Modern Babylon: Ziggurat Skyscrapers and Hugh Ferriss’ Retrofuturism The Public Domain Review
Climate/Environment
Spruce Trees Are Like Real-Life Ents That Anticipate Solar Eclipse Hours in Advance and Sync Up ZME Science
“It Made No Sense” – Scientist Discovers California’s New Highest Tree SciTech Daily
Nine-year study shows mountain plants won’t adapt fast enough to climate change Phys.org
Forests taking longer to recover from severe ‘megafires’ since 2010 Carbon Brief
India-Pakistan
Trump Truce Leaves India Furious, Pakistan Elated as Risks Loom Bloomberg
India has only pressed the pause button on Pakistan. It needs serious behavioural change General Manoj Mukund Naravane, The Print
Tensions, trade, and the fuel factor—India’s energy supply amid conflict with Pakistan Intellinews. “Diversification of sources with US-sources fuel seen as a benefit in time of war, but also a way to help India avoid the threat of tariffs by Washington.”
iPhone exports from India jump 116% in April amid tariff gap Communications Today
China?
Joint Statement on U.S.-China Economic and Trade Meeting in Geneva The White House
China and US agree to slash tariffs FT. “The US will lower tariffs on Chinese goods to 30 per cent from 145 per cent and China will reduce duties on US imports to 10 per cent from 125 per cent.”
***
Silent Struggles: Tariff Crisis Hits China’s Garment Workers China Labour Bulletin
Ethereum Skyrockets After China Stimulus: Altcoin Season Starting? Tron Weekly
In China, record land prices return as developers bet on prime plots Business Times
How Many J-20 Stealth Fighter Will China Build? Top Expert Predicts over 1000 Military Watch
Philippines votes in high-stakes midterm election amid Marcos-Duterte showdown Straits Times
Old Blighty
British troops could join EU forces under new security pact The Times
UK sends flat-packed decoys to Ukraine in bid to confuse Russian forces The Times
Syraqistan
Hamas and U.S. reach deal. “I think we’ll have to detox from US security assistance,” says Netanyahu Drop Site
PM may call early elections to preempt Haredim over IDF draft, ministers say Times of Israel
US abandons ‘Hamas disarmament’ demands in Gaza truce talks: Report The Cradle
Israel fully endorses US aid plan for Gaza: Top diplomat Al Arabiya
As Gaza Starves, Israel Attacked UNRWA Food Distribution Center Drop Site
PM Netanyahu, today at the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee meeting: “We are demolishing more and more houses, they have nowhere to go back to. The only obvious outcome will be Gazans wishing to emigrate out of the strip. Our main problem is finding receptive countries.”… pic.twitter.com/WtZ5bBkWJH
— B.M. (@ireallyhateyou) May 11, 2025
***
Houthis say Israeli airstrikes hit Yemen’s Al Hudaydah province Anadolu Agency
***
US and Iran agree to future nuclear talks as negotiations wrap up in Oman France24
Pressure without power: Why the US can no longer dictate terms to Iran Elijah J. Magnier
Seyed Marandi & Alastair Crooke: Trump’s Negotiations Fail Glenn Diesen (Video)
Prospects of Saudi ties to Israel elusive as Trump seeks $1 trillion bonanza Reuters
Trump Tower Damascus? Syria seeks to charm US president for sanctions relief Channel News Asia
European Disunion
When European unity becomes inconvenient, disinformation goes so far as to make a simple tissue look like drugs.
This fake news is being spread by France’s enemies, both abroad and at home. We must remain vigilant against manipulation. pic.twitter.com/xyXhGm9Dsr
— Élysée (@Elysee) May 11, 2025
This from the Elysee is in response to the allegations making the rounds:
I’m not saying Macron was hiding a bag of Coke… but let’s just say if it were a bag of sugar or a grocery receipt, he wouldn’t have tucked it away like a squirrel hiding snacks for winter. pic.twitter.com/foxWOWfsyD
— Kevork Almassian (@KevorkAlmassian) May 11, 2025
Yves here. I hate to weigh on on Conor’s post, but I’ve been out and about on Twitter, and even accounts with a history of being anti-Macron and/or anti globalist are not buying this. Many images with a zoom on what Macron grabbed, which most definitely looks like a tissue and not at all a baggie.
The weird thingie that Merz hid was standing vertical and Twitterati showed images of it looking like a very oddball food device:
Yes, it is weird that Macron grabbed the tissue and then did such a lame job of getting rid of it, and that Merz followed suit. But the video doesn’t support the big claims here. Maybe Macron is a neat or an image freak? He is fabulously vain, after all. Maybe he was strictly instructed by handlers about images with other Important People? The fact is that Macron is an egomaniac and incompetent all on his own, as in without chemical assistance as an excuse. Merz is not well known but looks to be cut from similar WEF cloth.
