Penguin Poop Helps Antarctica Stay Cool 404 Media
A paraglider in China survived a rare updraft incident, and was lifted to nearly 9,000 meters high. Video footage shows him covered in ice as he navigates the altitude. Experts say convective weather caused the accident. Survival at this altitude is extremely rare. Learn more.… pic.twitter.com/nIrI04XN8R
— CGTN America (@cgtnamerica) May 27, 2025
Climate/Environment
Microplastics eaten by UK invertebrates are contaminating food chains University of Sussex
New WMO report on near-term climate projections finds that global temperatures are likely to remain at highly elevated levels for the next five years. Barring a large volcanic eruption, it is very unlikely that we see a year as cool as 2022 again. pic.twitter.com/AH6fKNJ5dx
— Zeke Hausfather (@hausfath) May 28, 2025
INCREDIBLE !!
Here we are… 😱😱😱
After days of overloading and cracks propagating, Birch Glacier collapsed over Blatten today at 3:24 pm and dammed the Lonza river…
Devastating! 😭https://t.co/EgQQjq8YCO pic.twitter.com/gzhf92DRKG
— Melaine Le Roy (@subfossilguy) May 28, 2025
Massive Saharan dust clouds to approach Florida, Gulf Accuweather
World faces new danger of ‘economic denial’ in climate fight, Cop30 head says The Guardian
Water
Groundwater is rapidly declining in the Colorado River Basin, satellite data show Las Vegas Sun
Pandemics
Exercise-induced Changes in Microclotting and Cytokine Levels Point to Vascular Injury and Inflammation in People with Long COVID Research Square (Preprint)
Long COVID and Biomarker Dysregulation—A Shift Toward Immune Exhaustion? Medicina
Single measles strain triggers outbreak in Milan despite high vaccination rates News Medical
China?
Donald Trump orders US chip software suppliers to stop selling to China FT
U.S. Pauses Exports of Jet Engine Technology and Chip Software to China New York Times
***
The West is recycling rare earths to escape China’s grip — but it’s not enough CNBC
China rare-earth controls could starve EU factories in days, chamber warns Nikkei Asia
China May Ease Rare Earths Export Controls for EU Semiconductors Oil Price
India
India’s alarm over Chinese spying rocks the surveillance industry The Economic Times
European Disunion
EU Commission president receives Charlemagne Prize for ‘European unification’ Anadolu Agency
Turning the EU into a Life Insurance Policy German Institute for International and Security Affairs
Dinner with “Azov” fascists Junge Welt (Machine translation). “Ukrainian delegation visits the Bundestag. Among them: avowed Bandera supporters and Hitler admirers.”
Syraqistan
A short guide on how to starve a population to death Jonathan Cook
‘Heinous crime’: Israel kills 10 desperate aid seekers in Gaza in 48 hours Al Jazeera
A journalist from the Daily Wire shared an AI-generated propaganda video depicting starving civilians in Gaza appearing to cheer for a mercenary handing out food.
The manipulated footage aimed to distort the reality of the humanitarian crisis, and despite its inauthentic nature,… pic.twitter.com/7ij6aAZC39
— MintPress News (@MintPressNews) May 28, 2025
***
As Trump Seeks Iran Deal, Israel Again Raises Possible Strikes on Nuclear Sites New York Times
Trump confirms he told Netanyahu not to act against Iran in private talks Jerusalem Post
Trump and Biden both pretended to be fighting Netanyahu Al Mayadeen
Ukraine and Israel – a United Force? Vanessa Beeley
New Not-So-Cold War
Germany’s Merz under fire over ‘contradictory’ remarks on long-range weapons for Ukraine Politico
German chancellor promises to help Ukraine produce long-range missiles BBC
Kremlin responds to Germany’s long-range missile pledge to Ukraine RT
Word in Moscow is if Merz uses German weapons to strike Moscow – and we all know that Kiev has no independent capacity to operate Tauruses or other long-range missiles – then Russia will have no choice but to strike Berlin directly.
Simple enough. pic.twitter.com/8jYMr0zpUe
— Margarita Simonyan (@M_Simonyan) May 28, 2025
Merz has already lost the escalation battle with his comments on cruise missiles Ian Proud
***
Minister: Berlin and Washington share same goals in Ukraine policy DPA International
America is ready for ‘maximum pressure’ on Russia, says State Dept. spokesperson Fox News
WHAT IS NEW IN RUSSIAN THINKING ABOUT TRUMP, WHAT ISN’T NEW IN EURO-NAZI THINKING John Helmer
Is Donald Trump Getting the Mushroom Treatment on Russia? Larry Johnson
“Liberation Day”
Court says Trump doesn’t have the authority to set tariffs Axios
Trump says he’s not ‘chickening out’ on trade: ‘It’s called negotiation’ CNBC
Trump 2.0
Education Department Targets Pregnant, LGBTQ Staff Protections Bloomberg
US will ban foreign officials to punish countries for social media rules The Verge
The plan for nationwide fiber internet might be upended for Starlink The Verge
Musk’s fixation on South African “white genocide” traces back to Starlink expansion Musk Watch
PATRICK LAWRENCE: The White House as Playpen Consortium News
MAHA
US, Argentina launching new ‘alternative’ to WHO The Hill
RFK Jr. threatens to bar government scientists from publishing in leading medical journals Politico
Democrats en déshabillé
Does “Abundance” Beat America’s Culture-Warrior-In-Chief? Racket News
Vladimir Putin is a sworn enemy of the United States.
Appeasement was never going to work.
Why is that so difficult to understand?
