Ancient Poems Record the Decline of a Special Porpoise 404 Media
Climate/Environment
When will companies start spending on climate adaptation? Financial Times
Real Constraints The BREAK—DOWN. ““When climate action is framed primarily as a problem of mobilising finance, the role of the state is reduced to simply enabling private investment rather than leading the transformation.”
Homebuyers urged to order climate change surveys as risks rise The Times
LA fires cost quarter-trillion dollars, but California lawmakers still won’t bill Big Oil Los Angeles Public Press
What happens in the Arctic doesn’t stay in the Arctic. It affects us all.
The Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP) has released their Summary Arctic Climate Change Update. Read it: https://t.co/UJSFjafdAw
Nobody can later say they weren’t warned, again and again. pic.twitter.com/6GjoTCjfEa— Prof. Stefan Rahmstorf 🌏 🦣 (@rahmstorf) May 13, 2025
The Koreas
Why the United States, South Korea, and Japan Must Cooperate on Shipbuilding RAND
South Korea’s eight Daegu-class frigates come under scrutiny for reported defects Baird Maritime
China?
China pauses rare earth export restrictions on 28 US entities after trade truce Interesting Engineering
CK Hutchison stresses legal compliance in Panama port sale amid US-China tensions Intellinews
Xi Takes an AI Masterclass China Talk
Fighting Obvious Nonsense About AI Diffusion Zvi Mowshowitz, Don’t Worry About the Vase
Old Blighty
Warning UK rivers are ‘toxic chemical soup’ as all now plagued by sewage The Independent
Exceptionally low river flows forecast across UK as drought threat grows The Guardian
O Canada
Mark Carney is already betraying the voters who made him PM Canadian Dimension
Africa
White House halts agency work on upcoming G20 in South Africa The Hill. NC with background on the US pressure campaign here.
Elon Musk’s Grok AI Won’t Stop Talking About ‘White Genocide’ User Mag
US Launches Airstrike in Somalia, Says It Targeted al-Shabaab Antiwar. Fifth this month alone.
Syraqistan
Israel’s Top Civil Liberties Group Warns Knesset Is ‘Building Dictatorship’ Haaretz
How Kahanism found its way into the Israeli political mainstream +972 Magazine
The entire @SenateGOP (except @SenRandPaul) just signed a letter that aims to tie the hands of @POTUS & @SteveWitkoff and prevent any chance of successful diplomacy with Iran
They want to guarantee that diplomacy fails so they can force the US into a disastrous war in Iran https://t.co/fT6KURCpVO pic.twitter.com/a1JLE1adE8
— Erik Sperling 🌍 (@ErikSperling) May 14, 2025
Saudi Arabia snaps up US chips following Trump’s visit Semafor
Trump visits Qatar as country’s jet offer puts spotlight on nation’s growing influence in Washington Fox News
Trump Meets With Syria’s Al-Qaeda Leader-Turned President, Praises His ‘Strong Past’ Antiwar
European Disunion
Friends of Genocide Tarik Cyril Amar
Friedrich Merz makes big promises from Ukraine to economy in first government statement to Bundestag Euronews
New Not-So-Cold War
Navy escorts suspected ‘shadow fleet’ tanker out of Estonian waters ERR. Commentary:
That’s what NATO membership does to chihuahuas, they think NATO comes protecting them and provoke civilians ships. pic.twitter.com/z0bxQoDdn9
— Lord Bebo (@MyLordBebo) May 14, 2025
Russian fighter jet breaches Estonia’s airspace ERR. Commentary:
A Russian SU-35 military jet flew up and the Estonian pursuit stopped.
Since it was international waters, they have no authority to stop the ship and the Russian jet can technically open fire in defense of the ship. pic.twitter.com/mcxeYDSnqi
— Lord Bebo (@MyLordBebo) May 14, 2025
***
Putin, Trump to skip Ukraine’s peace talks that Russian leader proposed Channel News Asia
The Diplomatic Dance is a Charade, What Does Russian Victory Look Like, Trump-Netanyahu Lover’s Quarrel, Trump vs Iran, more… The Real Politick with Mark Sleboda (Video)
A WAR THE GENERALS WANT TO END Seymour Hersh
“Liberation Day”
Trump tariffs live updates: Trump’s pause on China tariffs still a ‘nightmare’ for small businesses Yahoo! Finance
What Pennsylvania factory workers say about Trump’s tariffs now WaPo. On-the-ground reporting from one of the last remaining US commercial furniture manufacturers.
