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.
Russia’s obvious reply to this stunt is that they do not know if Zelensky is authorized by the proper authorities in Kiev to negotiate on behalf of Ukraine, therefore, the Rada should formally repeal the law banning negotiations with Russia and authorizing the terms on which Zelensky can negotiate with the Russians in detail, ie. actually specify what he can and cannot negotiate. In the end, what is Zelensky exactly, as far as Russians go? He’s not a president of Ukraine. He holds no official position of any legitimate authority really, so the legitimate authority has to formally grant him the powers: Russia might as well negotiate with Emperor Norton’s ghost in absence of such formal and legal grant of authority.
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.
I thought Germans did plan for something like that in the long term (not many details, but those guys planned for all sorts of things that could never come) . Of course, the guy who would have been the chief judge at that tribunal came to a bad end in Feb, 1945 and Mr B17 has leaner and meaner descendants…
All sorts of things that could never come, came after reunification, including Germans accusing others of genocide, and an Auschwitz party for the organizers only.
“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
The thing is, they behave as they are on coke, not only on that clip…
A person of Macron’s position (and pretty much anyone else with enough $$$$ and not blatantly drug-addled) can easily doctor-shop to get unlimited scrips for medicinal stimulants.
I would not be shocked if Macron imbibes on “go pills” (dextroamphetamine) also sometimes prescribed for ADHD
That food device is a cocktail stick for canapés. The twist at the end markes a convenient handle and nobody spikes themselves picking it up.
Yes, this is dumb. I have performed that exact same maneuver multiple times, generally after having some kind of finger food like a pastry. Macron was just clearing the work surface and putting it away to be discarded later. At most he looks a little furtive doing it, but maybe he always does.
If it’s drugs, why does he leave it out in plain sight for the first half of the video? He doesn’t even look nervous. And why do none of the others react in any way? This is just people selectively interpreting evidence to fit their preconceptions.
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.
I’ve listened to Akkadian and appreciated his take on Syria, but trying to discredit your enemies with stupid s^#+ like this is embarrassing, and as experience shows, counterproductive, as Russiagate and the Stormy Daniels indictment showed.
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.
Even though I dislike all three of them, I very much doubt that they were snorting Colombian marching powder en route to Kiev. That said…..this clip has the vibe of three naughty boys who were caught misbehaving when mommy came home unexpectedly. Especially near the end of the clip, when Macron switches the white object from one hand to the other and then quickly puts it behind his back. Why did he do this? Weird.
Macron has aged. He doesn’t look quite the ticket.
Merz looks more like a meek tax accountant than a serious play-ah. He has even less charisma than his predecessor.
If Starmer loses his present job, he might consider a new career in cinema as a sleazy politician. He would fill the role brilliantly.
It’s a strange sort of a war when three top politicians can travel by train to UKR’s capital city (located only 100 km or so from RU) without any fear, even while spouting the most vehement nonsense against the same country (RU) that could easily whack them if it wanted to. “Full-scale invasion”, indeed.
For the Russians to push this nonsense is self-defeating. It makes it so much easier for Western media to portray anything Russia says as disinformation. Whoever decided to push this on the Russian side should get his head examined.
Russians, and the rest of the World, are pushing this nonsense as a joke, just like memes about Zelensky’s nose candy, and his attire. Western media portrays anything Russia says as disinformation by default, and idi0ts buy it by default, regardless of what Russians say or do. If you expect Russians (or Chinese, or any self respecting country) to care about Western media, let alone pander to it, you have a lot of catching up to do (head examination optional).
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.
I think NC has linked to studies previously – they found the trees were not recovering after the fires out west. Sorry for the loss. We are losing species in the Appalachians. Hard sometimes.
Couple of years ago we had the smoke from the fires- drove home for me that there isn’t an away, really, to go to. I was getting greens recently from a local regenerative ag farm and conversation was along the lines of at least we are here, away from all of the crazy. And I did not say but thought – not sure it works like that anymore.
“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.
Whats the logic behind thinking that Reform would reverse course on that kind of stuff? Besides wishful thinking about how Farage wants to be remembered. If Farage was a real threat to the overall project he wouldn’t be getting kid gloves from the media, he would be getting the Corbyn treatment
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.’
Is customer support outsourced to India?
Humbly report, sir.
These are American-made fabrications…
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…”
That sounds like the approach taken by the US just before Iraqi invasion of Kuweit…
The reason Modi is “furious” is because the process put Pakistan and India on equal footing, pride and all that.
Rather, it was Trump’s move to upstage Prime Minister Narendra Modi, undermine India’s longstanding policy to resolve the Kashmir territorial dispute through bilateral talks and — perhaps worst of all — put the sworn enemies on an equal footing, a move officials in New Delhi have resisted as the nation’s economy surges ahead of Pakistan.