— Hakeem Jeffries (@RepJeffries) May 28, 2025
Big Brother Is Watching You Watch
ICE Taps into Nationwide AI-Enabled Camera Network, Data Shows 404 Media
Developer Builds Tool That Scrapes YouTube Comments, Uses AI to Predict Where Users Live 404 Media
Immigration
Trump has no plan for who will grow US food: ‘There is just flat out nobody to work’ The Guardian
Wars Come Home
Read Elias Rodriguez’s Leaked Chats Ken Klippenstein
The Outcasts of Zion Boston Review
Imperial Collapse Watch
HOW AMERICA LOST CONTROL OF THE SEAS Arnav Rao, The Atlantic. The author’s full paper at the Open Markets Institute.
Theater of Cruelty Liberties Journal. “Americans have developed the capacity to convert acts of obscene cruelty into theatrical performances for our depraved amusement.”
What Are You Doing After The End? Aurelien
Silicon Valley
Collective Property, Private Control London Review of Books
Apple Reportedly Says ‘Screw It’ and Jumps From iOS 19 to iOS 26 Gizmodo
AI
Taiwan’s chip plants run on migrant workers. Job brokers run their lives Rest of World
Some signs of AI model collapse begin to reveal themselves The Register
Supply Chain
West Coast Ports Brace for Cargo Comeback, Sparking Congestion Fears The Loadstar
Healthcare?
UnitedHealth Group faces lawsuit claiming it used ex-employees’ 401(k) funds to defray its own costs Fortune
Health Affairs: Health Care Provisions in the “Big Beautiful Bill” HEALTH CARE un-covered
Our Famously Free Press
Jake Tapper’s Biden Book is Hilarious and Insane Matt Taibbi
The Bezzle
Quantum computers could break Bitcoin encryption 20 times faster, Google warns Interesting Engineering
America is a scam Cory Doctorow, Pluralistic
Class Warfare
Most US households say finances all right even as inflation still bites, Fed survey shows Reuters
Antidote du jour (via):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
Habeus Corpus!
(melody borrowed from I Am The Walrus written by Paul McCartney and John Lennon in 1967, as performed by The Beatles.)
(The new ruling by the Court of International Trade saying that Trump’s tariff adventures are entirely unconstitutional puts the White House, GOP, and Project 2025 in a tight corner. Everything they have done so far leads to them eventually defying the Federal courts through the ‘invasion emergency’ suspending of habeus corpus, after which there are no civil rights for anyone, citizen or not. Nothing they are attempting will work if they fail to take this final step in their slow coup.)
Talking heads on Fox TV they talk to me and tell me I’m so clever
Favorite son, my stories get spun—they’ve never lied
Complying . . .
Call ’em for a hot take—watch ’em spinning on my thumb
Smiling till their teeth hurt, fallin’ for the cosplay
Sayin’ I’m the real McCoy and I can do no wrong
I am the legend, I have my Yes Men
(Habeus Corpus!)—bring me a rube!
Deportation season that means all these swarthy people have to go!
SCOTUS can try to block and defy me one by one
They’re flyin’ . . . They’re flyin’ . . .
They’re flyin’ . . . They’re flyin’ . . .
Judges getting flustered, shoutin’ wherefore and whereby
I’m much larger than life, they’re stuck with their process
I will really rock their world—I’ll tear their whole farce down
I am the legend, I have my Yes Men
(Habeus Corpus!)—bring me a rube!
All the scoundrels that I pardon cannot be undone
For a tidy sum I’ll pardon pond scum
All a part of my campaign
I am the legend, I have my Yes Men
(Habeus Corpus!)—bring me a rube, just bring me a rube!
Brownshirts with quirts poking voters
Dictators depend on what they do
You can revile their stance or their style but not their pride
Complying . . .
I want you bewildered—that’s the way I grab more power
Set you back to square one, fighting my charisma
Bouncing on my seesaw till it is your turn to go
I am the legend, I have my Yes Men
(Habeus Corpus!)—bring me a rube, just bring me a rube!
Bring me a rube, just bring me a rube, a rube . . .
File under The Bezzle, from Racket News, no paywall:
It’s 3 a.m. and Private Equity is Extending an Invitation to “The Big Club”
Private Equity is ramping up efforts to get at the $12 trillion 401k sector.
– by Eric Salzman
https://www.racket.news/p/its-3-am-and-private-equity-is-extending
I don’t have a source, but a friend texted me last night that there is a move afoot to allow cryptocurrencies as an investment choice in 401k’s.
Presuming that’s not just a rumor, we’re totally screwed.
We’re going from “caveat emptor” to “fugiat emptor.” “Buyer, get the hell out of there!”
What happens when that crypto fund in your 201k blows up and finds firm support at zero? Have we forgotten about SBF and Tom Brady endorsing FTX?
Seems like they need bag holders.
A bunch of no good low down ‘Numisaddicts’
An old-time quote in the coin biz dates from the 1950’s and was coined by Lee Hewitt-founder of Numismatic Scrapbook Magazine, the industry standard from the 1930’s to 1970’s
Private Equity is ramping up efforts to get some exit liquidity.
CalPERS is all in on the idea. From Sept. 2024:
“Speaking at an investment committee meeting Monday, Stephen Gilmore said the $503bn pension plan has to make itself among the most weighty clients of the private equity managers it invests with in order to get high-quality deal flow, adding that institutional investors should avoid being drawn to co-investment opportunities only because they often come with no management or incentive fees. ”
…
“While many pension funds continue to struggle with being over-allocated to private equity, Calpers earlier this year increased its target exposure to private markets to 40% from 33% and placed co-investments at the heart of this aggressive growth strategy.”
https://www.penews.com/articles/calpers-investment-chief-warns-of-adverse-selection-in-private-equity-co-investments-ce061743
CalPERs: from bellwether to red warning buoy.
” EU Commission president receives Charlemagne Prize for ‘European unification’ ‘
Also included was a decorative statue in the form of a riding crop whip atop a box of tools.