Trump 2.0
How Trump’s National Weather Service Cuts Could Cost Lives Scientific American
‘Crypto Is the Biggest Corruption Issue With Trump’ FAIR
Trump cabinet member’s links to El Salvador crypto firm under scrutiny The Guardian
DOGE
Musk promised budget cuts. He delivered a panopticon. Musk Watch
Thanks to DOGE, Gumroad’s founder has a second job with the VA Fast Company. Commentary:
A DOGE employee arrived at the VA and realized that, actually, the government more or less works fine. pic.twitter.com/mX90f2falc
— Jordan Weissmann (@JHWeissmann) May 14, 2025
MAHA
Trump admin cancels layoffs for some health workers ahead of Kennedy hearing Politico
Trump EPA Guts Rules Against Toxic Forever Chemicals in Drinking Water Common Dreams
Wellness CEO files ethics complaint against top RFK Jr. adviser Politico
Trump Leadership: If You Want Welfare and Can Work, You Must Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Mehmet Oz, Brooke Rollins and Scott Turner, New York Times. Commentary:
Unless the US government guarantees work through a federal jobs program, then work requirements are just eugenicist bullshit and support for worsening labor abuses. The reality is that many unemployed people simply can’t find jobs––let alone dignified jobs––in the US economy. pic.twitter.com/9Qn71Biu4R
— Eric Reinhart (@_Eric_Reinhart) May 14, 2025
Democrats en Déshabillé
After Promising Universal Health Care, California Governor Must Reconsider Immigrant Coverage KFF Health News
Colorado labor groups turn to 2026 ballot fight ahead of expected Worker Protection Act veto Colorado Newsline
Big Brother is Watching You Watch
US court hits Israeli spyware firm NSO with $167m fine over Pegasus abuses Middle East Monitor
Seven things we learned from WhatsApp vs. NSO Group spyware lawsuit TechCrunch
Spyware victims not allowed to testify at MEP event EU Observer
Police State Watch
Feds Begin Political Vetting for American Citizens Ken Klippenstein. More on the Hasan Piker detention and interrogation we linked to yesterday.
Trump isn’t fighting antisemitism. He’s targeting critics of Israel Antony Loewenstein, Middle East Eye
Trump’s Censorship Campaign Draws on Decades of Infrastructure Built by Big Tech Truthout
Immigration
17 members of a cartel kingpin’s family were escorted into California from Mexico. Why? Los Angeles Times
ICE acting director says 9 people died in custody since January Anadolu Agency
AI
Will Congress Legalize Mark Zuckerberg As Your Therapist? BIG by Matt Stoller. More on the GOP proposed ban on AI regulation in Links yesterday.
Beware Corporations Whining About a ‘Patchwork of State Laws’ Boondoggle
Like Uber:
So honestly, AI shouldn’t even exist right now if it was following normal business and copyright laws. It’s in an artificial bubble, and if we would just enforce ONE of these laws (the natural law that businesses should be profitable or the very real copyright laws it’s breaking)
— Chris Alvino (@ChrisAlvino) May 14, 2025
Healthcare?
UnitedHealth Group Is Under Criminal Investigation for Possible Medicare Fraud WSJ
They Cut Medicaid, Not the Waste: Congress Protects Big Insurance While Slashing Care HEALTH CARE un-covered
By the way, this is somewhat specific to Texas: there are explicit rules for the number of parking spots per hospital bed (and related rules for churches, bars, etc). pic.twitter.com/O7IrM8R3UI
— Nikita S (@singareddynm) May 6, 2025
Tech
Are the means of computation even seizable? Cory Doctorow, Pluralistic
Imperial Collapse Watch
Hotline linking Pentagon, Reagan Airport inoperable since 2022, FAA says Axios
FAA holds meeting with U.S. airlines to cap Newark flights Reuters
What We Have. Aurelien, Trying to Understand the World
The Bezzle
Waymo recalls 1,200 robotaxis after cars crash into chains, gates and utility poles Interesting Engineering
Class Warfare
Wells Fargo Wants to Privatize USPS. We Should Dismantle the Mega Bank Instead. Truthout
Teaching Sculpture On A Shoe-String, or Tactility and a Student’s Brain Liberties Journal
Antidote du jour (via):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
Thank you, Conor.