The water sharing agreement needs to be handled. If Modi decides to deny Pakistan its share of the Indus it will be war. If it’s war nukes will happen. Tactical nukes are a big part of Pakistan’s strategy for a war with India, the result of India having a much larger army.
>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.
If anything the EU elites were virulently anti-Serb, and wasted a lot of time and effort supporting the doomed effort by the Muslims to maintain a unitary state under their control. Some (notably the Germans) combined being virulently anti-Serb with also being pro-Croat. Only one “safe area” was overrun, and Srebrenica was anyway not demilitarised as had been promised. An entire Division of the Bosnian Muslim Army was stationed there. After the Bosnian Serbs attacked the town, the Division ran away, with the other adult males. There was very little violence in the town itself: the massacres were of surrendered soldiers and others who were captured on the road to Tuzla, and taken away to be shot, some fifty kilometres away. Like the rest of us, the Dutch had no information about what what going on.
Why were the Germans so pro-Croat? I hesitate to jump to the WW2 ties option, but the other connection that springs to my mind is (cultural) Catholicism, which after all still has some power in Germany. That all seems pretty tenuous, though.
To put it quite roughly, for a long time Croatia was Habsburg, Bosnia-Serbia was Ottoman. A lot of ethnic Germans from Hungary moved to the Militärgrenze in the 16th century.
Not really sure if it’s relevant, though. I’d say it’s more likely a garden-jungle thing, as you refer to.
I thought you were Russian (and that Russians should know those things). It predates WWII, just like with Galicians/Ruthenians. Austrian Empire groomed subgroup of Slavs on its territory to make them fight other Slavs (including the racial superiority stuff, religion, etc.). Can’t say much has chaged since. Bandera’s equivalent was Pavelic. You can guess what happened to him, and his followers, after the WWII (and after the Cold War).
What pro-intervention, R2P (“responsibility to protect”) oriented protest there was in Germany, was for years very much a minority opinion, and not so much “anti-Serb” as specifically anti the Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadžić’s policy of ethnic cleansing—deliberately having his followers commit atrocities in what had been harmoniously mixed areas, in order to drive the non-Serbs out and scar relations so deeply and horribly that future co-existence and tolerance would be impossible.
I’m sorry to brake it to you, but CNN (and everyone else) lied to you when reporting about the events.
Since I’m in Germany, it would have been state-supported broadcasters ARD and ZDF rather than CNN.
If what you say is true, then the AfD and other populists are right when they call mainstream media the Lügenpresse (“lying press”), and right to want to abolish the compulsory fee whereby one is forced to pay for such biased, war-mongering, politically preachy public broadcasting.
I just wrote CNN as a lowest common denominator of sorts. All NATO state controlled media have been coordinated since forever (and even more so in the times of war). Whether that is true is easily verifiable by checking them out right now.
I bet ARD, ZDF, RTL, DW, etc, are full of praise for freedom loving Banderites (Slava Whatever) and diversity spreading headchoppers of Syria (that welcomed Baerbock so kindly). I am afraid I have to say that Germans have the perfect record of supporting genocides while claming moral high ground, and even talking about preventing them. The term Goebbelsian comes to mind. I guess there is indeed nothing new under the sun.
Paying for the state media by people is not bad per se, because alternative is for them to be owned by Bezoses and Musks, which would just cement them as Lügenpresse without any hope of reverting. The real problems is that one should not need “AfD and other populists” to tell them what should be obvious to everyone by now. The fact that they have support in the Eastern Geramany is an important telltale sign (and an indicator of presence of critical thinking). People from “Communist Block” have learned to not trust the news, while the “Free Speach und Democracy Crowd From the West” have been brainwashed into believing whatever nonsense the TV says (like Putin being the new Hitler, and Germans being on the right side of history now in spite of repeating the same exercise for the third time in a row and expecting different results).
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.
Recess and outdoor play for elementary school students was cut way back during corporate school reform years under Bush and Obama, with the time increasingly devoted to test prep.
Gotta prepare those kids for the miseries of the workplace, don’t we?
Exactly. Retired public school teacher here. Elementary-age kids need 2 breaks/recess each day. The Bush2 doctrine– “no child left untested” put the kabosh on this practice. Standardized test pressures resulted in the admin at my school telling me to knock off the 2nd recess my 5th graders had routinely received. In the long run, I think it’s counter-productive, for test scores and particularly for boys.
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.
you are not being unreasonable. one neighborhood friend had all her kids post-40 and her husband is >5 years older.
The oldest boy, I knew that he had clinical ADHD within the 1st hour of hanging out w/them at the park (when the kid was 5). And I was relieved for him when I learned that he was put on meds in 1st grade and admitted to the ‘special school’.
The youngest girl….she’s (IMO) right on the line—treatable w/behavior modifications (i hope).
Over-40 pregnancy is correlated w/autism spectral disorders (but not iron-clad as the studies are there, but sparse).
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.
He didn’t ‘act like ADHD doesn’t exist’. He pretty clearly commented that *some* kids have it for real, and some are over-diagnosed. Literally.