The idea of the Charlemange Prize is pure Monty Python. I think a decorative statue would be more representative of the EU’s achievements if it is a riding corp atop crossed washing machines supported by three female orangotans called Useless, 360 and Krazy K on heat and framed by German self loading rapid fire broomsticks.
By the tip of the sword, eh. They might have chosen Napoleon or Hitler.
How the mankind works:
Ceaser has been deified in Europe: Tzar, Caiser. His name becam the title, O, Caesar!
A bit under 1000 years later, we gat Charlamange, another warmonger, now they have prize on his name.
Napoleon has to wait 750 years.
Poor Hitler, has to stay soo much longer in hibernation. Probably happy to hear that WWII was in fact started by Germany & USSR together… He’s on the right path…
He was a victim of circumstances and widely misunderstood. Jihadists and Nazis are being redeemed right now so Big Adolf? Yeah, it could happen.
“Rubio says US will be revoking Chinese student visas, those with ‘Chinese Communist Party’ ties or ‘studying in critical fields’”
I think China can best retaliate by encouraging student fron the US to avoid excessive student loans by studying in China and adding a two year internship to work successfully in a Chinese business to develop cross-cultural teamwork skills prior to full graduation.
I know that Trump wants to take the US back to the 19th century along with its “gilded age” but I had no idea that it included the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act as well-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Exclusion_Act
Boy, looks like everything old is new again.
He should make them build a railroad first.
Nominated for the best (brevity the soul of wit) comment of the day.
Bravo!
They can’t build it if they are not allowed in…
“Yellow Peril” was a staple of 1890s icon W.R. Hearst. Those who suggest MAGA is something new ignore the realities of American history.
Of course in this country, save the Native Americans, we are all immigrants from somewhere. One should also point out that Asian countries like Japan are not necessarily that welcoming to us. Tribalism is universal?
If the 20th was, per Luce, the American Century it was built on immigrants. Later some of their offspring, some the sons of real estate moguls, learned how to coast.
‘Yellow Peril’ was the moniker friends bestowed on my briefly owned 1979 cream colored Cadillac Seville in the 1980’s, which had power everything, much of which was on the fritz or would be soon, was the feeling.
After it stranded passengers and the driver maybe the 3rd time, is when what looked like a banana split on wheels, was duly named.
Was it a convertible? I don’t know if they even made one, but that’s the mind pic that came over me. How many gallons to the mile did it get?
It wasn’t a convertible like say the Great Red Shark in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, the loathing was mostly relegated to the vehicle itself.
Lol!
“Of course in this country, save the Native Americans, we are all immigrants from somewhere.”
Actually, Native Americans are immigrants too — from Asia (Bering strait bridge during the great glaciation and all that) — just that they came to America long before anybody else.
I met a friend from the Sooke tribe on Vancouver Island while soaking @ Saline hot springs, and we try and keep up with one another via text, and I had been supplying her with images of Inca handiwork, and she reminded me that Quipo: the knotted string method they used, was also utilized by her people who called it quits in the great white north, after also crossing the Bering strait bridge
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quipu
Same as Australia – we all came from somewhere else. The first arrivals walked from Africa 65,000 years ago. The trip took them 15,000 years or so…
One can visualize an early native American economist suggesting to his tribe that, as the tribe is a tribe of immigrants, they should welcome the hard working people that are immigrating from overseas.
Native Americans also had inter-tribal conflicts over resources, as I read about historical tribal conflicts over one of the hot springs areas in South Dakota.
It can get very cold in South Dakota in the winter.
I saw a X tweet recently with a lady holding a sign in Chicago saying – “without immigration Trump would have had no wives”.
Expand that and it means no kids …
Which then begs the question … should Melania be deported considering the questionable aspects of – her immigration – application and would that extend to their kids …
“Of course in this country, save the Native Americans, we are all immigrants from somewhere.”
Go far enough back, even the Native Americans were immigrants from Asia. https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/247747#1
I know that Yves has a dedicated post on the judiciary striking down Trump’s authority to levy tariffs in the works.
Perhaps this comment would be better off there. But I have a busy day ahead, so I want to capture the thought.
Completely separate from the legal questions, I wonder if this cripples the Presidency in terms of any ability to change economic course away from neo-liberal dogma. As misguided and ill-conceived as Trump’s trade policy has been, it was at least an attempt to effect change.
Stating that he usurped Congress’s authority is all well and good in a narrow legal sense. However, what the ruling does not address is that Congress itself is a fundamentally broken and corrupt institution. The founders never envisioned a scenario where bribery would become legalized (thanks, SCOTUS, heckuva job with Citizens United), in effect turning Congress into a vassal of corporations.
When one of the three branches is derelict in its duty to the Constitution, we cannot have a functional government. We’re left with a government that represents multinational corporations, not the people.
There was article linked few days ago dealing with this. Essentially check-and-balances are means to protect the status quo and slow down any change. Which is fine until the status quo itself becomes untenable. And it’s compounded by the fact that the one branch directly tied to voters, and theoretically the most powerful, the Congress, ceased to reflect the will of people, so no matter who you vote for, the laws don’t change and it’s easy for courts to then smack down the few changes that somehow got thorough.
Amen, I’ve been mourning Congress’s decline for years.
Apropos Hakeem Jeffries’ post on X, do candidates for the Democratic Leadership have to take formal stupidity and ignorance tests to prove that they are dumb enough to be worthy of the job? My great nephew believes they do and I’m uncertain of the answer.
I believe they have to pass an exam in Advanced Loathsomeness. Getting merit badges in Barefaced Dishonesty and Blatant Hypocrisy is also recommended to qualify for senior posts. The requirements are surprisingly similar on the Republican Leadership side, which almost makes one wonder why we are bothering to have two parties.
Yes, and that has been the case for pretty much every facet of US foreign policy since at lesdt the end of WW2 (well, long before that in much of the Americas–I don’t think Wilson asked Congress for authority to send Marines to Haiti in 1915, for example). Very few actual treaties, no declarations of war, pretty much unilateral presidential authority doing things while Congress looks on with inaction of approval.