Further to the Mark Carney link, what did Canadians expect? Please refer to my recent comments about Carnage, the matinee idol from the colonies.
There is one thing that I forgot to mention. There were complaints made about the egomaniac’s conduct at the Bank of England. There may well have been out of court settlements subject to non-disclosure agreements. Methinks a Freedom of Information Act request is in order.
A bon entendeur.
We caught in an evil place between Goldman-Sacks and a crazy pseudo-Musk. We have a ringside seat of the craziness in the US. It was a true choice of the lesser of two evils. We’re all in for a rough ride.
Thank you.
Good luck.
Canadian readers could think about what one Acadien family, les Rouillard, did in the 1760s. Instead of going to la Lousiane, they went to Isle de France, later renamed Mauritius. We share many patronymes with francophone Canada.
“The entire @SenateGOP (except @SenRandPaul) just signed a letter that aims to tie the hands of @POTUS & @SteveWitkoff and prevent any chance of successful diplomacy with Iran”
There is stupid, very f*cking stupid, beyond the bounds of the very f*cking stupid, and gleefully surfing to your country’s death on a tsumani of political sewage and cretinous ignorance.
Best government money can buy.
Declare politics a market place and in no time at all the corruption rots everything.
How to take a large government back is a major collective action problem we need to start solving.
Imo we used to have that gov, but now we’ve got the worst gov money can buy. Or at least it’s hard to imagine a worse one.
Like much of what the GOP does. They are incredibly brainwashed by FOX news. Which devotes a lot of coverage to hating minorities and hating Muslims particularly Iranians. Every FOX news watching relative, I have, has announced how much they hate Iran. When I ask why, they are not able to answer.
They will eventually mutter something about Israel. But, that’s about it. Ask them what exactly has Iran
Done and they just don’t know. Neither do these senators.
They only know what their AIPAC “handlers” tell them to do though Thomas Massie gets to use his own judgement. If it starts a war with Iran causing the deaths of thousands of American service people, at least those members of Congress will have their lucrative defense stocks to console themselves with.
This. When do I get a “handler”? Will he/she do laundry?
If your relatives are anything like mine, they are also well-informed about myriad things and nonetheless still believe Gutfeld is a comedian and Tyrus is a great guy who never sexually harassed anyone and also had a great career as a wrestler.
“Putin, Trump to skip Ukraine’s peace talks that Russian leader proposed”
The media have been hyping this possibility of Putin and Trump in Istanbul but it was never going to happen. The Russian and Ukrainians are undertaking the first real negotiations since they were in Istanbul a coupla year ago. Trump would only show up for a finalized deal so that he could claim credit and Putin knows that him being there would be a waste of time. Having both Rubio – fresh from a NATO meeting – and Kellogg on the US team tells you that the plan is for an “unconditional ceasefire” which is exactly the same as a “conflict freeze” like happened in Syria several years ago. And we all know how that ended. Thinking back on what happened with the first Ukrainian negotiation team that went to Istanbul a coupla years ago, if I were them I would be wearing a bullet-proof vest. And put a ban on Boris Johnson turning up too.
A lost opportunity, Rev. According to the Guardian, the green theatre prop is arguing that the Russian Istanbul team, with whom the Yukkies almost had an agreement which would have meant that all the lost lives and limbs, and the destruction of infrastructure wouldn’t have happened, is merely a theatre prop. I suppose he really wanted to surprise both Presidents Putin and Trump with his revamped comedy act and is grieving at the lost opportunity to show show his artistic side. Maybe he can do a few more backflips to keep Rubio and Kellog entertained and then put it up on youetube.