Calling someone “nonsense and offensive” is a bit much when you’re putting words in their mouth. Maybe back away from the keyboard when things affect you personally?
I try to stay away from the keyboard when it comes to stuff that affects me personally but sometimes there are demonstrable things – like the fact that although IN GENERAL USians overpay for meds compared to us people in UK, it is interesting that my antidepressant (first generation, went off patent 50 years ago) typically in USA costs 10% of the cost charged to public systems in both UK and Australia.
It’s because there is a critical mass of older shrinks in US who realise its efficacy. I had shrinks in 3 countries across 2 continents say things like “it’s the mother of all anti-depressants” or “it’s the antidepressant of last resort because if you’re capable of being affected by a medication this one WILL do it”.
There are people close to me with ADHD and autism. Personally I think (as NC has occasionally hypothesised) over processed foods might be a part of the problem. Each generation seems to have half the number of gut bacteria of their parents. NOT an explanation but worthy of research.
How is this not an offensive take, “It’s a totally BS diagnostic category”, that also has the virtue of being completely false?
As Adrian has said, ADHD ia a very real, serious disorder. It is likely overdiagnosed and the stimulant medications for it are absolutely abused even without having a diagnosis. However it is a real condition that seriously affects persons, worse so due to the stigma against persons claiming to have it.
There are alternative treatment options that don’t involve stimulants or can be used in conjunction but the point is that it is a very real debilitating condition. Persons can have very mild to severe manifestations with the milder end being harder to differentiate from another pathology (like a personality disorder or Bipolar disorder) or even from normal variations in human behaviour (everyone can potentially be a little more impulsive/forgetful than others).
With ADHD it’s not just the inability to sit still in classes (genuinely, in part, a problem of the popular mode of education). The behaviours do manifest in every sphere of life and the end result of untreated ADHD is often somebody unable to ever make any accomplishments (at least not to the extent they should be capable of) who has resigned themself to being that forgetful, unreliable character in everyone elses’ life.
They often develop depression due to the effect this has on their social lives, anxiety, addictions and have a higher risk of becoming criminals due to their impulsiveness, difficulty planning ahead as well as feeling misunderstood and alienated.
RFK also says that we are facing an Autism epidemic but as has been pointed out, this is largely due to improvements (and changes) in how we recognize and define Autism. The case is similar for ADHD.
I also want to add that the misconception that hyperactivity is solely due to boys being forced to sit still is an implicit bias even in Psychiatrists who often miss ADHD in girls because they are less likely to present as hyperactive/disruptive. This is possibly due to gender norms being instilled differently (ergo ‘boys will (should be allowed to) be boys’.
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’ve noticed in Greece that kids are often running around in adult-occupied areas and are at the same time well behaved when doing so. They manage to entertain themselves without pitching a fit.
Contract that with the US. A few years ago at a diner near me, the owner threw out a couple and their toddler when the kid wouldn’t stop screaming in the restaurant and the parents didn’t do a thing about it. The mother thought she’d embarrass the owner and posted on Facebook about it, only to have it backfire. The social media contingent largely sided with the owner, gave the incident a lot of publicity, and there was a line out the door at the diner for weeks afterward.
Definitely something pathological about USian culture.
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.
Oh, please. The Romans and even more the British — admittedly, a mongrel people — wandered all over the world and adapted to living in places in their farflung empires quite successfully without any diagnoses of ADHD. Cases of psychopathy, maybe, and malaria and allergies, certainly.
What’s there specifically about “the genetics of the indigenous people of the Baltic Sea” and “eating and living like …an Italian” — especially as certain Italian regions have some of the highest longevity rates in the world — which would make you “mentally ill” or pollute your precious bodily fluids or whatever?
> Oh, please
Very dismissive and condescending without understanding my background.
>the British — admittedly, a mongrel people — wandered all over the world and adapted to living in places in their farflung empires quite successfully without any diagnoses of ADHD
The British are not a nation of new immigrants so it is possible that the ADHD phenotype has already been eradicated from the population by natural selection.
>especially as certain Italian regions have some of the highest longevity rates in the world
Italians most likely have higher longevity 1) because of their genetics and 2) because they are still living in Italy, eating the foods and living in an environment that they are genetically predisposed to. This is the fault of the “blue zone” studies, they do not account for the fact of matching genetics with diet and environment.
It is well know if you put Inuit on an TAD they will become more sick, more quickly.
For myself, having genetics that predispose me to diabetes (like the inuit) eating the high carbohydrate diet of my father’s lineage increases my diabetes risk. And the link between diabetes and mental illness is known.
‘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.
Yes, Social Rhino, Grok is a good one, and I really like Perplexity because you can see all the sources that it used to get you that specific answer.
I got a new laptop last week and I’m now using Linux Mint. I had some questions about how to use it since I’ve only ever been on Microsoft. Perplexity scoured all the chat rooms and forums for Linux and got me a series of very specific steps to fix the problem and it worked on the first try. Happy camper here.