If anything, I suspect that the trade court has issued its own institutional death warrant.
I see the Patrick Lawrence piece and the Aurelian piece as closely related and interesting reads. Worth checking out.
Perhaps some of us who hoped Trump 2 might be better than Trump 1–distorted as it was by Russiagate–were kidding ourselves but anything to get rid of Biden.
Still if much of Trump 1 was a bluff the same may end up being true of Trump 2. If only he would simply shut up and go play golf. As Lawrence says he seems to find his shiny president toy irresistible. Zero impulse control.
That said, Trump may be a lot more self aware than we give him credit for. He just said the only reason he ran again was to get revenge for 2000–his perception of being cheated out of a win and all the pummeling over 1/6. The Dems too should have simply shut up and let him fade into obscurity.
‘Still if much of Trump 1 was a bluff the same may end up being true of Trump 2’
The Wall Street traders have taken the measure of him and labelled his dealing as “TACO” trades, an acronym for ‘Trump Always Chickens Out.’
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/wall-street-trump-trade-taco-b2759384.html
He was unfit for office in 2016 and he was unfit for office in 2020. And the only reason he won both times is because somehow the Democrats managed to find worse people to run against him.
Just hit 226k miles on my 2010 Taco, and any association with that other TACO is wildly inappropriate behavior, or what passes for a leader.
Best vehicle i’ve ever seen, the truck that is.
Nothing wrong with hope. Besides, the Dems showed us that the would rather lose than run someone other than Harris or Biden and got their wish!
I pretty much now view Trump as an object lesson of the theory that businessmen (and businesswomen,) make lousy politicos, much less Presidents. Herbert Hoover anyone?
Commander in Chief is nothing like Negotiator in Chief.
When did Political Economy become Economic Politics?
>>> the Presidency in terms of any ability to change economic course away from neo-liberal dogma.
America (really meaning DC) loves an imperial presidency—-but only went it bombs the little people and cuts estate taxes
Fascinating to watch a self-organizing, non-linear social system (DC Establishment) function in real-time to a pathogen (Trump)
As for change via legislation, much like it’s 45 BC, the big institutional hurdle is the Senate—regardless of nominal party control.
“Donald Trump orders US chip software suppliers to stop selling to China”
I don’t think that Trump has thought this all the way through. China could do a 100% ban on all rare earths to the US and any countries that seek to supply the US with rare earths from Chinese stocks would also suffer secondary sanctions. The net effect? The US would soon have to go back to 20th century technology again, especially the US military. Does he really want to go there?
20th century technology, especially the US military, did work as intended for the most part, so there might be a method to this madness.
20th century electronics used more rare earths, in that each gate was 10,000 times bigger. (just a guess, probably understated, add a couple zeros maybe). Now, forcing the designers / engineers to work with old school components would make the systems way more reliable. But you’ll never pry the bells and whistles from the grubby paws of the general officer ranks making the buying decisions. What’s the fun in ordering a remote strike if you can’t watch it from your arm chair in real time?
Speaking about the old school components, the other day I saw a video of disassembly of remnants of a Kh-59:
https://www.bitchute.com/video/csoDjMhhNHrd
Interesting observation, as typically in history the general officer ranks are derided for excessive conservatism and it requires the young captains/majors to push innovation.
Have general officers actually tipped from conservative to rash? If so, how and why?
Yes.
How? For future earnings prospects.
Why? Because there are no negative consequences (so far, it works till it doesn’t).
There is a house on Pennsylvania Ave
They call tariffs the rising sum
And it’s been the ruin of many a poor economy
Dear God, I know of some
His mother was a socialite
She was also a nanny too
And his father was a real estate man
Way down in Queens
And the only thing a narcissist needs
Is a lack of empathy and excessive admiration
And the only time he’s satisfied
Is when he’s drunk on grandiosity
Oh, mother of intervention, tell your children
Not to do what he has done
To spread your tariffs and misery
In the house of the rising sum
He’s got one foot on the neck of the economy
And another on the driving range
And he’s going back to Mar-a-Largo
To sell cryptocurrency on the blockchain
There is a house on Pennsylvania Ave
They call for a rising sum
And it’s been the ruin of many a poor economy
Dear God, I know of some
Dear God, I know we’re done
House of the Rising Sun, by the Animals
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4bFqW_eu2I
I’m disappointed that the judiciary threw a major spanner in the works. I was looking forward to the sight of scavenging hordes sacking the local Home Depot for the last power tool.
In a Joker-esque kinda way.
A well used Ryobi 40 volt weed whacker I bought last year @ Home Depot bit the dust, and thought i’d try and return it despite not having opted for the extended warranty, and the woman at the returns desk was cloaked in tattoos, so I complimented her greatly on the visuals despite not meaning any of it, subterfuge cloaked in kudos gets you somewhere, sometimes.
Crawled from the wreckage into a new weed whacker, as it were.
p.s.
Felt the first lash of levy yesterday, in that my favorite bubbly mineral water imported from down under, down Mexico way…
Topo Chico
…had gone up 15% since the last purchase
I guess this is Starmer’s way of saying that realises that he’s done as much as he can to destroy the UK and now he’s bringing in Zelensky and the A Team to really finish the job because if the man’s done it once, there’s no reason why he can’t do it successfully a second time.
https://x.com/KitKlarenberg/status/1927780682081697897
It will be interesting to see if he eventually ends up in the House of Lords. Why not? He has done so much for his sponsors over the years that it is the least that they can do. I can see it now – Lord Starmer of Rotherham.
When I started reading your comment I thought you meant Lord Zelenskskii of Balaclava…
Ditto. With all the “foreign” aristocrats Britain had, how many of them were actually in the House of Lords? Would Lord Greenie be all that new?