***
Poland and France sign “groundbreaking” treaty, including mutual security guarantees Notes from Poland
‼️🇩🇪 Disillusionment Sets In: Majority of Germans Already Unhappy with Chancellor Merz — BILD Reports
Just four days. That’s all it took for the German public to turn sour on their new chancellor.
According to a fresh INSA poll, only 23% of Germans view Friedrich Merz’s… pic.twitter.com/rmdUW25gux
— Zlatti71 (@Zlatti_71) May 11, 2025
Germany Scales Back Transparency on Arms Deliveries to Ukraine Defense Express
New Not-So-Cold War
Putin proposes unconditional peace talks with Ukraine (FULL SPEECH) RT
Trump urges Ukraine to meet with Russia in Turkey to negotiate ‘a possible end to the bloodbath’ The Hill
Zelensky agrees to Putin-proposed meeting in Turkey after Trump demands they negotiate end of war The Independent. Zelensky: ““We await a full and lasting ceasefire, starting from tomorrow, to provide the necessary basis for diplomacy…”
EU leaders demand Putin end hostilities or face crushing sanctions Intellinews
Zelensky wants ceasefire to rearm military – senior Russian diplomat RT
Source says European position hasn’t changed
— ceasefire still starts tomorrow
— Russia must agree
— if Russia attacks from tomorrow expect strong European and US response including sanctions as agreed on Saturday
— Trump post and Zelensky tweet don’t change what was agreed— Alex Wickham (@alexwickham) May 11, 2025
Trump Played Europe and Kiev, But Putin May Be Playing Them All Gordon Hahn
Victory Day Leftovers
Victory over Nazism? Azov Lobby Blog. “Support for neo-Nazis ‘looks like deliberate policy.’”
Terrorists R’ Us Julian MacFarlane
Mr. Market Rejoices
Dow futures rocket higher by 1,000 points after U.S.-China agree to cut tariffs: Live updates CNBC
“Liberation Day”
Cleveland Fed President Beth Hammack says she’s hearing from firms that aren’t sure how much tariffs will go up, so they are beginning to implement a sequence of rolling price hikes to avoid a larger, one time increase in prices. Some firms that haven’t faced tariffs are also…
— Nick Timiraos (@NickTimiraos) May 9, 2025
The U.S.-U.K. deal shows the trade war is here to stay Axios
Geoeconomic Pressure The Global Capital Allocation Project. From the introduction: “A defining feature of the current global system is the willingness of the Great Powers to use their economic and financial strength to achieve geopolitical or economic goals. This rise of geoeconomics is a major departure from the last twenty years of policymaking and has the potential to dramatically alter the landscape of the global economic and financial system.”
Trump 2.0
Trump fires Copyright Office director after report raises questions about AI training TechCrunch
Trump administration poised to accept ‘palace in the sky’ as a gift for Trump from Qatar: Sources ABC News
Trump says he will sign executive order on drug price caps The Hill
GOP Funhouse
Big Brother is Watching You Watch
Mark Zuckerberg is building a new surveillance state The Hill
Immigration
Trump administration offers refugee status to 49 white South Africans The Guardian
Requests to remove tattoos considered ‘suspicious’ by Trump administration are increasing El Pais
AI
Disturbing new ‘glitch’ means mysterious ‘suicide’ of AI prophet of doom may never be solved Daily Mail
An AI Whistleblower Bill is Urgently Needed National Law Review
Healthcare?
Why Are ADHD Rates So Much Higher in the U.S.? Gizmodo
Poor family finances, family-based adverse childhood experiences, and depressive and behavioral symptoms in adolescence Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology
Antitrust
So you’re not crazy…Google did get shittier. https://t.co/g1cV1E5C2A
— Radical Centrist,wrathful tantric deity🇺🇦🇹🇼🎗️ (@RadCentrism) May 11, 2025
Imperial Collapse Watch
The end of US empire is not the end of the world Africa Is A Country. Hopefully not.