I think we are now in a great struggle, with this technology, where it is going to be weaponized by Big Tech and others (governments) to do evil. Of course, there are positive use cases, as the one that you mentioned.
As usual, it comes down to trust. Who owns Grok, and who controls it? They may be benevolent at the moment. But can they be bought out by Private equity? Who has the power to destroy it if it starts stepping on Sam Altman’s airhose?
On the other hand, can some benevolent individual build out their own AI farm to run LLMs free from influence from corporate actors?
All of these are open questions, and I have no answers. I think resistance will come down to a willingness to revert to the physical world (libraries, paper copies, books, etc.) and refusing to use the technology on ethical grounds is an option if you have the clout.
If “search” won’t link to our stuff, will be our incentive to create any original content and put it on the web?
Start making a list of sites and, if necessary, share them. I keep lists of sites.
And the first I’ve heard of a number of sites was right here on NC.
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.
I use Firefox. Is Kagi better?
It prevents tracking and ads. For instance X won’t let me see its stuff because X contains ads and trackers and Firefox won’t allow it. In fact I’m not able to see any of the X links on NC because of this unless I specifically allow ads etc. which I won’t do.
Actually I use Firefox coupled with DuckDuckGo.
Kagi is a search engine. It uses Google’s index but you pay for the service, instead of them selling you to advertisers.
You can use Kagi with Firefox. I do.
Kagi has a browser now as well. MacOS only though,
https://kagi.com/orion/
My routine with X content is to copy/paste the link, and replace ‘x.com’ with ‘nitter.net’. That works for now…
@ Jokerstein-
Thanks for that. I was unaware and it looks far better for document search and improves my AI options. If the latter is what one is interested in, I note that Kagi’s subscription rate is half of Claude’s but gives full access to Claude as well as other AI services, if I understand correctly.
I’ll have to do a trial.
@ Keith Newman
Kagi is a search engine, Firefox is a browser.
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.
The recent Android permissions behavior, particularly around the notifications UI, feel like they’re deliberate punishments for taking away their sweet sweet tracking data. Evil to the core.
Get a Fairphone and run e/is, open-soyrce Android with the ad/spy-ware and google account requirement taken out.
Just visited the Fairphone site. One of their phones costs 500 euros minimum. My cheapo smartphone cost $100.
Is the fairphone worth the difference, and how many can afford to pay it?
DuckDuckGo is much much better than Google search. Results are better and more relevant. No sponsored results. No ads. No tracking.
I use DuckDuckGo as the default search engine on all my devices.
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.
I compare the response of tech to a mining company whose ore is playing out.
It is more difficult to attract advertising dollars as platforms attempt to monetize financially strapped consumers.
And there are more companies pushing for revenue growth.
It seems that it will only get worse as comumers become lower grade “ore” and the companies try ever harder.
Tennis channel offere a paid/no adds option. Perhaps the future will be either that or even more adds, pushing people harder towards ‘paid’. Some streaming options similarly offer this.
To avoid signing in on youtube to watch a video, go in the url, and type nsfw before youtube, then hit enter. It will redirect you to nsfwyoutube (so named because you can watch videos that require ‘age verification’ without signing in, the site itself isn’t anymore nsfw than youtube) where you can (usually) watch the video just fine.
Kind of a hassle but preferrable to the alternative to me.
Eg: https://nsfwyoutube.com/watch?v=Dcd-U70SYgI would be the link to last Sunday’s movie The Night Stalker.
>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.
While we’re at it, instead of holding lawyers up on high standards, get rid of shylock billboard advertising.
I truly appreciate this insight. My comparatively good health (and insurance) should really be cause for me to find religion; your second patient’s out of pocket for meds is more or less the mortgage payment I can barely afford and now I’m shuddering to imagine choosing between losing my home or my health. I can’t imagine people in the position of your patients forgetting this – although, if the plan goes belly-up for any other reason, that long memory could be to the administration’s detriment. Which Dem strategist was it who insisted the party ought to just do nothing, again?
I hate to tell you but you have been had. The fact Dems are awful and Trump is not a Dem does not make Trump necessarily not awful. The Trump drug executive order is a PR stunt.
Pharma stocks are up.
From The Lever:
Trump already disarmed the war on drug prices. This morning the president signed a new executive order instructing Health and Human Services Secretary RFK Jr. to use Medicare to buy drugs at the lowest world-market prices. Big Pharma and its investors seem unconcerned, likely because RFK Jr. has already flip-flopped and declared he won’t use a far more powerful price-reducing tool: a law that says regulators can “march in” and license lower-priced versions of government-developed medicines that Big Pharma does not make “available to the public on reasonable terms.” In his first term, Trump tried to permanently block the government from ever using that law.
See additionally:
There is a lot more like that from informed sources.