Did he state the age and sex of a refugee that he would like to take? Also, does Molotov Boys band count as refugees that he took?
For a good time watch the SKY UK interview of Dominic Cummings – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xaUixccGK7s
Basically he says Gov is sock puppets for Treasury, ISC, etc, and elected officials are just props going way back … blame cannons have been deployed … shells have CYA written on them …
Wonder what the NC UK commenters would make of it.
Watching it now, thank you!
I don’t have strong views on Cummings, he’s not a political genius, political quisling or political demon. But I have a sympathy for fellow contrarians and heterodox thinkers. I’ve never seen him speak for an hour interrupted and I am quite impressed, not that he sees the answers but he at least sees the questions.
Will watch it to the end and comment again!
Hmm, he’s gone off on a rant that will do him no good. He could have talked about the point he raised on immigration, of massive legal immigration, and instead he went on a rant – with bad solutions proffered – about stopping asylum seekers coming on small boats. Asylum seekers are 1% or 2% of the immigration problem.
Cummings is a political fool to want to leave the ECHR to mistreat asylum seekers rather than just halve legal migration for 25x the effect without picking a “culture war”. I’m still impressed by his coherence but his political antennae are picking up alien transmissions.
One of the comments on that video accurately but waspishly says they saw him and thought he was Phil Collins!
Yes, that was my basic summation as well, questioning undemocratic influence on national policies. Maybe foaming the runway, not political person or group X/Y fault [dark forces] and then segue to the old outside forces “culture wars” trope.
Same here in OZ for decades wrt the boat people thingy, when the vast majority came over on international flights and given jobs by the same people that would anguish over boat people.
There really seems to be this huge zeitgeist in the West at the moment as decades of rank ideological agendas goes splat with Trump leading the parade. I mean Russia calling him ***emotional*** after Trumps media OCD affliction in saying Russia/Putin were playing with fire and would pay …. they basically called him a child or worse a woman in attacking his staged manhood – internationally.
Trump has no plan for who will grow US food: ‘There is just flat out nobody to work’ The Guardian
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I like to watch, and in 20 years of observation have never seen a non-Hispanic person working in Ag in the Central Valley, and frankly they’re sitting ducks if ICE wanted to do its worst in getting rid of them…
Typically around harvest time, you’ll see 20 to 25 cars and a few port-a-potties gathered near the front of the orchard, currently citrus.
Each worker climbs 15 foot 1 piece ladders propped on said citrus trees and collects the golden orbs in a sack that resembles the one I utilized on my paper route when I was 12.
One worker might pick a ton of oranges over the course of the day, going up and down the ladder, you’d never get a gringo up there-too dangerous.
i do it, every year,lol.
currently using regular ladders, tho….which is a pita.
ive been hankering for one of those, say 10′, orchard ladders…the old timey kind with just the 2 uppers and a hook on top(ie: no 3rd leg).
my “orchard” is much like my “garden”…intermixed and distributed all on this side of the road…so its pretty tight.
last year, i picked some peaches and nectarines from the roof of the shop, using one of those grabber things.
only ones like that ive been able to find are on antique sites…and therefore crazy expensive.
considered just obtaining 3 or 4 untreated 12′ 2×4’s, cutting notches in 2 and soaking them, then putting it all together to bend the wood, and forging a hook for the top.
maybe this fall.
amfortas, you’re a wonder!
Ever thought of getting one of these:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CNGSCKKM/
It’d probably keep you going for a couple of weeks…
“China May Ease Rare Earths Export Controls for EU Semiconductors”
Now this could get interesting and an opening for the Chinese to put a wedge between the US and the EU. Suppose that China makes a deal with the EU for those rare earths providing it is for the exclusive use for the EU alone. Meanwhile the Chinese hang Trump out to dry saying ‘No rare earths for you!’ So what does Trump do? Rage at the EU for taking that deal and threatening sanctions? Demanding that the US gets a cut of those rare earths?
While not exactly rare, if you don’t have tungsten…
…your war machine is gonna suffer mightily when China & Russia are the largest producers by far
Wolfram jack’d
Titanium too for that matter.
There might be re-exports of those rare earths from the EU to the USA — except that the USA intends to impose 50% tariffs on what comes from the EU…
“Israel’s Weaponized “Aid” Plan Forces Thousands of Palestinians to Trek Miles and Risk Their Lives for Meager Boxes of Food”
Little do those Palestinians suspect that there is a legal notice inside each food packet saying that in accepting this aid means that the receiver agrees to be deported from Gaza forever with no right of return. Also, that the receiver agree to pay back the State of Israel all costs associated with the transport of said receiver. Hey, Israel’s not a charity you know.
Another “also” is the inclusion of a tracking device to assist the targeting of American supplied bombs.
The most important “also” is the statement that the Palestinian thus supplied “holds harmless the State of Israel, its trustees, officers, agents, and all foreign organizations empowered to act on its behalf, as well as its citizens, from and against any and all liability, loss, or damage suffered or incurred by the recipient of the aid from the date of the 2023-10-08 onwards, and renounces any and all corresponding action, claim, protest, or appeal in Israel courts, or in other national or international jurisdictions.”
America is a scam – Cory Doctorow, Pluralistic
Someone should tell the Pres that all the scamming is a true marker of a “sh – – hole country”.
UFC 86
Teetotalitarian Leader vs Himperial Presidency
Both go into the octagon and claim victory afterwards~
Lets get ready to crumble!
PPV: More than the country can afford
PPV (HD) Do you really want to go there?
Would historians deem Bush the Lesser’s reign as the Chimperial Presidency?
A repeat of my favorite moment of the ‘sssssshrubbery administration, W is gonna give a speech on immigration when the teleprompter goes down and he has nothing to say for way too long, and his eyes are looking for redemption and some way out, mommmmmmmy!