Zelenski kinda boxed himself in here. Back in 2022 he put out a decree that no Ukrainian can negotiate with a Putin-led Russian government which meant him as president. But a day or two ago he came out with a statement saying that that law did not apply to him as only he alone could negotiate on sovereignty and the territorial integrity of Ukraine but when people read his decree, it actually does apply to him-
https://www.rt.com/russia/617509-zelensky-putin-negotiations-ban/
I have found plenty of references to that decree, interpreted slightly differently (it forbids negotiations with Putin, or with a Russian government as long as Putin is president, or with Russia altogether, applies to the government of Ukraine, or forbids the president of Ukraine to sign an agreement, etc) but I have yet to see the full text and an authoritative translation thereof.
Russia will have nothing of a Minsk 3 aka no holds ceasefire, to be broken by Kiev while US arms flow in.
US will have nothing of a disarmed Kiev and no more arming.
EU is out of supplies, US can probably send all its smart bombs and long range missiles that it won’t use exposing F-35s to any real air defenses. US fighter aircraft won’t get close enough to Taiwan to shoot anything……
When Kiev runs out of bodies and war tourists…..
If that article on Elon Musk’s new AI is in any realistic, talking to Grok seems to be like talking to an autistic, sociopathic white supremacist in a haze of drug-addled delusion.
Evidently NeuraLink has come up with something!
Either that, or the plan all along was to generate Artificial Musk.
I am given to understand that Elon Musk’s ring dial tone is the song ‘I never promised you a rose garden.’
Re Turns out hospital parking is a helluva business.
Here in Blighty, where older town centre hospitals are being replaced by PFI scam new builds (where private companies build and finance the new hospital in return for very advantageous for them lease agreements with the NHS that ends up costing the NHS far more than if the hospitals were government financed), these new builds are often way out of town with expensive parking charges. A feature not a bug to screw the public out of even more money.
“A Russian SU-35 military jet flew up and the Estonian pursuit stopped.
“Since it was international waters, they have no authority to stop the ship and the Russian jet can technically open fire in defense of the ship.”
LordBebo
I have developed a singular detestation of Estonian Potemkin nano-state, and it’s peculiar obsession with pissing off Russia and the rest of the sane world. Indeed, come to think of it, I find it hard to se the point of any of the Baltic nano-states who cheerfully repress their Russia minority populations to protect “democracy”.
No doubt this is due to their shattered dreams of imperial glory being flushed down the toilet of history when their fellow-Nazis were defeated by the USSR which they are now attempting to revive by creating incidents to provoke the Russian military to exercise their lawful right to take out any adversary acting against a ship bearing Russian cargo in international water.
Perhaps the Estonians will accept a neutral South Africa or Nigerian peacekeeping force to tkeep an eye on them and ensure that such foolishness does not occur again and we do not end in a war which Estonia can only lose?
Alternatively, it might well give some of their more willing NATO neighbours the chance they so obviously desire to square up to the Russians mano a mano and throw lots of their stolen porkie pies at Johnny Russ and give him a taste of their latest rapid self loading broomsticks. Or maybe there may be a few grownups in the room who feel dutybound to take over the reins of power from the dwarf politicians and eliminate all the supposed ant-Russian sanctions that have done so much harm to the people of Europe.
The article linked before “Navy escorts suspected ‘shadow fleet’ tanker out of Estonian waters ERR.” is quite misleading. It mentions the Exclusive Economic Zone in which according to the Law of Sea Estonia has rights on its natural resources + the seabed and responsibilities on their conservation but these are not Estonian territorial waters and Estonia has not the right to police the area and the ship didn’t need to “cooperate” with Estonian authorities or follow the instructions of those.
The Baltic States were talking about banning Russian ships from the Baltic Sea a coupla weeks ago and I guess that they were serious. Mind you, they are claiming that they can do this in international waters like they tried to do here because it is the Baltic Sea I guess. I suppose that the Russians have Su-35s on standby for this possible level of stupidity and now they have had to use them. I can’t believe that the Poles were stupid enough to take part in this attempted hijacking in international waters but as they say, FAFO. It’s all fun and games until a Russian fighter has missile lock on you. I wonder if the Russian will have Gabon take this to the UN and it would be entertaining to hear the Baltic States and the Poles tie themselves in knots trying to explain this attempted act of piracy. Should make a great move down the track. I can see it now – “Pirates of the Baltic.” Arrr!