Supply Chain
What to know about screwworm, as U.S. suspends cattle imports from Mexico Axios
Sports Desk
Kentucky Derby-winning jockey fined $62,000 for overuse of whip Racing Post
The Bezzle
Elizabeth Holmes’s Partner Has a New Blood-Testing Start-Up New York Times
Class Warfare
Progressives Need a New Toolkit to Fight Inflation The Sling
Antidote du jour (via):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
“Putin proposes unconditional peace talks with Ukraine (FULL SPEECH)”
Putin, by doing this, managed to short-circuit all the talk of a 30 day/forever truce that even Trump was echoing. But the funny part was when Putin suggested unconditional peace talks with Ukraine and Zelensky said that he agreed to it – but first, here are my conditions for these peace talks-
https://www.rt.com/russia/617393-zelensky-putin-direct-talks/
Zelensky conveniently forgot that he demanded a law that forbade him from even negotiating with Russia. So he is proposing to break his own law.
Meanwhile, there is fighting across the line of contact, including Pokrovsk, the South Donetsk direction, and the defense of Bahatyr collapsed, according to this morning’s latest Military Summary Channel video.
So there is nothing positive happening diplomatically. Russia cannot afford to stop, they must finish the job.
Unrestricted rearmament and EU troops deployed during a ceasefire!
I took Latin in school bc I did not care to endure classes speaking modern languages.
We had to read in Latin Julius Caesar’s commentaries.
The first Gallic war started out Caesar going in to help out a small, casual ally.
“All of Gaul had been divided into three parts….” until Julius overran them.
As I see it Macron/Starmer/Merz think they are Caesar and can get their caliguli in the door on the Dneiper.
Actually it gets better than this. Kallas and the coalition of the willing are now setting up a tribunal to try Putin and other Russian leaders after the war is over. They are already hard at work making up the laws that they will use for it-
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/5/9/eu-ministers-back-ukrainian-tribunal-to-try-russian-officials
Say, does anybody remember the time how at the Nuremburg Tribunal at the end of WW2, that Germany put the leaders of the Allied nations on trial for their war of aggression against Germany? I sure don’t.
What was, IMO, incredibly weird was the reasoning of the ultimatum: if you don’t obey we will do what had already been done long ago. Kind of retrospective ultimatum? If they hadn’t gone for those many rounds of sanctions before, the ultimatum would have made some sense. Wouldn’t look so ridiculous. Looks like confused minds in desperate search for alternatives doing their best to precisely eliminate any possible alternative. Why they thought Putin, who already has several alternatives at his disposal, would corner himself to the worst option available is beyond reason. They may believe Putin naturally confuses facts with PR just like they do all the time.
“It Made No Sense” – Scientist Discovers California’s New Highest Tree SciTech Daily
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Kaweah range was initially thought to be the crest of the Sierra Nevada, as they’re tall, but not tall enough-with Mount Kaweah being a few hundred vertical feet short of the mark.
It has been my playground for many decades and i’ve had the opportunity to be on most of the peaks, and around the turn of the century on the other side of the U-shaped valley where the highest Jeffrey Pine is, lays a Foxtail Pine that we stumbled across while off-trail going to the 3rd or 4th Big Five Lakes. It was immense and undoubtedly the largest one known (the claim is the largest one is in Mineral King, but it’s clearly 2 trees together-which doesn’t count) and similar to the aforementioned Jeffrey Pine, lies far from prying eyes.
The lay of the land:
http://www.sierrahiker.com/FiveLakes/
Apropos what Macron was ever so keen to hide on the train back from Kiev, surely no cultured individual would leave a crunched up paper tissue, be it used or fresh, on a table shared with other individuals? Far better to suggest, for example, that it was a few doodled ideas on a napkin about savage new sanctions against the dastardly Putin. Ideas that needed to be kept confidential from the media. Not to mention the small metal object Merz was also keen to conceal from view.
But of course, it is all disinformation/fake news, the go to excuse of those with something to hide.
I have had weird technical issues with adding this to the post.
Yes, it is fake news. It’s a proof of how much people are subject to halo effect cognitive bias. Macron and Merz and Starmer really are schnooks, ergo any negative allegation about them is deemed credible.
*****
Yves here. I hate to weigh on on Conor’s post, but I’ve been out and about on Twitter, and even accounts with a history of being anti-Macron and/or anti globalist are not buying this. Many images with a zoom on what Macron grabbed, which most definitely looks like a tissue and not at all a baggie.
The weird thingie that Merz hid was standing vertical and Twitterati showed images of it looking like a very oddball food device:
Yes, it is peculiar that Macron grabbed the tissue and then did such a lame job of hiding it, and that Merz followed suit. But the video doesn’t support the big claims here. Maybe Macron is a neat or an image freak? He is fabulously vain, after all. Maybe he’s had strict media training about images with other Important People? The fact is that Macron is an egomaniac and incompetent all on his own, as in without chemical assistance as an excuse. Merz is not well known but looks to be cut from similar WEF cloth.
