish to change gender. They found a population, in FL, they thought was healthy, which turned out to all be the same sex–probably the eggs absorbed it. This chemical is in almost everything–the paper wrapping your butter, cheese, plastic wrap, milk cartons, the industrial detergent used to clean bottles, etc. Anything with fat, such as dairy products, absorbs it readily.
Most discussions about this topic quickly turn to bringing up all the outliers and edge cases as if they applied far more generally. That seems to an argumentation tactic of pop pseudo-postmodernism.
re: What birds can teach us about the ‘biological truth’ of sex The Transmitter
This kind of article would receive the DEI label in order to dismiss or attack it. And therefore, endocrinology would be subject to attack, as would neuroscience and biology. And social and cognititive psychology, anthropology, sociology and behavioural economics, since these study bias and prejudice.
Re: “When ChatGPT users search for products, the chatbot will now offer a few recommendations, present images and reviews for those items, and include direct links to web pages where users can buy the products.”
Well, when the balance of links returned by a Google query tipped significantly toward ads and shopping, that was pretty much the end of google as a research and work tool. I don’t know why it will be different with ChatGPT. It will pay ChatGPTs bills, so maybe it will actually become profitable, but profitable useful.
“but profitable does not equal useful.” (symbols got lost in posting).
Yup, ChatGPT for the masses will be ad-supported. Meanwhile, the professionals pay for premium and specialized AI services. We’re already there.
Basic AI plans: Free to $500/month for entry-level tools.
Mid-tier enterprise AI: $500–$10,000/month, for more advanced capabilities.
Premium AI: $10,000+ a month.
re: Germany BSW post-election
statement by member of the commission to decide whether to overturn the official election result for BSW or not:
“If mistakes were made, and they were made and perhaps will continue to be clarified, then BSW might actually have a chance of bypassing the five percent clause. But whether further errors have been made besides those already identified by the Federal Returning Officer, I cannot judge from here. The review by the Bundestag will reveal that. There are opportunities (…) I assume that we are already talking about a few weeks, probably more likely a few months, before a decision proposal from the Electoral Scrutiny Committee is available.“
I don’t know how the committee can take an objective decision that will satisfy all the parties, considering that it is controlled by the current coalition. Unless I’m missing something. It’s good that BSW decided to finally dispute the results though.
Re: Is our universe the ultimate computer? (Phys.org)
Humans being non-playing characters in some 5D version of Civilization or GTA would explain a lot.
A barbarian tribe, perhaps? (Civ reference, before IV)
I always like the Minbari philosophy on it (Babylon 5), that we’re all just the manifestation of the Universe trying to understand itself.
As long as somebody doesn’t conquer and raze Cleveland. And will somebody let our Civ know we don’t need any more hospitals in Cleveland. Cleveland Clinic is filling the sky with skyscrapers.
A vessel the size of a small island can not turn on a dime, nor dodge guided weapons (not to mention the famous iceberg dodging). More likely, it was trying to avoid getting into the danger zone (and put in some distance while incoming drones/missiles were still far away), or maybe even bracing for an impact (in case they were closer). CIWS’ are close range (aka. last ditch defense), and anything going past them would score a hit (which did not happen, reportedly).
Dunno. Years ago when I was a Mid they sent me to the CVAN Enterprise for summer cruise. (Idea was to get me to apply for Nuke Power, but had the opposite effect.) But what I remember was the Officer of the Deck and Conning Officer were paranoid about the heel angle (there was, maybe still is these days a sort-of level device called the clinometer that showed your heel). So I’m wondering if there was a communications problem about authorizing movement of aircraft in the hanger deck.
Later as a destroyerman, throwing the helm over and putting a good heel on the ship was what made life fun (just don’t do it during meal time or the XO would come running up to the bridge to give you a good butt chewing).
When alongside the oiler for UNREP, SOP when you were done was to execute an “emergency breakaway”. Five short blasts on the ship’s horn, ring up a flank bell and away you go. When clear give a right full rudder (99% of the time destroyers UNREP portside-to, as the carrier is always on the other side due to its configuration, and all the “small boys” can refuel in turn while the carrier is still alongside).
“Researchers Secretly Ran a Massive, Unauthorized AI Persuasion Experiment on Reddit Users”
Obviously the Ethics Committee of the University of Zurich has a lot of free time on their hands.