Logic at work. Thanks. I’d add a simple example from nature that illustrates the dangers of over-generalizing.
Rattlesnakes are venomous. A scorpion is not a rattlesnake. That does not mean the scorpion’s bite doesn’t contain venom.
Scorpions and rattlesnakes would make more appropriate mascots for our current 2-party system than Donkeys and Elephants, IMO.
Should have written “scorpion’s sting.” Doh!
Let’s hope it does more than the EO he signed in his first term to do almost the exact same thing – lower drug prices:
Lowering Drug Prices by Putting America First Executive Order 13948 of September 13, 2020
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2020/09/23/2020-21129/lowering-drug-prices-by-putting-america-first
DELIVERING MOST-FAVORED-NATION PRESCRIPTION DRUG PRICING TO AMERICAN PATIENTS Executive Orders May 12, 2025
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/05/delivering-most-favored-nation-prescription-drug-pricing-to-american-patients/
I don’t remember the first EO having a big impact, but I could be wrong. At least he seems to know that doing anything would be very very popular with average Americans, but all the politicians have to had know that since at least Clinton.
Facts, Yves!
I doubt dems are dumb. But they’re -paid by pharma, meaning pharma dictates all their pharma views. My guess is they won’t publicly support ‘poor’ pharma but they’ll just duck the issue as much as possible. Luckily, pharma ads buy msm, too, Jo our free press (what a laugh, they’re just as bought as us congress) is not likely to ask the dems any tough questions.
But can trump do this with ex order? Imo not gonna get to house or senate vote any time soon.
Help start a new party, IM DOC!
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.
Coup assuming as I say the impact is actually felt positively, which seems to me a high bar to clear, whereas dunking on the Dems for a news cycle (whatever unit of length that is nowadays) seems more or less guaranteed…and actually, based on IM Doc’s comment maybe we shouldn’t underestimate the goodwill generated just from the gesture alone. I’m not, as they say, on the ground.
and actually, based on IM Doc’s comment maybe we shouldn’t underestimate the goodwill generated just from the gesture alone.
On that front, Trump could give Luigi Mangione a presidential pardon and become President-for-life
Opposite Bingo Card*, the latest Dem strategy.
Results so far on past initiatives are mixed, with media raving and public disgusted.
*Who had fill in the blank head scratcher?
The trump administration wants to find Mangione guilty of a federal crime so that it can execute him. There’s an old saying around my neck of the woods, trump went into the sh**house, and came out smelling like sh**.
The Pharma Lobby is not what it used to be, eh? Or is not paying its dues?
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.
I blame S’mores, which are a gooey mess and supposedly a rite of camping passage, and if you’re laying out 3 bills a night for car camping, you’d damned well better get S’mores ‘prepared’ over the fire.
I think the fire yesterday might have been a wakeup call, gonna contact them and explain the dilemma between the have fires and the have nots.
Eldest and i moved most of my home kitchen to the almost complete kitchen here at the Wilderness Bar(*)…but i forgot that i put my propane regulator on mom’s house 2 years ago when her 50 yo tank sprung a leak…she has my 2 larger(but still carryable) tanks, too…so no gas for the now spic and span stove.
so ive had a slow fire going at the bar for 3 days, now…so’s i can cook(and make coffee, since mr coffee died some weeks ago, and one must heat water for the french press.)
luckily, we’ve had around 11″ of rain in the last 3 weeks or so…and i’m careful and adept at this sort of thing,lol(odd shaped bit of R Panel that i ran off with from the dump for just this purpose…covering the remains of the fire.)
so the house is a wreck…havent had time to sweep up all the stuff that crept under stove and tables and counters over the years.
but i spend pretty much all my time outside and at the bar anyways,lol.
i couldnt do this where you live.
(altho i do have the big smoker pit thing for when its dry as a bone and/or theres a burn ban…closes up tight, and ive learned to maintain a really slow fire in that, too)
*– when Tam and I hatched our grand plan for our side of the place, this bit was included…why maintain 2 kitchens?. 10 months+ out of the year, i do all my cooking out here anyway….and even in winter, on a warmish day, i’ll whup up a big a$$ dutch oven of whatever i intend to eat for the next week, and nuke it when its cold again.
I have fires all the time in a romance with flames from December to May, its my time to burn out the understory on my terms-not Mother Nature’s.
2 months ago, there were 7 or 8 distinctive gradations of green on display, and now they’ve morphed into a tan underbelly, having died back with their roots on.
A spark in August could be a 360 degree fuse, fire emanating out in all directions.
yeah, it gets thataway here sometimes, just not as bad as y’all have it(at least so i glean).
ive got those huge sprinkler heads, from the rolling sprinklers, mounted on pvc and then mounted to tposts, or to…say…the corner pole of the bar.