There are claims the The Baltic Fleet was already last week arranging the leaving vessels into a convoy escorted by a Russian corvette. This ship was inbound, but I guess the Baltic Fleet will start soon collecting even these close to the Kaliningrad harbor and then escort them to Primorsk.
With the Baltics the thing is that when they gained independence after the WWI, they quickly became dictatorships because neither the pre-revolution elites made sure democracy did not work and threaten their positions and wealth. For some reason they have all forgotten this and are blaming Russia and Russians for everything.
Not saying that the Russian Whites and Reds were not enablers in the Baltics, but the worst was usually done by the locals to the locals – due to that social pressure that could not find a safe way of letting steam out.
bertl: There are big differences in the Baltic States as to the rights of residents / citizens who are Russian.
Lithuania, which is about 5 percent Russian, accepted citizenship of all groups. There is an even larger Polish population, long resident in Lithuania, which received citizenship normally in the reestablished republic after 1991. And there are some refugee Old Believers who number among the Russians.
Latvia and Estonia made a mess of things at the breakup by creating a class of people “becoming permanently resident “non-citizens” – as in Estonia and Latvia, which restricted citizenship to their pre-World War II citizens and their offspring (regardless of ethnic group) upon restoration of their independence in continuity with their sovereign identities prior to June 1940.” (From Wikipedia.)
I read in one entry that immediately after independence in 1991, Estonia’s residents included 30 percent of the population without citizenship, mainly of Russian descent.
So the Estonians continue to act in bad faith.
Barbara Spinelli, an excellent commentator and writer here in Italy, pointed out that the European Union cannot continue (nor can NATO) if it is to be treated by the former Warsaw Pact countries and the Baltic States as a means of getting revenge on the Russians. Revenge is not forthcoming, no matter how much Kaja Kallas rages. And to put it Chicago style, shitting in the nest (the EU) that you alighted in not so long ago isn’t recommended either.
This is beyond dangerous!
We could very well see WW3 start here. They have been at it for a while now.
1. Cables that are sabotaged, except they aren’t
2. We can use coastal rockets and close off the Bay of Finland together with Finland, in effect a naval blockade of Skt. Peterburg.
3. We board and take over ships from third parties (as in this case) Russia may very well have to start running convoys which they cover with their fleet.
Bat shit crazy stuff
“A WAR THE GENERALS WANT TO END”
‘One constant in the war between Russia and Ukraine that Vladimir Putin started more than three years ago has been the willingness of the generals on both sides to say: “No more.”’
I have no idea of who Seymour Hersh is carrying water for here but he is being very disingenuous. Putin started this war? Really? Anyway, the regular Ukrainian generals may want this war to stop but as for the Russian generals, they want the gloves fully taken off so that they can finish the Ukrainians off and chaff under the restrictions that Putin has put on them and those occasional truces. The only way that Russia fulfills its war aims is through a decisive victory and those generals know it. if Putin went for a total ceasefire, they would probably march on Moscow.
Yes. I couldn’t get past the firewall, but what was available struck me as absurd, and also squarely in line with the Western propaganda line about this being *Putin’s* war, that it is *Putin’s* egocentric desire to reestablish the Russian Empire, etc., etc. This is such a ridiculous take that I, too, was wondering about the source, and the agenda behind it. Surely Hersch doesn’t actually believe this?
One carries water for those that pay for the service. As a non westener, I have heard about the guy only recently, and just can not get why people consider him a big deal. To me he seems as run-of-the-mill soon-to-be-replaced-by-AI level (sans the Nord Stream piece, which looks more like a bait before the switch).
Good article. Excellent summary with good graphs and photos. Here is a direct link w/o twitter.
https://www.amap.no/documents/doc/arctic-climate-change-update-2024-key-trends-and-impacts.-summary-for-policy-makers/3847
Re: Musk promised budget cuts. He delivered a panopticon.