I read all about this before NC drew attention to it. I haven’t gone into detail since it bores 99.9% of readers…… but their idea of the delta to evaluate humanity is flawed from the get go.
So I’m following my old mentors strategy…… if their idea is too stupid to be redeemed say nothing.
I knew how to design and how to better beat these things 20 years ago. I’ve described it before so won’t bore people but colour me unimpressed. The only thing that worries me is that Macquarie Bank in Australia somehow learnt our stuff and use it to maintain profits.
Due to the reluctance of the researchers to show their faces, and the tepid, anguished needle-threading between apologetics and sanctions on UZH’s part, I suspect NATO’s “cognitive warfare” project has more than a finger in this pie.
10,500 drones form tanks and liberation flags to light up the sky of Ho Chi Minh City (in Vietnamese, video and pics are good)
Vietnam celebrates 50 years of National Reunification this week. This is the rehearsal flight for the state’s storytime drone show. It’s very Vietnamese stylistically. Actual flight May 1st.
My highlight: Ho Chi Minh in a lotus
Thanks. I liked that.
Semafor chat- “Most interesting part of the Semafor group chat story is this tidbit about tech’s centrism-to-right wing partisan pipeline” the turn towards authoritarian government seems a rational response in the face of – well, fear. Fear of death, fear of change. Having made billions and used to servants handing you grapefruit spoons or whatever, seems logical to not want this to change.
Especially with multiple system failures on the horizon. The accelerationist ideology has its logic as well.
But there are competing ideas and movements based upon different ideas. Also arising in response to multi-system failures.
Curious to see – generally, locking things down and creating closed societies leads to some stagnation, doesn’t it? The interesting ideas will arise is other places. The fear driven policies will not produce the open, creative environment needed to move through the bottlenecks.
Thinking on a large scale, out of my wheelhouse but you know, it’s a generally unremarked upon public argument- what shape social construct through the bottlenecks. reminds me of John Kay’s book Obliquity
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/308233/obliquity-by-john-kay/
Re autism. I used to use Google advanced search to find old NC discussions relevant to the topic so we can all start from same point. Enshittification means 90% of the time this doesn’t work anymore for me. Google is clearly suppressing stuff, particularly older stuff.
But the autism debate was had on here AT LENGTH. My covid addled memory can’t be relied upon to say any conclusion was reached but people above my pay grade were suspicious of what we laughingly call “food” these days which is implicated in gut issues.
The medical brain trust here can no doubt say more but I’m just trying to bring up some interesting conclusions and hypotheses from early 2010s to act as starting point so we don’t revisit old stuff.
I don’t recall that gut microbiome re. autism debate. But two points, if you didn’t already know them —
[1] Every American suffers from microbiome dysbiosis. Cause or causes? In large measure — though far from entirely — simply because individuals’ sugar and milk intakes are massively more than humans evolved to process, and because anti-bacterials are everywhere — and we are commensal organisms effectively.
(Your microbiome is you and that’s a good thing because it’s hard to see how we’d exist otherwise with a total only about 20,000 genes in contrast to a species like wheat, which has over 50,000 genes, for God’s sake)
[2] Yes, a correlation between autism and microbiome dysbiosis is well-established at this point. But it may be a bit of a chicken-and egg thing. That is: yes, autistic people seem to particularly suffer from microbiome dysbiosis, but also autistic people frequently suffer from ‘leaky guts’ — in other words, they often experience gastrointestinal issues, and research indicates increased intestinal permeability with their gut microbiome leaking out into other physiological areas.
https://gutpathogens.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13099-021-00448-y
https://neurolaunch.com/leaky-gut-autism/
https://healthpath.com/gut-health/autism-and-the-gut-microbiome/
Re: Ukraine announces wave of murders and terrorism in Russia immediately after Putin’s ceasefire announcement…..
“…The presenter asked the deputy how he assessed the bombing of Russian General Moskalik in the Moscow region that happened the day before.
“I am pleased. This is good work by our special services. I think that even if we reach the point of stopping the war, the work of the special services will only just begin. And this will be a task for the next 10-30 years,” said Kostenko.
Anyone thinking they are only talking about within Russia and Ukraine is mistaken.
The usual suspects will take in the worst of the lot.
“GPT-4o Is An Absurd Sycophant”
I suppose that Sam Altman tested it personally and when it sucked up to him something chronic, he gave it his mark of approval as that is what he hears from people all day long.
