Archaeologists Solve Mystery of the 30,000-Year-Old Ocean Crossing SciTech Daily
How to redraw a city Works in Progress
Summer Wants You Dead Life and Limb
Climate/Environment
Latest on Texas Hill Country flood tragedy Balanced Weather
Madre Fire in California explodes to nearly 80,000 acres ABC News
Triple-digit heatwave starting Tuesday, elevating fire risks LAist
Los Angeles to halt ‘disaster tourism’ buses through Palisades fire zone Los Angeles Times
Heat Wave Hotspots Open Mind
Greece’s olive oil crisis is bad enough to tempt thieves Food & Environment Reporting Network
Florida’s Home Insurance Crisis Hits Hardest in Some of the State’s Poorest Counties Inside Climate News
St Petersburg braces for historic flood as Neva River surges past warning levels Intellinews
Major reversal in ocean circulation detected in the Southern Ocean, with key climate implications Institut de Ciencies del Mar. Commentary:
At what point do we stop working during the apocalypse and pretending everything’s fine so we can instead shift focus on actually addressing it? Or are we just gonna be the frogs in the boiling pot https://t.co/Ak8hZMt9YL
— Lia (@socialistsloots) July 6, 2025
Pandemics
Journalists never reported this, but documents point out that by the time the @WHO was “reassuring” the world that the virus was certainly NOT airborne, its offices had already completed an urgent ventilation upgrade to guard against airborne transmission. https://t.co/716Hclc5G1
— Maarten De Cock (@mdc_martinus) July 4, 2025
Water
‘WITH WHAT WATER?’ Texas Observer
China?
China reroutes exports via south-east Asia in bid to dodge Trump’s tariffs FT
China hits back at EU with reciprocal ban on major medical equipment contracts Euractiv
New East Asian Attitude Between China, Japan & South Korea Karl Sanchez
Japan To Export Used Destroyers To Philippines To Deter China Reuters
Syraqistan
“Operation Black Flag”: Israel Launches Unprecedented Multi-Port Attack on Yemen JFEED
First Red Sea Attack On Commercial Shipping Since December Launched By Houthis The War Zone
Seyed M. Marandi: Israel Prepares Proxies for Next War with Iran? Glenn Diesen (Video)
The Hamas Response to Trump’s Gaza “Ceasefire” Proposal Drop Site
BCG modelled plan to ‘relocate’ Palestinians from Gaza FT
Tony Blair’s think tank worked on ‘Trump Riviera’ plan for Gaza The Telegraph
European Disunion
Poland to introduce border controls with Germany and Lithuania amid migration concerns Euronews
Old Blighty
Keir Starmer faces fresh Labour revolt over special needs support reforms The Times
UK puts out tender for space robot to de-orbit satellites The Register
British-made Typhoon production grinds to a halt raising fears about UK defence skills FT
New Not-So-Cold War
Ukraine mess: finding a way forward Asia Times
Russia Says Captured Two More East Ukraine Settlements AFP
Completing the Devil’s Work Pluralia
“Liberation Day”
Trump and US commerce secretary say tariffs are delayed until 1 August The Guardian
Trump 2.0
Monetizing Primacy Phenomenal World
Red States Follow DOGE’s Lead, Slashing Services to Fund Giveaways to the Rich Truthout
The 19th-Century Precursors to the Crises of Trump’s America New Lines Mag
“Shakespeare in a Ring.” Hulk Hogan and the Rise of Pro Wrestling in the American Psyche Lit Hub
L’affaire Epstein
Exclusive: DOJ, FBI conclude Epstein had no “client list,” died by suicide Axios
Mamdani
Gilded City New Left Review
What Can Zohran Accomplish? Dissent
Realignment and Legitimacy
Musk should stay out of politics, treasury secretary says after ‘America’ party news The Guardian
If Musk successfully builds his new fascist party, the Democratic Party will likely cease to exist as neoliberals will be motivated to merge into the Republican Party. This new duopoly would more accurately reflect the political landscape, leaving an even bigger chasm to the left
— Hampton Institute (@HamptonThink) July 5, 2025
AI
‘Improved’ Grok criticizes Democrats and Hollywood’s ‘Jewish executives’ Tech Crunch
This Is Why Tesla’s Robotaxi Launch Needed Human Babysitters Wired
The hidden labor that makes AI work Rest of World
TikTok’s ‘ban’ problem could end soon with a new app and a sale The Verge
Police State Watch
Maine police department apologizes for AI-doctored evidence photo Boston.com
Sports Desk
Wimbledon apologises after AI line-call malfunction leaves Russian fuming The Times
Silicon Valley
He’s the hackathon king of SF — and he doesn’t even know how to code SF Standard
Imperial Collapse Watch
Pensioners for war Branko Milanovic
Managers And Clowns 3 Quarks Daily
BRICS
BRICS in 2025 Phenomenal World. ““The implicit contest within the BRICS over the next dominant energy mix, and the political economy built around it, will decide not just geopolitical power arrangements across the BRICS nations in the decades ahead, but the fate of most of the world’s peoples.”
De-dollarization: Are China and the BRICS building a gold-standard trading system? Kevin Walmsley
Brics leaders condemn strikes on Iran and tariffs, but avoid direct mention of US, Israel South China Morning Post
Trump says nations aligning with BRICS’ ‘anti-American policies’ will face additional 10% tariff Anadolu Agency
Chokepoints
A Conflict in the Pacific Could Prompt a Fight Over the Strait of Malacca Maritime Executive (Lambert)
Class Warfare
What is a micro-retirement? Inside the latest Gen Z trend Fast Company
To Understand the Economy, This Fed President Is Ditching His Desk WSJ. “…businesses raising prices not because they have to, but because they think they can get away with it.”