Who could have foreseen such a thing
( /s )
Musk did exactly what he was supposed to do as the tip of the NRx spear.
The postman brought me a smallish but heavy package yesterday. Inside, I found days of entertainment in the form of my copy of this year’s Red Book, the collection of reports from Harvard’s Class of ’75. It was a hefty volume of nearly 900 pages, so I looked up the people I knew best first, and I had to laugh at how many of us had retained the traits and attitudes we had had back before we’d even reached twenty, myself included.
Many if not most of the class submitted nothing. Their entry contains their name, degree, honors if any, and House. Most who did submit entries followed the usual form of “I married …. I worked … I had kids… I’ve traveled to…and plan to travel to…” A few of us submitted sermons, and you’ll probably not be surprised to read that I was among them, nor would you be shocked at the thrust of my Cassandra-esque polemic. A fellow who attended both high school and college with me was another of the “preachers,” but his report came from pretty much the opposite point of view, lamenting the forced departure of the great Larry Summers over what he called a DEI issue, praising Bill Ackman as a Superstar and joining the hedge funder in condemning Harvard for failing to protect Jewish students last spring. I’m about a third of the way through the reports, and I’ve been surprised how many of these expressions of concern over anti-Semitism I’ve read. There’s been only one expression of concern over the Palestinians or the faculty and students disciplined for expressing pro-Palestinian views.
There are some reports from people who’ve led remarkable lives of service in Africa, South America and their local communities here in the USA. It’s humbling to read how much they have been able to accomplish in the most difficult of circumstances. Then there are entries that might appear at NC under the Guillotine Watch. A freshman roommate of mine reported that “wine and wine law, metal sculpture and tai chi” were his “passions and professions.” After discussing his wife’s passions and professions prior to her retirement, he went on to explain that she was busier than ever heading up the ____ Valley’s Climate Action NOW organization, which was quite laudable. The only problem was that the next sentence boasted about how often they traveled: to their favorite Ashram in India; to see their fellow vintners in Europe; and to visit the wife’s family on yet a third continent. I’ll let you fill in the blank for the name of the valley. (And Tom S., if you recognize who this is, I’m sure you’ll keep it to yourself.)
Our class had three widely known people. Ben Bernanke is a name that used to be discussed a lot around here. On the more infamous side is Bush/Cheney era security ghoul, Michael Chertoff, and God’s very own banker, Lloyd Blankfein. Their reports are pretty blah.
The reports had to be submitted by October 8, right in the middle of the election campaign. I’ve been completely surprised at how little either Kamala or Trump were mentioned besides a couple of out-and-proud Trumpers. Not much “most important election evah” nor much said about any specific issues, even abortion, “democracy” and especially, almost eerily, there has been no mention of the polycrisis beyond what I wrote and two others who evinced concern.
I had not originally planned to submit anything, but I received an email at the end of September that the deadline for submitting reports was October 8, which was the date set for my last, most difficult surgery. So I took it as an omen and submitted my little essay on “Deadlines.” I’ll share the conclusion with you here:
My one regret after reading so many accounts of international travel and noticing that the picture section is dominated by photos of people on other continents is that I didn’t include Ursula le Guin’s pithy rendition of the Tao te Ching #46 and #47:
and:
Thank you for this graceful and urgent note, a tiny candle flicker in a sea of self absorbed darkness. If only these people weren’t taking the rest of us down with them and trampling us underfoot in the process!
Nothing has substantively changed. The grift is in the open. The rent seeking is on steroids. Look out for yourself. No one else will.
What We Have. Aurelien, Trying to Understand the World
I so enjoy your writing style, breezy yet bracing in narrowing down complexity of our lives. And once that complexity goes away, there will be yearning for what was lost-much of which was characterized by the word: easy.
Nothing will be easy in regards to the turmoil to come, compounded by climate change doing its worst, laughing at previously perceived safer locales to ride it out, rewriting the rules of engagement here on this good orb.