They redid it and he nailed the actual speech a few minutes after the snafu~
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-ZlXHCCzaE
Regarding the New WMO report on near-term climate projections, it seems we’ve just passed the heal and are heading up the shaft. “Shot on Goal!” I wonder who scores for the win? I know who the loser is.
Apple Reportedly Says ‘Screw It’ and Jumps From iOS 19 to iOS 26 – Gizmodo
At the end of that article was a link to a much more entertaining article:
https://gizmodo.com/trump-struggles-to-silence-his-ringing-iphone-during-press-conference-2000606714/
“President Trump does not email. He does not text message. And he has no work computer at home or anywhere else,” Habba said, according to CNN. Habba is now serving as the acting U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey.
I had to chuckle. Somebody is tech savvy enough to know not to use those things if a DA is looking around for them.
That first half of Aurelien’s piece, as a paean to properly ordered hierarchy, is the most thoroughly British feeling philosophical performance I can imagine. That’s not a criticism, incidentally, it’s just extremely on brand in a way I find tasteful.
Where I do differ is in his principally targeting egocentric ideological transformation (beginning in the second half of the 20th century in the west) as largely culpable for the breakdown of coherent hierarchy. Hippies and sons aren’t irrelevant to this development but they’re not the crux of it. Aurelien touches on political promotion and wrongheaded efforts at rendering a functioning system “efficient”, but for my money he undercooks the case.
I will instead frame this according to a power analysis, in the tradition of elite theory, since I think any mass phenomenon of power transfer is generally best explained in those terms: any properly functioning hierarchical human system is a structure of power, whether this is a government department, a megacorporation, a military unit, a labor union, a mom & pop shop, or a rock band (even if the frontman wears a circled A on his mostly-black clothing). Each of these superorganisms has interests and a constituency of its own, and is willing to exert power to support those things – in most cases soft power, which is what a state monopoly on violence is all about, but power nonetheless. To the extent such an organization swells to unusual size, with an unusually large or relevant constituency, it presents an innate threat to the hegemonic hierarchy of its context (typically the state). Realistically, we should expect the relative hegemon to suppress by whatever means would-be rivals even before they begin to compete with the hegemon for domination. There’s a sense then in which, for example, union-busting and trust-busting are actually the same thing despite existing at political antipodes.
Of course, the methods by which the hegemon engages in upstart-suppression needn’t be as heavy-handed as sending in the Pinkertons or court-ordering selloffs of subsidiaries, to extend the example. There are subtler ways to execute the task. To use Aurelien’s illustration, you might send smiling Mr. Efficient Management with his expensive wristwatch in to make things just run a little bit better, so he says – and in fact in the course of his work he removes some essential cog from the apparatus of the hierarchy and thereby renders its previously ascendant power quite inert (this is obviously what DOGE is doing, with all the subtlety of an aurochs vs fine tableware). Or you might insist that, for the benefit of the rival institution or society at large, it must focus some area of its policy on the promotion of a previously neglected interest; in demanding this focus, inevitably the institution’s previous focus is diluted, if not erased. This is what a truly coherent criticism of DEI (and its various predecessors) must understand.
I believe it is a mistake to see these phenomena as byproducts primarily of late-liberal-egoism. They might take the form of that ideological tendency because it is the flavor of the age, but what they are ultimately is a cynical hegemon-structure guaranteeing itself at the expense of every other constituency in range of the eye of Sauron. There is, I think, a version of this behavior which, properly attenuated, could still be congruent with a harmoniously ordered society – that is, a situation wherein the executive hegemon wields its destructive wrath less indiscriminately – but we haven’t got that in the United States, and I might suggest in the west more broadly; we have paranoiacs in tailored suits. How that came to be the case is another question entirely and beyond the scope of this comment.
I enjoyed Aurelien’s latest effort, and it used to be that the things we utilized had levels of complexity not all that different from the range of human hierarchy, we were encouraged to take tubes out of the innards of our television set if it was not cooperating in some way or fashion, and check them at Thrifty Drug Store at the testing machine. You simply give up on a TV set now, way too complex.
Open up the hood of a 1971 Boss Mustang and everything is easy to get too, in what they used to refer to as a shade tree mechanic, as in do it yourself. Try the same thing on a 2013 version that looks pretty much the same as the 1971 Boss, but open the hood and it practically screams, go away!
If your smartphone up and died on you, what would you do to remedy the situation?
Your car example is in my mind a manifestation of the same thing I’m pointing at, although it’s rather a business application – in this instance it’s the very specific manifestation of the inherent interest of a business to make it so that their product can only be serviced by an agent of the business itself. Your helplessness is their profit margin – and I think in the most developed cases of this phenomenon, your permanent bondage to their products, which ensconces you in a power constituency for that business. I don’t think I go to far in saying that this is the reason proprietary software is terrible, for example.
A colleague once told me that bicycles exhibit the same characteristics. Once upon a time, one could repair everything with a small set of wrenches and materials. Nowadays, it seems that one needs special tools for those modern bikes built with complex braking and derailleur gears — and that is without talking about the battery-powered ones.
OK, but you can buy a vintage 1973 Campagnolo #3380 tool set these days for around $3,000.
Other than needing to bleed hydraulics today I don’t see anything fundamentally different, but there are accelerated changes in standard, so the special tool that was needed yesterday is replaced with a new special tool today. But even “back in the day” you had English thread vs Italian thread, JIS vs Euro, etc.
Peak durability and interchangeability for bicycles was in the 1980s. Even Campagnolo sort of complied with standards for a little while.
Don’t trust anything without a distributor cap and a clutch.
I disagree with Aurelien that hierarchy is “what humans do”. I did think that was true until I read David Graeber and David Wengrow’s book, “The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity”. There, the authors give many cases throughout history of societies and cultures where it is definitely not the case. Michael Hudson cites David Graeber on occasion, as well.