LLMs remind me of a student that studies the teacher more than the subject. It can make a some students good test takers in certain subjects. The jury remains out for what they’ve actually learned in the long run.
I’ve had plenty of teachers whose fragile egos were such that not taking that approach was perilous. Learning that fairly early in college was useful because it was not always possible to avoid such profs.
A twiXet yesterday expressed shock that a deviation from the set point frequency (50 Hz in Europe) of 0.15 Hertz could lead to a blackout. Actually a deviation of half of that will put the operators of the utilities connected to a large grid into crisis mode. Initially fingers are pointing at a geomagnetic proximate cause of the blackout, but it will likely take weeks or months to identify root causes that made the grid vulnerable.
“SITREP 4/28/25: Russian Vise Tightens as West Dawdles and Dallies with “Ceasefire” Sham”
I really can’t understand Trump’s final plan. It’s like the Kellog plan but worse. They are offering things to Russia that they never asked for and things that they can’t deliver on. And ‘Security guarantees for Ukraine are provided by a military contingent of European states.’ In other words there will be a NATO garrison in the Ukraine. As for Zaporizhzhya NPP, the Russian Constitution will not allow for Russia to hand bits of Russian territory to Americans – the same people that have been running this war the past three years. Also, ‘Ukraine will receive full restoration and financial compensation.’ From who exactly? Do they mean Russia’s frozen $300 billion? And the Kinburn Spit? The Ukrainians keep on trying to land forces there and the Russian keep on shooting them to bits. Is that a bone for the Ukrainians. Based on this document, Trump’s team have not listened to a single thing that the Russians have been telling him for months now. And forget that Russia is winning this war and it is not a stalemate.
That video of the North Koreans is interesting. I wonder if among their number there will be future generals. I read accounts of British junior officers in the 19th century being assigned to extraordinary duties but which marked them for future promotions over those who just stayed with their Regiments or ships. Such may be the case here. The North Korean army is about to get an upgrade.
More of the west bargaining with themselves? I don’t think Ukraine will agree even to this ‘win’, so it may be more about shifting expectations. The ‘Victory Day’ ceasefire trick is pretty clever, the Ukrainians almost certainly have plans for that day, and now they will look un-ceasefire-ready when they pull them off. I wonder if they are feeling extra pressure to grab headlines, now that the Nuclear War Book swung the odds wildly towards the India-Pakistan conflict.
Trump loves to give Biden hell over the chaos of the Afghanistan withdrawal. Does he want to keep playing this game rather than just shutting down U. S. involvement? If he pursues the former, he might find himself watching helicopters frantically leaving Kiev or Lvov in a year or two (or sooner). By then, it will certainly be Trump’s war.
“Ice Age Humans Were Experts at Wielding Fire, Study Finds”
‘Fire was not just about keeping warm; it was also essential for cooking, making tools, and for social gatherings’
I really do not think that enough attention is paid to that last bit. After all, you don’t see animals gathered around a fire. If you want to know where the foundations of civilization were laid, it was around those prehistoric fires. People engaged in experimenting with thoughts and language. Developed social skills as a species as they swapped small talk and retold stories. Learnt new ideas. Watching those flames must have changed the way that they looked at things too. Just sitting there warm and safe and fed with warm food must have made this a special place for them. During the day you had hunting and gathering and all sorts of tasks. But at night, there was time for other things.
One thing most of us don’t have on hand is matches or lighters, unless you smoke.
Or are not confident with flint and steel skills. ;-)
All winter long as i waz winding down after dark, my muscovy ducks would line up on the other side of the fire and do that head bobbing thing they do.
Im certain that its language.
When i head bob back, they give me sideye
Thanks, Amfortas, for that very funny image.
surprised the hell outta me the first time they did it.
i thought they were headed to teh bar proper to bed down under the lights.
i was rather drunk, but i got the distinct impression that they were talking to me.