****
And Macron does have form. Recall he guiltily hid a watch allegedly worth €85,000….except it was really worth only at most €2,400:
https://www.newsweek.com/macron-watch-france-pension-protests-video-1790157
Elysee,
That tissue can hold a lot of powder.
And those EU guys and girls are more interested in putting weapons in Kiev during a no holds barred pause to regroup cease fire than peace.
I know this sort of harping on the midget Jupiter is fun but it’s also real cognitive bias in action. It’s not a good look.
It is hard to imagine that anyone would distribute/carry cocaine from tissue paper. Some would adhere to the tissue. Tissue over a baggie would be plausible but the crumpling of the paper indicates not.
And if it were in a tissue, Macron would risk getting cocaine on that nice shiny glass table.
I should have typed less and merely observed that Elysee is gaslighting.
I have no direct experience, but in the 60’s baggies was for pot which was bulkiers.
The idea of Micron not using some designer coke container and silver spoon is prima facie absurd. Those claims were made by drug users who fly coach. Even Zelensky doesn’t deal with baggies or used Kleenex. Some think it is much more likely to be an elite homoerotic ritual.
That tissue (or napkin) could hold a lot of powder, or a screworm, or gold coins recovered from the wreck of the Chameau. Maybe they made him cry, he wiped his tears and blew his nose and hid the napkin in shame!
If you want to make something of it, go nuts.
Or, accept that he wiped his mouth or nose.
It looked as simple as they didn’t want a tissue or other junk on the table for whatever picture they started posing for immediately after.
Nine-year study shows mountain plants won’t adapt fast enough to climate change Phys.org
Forests taking longer to recover from severe ‘megafires’ since 2010 Carbon Brief
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
About 5 years ago we were backpacking in Yosemite NP, and walked a 4 mile stretch of the John Muir Trail that had been severely burned some 8 years prior-and Whitethorn had taken over, a low lying ground cover with spiky thorns as per the name.
It wasn’t as if a slow growing pine could ever hope to beat the fast growing other lesser clients (hope i’m not coming off as a tree’ist) of Mother Nature, and you trade a shaded forest for four foot high scrubs-not a good deal. I remember the relief we all felt when we emerged back into the forest that hadn’t been burnt, it was an instant 5 to 10 degrees cooler than the scorched stretch we sauntered through.
Closer to home in the aftermath of the KNP Fire, we walked around the Oriole Lake area quite a bit, as the fire was especially intense in places, and I remember walking up a hilly area to get to the Oriole Grove of Giant Sequoias, as it was tantamount to an elevated moonscape, the fire had taken out everything, and each step, my boot sank 4 to 6 inches into the ash, felt a little like Buzz back in the summer of ’69.
Fast forward to last year, and the same lifeless hill was now full of fast growing groundcover-same deal as Yosemite, really no chance for trees to ever get going.
“British troops could join EU forces under new security pact”
British forces are already a part of NATO but the EU does not have a military force – yet. It could be that this will be a backdoor way to try to get the UK back into the EU or maybe a way to be able to deploy forces that the US will be unable to veto. More likely, the UK sees that the EU wants to put together hundreds of billions of dollars into a huge honey pot for “defense” and the UK wants in on it and this article even mentions this slush, errr, defense fund.
EU forces…..
Hundreds of billions in war spending.
Any plans?
While the EU presider says Russia is a big threat and will be until ……??
What could go wrong?
The Brits won’t be happy about the UK joining any part of the Useless and Callous circus, particularly when the EU’s only perceived enemy is the Russian Federation, proably due to be joined by their potential enemies Serbia, Hungary, German, “terrorist” groups like the AfD and BSW, not to mention the former French colonies, China and Uncle Tom Cobbley ‘n’ all.
The EU has long shown signs of having lost the plot and is highly gifted at digging itself into a hole, only to dig ever deeper in a Promethean effort to get itself out. It is an enfeebled effort to create the Fourth Reich as it snowballs into economic, military, political and moral decline and it has become a feckless comedy routine, a pride of idiotic losers gathered like mangy weasels at the edges of the verdant jungle from which its unelected pretend government seeks to exclude its members.
No, I can’t see the Brits going for it, but I can see them dumping Starmer and putting Farage and his unruly crew in charge at an early general election on a promise to make a good strong treaties with Russia and China while Farage and his cabinet find their feet in government and begin the process of creating jobs by revitalising institutions like health, education and training, social care, and physical infrastructure as a basis to secure the future benefits of a new kind of industrial and service economy.