Their conclusion is, “It doesn’t have to be this way.”
That’s discussed at some length in the comments at Aurelian’s Substack.
Personally I quite disagree with the strain of anthropology Graeber represents that generalizes tribal lifestyle arrangements as applicable to the rest of the human condition. It seems clear to me that as human communities scale up – which is a competitive necessity when any neighboring community scales up, lest yours be consumed – hierarchical stratification (serving the purpose of alienating labor, as Aurelien points out) becomes inevitable as it’s simply more efficient. This is a perfectly tenable situation so long as residents of the higher strata don’t abuse their positions and destroy the trust that keeps the whole edifice upright, thereby bringing it crashing down only to realize they (as atomized units of efficient labor) don’t know how to do anything practical any longer.
Jake Tapper’s Biden Book is Hilarious and Insane Matt Taibbi
I can only read what isn’t pay walled, but it doesn’t matter. First, nothing will come of the entire thing IMO. Yea, we were deceived and lied to by so many we can’t even count them. Doesn’t matter, nobody cares at this point except a few. Certainly not BlueMAGA who have made Jake Tapper Hitler of the month for picking on old Joe, the best president since FDR.
The whole charade is fitting for this country. We are nothing but a shopping mall with a flag (credit to whoever thought that one up) ran by a bunch of incompetent grifters who only care about their donors and the next swindle they can partake in, and that includes both of these pathetic excuses for political parties.
The American Dream – Carlin was right in 1991 and he’s still right today. They don’t give a **** about you.
re: “Yea, we were deceived and lied to by so many we can’t even count them.”
This is why the MSM no longer matters to a lot of people in the US.
So now the narrative managers are turning to AI controlled bot farms to control your social media feeds in particular ways. From Forbes:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/emmawoollacott/2024/04/16/yes-the-bots-really-are-taking-over-the-internet/
Many assumed “people” comments on FB and X and blogs might be AI programs designed to push certain narratives; designed to get lots of likes from other bots controlled by the same AI. Enough likes and the comment gets elevated as trending. Suddenly said comment shows up in lots of feeds. (I’ve even noticed and flagged a few on this site. They were clumsy and easy to spot. Once flagged they were quickly removed. The better bots are hard to spot.) No humans involved in this production except the real people setting the narrative script and the real people reading the feeds. It’s a step up from what was once know as ‘google bombing’… or a step down, or a step sideways.
Anyway, MSM as narrative control central is being replaced in the online world with programmed AI bot farms given specific narrative management tasks. Readers, beware. / my 2 cents.
What a shocking idea. I’m shocked, shocked! / ;)
The only ironclad protection is to limit interactions to real people with voices and faces. You might be able to include Zoom for a while, but it may not be long before that can be faked convincingly. They’re already using AI-faked voices to call up us old folks and try to trick us out of our money.
AI is so worth the brownouts, water shortages and huge carbon emissions that all those data centers will bring. And the really, really bad stuff they’re planning to use it for is not even here yet.
Taking out those data centres will be a task for the New and Improved Mad (Neutron) Bombers.
The Russians need to invest in research into non-nuclear field effect weapons to disable electronics with. Producing an EMP pulse in North America through the exploding of a nuclear device in the upper atmosphere in the middle of the country could, in some quarters, be considered as a ‘casus belli.’
If Al Qaeda in 2001 had hit Hollywood and Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, they would’ve caused more immediate damage to the US economy than they did by hitting the WTC and one section of the Pentagon. Bin Laden misjudged what the real sources of American power were. Of course, then the Bush-Cheney crowd quickly took a high self-damage course of action, which must have made OBL happy.
Nah, a bunch of cheap drones will do the job just fine. And it won’t be the Russians and the Chinese doing it.
The autocoprophagy of AI is accelerating logarithmically.
A digital Kessler syndrome is starting.
I wonder how much of the intertubes it’s going to blow? (And I won’t be surprised if some damned communist has already figured out how to avoid it with DeepSeek, you know sinful planning before capital reproduction, crime of crimes!)
From Market Watch.
AI bots aren’t just shaping your opinions. They’re threatening your private data.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/ai-chatbots-taking-over-the-internet-aren-t-just-shaping-your-opinions-they-re-threatening-your-personal-data/ar-AA1Fhfq2
This is the real market for AI in the US and other countries, imo.
If my earlier comment now in mod gets released then this comment will make sense.
adding: a good description of one type of AI bot farm that focuses on smart phone use. From Fast Company magazine.
Bot farms invade social media to hijack popular sentiment
Governments, financial influencers, and entertainment insiders are using data center-like facilities full of phones to push narratives fabricated through fake social media engagement.
https://www.fastcompany.com/91321143/bot-farms-social-media-manipulation
Forewarned is forearmed, or at least raises skepticism.
To achieve escalation dominance, a country must be capable of de-escalating to its advantage. To grind the years away is exactly what escalation dominance avoids with sharp decisive changes to the battlefield. To contemporaries, this dominance overtly resembles a series of discreet campaigns across a number of years in a particular theatre, what Russia achieved in Chechnya over the 90’s – 2000’s, which led to a co-option of the Chechen political dynasty — Cold. Hot. Cold. Hot. Political solution. —
Ukraine is too precarious to join in this losing exercise. Because Ukraine has access to soldiers indistinguishable from Russians, Ukraine eschews trying to build a better “race car”, opting instead to just destroy the other “driver”, a job at which Ukrainian operators excel.
Another challenge to actual Russian escalation dominance is that Russia chose to fight someone other than their primary enemy. If this were the Cold War, the Soviet Union would have used a proxy against a country like Ukraine. Russia claims NATO as its primary enemy, but chose to fight Ukraine instead. A country which posed no threat until Russia forced it to fight for survival on what Sun Tzu would call “death ground”. Which tells me Putin does not see NATO as a threat to him, but rather the Maiden Revolution was the actual threat. It’s giving Russians a lot of ideas so the Kremlin improvised an ersatz Patriotic War minus the two million Ukrainians who fought in the Red Army during the original. Banderites, my tokhes.