(wish i could figure out how to send vids,lol…the head bobbing thing is hilarious)
In his novel “Shaman” by Kim Stanley Robertson, the first chapter is about the right of passage of a teenager to whitstand a 3 day trip and managed getting fire, etc. And the storm, and all the details about the tools needed to make fire in any circumstance. Quite gripping and immersing.
i made sure both my boys read “To Build a Fire”, by Jack London.
after eldest read it, he pestered me to teach him how to do a bowdrill and flint and steel,lol.(he was in his dances with wolves phase, shouting in Lakotah all the time)
Re Euro-Med link
In the Euro-Med article: Civilian lives, including those of children and women, are not collateral damage to be overlooked; these are real people with personal stories, deliberately and systematically killed without the Israeli acknowledgement of any legal or even moral obligations.
Posted at Consortium News – Interview transcript b/w Hedges and Dr. Feroze Sidhwa a medical prof whose seen the real. Stan for Kneecap ’cause, well, if you have to ask, read the following interview in full.
And I’ve yet to read msm-slop about how those in Michigan, who helped vote in the R prez, perceive the lie that was sold.
One sample of a lengthy interview to underscore EuroMed’s line that non-combatants are being “deliberately and systematically killed without the Israeli acknowledgement of any legal or even moral obligations.”
https://consortiumnews.com/2025/04/28/chris-hedges-report-decimating-gazas-health-system/
Dr. Sidhwa, “I keep mentioning Mark Perlmutter. He’s a Jewish-American hand surgeon, orthopedic surgeon that I’ve been to Gaza with twice now. He talked about how he was actually having to implant not pins but drill bits themselves into children’s bones in order to fixate them because they just don’t have pins that are the size needed for children.”
Canva too:
Canva shocks employees with AI-related job cuts
They whacked basically the whole technical documentation and education team. That’s gonna go well.
Technical documentation written by an AI? That’s going to be hilarious that. Could Canva be sued for bogus instructions written by an AI?
Banana Republic territory
Secret Deals, Foreign Investments, Presidential Policy Changes: The Rise of Trump’s Crypto Firm
Go big or go home. Makes Biden’s petty corruption look pathetic and slight.
And DJT Jr selling gold in “uncertain times.’
The Bidens were shady. The Trumps are brazen.
Came across a story the other day that he will be having dinner with the biggest owners of his meme coin so get your meme coins now. That’s pretty blatant that. Don’t know if that dinner will be in the White House or not.
‘Numisaddicts’
Another impressive European leader. I didn’t realize just how dark life was during the period of cold war neutrality. It sounds like hell. /s. There is quite a supply of these European warmongers.
Finnish Leader Warns the Kremlin: ‘You Don’t Play With President Trump’ NYT archive
But hey, he plays a near-pro golf game.
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/28/trade-war-tariffs-full-blown-crisis-us-farm-exporters-say.html
I’ve never tried cocaine and can confidently state that I never will, but here in Peru, drinking tea made from coca leaves is a very ordinary thing, in fact I’m sipping on a cuppa in my hotel lobby.
I wasn’t all that enamored with having coca leaves in my mouth though, which is what I did on the Inca trail.
I’ve read about that tea. How is it?
It makes for a nice tea with a slightly interesting flavor.
Fair enough!
Was talking to our Peruvian guide how things went when Peru changed the name of their national currency from Soles to Intis and then back to Soles, and he related that it was even worse than it is in Argentina now, savings wiped out, along with it happening during the Shining Path period, greatly exacerbating things.
Things are pretty stable here now, he told me.
Re: the Breach article on Mark Carney;
I disagree with the take that he is a firm believer in the free market. He at least recognizes that value needs to be assigned to things society values that don’t have market value such as the environment. I don’t disagree with the take that he will continue the funnel of public funds into the private sector, though.
I don’t necessarily think he’s lost in the economic problem….. But like you I’ve spotted things that suggest he might, just might, have some real understanding of money that he might be willing to act upon….he’s seen TWO countries mess themselves up
Probably unrealistic…… But I get a weird vibe from him……colour me curious
Weird vibe as in you are suspicious? I’m curious if those hints we are seeing amount to anything but I am cautiously suspicious considering how intertwined and accepted he is with the status quo
He is a very, very smart guy – far too smart to be a true believer in the usual economic tropes. He is credited with saving Ireland billions by essentially sketching out a back of the envelope way of turning its promiserry debts into long term bonds (among other things, he is an Irish citizen). While the overall concept of what he suggested was simple, the mechanics were very complex and not well understood.
Like all Central Bankers, he keeps his true beliefs well hidden. But he is also of course very much an insider. I wouldn’t expect anything radical from him, but at least he isn’t a glib idiot like most of the current crop of world leaders.