100′ radius, so i keep my side pretty green and growing year round.
and im surrounded by great big fields of newly sprigged coastal bermuda.
when we are in a drought…usually in late winter and late summer, barring a hurricane in the Gulf, i keep a sharp eye on the NWS for wind and humidity, etc…so i can plan a small fire in the open pit for to do th big dutch oven(wont fit in the pit). right here in the Bar environs im pretty protected from all but westerly winds ….and those pretty much suck, anyway:thats where we get the 70mph blows and west texas dust…so im unlikely to be outside anyway.
The Democrats, ladies and gentlemen! One party rule state:
Newsom to Ask Cities to Ban Homeless Encampments, Escalating Crackdown (NY Times via archive.ph)
(bold mine)
Indeed, no more excuses for liberal Democrats to permit homelessness. Capitalism causes homelessness.
Why not just be honest and call for euthanizing homeless people because they’re inconvenient and bother you?
(bold mine)
Because markets, go die, is hardly a shift.
when i was livin in my lil truck, long ago(before i got the van and figgered out that my hometown was out to get me and hit the road)..i’d park behind mr gatti’s(my first real job)…with the owner’s permission…and the cops would harass me(and 3 others back there) at regular intervals every night.
so the 4 of us…one a family with a baby in an old montecarlo…started camping(sic) in the cop shop parking lot,lol.
i was the one with sufficient stones to go inform the night dispatch guy that we were there.
harassment stopped, at least for a while.
those 180k folks should descend upon sacremento…and take up residence on the lawn of whatever high dollar mansion newsome lives in on their dime….and every state owned parking lot and park and greenspace in and around wherever the state gov is concentrated.
that would definitely be newsworthy,lol.
solidarity and direct action.
lots of heads will be kicked, but such a concentration of the huddled masses is unlikely to be ignored.
make the problem visible.
like a woodstock for homeless folks
how many houses in cali sit empty right now, i wonder?
Book: “There Is No Place for Us”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/there-is-no-place-for-us-review-trapped-in-a-shadow-realm/ar-AA1ElBbx
Politicians want to believe all homeless people are on the streets or in shelters. The true number of homeless is 6 times higher than US politicians would like to believe, according to the author of the book.
Here in Santa Rosa there are homeless sleeping in any sheltered spot, under every bridge, in any corner not visible from the street.
This is in addition to the homeless camps and shelters.
I’d be very surprised if the official homeless numbers were anywhere close to accurate.
yeah.
been there.
for the 5 or 6 years i was actually on the road(all over the south), there was little community amongst the other road warriors.
but, then again, my traveling companions and i didnt stay in one place.
but 3 or 4 years later in austin, when we got evicted bc the rent check bounced…because my last paycheck from college town bounced…we were on the streets…with the veterans and “Dragworms” and lunatics and whole families just tryin to stay out of all the formers’ way.
lotsa nooks and crannies in austin.
except for the dragworms, all the rest…even the obviously insane…were rather helpful, in a reciprocal, golden rule kinda way.
id get a big dutch oven out of storage, and someone would buy beans, someone else absconded with some leftover chicken or something from work…and we’d make a meal down in the canyon, out of sight.
some of the most profound fellowfeeling experiences ive had were on the road, or on the streets.
on the road, it was folks who let me camp out in their yard(or compound,lol)…learned to cook cajun and creole thataways.
on the streets, it was more about we’re all in this damned boat…lets stop fighting over scraps and do something to fill our bellies.
theres a trail off of barton skyway that leads down…perilously…into barton creek canyon…nobody went there at the time.
go down stream from where the trail hits the creekbed about a half mile, and theres this huge rock overhang.
we lived there for almost a year with all manner of people, coming and going.
only saw the cops down there once…and i went out to negotiate…got them to back the fuck off, and let us eat our derned dinner in peace(it was just getting done, and i was the cook)
.
re: Ukraine Germany
One of these (almost) unreported events that show how deeply in trouble Germany is intellectually and humanistically speaking. And why there won´t be any change until its enforced by economic decline:
JUNGE WELT
machine-translation
Liberation Day
Festival of Revisionists
Ukraine: Bundeswehr Major General courts “Azov” Nazi commander at May 8th commemoration
By Susann Witt-Stahl
https://archive.is/DXJhb
p.s. This is of course not the first time that the SPD-affiliated foundation “Friedrich-Ebert” has been supporting such harrowing events. Just to add, “Friedrich-Ebert” also cooperated e.g. with RAND when RAND published it´s more dovish alternative paper to the infamously inept “Over-Extending Russia”. That alternative was trying to avoid war. But in its essence built on the same ideology.
I don’t know, that sounds rather apt considering Friedrich Ebert’s own support for war with Russia in 1914… I think there may be some ideological continuity there. It’s German social democrats for European/Western civilisation versus Eastern barbarism, though the content of both the civilisation and the barbarism has changed somewhat.
👍
I didn´t want to point it out but yeah, any serious person stumbles over this of course.