Not everyone in Reform is as rich as its donors, but many of its members and supporters are grandparents from the lost post-War world of security, hope and rising living standards which they would like to see their grandchildren and their grandchildren’s children enjoy. And given that Farage can obtain support from electors of right and left, he can expect a parliamentary party older than the modern norm which will be a very broad church. And he doesn’t want to go down in history as a one-hit wonder. As well as achieving Brexit, I think he would like his memory to be honoured for presiding over the re-building of Britain just as Putin has will be remembered for presiding over the re-creation of a high achieving Russia.
Trump Truce Leaves India Furious, Pakistan Elated as Risks Loom Bloomberg
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Benedict Donald: ‘I’m happy to announce that you qualify for an extended warranty on war, truce be said.’
The truce has already been broken – can Pakistan ask for its money back?
‘Thanks for calling customer support, and we appreciate that!
Please press 1 through 9 to be lied to in varying degrees of duplicity for duplicity’s sake.’
Too many people on both sides of the border really wanted to have it out. They weren’t happy that their forces just hooked and jabbed until honour was settled on both sides and then called it quits.
I decided last night to browse how one of the other India – Pakistan conflicts was handled.
I chose 1971 because that was the year what is called the Nixon shock hit the global economy.
Whip-lash global diplomacy was also in effect. Here’s one article I stumbled upon and there are a host of academic and think tank papers. But this particular take is a quicker and easier read:
https://www.wionews.com/india-news/explained-when-pakistans-ally-us-pushed-china-to-attack-india-during-indo-pak-war-of-1971-625741/
Explained | When Pakistan’s ally US pushed China to attack India during Indo-Pak war of 1971
This little nugget is especially interesting:
“…Astonishingly, while the US administration in 1971 encouraged China to act against India, it also assured India of military support in case China engages on its northern frontier in the Himalayas.
A Times of India report from 2011 showed communications between the Indian embassy in Washington and the government in New Delhi. It highlighted how the US offered India “all out” help if China were to enter the Indo-Pak standoff to favour its all-weather friend…”
>Our main problem is finding receptive countries.
Oh, well. Europeans will not object too loudly, so, “Wir schaffen das!” 2.0, I guess.
‘What you mean ‘we’, white man.’ :)
“Ihr kleine Leute schafft das schon”?
My working hypothesis is that Merz put a stop to asylum applications in preparation for the inflow of Gazans.
It is incredible that European governments just let the genocide happen on their front doorstep.
> It is incredible that European governments just let the genocide happen on their front doorstep
Oh, the EU elites already did that once in the 1990s. They shilly-shallied during the Yugoslavia breakup civil wars, hoping that the Serbs and Croats would hurry up and establish “facts on the ground” — finish carving up Bosnia and folding the pieces into “Greater Serbia” and “Greater Croatia” — before the bloodletting got too embarrassing and they would have to intervene.
The EU leadership lost that bet when the UN “safe zones” were overrun and the Dutch UN peacekeepers in Srebrenica reported being helpless eyewitnesses to a massacre.
I think “Wir schaffen das!” was just Merkels translation of Obamas “Yes we can” from some years earlier and your question can/should be asked about both slogans, of course.
>>>>Why Are ADHD Rates So Much Higher in the U.S.?
having been around a lot of kids now thanks to the kids…not a clinican, IMO ADHD is both much more rampant versus 30 years ago AND over-diagnosed. both can be simultaneously true.
*imo* It’s easy to spot the genuine ADHD/spectrum disorders especially at young ages when kids don’t know to feign XYZ symptoms for an Adderall Rx. But at the same time, I see kids how are on the line…and should try other options before Rx
ymmv.
As a diagnosis, the condition sprung up quite recently, describing (as pathological) the behavior of kids who don’t like sitting still in class, as observed by, often, teachers. It’s a totally BS diagnostic category. Whether the children benefit from the stimulants they’re prescribed is another matter; I suspect that they don’t. To my eyes, it’s another case of a medical and psychological establishment individualizing broad social problems, in this one that of an educational system and social environment human children aren’t generally well-suited for out of the box, so to speak. Conveniently for said Establishment, they sell the cure, and it’s addictive.
Don’t some schools but back on break time so that kids can spend more time in class? If so, that alone would explain why kids are so restless. It may be more “efficient ” having kids spend more time in class but that does not translate into being more “effective.”
I know people who were diagnosed with whatever they called it in the 50s. The movie Real Genius stars Val Kilmer in one of his first movie roles and features a female character who is “hyperkinetic.”
Whether we’re seeing a disorder or just varied ways of being, I don’t know.