Carney is among those most responsible for the real estate bubble and investor bailouts in Canada, which have wonderfully concentrated wealth in few hands.
MMT for sure, but only for the benefit of the bourgeoisie.
As for the environment, consider the following: (a) nothing has done more harm to the global environment than capitalist globalization, and (b) Mark Carney’s entire career has been dedicated to capitalist globalization.
I agree with your Carney-bad assessment, but what choice do we have? Poilievre-worst? More importantly, presidents and prime ministers are front men without any real decision-making ability, which was made painfully clear by the election of a senile president in the most powerful position on Earth.
Justin Trudeau was a playboy with a sizeable trust fund who, by the time he got elected to the House of Commons at 37, had managed to abandon three different professions.
Before her fulgurant political rise, Von der Leyen’s entire career consisted of two 20-hr per week student jobs, assistant physician in the university clinic during her PhD, and research assistant during her master. Another non-entity with a trust-fund.
We are still speaking as if these figureheads matter, as if today’s oligarchies would allow politicians any independent field of action. They are simply choosing them for their loyalty to the neoliberal and imperialist status quo. Much of the handwringing in the alternative media about the current batch of politicians is a colossal waste of time in my book.
Re: “What birds can teach us about the ‘biological truth’ of sex”
Men (adult human males) need to stay out of women’s spaces and sports. No matter their feelings.
As a vegan, it pains me to read that chickens are suffering to justify some people’s desire to disassociate themselves from their sex. There are about 4 BILLION ways to be a human female and about the same to be a human male. Leave the chickens alone and accept your one frail and mortal body.
Carney is a neoliberal, globalist, investment banker. Carney is also a continentalist, who wanted a currency union with the USA.
The Canadian Liberals held their seats by using the old political tactic of rousing the public’s fear of a foreign enemy. Phoney patriotism, but it worked well enough to save them from an expected wipeout.
It’s another minority gov’t. I predict that Carney will pick some silly fight with Trump, then call another election later this year. The beaver-worship will be something else–have your sickness bag ready.
The NDP collapsed (lost two-thirds of their vote share), which was unsurprising. When the Left is no longer Left, their voters will leave. Nevertheless, even after being punished for propping up Trudeau, the NDP remnants have already pledged to support Carney! So now a vote for the “Left” in Canada means a vote for Goldman Sachs, literally. This, at a time when there has never been a bigger gap between rich and poor in Canada, with the beggary and homelessness in plain sight.
Meanwhile, the mainstream Quebec nationalists have again been caught in their own contradiction: they’re totally co-dependent with Canada. But the mass immigration of recent years is what is most damaging to Quebecois nationalism. The nation descended of French colonists is becoming a minority in Quebec.
Another thing: there is a resemblance with the electoral pattern in the USA. Classic metropolis vs. hinterland. Liberals swept most of the major cities (Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver) while Conservatives or Bloc took the rest.
NDP is still weded with the identity politics and won’t budge and won’t even admit that a big proportion of the population wants no truck with it.
Their reps don’t seem to understand economics and are not capable to find sound advisors. I am sure Steve Keen would love to help.
Jagmeeth is a nice fellow, with taste and handsome, etc, but he will put off a lot of the voters just by being Sikh.
Thus many that could consider NDP would migrate, in this battle royale either to the Liberals or the Conservatives. STV or proportional representation would have been more clarifying in terms of voter preferences than the FPTP.
The Juice Media kind of nails it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wT_n4Khmq0o&t=2s
Source on the currency union claim? He’s been vocal about replacing the USD with a non-state currency as the global reserve currency.
Liberals have only ever been left socially. The minority govt will probably have no problem getting things done considering they are 3 seats from a majority and there are 22 bloc and 7 NDP seats respectively.
The patriotism was an incredibly effective political tactic but considering Poilevre was endorsed by Elon Musk and Canadian identity really does revolve around being separate and better than the US I’m not surprised people turned on him
Singh lost his seat and stepped down as leader of the NDP. Poilievre lost his seat and will remain as leader of the Conservatives. Liberal seats now stand at 169 (need 172 to form a majority government). Conservatives now have 143 seats and are leading in 1, NDP has 7, Bloc Quebecois has 22 seats, Greens 1 seat.
Carney has spoken to Trump, no word on what was discussed.