(On the other hand 15 years ago even the Rosa-Luxemburg Foundation by DIE LINKE was not willing to support a project that would sympathetically picture Hugo Chavez´s economic policies. So in any case those names are eventually names of product brands merely. Regardless of what one intends to do. In the case of the SPD vs. RU then and today it is too obvious to not be appalled.)
re: Israel – USS Liberty case from 1967
New Appeals Briefs Filed in USS Liberty FOIA Lawsuit
by Michelle J. Kinnucan Posted on May 12, 2025
https://original.antiwar.com/Michelle_Kinnucan/2025/05/11/new-appeals-briefs-filed-in-uss-liberty-foia-lawsuit/
re: Yugoslavia history
Neutrality Studies Channel
A recommended conversation between Pascal Lottaz and Susan Woodward:
The Real Reason Yugoslavia Died
45 min.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2hyevgXLDA
Tales from the battlefield in the ongoing War On Cash®
I never thought money, semolians, double sawbucks, long green, et al would become verboten in my neck of the woods, but as of next week, don’t try and pay your entrance fee to Sequoia NP with any of those now forbidden fiats.
When you get to the visitor center @ Ash Mountain, donations are accepted in cash only, though.
seriously???
This is just 🤡
Dead Presidents need bear no presence.
👍😜
Great phrase – perfect for a spoofing of this (à la “Tropic Thunder”´s spoof trailers):
“Dead Presidents” (1995) – Teaser Trailer
55 sec.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anaPNLgTOdc
Benjamin Franklin was no president.
Not to mention the only loser of a duel on US currency, Hamilton.
Gore Vidal has a novel on Burr, the victor of the duel… No opera for him though…
He did a lot more for The Nation than at least a half of the “legitimate” Presidents. Franklin was Postmaster General, so, that’s President Adjacent.
And he wanted the Turkey to be the national bird, just think if we had a little follow through and did what Benjamin said?
We would be eating Butterbald® Eagles at Thanksgiving, with old glory waving in the background.
The German Eagle hanging in the Bundestag for many years was so overfed that it looked more like a turkey, why it was mocked as “fat chicken” (in fact mocking the overblown size of the parliament.)
https://webarchiv.bundestag.de/archive/2007/1210/bp/1998/bp9801/9801012.html
Donations for what? The Guest Worker Repatriation Fund?
re: Ukraine – Moon of Alabama with Vershinin quotes
An Immediate Peace Is The Best One Ukraine Can Ever Get
The attritional war in Ukraine is moving towards a new phase. The Ukrainian army is crumbling but its leadership, with the support of some Europeans, is unwilling to concede its defeat.
There are still very unrealistic views in the West about the losses and capabilities in this conflict. They prevent those who have them from acknowledging the urgent need for peace negotiations.
In a new analysis Alex Vershinin, an expert from RUSI, provides sound arguments and numbers for those who support an immediate end of the war.
In military circles Vershinin is a well known capacity:
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2025/05/an-immediate-peace-is-the-best-one-ukraine-can-get.html#more
In the unlikely event that you are feeling optimistic keep in mind that at any given moment every Human being is doing the best they can with what they have.
re: big scientific questions
Challenging common notions on how eggs break and the role of strength versus toughness
https://www.nature.com/articles/s42005-025-02087-0
p.s. I am using many eggs regularly and I have never encountered one fall vertically to the ground.
yeah,lol.
i never drop an egg.
so i wouldnt know.
as an unrelated aside/follie:
“Imagine an American woman born in 1960. She sees the gas lines of the 1970s, the short-term political gimmicks that papered over the crisis in the 1980s and 1990s, and renewed trouble in the following decades. Soaring energy prices, shortages, economic depressions, and resource wars shape the rest of her life. By age 70, she lives in a beleaguered, malfunctioning city where half the population has no reliable access to clean water, electricity, or health care. Shantytowns spread in the shadow of skyscrapers while political and economic leaders keep insisting that things are getting better.”
https://www.ecosophia.net/long-road-decline-deindustrial-future/
from 2004!,lol.
and i was involved with that whole peak oil mileau at the time…maybe even the archdruid under some glamour on Latoc.
everybody thought we were crazy…except when we were right on the money,lol…then they got angry.
such that latoc was shut down under mysterious circumstances, and the owner faded into an obscurity of woo-woo healthcare stuff.
i also have found that when cracking eggs…into a bowl or hot skillet…i simply cannot do it two-handed,lol.
even when i want to(because of bad arthritis, etc)
i get shell fragments all in it when i try.
(and yah…i eat a LOT of eggs, too)
But one-handed is in fact the pro-way. You hit the bowl´s frame then? That IS difficult…
p.s. since eggs have exploded in price I have not broken a single one accidentally 🤣.
The most difficult is to take them out of the fridge´s egg compartment.
Modern Babylon: Ziggurat Skyscrapers and Hugh Ferriss’ Retrofuturism The Public Domain Review
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In the retrofuture, Edifice Wrecks will all be repurposed into gloomy debt instruments that cast a giant shadow on the economy until they’re written off, and last monies raised by drawing spectators to watch the razing.