My buddy’s little boy has it and he’s constantly hyped up on the meds, tapping his foot or fingers, can’t listen to music because it irritates him, needs to be reading or doing a puzzle all the time. I feel so bad for him.
my pet hypothesis has been the plastic tubing from fountain drinks and ice machines, as one of multiple vectors. which would line up with theUSA…..as constant usage of ice is a uniquely USA thing.
but there is no money in prevention,.
bought a new fridge and the manual stated that the ice machine met XYZ standard re. plastics off-gassing. makes you wonder.
My hypothesis is the severe cases i’m aware of all involve having a first child when you’re over 40, probably the only time this has ever really occurred en masse in history, as many American women put careers first and childbearing later.
This is a nonsense and offensive take, my oldest son has ADHD, come over and try spending a day with him when he’s not on medication. Do you have kids? Have you researched this or are you just speaking from ignorance? ADHD might be over diagnosed sure, but its a real condition. Everyone is neurologically different, and some people have a deficiency or dysregulation in how their brain produces and takes up dopamine. That can have a large range of manifestations, from impulsiveness, compulsive movements or speech, inability to focus, poor executive function, poor ability to understand future consequences of behavior (almost having a different understanding of time).
This is something people have always had. Think about people in your life who can’t make decisions, can’t focus or follow through on tasks, who takes illogical risks. How many kids did you know who couldn’t function in schools, or who as teenagers made crazy decisions, etc? They wouldn’t necessarily get a clinical diagnosis but they more than likely had some form of dopamine dysregulation, the more extreme cases of that are easy to spot. The increase in ADHD diagnosis is partially catching up on the fact that there is no such thing as a “standard” brain. The medical and social consequences of that spike in diagnosis and potential abuse of it is a different discussion. But to act like ADHD doesn’t exist is nonsense.
Overdiagnosis component is cultural tendency towards pharmaceutical optimization of spectrum symptoms. I attended a psychiatric grand rounds about 15 years ago that pointed out Australia also had elevated rates and the speaker hypothesized “maybe the ancestor who jumped on a ship instead of staying home carried the genetic risk.”
I used to spend a lot of time (ca 2 months each year) in Portugal, and kids’ behavior that was treated as perfectly normal there, in pretty much any informal venue, would have USAtians throwing a complete freddo of their behavior here. The control freakery and neurotic attitudes of adults here in the US is pathological.
I have an idea about why the rates of ADHD, as well as other psychological disorders are higher in the United States.
We are a nation of immigrants, non-indigenous people, living in an environment, and eating foods, that are not matched with what we need for our genetically survival. This is because of technology and capitalism; the ability and need to spread populations around the world. And since this change happened at such a rapid rate, as a population, we were not able to genetically adapt. Or we are genetically adapting, but we are seeing a higher rate of disease to match with the more rapid environmental change.
We are only a few generations from the 1880’s when immigration to the US really started taking off. Sow hat you are seeing is the product of genetic adaptation, except sped up by technology and capitalism.
I thought I was American, then I thought I was Italian and Polish, but now, thought my genetics, I see it ismuch more complicated, and I carry genetics of the indigenous people of the Baltic Sea. And eating and living like an American, or an Italian, was making me mentally ill.
‘Radical Centrist,wrathful tantric deity🇺🇦🇹🇼🎗️
@RadCentrism
So you’re not crazy…Google did get shittier.’
The past day or two Google has been experimenting with their home search page. So you would go to it and type up what you are looking for – only to discover a banner had appeared in the bottom right wanting to know if you wanted to try Google Gemini when you looked up. But in doing so, almost none of what you were tying made it past the appearance of that banner. You would then have to click on it to go away to then re-type your query. Then earlier tonight it went weird. I used Google Images to find some pictures I was looking for and when I clicked on a couple of them in different tabs, found that it was demanding that I sign into Google to see them. That behaviour has gone away now but I wonder if they were experimenting on users.
Karl Denninger over at Market Ticker makes a very astute point. With AI replacing search, we won’t even get to see the source attributed to the “results.” Just AI hallucinations, or black box output with lord knows what fudging being done to make sure that certain non-government approved results are never seen.
You know, search for “Bill of Rights” and find out that pesky 1st amendment is missing!
Not to mention, the enormous amount of energy it takes to produce garbage AI vs. simple search by indexing. Guess who is going to pay for that?
For a short while now, any Google search result will start off with an AI answer – which can be wildly wrong. In doing so, it uses far more energy that a plain old Google search ever did. But Google will then report that people are enthusiastically using this feature and they will have the numbers to “prove” it.
Yes, that is the dirty game. Force AI down people’s throats. Bundle it and make it impossible to separate from the operating system and charge more money for it (gee, where have we heard that one before?)
There will be ways around it involving physical books and the real world. Your local library may become the most valuable piece of real estate.