> Seldom being allowed to make mistakes and learn from them, they fell back on ever more complex systems of rules, believing ultimately that the answers to how to lead your life could be found in books. As they acquired power without having gained experience or judgement, it came naturally to them to seek to control the disturbing, even frightening messiness of real life by the imposition of more rules and, when that didn’t work, by even more rules.
Rules are abstractions, and this directly links to quotes in my comment in ‘When Illusions of Wealth Shape the Economy: Understanding Pseudo-Wealth, Macroeconomic Volatility, and Social Welfare’.
The add-on here is those quotes pre-date the GFC, and the kids born during the GFC are beginning to graduate high school. Janet is reading Sarah Kendzior’s book of columns to about 2018, and says they’re still completely relevant. The wisdoms are right there, were right there, yet the situation does not get better. At least not globally.
Wait, wait, are we till debating whether the Democratic Party is beyond salvaging? Read the short article about the Colorado labor groups and the bill in the Colorado legislature.
And note this: “But Polis is expected to veto the measure, siding with business groups who want to preserve the state’s 80-year-old Labor Peace Act. Under that law, Colorado workers organizing a union must hold a second election and obtain 75% approval to determine if workers who don’t support the union would have to pay representation fees, a modified version of the so-called “right to work” rules enacted by many conservative states.”
In other words, the workers who don’t want to pony up have a veto over unionization.
Yet the Democrats will trot out Polis, who is gay, as a sign of inclusion: From Polis’s Wiki bio, I have a feeling that I know what group he identifies with most strongly. “He was the only Democratic member of the libertarian conservative Liberty Caucus,[2][3] and was the third-wealthiest member of Congress, with an estimated net worth of $122.6 million.[4] He was elected governor of Colorado in 2018 and reelected in 2022.”
Sheesh. Polis, Thiel, and Bessent are sure making dating complicated, eh? What’s more romantic than having to ask, Now, what is your position on right-to-work legislation?
re: @ChrisAlvino So honestly, AI shouldn’t even exist right now if it was following normal business and copyright laws.
This forgets the use-case of corporations feeding their in-house AI’s on their own internal processes, data and documentation, not the world’s copyrighted material.
“Why the United States, South Korea, and Japan Must Cooperate on Shipbuilding”
With Trump America, both Japan and South Korea are going to have to be very careful in how this is done. If both countries maintain and even expand their shipyards while they help American shipyards get up to speed with their expertise, then all is well – mostly. But if Trump demands that to get sanction relief, they both Japan and South Korea develop shipyards in the US to build the ships they need, then both countries would realize that this would be all about developing American shipbuilding so that they can eat Japan and South Korea’s lunch with. Like how the US forced Taiwan to build a chip foundry in the US so that they would not need Taiwan down the track. And surely Japan would remember how even though they were a loyal ally, that when their industrial capacity was going like gangbusters in the 60s and 70s, that the US deliberately destroyed their development back in the 80s from which they are still recovering.
How would one spread false information about Truemed? It’s all lies.
Anything anyone at Truemed says or does is false.
“South Korea’s eight Daegu-class frigates come under scrutiny for reported defects”
‘An investigation revealed that Hanwha Ocean, which was responsible for the detail design and construction of class lead ship ROKS Daegu, had used low-strength piping materials that differed from what was stipulated in the design drawings during construction, thus resulting in cracks.’
Not even my country but it is always a disappointment to read about stuff like this happening. A short cut? Somebody trying to cheat on materials with sub-par supplies? I wonder if this is going to be one of those mistakes-were-made moments or one of those somebody-is-going-to-prison moments.
Labour at the Cliff Edge, James Butler in LRB. A survey of the UK political situation after the elections last week. Gloomy stuff.
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v47/n09/james-butler/short-cuts
Opens in a private window for me.
When I read here this morning that the name Robert F. Kennedy was attached to a screed demanding work-for-welfare, my heart sank. Oh, Junior. Really? You really think this is the problem with our society? You’re going to resurrect Reagan’s Welfare Cadillac baloney to poison another generation with this politics of resentment and punish-the-poor, while allowing more and more trillions to flow up and up and up to upper classes which don’t need another nickel? You should be ashamed. And “Doctor” Oz, too.