Re: jockey fined for “overuse of whip”: Alvarado (the jockey) beat the horse eight times instead of the sanctioned six.
People celebrate and bet on horses being whipped to run faster, and most people are okay with this.
Nothing about horse racing is okay for the victims–the horses. Just reading the linked article alone should be enough for anyone to see that horse racing is vile, but I worked on Thoroughbred layup and breeding farms and can attest that nothing about horse racing is good for the victims. And they don’t love to run any more than any other horses. They’re pushed and doped and whipped for human entertainment. If whipping a horse up to six times is hunky dory, imagine what’s going on behind the scenes.
The real question is, can horses count up to six?
i will attest that donkeys can count at least to six.
and open rather complicated gate closing apparatii with their lips and tongue.
our original donkey..Emmelina, mother of all the rest(whom i refer to as my sister, bc i grew up with her) could turn a doorknob and enter the house if she wanted to.
fun times…to counter the actual crazy bs from mom.
id hear mom yelling and go to find that full grown donkey in the center skylighted part of the house, eating flowers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yT5BLpZDr7o/
Ray McGovern and John Helmer: Enemies or Frenemies? The U.S. Position on Russia, Iran & China
Helmer’s view on the outcome so far of India vs Pakistan…of particular interest…
Regarding that CNN headline re “Zero ships from China are bound for California’s top ports” in the Links yesterday, which I noted in a comment that Sal Mercogliano, who runs the “What’s Going on With Shipping” channel on YouTube, called “EXTREMELY misleading” (caps his):
Mercogliano today has a follow-up video where he talks specifically about this story and why, in his view, it was misleading.
I wonder if panic buying caused some reports of empty shelves?
Possibly. Even with Trump unequivocally climbing down re tariffs, there’s been a MAJOR gap in shipping to USA. Whllst in longer term things might right themselves, a lot of people know there will be a temporary loss of “stuff”. That’s what triggers panic buying and a doom loop.
Really?
One of the key things the world has learned from the Russia Ukraine conflict is that sanctions don’t work. All they do is trigger a search for alternative supplies by the sanctionee, and eventually, a permanently lost market for the sanctioner. One would think that Germany, in particular, would have learned this lesson vividly as it has watched its energy intensive industrial base collapse over the last few years.
At any rate, this proposal suggests a good plot for Groundhog Day II, with Bill Murray playing the decrepit German Chancellor (and Andie McDowell as Ursula von der Leyen!).
Sanctions can wreck small countries, which Russia is not quite.
Not seeing other comments on this right now but I’m really concerned about the potential Meta AI glasses.
I thought Cluely’s glasses pitch was a pipe dream – the reading surface is extremely close to your eyes and I can’t imagine how the information could be presented on that small display coherently and without distracting you from anything else in front of you. I also imagined the strain needed to focus on something that close to your eyes would make it unusable.
But apparently there are Augmented Reality glasses on the market including by Meta, Amazon and OpenAI already. I am clearly late to the party as I found a list here of the ‘Best Smart Glasses of 2025’.
Meta have poured hundreds of millions into funding the last remnant of the old UK electronics firm Plessey (last owned by GEC). Management at their Plymouth factory acquired it and ran it as Plessey (because it has just been built to a high standard) and their subsequent innovations in display microelectronics have been snapped up by Meta.
Apart from Meta, it’s a heartwarming story!
I’ve seen them twice where I work at in the French Quarter.
One dude was clearly filming me with his light on, and I was all like, “well, you better give me credit in that video when you post it!”
People just film you at work, no invasion of privacy anymore?
Just bathing ourselves in voyeurism so our rich overlords can watch.
Disgusting.
I am afraid the link ‘Hamas and U.S. reach deal. “I think we’ll have to detox from US security assistance,” says Netanyahu’ does not lead to the right story (and apologies but I cannot fjnd the correct link).
Captain Ibrahim Traoré talks to RT, after the Burkina Faso’s interim President finished up extensive meetings with various representatives in Russia. Captain Traoré is funny, insightful, serious and dead right about imperialism. This is truly the best interview I’ve seen all year! And what a year!
Well it’s about to get a lot more interesting! It would be a shame this interview wasn’t widely seen.
https://www.rt.com/shows/rt-interview/617399-ibrahim-traore-/
re: Dems vs. labour
JACOBIN interview
The Democrats Actively Expedited Class Dealignment
An interview with Neal Meyer
In the 1990s, Democrats adopted a neoliberal program to suit the needs of capital, driving many workers out. The party then adopted a political strategy meant to replace working-class voters with professionals — with disastrous consequences.
https://jacobin.com/2025/05/democrats-class-dealignment-working-class
Wowzers
Newark Airport Had 3 Controllers on Duty When the Goal Is 14
COVID is that you?