I’m starting to enjoy the sheer inanity of some of these AI results. Someone yesterday asked me if I’d heard of a certain political commentator, I hadn’t, and so I asked the google machine if this individual was a hawk. The AI overview dutifully informed me that was impossible as said commentator was a professor of geopolitics and not a bird. It was like it’d been trained on Abbot and Costello and understood the assignment perfectly.
Grok provides links to sources for answers and suggestions for follow up. I followed some linked sources to confirm they exist.
I’d guess it varies by tool. I’ve seen suggested lists of which AI tool to use for different purposes, so it seems are perceived to have different strengths.
Yeah, Google has been experimenting — and for more than just the past day or two — and that includes trying to get you to sign in if you’re using Firefox or another browser that doesn’t automatically do that.
Since 2020-21, I’ve dropped Google for Bing or anything else. (Only exception is Google Maps and YouTube, when I just open Chrome.) Whatever problems other search engines have, none of them push such increasing crud to wade through. Also, with Bing the line between that and CoPilot is established more straightforwardly and honestly.
Not incidentally, the last few months Amazon also has been trying to force people to sign in to read more than a couple of book reviews. The only way to deal with this cr*p is just to vote with one’s feet, as it were, and minimize use of these companies’ services.
Kagi search FTW – yes, it costs $10/mo, but is really worth it to me.
Re: Antidote du jour: Is that shot looking up the Eagles butt an intentional (double) metaphor?
>>>So you’re not crazy…Google did get sh—-‐-
there are plenty of alternatives to Google search. they’re generally èqually bad (someti es better at the margins, see Duckduckgo) but you have a clean conscious not feeding the best.
Gmail, google maps, Android Auto on the other hand, Google Drive…can’t escape the hydra there.
Having to set up a new Android phone is a punishment. During the past 4 years or so, I have been able to weed out much of the reach of The Evil One, however with the advent of the updated OS on this phone I have to relearn permissions settings, some by trial and error.
YouTube’s efforts to require sign-in are at an all-time high for me right now, except on my iPad.
There’s also almost no history, except on my iPad.
Technology is exhausting.
>China Us joint statement
Who was worse off when these higher tariffs were in place?
“Requests to remove tattoos considered ‘suspicious’ by Trump administration are increasing”
Saw two or three episodes of an American TV series where tattoo artists would use their skill to cover up a botched or inconvenient tattoo. So maybe those people could get their tattoos changed to one saying MAGA or maybe a silhouette of Trump’s profile to cover up a really big tattoo-
https://www.citypng.com/photo/4102/black-donald-trump-face-silhouette-side-view
Or maybe you will have underground laser clinics arise to zap those tattoos away.
Get up in the morning, looking for the dead, sir
So that every revenge factor can be fed
Poor me Israelites, ah
Get up in the morning, looking for the dead, sir
So that every revenge factor can be fed
Poor me Israelite
My wife and my kids, they packed up and left the commotion
Darling, she said, all we have left is to swim in the ocean
Poor me Israelites
Buildings them a-tear up, home is gone
I don’t want to end up pushing daisies on the other side
Poor me Israelites
After a storm of missiles there must be a calm
They catch many who bought the farm
You sound your alarm
Poor me Israelites
Get up in the morning, looking for the dead, sir
So that every revenge factor can be fed
Poor me Israelites
Buildings them a-tear up, home is gone
I don’t want to end up pushing daisies on the other side
Poor me Israelites
After a storm of missiles there must be a calm
They catch many who bought the farm
You sound your alarm
Poor me Israelites
Poor me Israelites, poor me Israelites, poor me Israelites
Israelites, by Desmond Dekker & the Aces
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxtfdH3-TQ4
No Democrat Death Watch today? You can’t possibly tell me they’ve been on their best behavior. Maybe they all took their mothers out yesterday.
The real sting for Dems this morning is the drug price executive order – imagining (and this requires absolutely dizzying optimism) this is in fact signed, actionable, and felt in American households, it would really be a coup for this administration with Joe Public. Panem et circenses when previously one went into debt just for a bite at the panem is a big deal. Medicamenta et circenses? Apologies to the Latin language.
…as an aside, that Qatari gift to Trump was featured in yesterday’s guillotine watch despite being a 7 year old twitter video at the time, and I can’t find reporting on it from before links was posted yesterday, so I can only assume Haig is a deep insider somewhere.
‘No Democrat Death Watch today?’
You can’t have a Death Watch when you are talking about a Zombie.