You do realize that the story that Russia just up and invaded the Ukraine “without provocation” is just that, a fabrication.
At this stage in the process, the primary feasible “de-escalation” available to Russia is the total destruction of the Ukraine.
Also, you seem not to comprehend that the Maidan “Revolution” was stage managed by the powers behind NATO.
It’s kinda odd that even after NATO secretary general admits that this war is about NATO expansion we still get people who claim that this is not the case.
It’s also about what kind of state Ukraine should be: multicultural and federalist or ethno-nationalist and centralist. It’s not like there hasn’t been a civil war raging on that issue for over a decade.
Yes, ever since the US backed Maidan Coup.
While Russia is currently fighting in the Ukraine (where Russian citizens and Nato equipment is located), they’ve made it clear to Poland, and now Germany, that they too are in the cross-hairs with Oreshnik. (Some folks seem to have forgotten the lesson of MRV, hyper-sonic missiles.)
So many words written in order to say Putin bad.
Internet says that tokhes is Yiddish/Hebrew for buttocks, which is weirdly appropriate.
I do not see what value “escalation dominance’ has.
Nukes are the ultimate escalation. For Russian Federation NATO on the Dneipro is an existential threat. To US NATO on the Dneipro is opportunity to do RF in.
If U.S. prevails it could go nuke. If RF prevails it is lost opportunity.
US sending difficult to replace assets thousands of miles to shatter against RF forces for an opportunity that it can’t get is good for RF and PRC as long as RF burns thru the U.S. stuff.
US ideological mistakes cannot be covered up with ideas like escalation dominance.
“A country which posed no threat” ? Sorry, but when you ally yourself with the US, you don’t get to continue to claim that you’re no threat to your neighbours. How many times has a country in so-called “defensive” alliance with the US been used as a base for an illegal US bombing campaign or a regime change campaign directed against their neighbour over the last 30 years ? It is not a small number.
You’ve seen him leaning on the hard right
Listening to some song inside
You’ve seen him X’ing on the information highway
Trying to tan a hide
Well, the Pachyderms tried so hard to hold him back
Heaven knows how hard they tried
But he’s made up his mind
He’s the restless kind
He’s the Golden Age
He’s the Golden Age
He’s the Golden Age
Riled age
It’s the Golden Age
And the law can’t stop ’em
No one can stop ’em
At the Golden Age
Mostly when the reckless years end
Nothing’s left to save
Some of them keep running
‘Til they run straight in their graves
To stay the Golden Age
Stay the Golden Age
Stay the Golden Age
Riled age…
Wild Age, by Warren Zevon
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hsst65GoV0
Was just considering, as I finally awoke this morning, how the West doesn’t seem to reward critical thinking and self reflection in our elite; the “system”, such as it is, sort of worked okay absent any serious crises, but elite competence is so hollowed out, it isn’t possible to response to Climate or the Pandemic in any meaningful way.
On the SARS2 Pandemic, just in public health, it required a shift in thinking, acknowledging that the previous “droplet” transmission paradigm is bunk, and that airborne transmission is a much more common route of transmission than anyone would care to believe, applicable not just to measles or TB, but SARS2, and other viruses.
But this requires a capacity for independent thought and self reflection, and space to offer alternate theories without institutional leaders getting butt hurt and punishing dissent. And this collides with the rules of neoliberalism, because markets, go die. So the system itself is setup in opposition to providing public goods such as public health. Recognizing airborne transmission therefore is anathema to the existing order, and our elite are too selfish and incapable of self reflection to recognize a shift is necessary to ensure there are enough healthy workers to grind to dust to perpetuate the existing order.
These people are easily taken by delusion, and perhaps actually believe that “AI” is the solution to this problem, and public health be damned. Who knows.
Twitter has certainly revealed how petty and clueless many elite are.
But meanwhile, we have what passes for “the left” in this country completely ignoring the ongoing Pandemic; Unions too. It seems ours is a society where few people are capable of independent thought.
Is this an issue with humanity in general, or simply a cultural aberration in America?
This comes from not long after the ’08 crash, and I had long attributed it to Taibbi, but never able to confirm, but here it is:
There are two kinds of rich people in the USA. There are the Insane Rich who say, “Let’s eat all the poor people NOW!” Then there are the Sane Rich who say, “No. No. We might need them. Let’s keep them alive a while longer.”
Sounds about right.
Just an interesting tidbit … China has stopped sales of Mavic Quad drones to Ukraine and parts to the West so they can give them to Ukraine. Yet Chinese reps are in Russia facilitating Russia building them, whilst increasing supplies.
So the whole JIT, investor/equity driven, financialized, et al, approach has come home to roost it seems. I mean one of the most key weapons for intel and attacking for the Ukraine has just gone poof …
Ultimately the US is after PRC!
If U.S. can Balkanize Russian Federation it can go after PRC from both Manchuria and the west Pacific using it favorite pork barrel the U.S. Navy.
PRC, DPRK, Islamic Republic of Iran have incentive to aid RF.
US can do what you posit only in its delusions.
Rent a thousand ships from China to fill with weapons made in China, or where not, made of Chinese components and/or materials to float a diabetic under manned expeditionary force to sink at sea in a hail of Chinese missiles.
If it weren’t for the Nukes, they’d just ignore US.
Groundwater is rapidly declining in the Colorado River Basin, satellite data show Las Vegas Sun
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It was a race to the bottom that assured us our unsustainable lifestyle could be sustained as if it were a perpetual notion machine… here have all the water you need, its been sitting down under for time immemorial, it sure took you a long time to develop the electric pump, I was wondering when 2 legs bad would get around to that.