If my first two patients of the day are any indication – this is going to be another classic example of Trump doing rings around what appear to be the increasingly feckless Dems. I just cannot believe what I am seeing. He has literally taken their very own issue ( or what used to be) and turned it around on them – so that with any outcome – he will win and they will lose. I just dare them to take up the mantle for corporate America when SO SO MANY people are out here and forced to deal with this grift every day. And the very sad part of this is the Dems have had multiple years in power in Congress and the White House and have chose to do nothing about this. They had multiple chances and chose to do nothing about this at all – even doing things that actually made things worse. I just cannot believe what I am seeing – an issue ( drug costs for the average American ) that has been all over the pages of The Nation, Mother Jones, In These Times for years and years when I used to read them. I read none of them now since the advent of IDENTITY POLITICS ONLY in our pages …..now, they are all like reading “The Gnostic Gospels” at this point – but that is a topic for another day. The working families and the working poor and the poor themselves mean nothing to the movers and shakers of the DNC and their media tools anymore. This negligence of their one time base is their big existential issue and so far I am seeing nothing that tells me that any of them are getting the point.
Patient 1 – a 17 year old young man – still with his parents – Type I DM – He is on about 50 units of insulin every day. This cost is about 550 dollars a month. A cost that with the other 3 kids – the parents, both blue collar workers, can really not afford without taking money from somewhere else. They have the “Obamacare special” family insurance – that has I think I remember them saying a 10K deductible. So every dime comes right out of their pockets. What is really fun is not just the meds. The labs come out of their pocket too – so we have to do hardly any labs so the family can eat. Like so many other patients, I am at times flying blind as their physician. It takes great concentration on my part to pay attention to other signs and symptoms so as not to miss things. I am glad I have the 35 years behind me, some young docs are not so fortunate.
Patient 2 – a 54 year old woman diagnosed with lupus and renal failure and a very unusual vasculitis of the kidneys and large arteries. This diagnosis was made about Oct of last year. Again, she has a very high deductible insurance, so her 2100 a month meds are right out of her pocket – I think we have finally reached the deductible for the year – so going forward she will only have to pay an 800 dollar co-pay. Even the 800 is an enormous strain on her family’s finances. On two occasions in my office, she has just wept. I have learned a lot about humility in my spiritual life – the negligence of my profession in these matters has forced it upon me. Look no further for the “moral burnout” that is now almost everywhere in my profession. It is so very real.
This is all day, every day. Both of these patients brought this new EO up with me today. I am here to tell you right now – just the fact that he is trying to do something about it – after years of watching the “party of the working class” just sit around on their hands and do nothing – is going to be a political win for Trump. Both of these families seem to be not believing that he is the one to throw this first grenade to help them.
Dems, just a piece of advice from me – I am down here in the trenches with your former voters every day, I would knock it off with the pointy head navel gazing talk – the condescension, etc. These people are exasperated and desperate. I am not sure how you are going to pull this one off and be intact on the other side, but the issue for you is that your current status quo and the “messaging” you have employed for years has now been turned on its head. Somehow, I have a very sick feeling that very promptly we will see Dems everywhere begin to stand up for the “beleaguered” Pharma companies. “How dare Trump do this to them!!!!” Please prove me wrong – and get off your asses and actually do something about it.
Not many people (outside of DC, Manhattan, and Disney execs in Burbank) would shed a tear if Trump signed an executive order banning pharma adverts on TV.
Surely the legislative authority exists? Make it happen, Donald! I wanna see DNC heads turn red w/rage.
really be a coup for this administration with Joe Public
I think coup is overstating it considering the imminent impact of supply chain disruption…more like an easy and insignificant win so he can poke the dems in the eye again as the dems couldn’t be bothered to do even that much.
Had a 10 acre wildfire here in Tiny Town early yesterday in my absence, and early May has previously been premature in terms of conflagrations occurring. It was squashed quickly by firefighting aircraft aloft lightening their lodes of Phos-Chek.
We have a new nationwide glamping outfit here named Autocamp, and for $300 a night you get to be ensconced in a new Airstream trailer. Each of the 85 sites has a fire pit, and no local would dare have a fire in the summer months when the fire risk is crazy, why does this place about 1/3rd of a mile away from where the aforementioned wildfire happened, get a pass?
https://autocamp.com/gallery/?_gallery_location=56
It all depends on whose palms got greased. People who play with fires end up becoming flaming idiots.
“…no local would dare have a fire in the summer months when the fire risk is crazy, why does this place about 1/3rd of a mile away from where the aforementioned wildfire happened, get a pass?”
Are the locals simply acting out of common sense or are there legal restrictions? If there are no enforceable legal restrictions, and given the risk of catastrophic fire, monkey wrenching might be the environmentally and socially responsible course of action.