Implicit coordination in sellers’ inflation: How cost shocks facilitate price hikes Structural Change and Economic Dynamics
What Does It Mean To Be a Working Class Writer at Iowa Writers’ Workshop? Lit Hub
Plague Poems – The Two-Hundred-and-Seventy-Seventh Week Librarian Shipwreck
A Defense of Joy The Marginalian
Antidote du jour (via):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
“This Is Why Tesla’s Robotaxi Launch Needed Human Babysitters”
‘Onboard helpers, bad-weather suspensions, but no crashes.’
Yeah, about that. “Tesla Robotaxi Hits Parked Car in First Recorded Accident” at
https://au.pcmag.com/cars-auto/111902/tesla-robotaxi-hits-parked-car-in-first-recorded-accident
To borrow a phrase from Ralph Nader, unsafe at any speed.
I think it would be pretty funny if Peter Thiel, who rants against the precautionary principle, was run over by a self-driving Tesla or Waymo.
Thank you, Conor.
Further to Blair’s involvement with Gaza, a bit of background:
Firstly, BCG would be an obvious choice as Netanyahu used to work there. He became friends with former Republican governor, senator and presidential candidate Mitt Romney when the pair worked there. Former Democrat governor and presidential candidate Deval Patrick works at BCG. The firm is well connected.
Blair’s influence on the Starmer government should not be underestimated. It’s not an exaggeration to say there’s no such thing as Starmerism, as Starmer has pointed out. As professor David Edgerton said last week, Starmer is reheating tired and inappropriate Thatcherism and Blairism.
Let’s go back a bit.
As the pandemic receded, Blair began to hire civil servants, especially those with experience of the pandemic. He saw such emergency management as the next wave to ride and wanted to sell his firm’s services based on that knowledge. In addition, Blair foresaw the Tories losing, not Labour winning, as in 1997 and wanted his people in place. The Blair team is at all levels of the government, beginning with ministers and advisers like Jonathan Powell and officials like Peter Mandelson (ambassador to Washington and friend of Epstein). Those not seconded to Whitehall are at his office, conducting similar work.
The team that put Starmer at the helm of Labour is really Blair’s team, but with some reporting to Mandelson, like Morgan McSweeney and Wes Streeting. McSweeney and his wife, Imogen Walker, also report to Gary Lubner, a triple citizen oligarch and sanctions buster.
When Blair “retires to his country estate”, “ducal” Wotton in Buckinghamshire, red boxes, just like in Whitehall, are placed outside his Connaught Square (London) town house and office for matters requiring his attention. He had these boxes made a couple of years ago. Blair would like a more prominent role in government, but realises that would provoke Rupert Murdoch. Murdoch blames Blair for the break up of his marriage to Wendi Deng.
Blair developed a taste for “squirearchy”* at Chequers, a dozen miles cross country from Wotton in my beloved Buckinghamshire, and the money that facilitates such a lifestyle and wanted his own estate. His elder sons, cashing in, have also bought country homes in Buckinghamshire. One country home, nearby, is owned by Blair, but occupied by his sister. *Being a squire meant, for example, not adhering to lock down and not scaling the hedge rows, so one could not see what the family got up to. Covid restrictions are for the little people, not the Blair family.
As PM, Blair often complained about being the CEO of the UK (the late Queen being chairwoman), but not being paid like a business CEO. He’s obsessed with money. Apparently, that goes back to Oxford. Like many of his followers, he thought about the Tories as the vehicle for advancement, but Oxford and its Tory association were dominated by the Cameron types, so Labour made some sense and an idea that, by the late 1990s, the Tories would have exhausted themselves in office. Like Trump, Blair found it easier to get on and ahead with new money, including attracting Arab and other autocrats as investors, one reason why Starmer ditched the green new deal and screamed that he “hated tree huggers” at Ed Miliband at a shadow cabinet meeting last year.
Blair’s association with Trump AND Kushner goes back to Trump’s first term, but may be even longer as an old deal for oil concessions in the occupied Golan Heights suggest. They have friends, donors and investors in common. Blair even thought he could mediate in the stand off between Trump and Biden in January 2021 and sought to fly to Washington.
Blair is adviser to and client of JP Morgan. The royalties from the gas fields off Gaza are paid into an account for the Palestine Authority at JP Morgan. A panel, including Blair, oversees the account.
Blair used to have his own investment funds. A master fund was fed by funds that included his family and others, often autocrats and donors, as beneficiaries. This became expensive, so the funds were wound up and Blair switched to JP Morgan.
Journalist Michael Crick has tweeted about this sorry affair and asked if anyone at BCG and the Blair organisation considered the ethics. What a ridiculous question. The only issue for these people is getting caught. From Blair down, these people are, to quote William Dalrymple from yesterday, “pig ignorant”.
When briefed about the hand over of Hong Kong to China soon after becoming PM, Blair confessed to not knowing about how Hong Kong became British and the opium trade and British oligarchs (extant, not extinct) and asked why the Chinese can’t get over such matters. A dozen or so years ago, Blair was asked to make opening remarks at Cape Town’s annual mining “indaba”, held every January. He embarrassed the hosts and upset attendees by talking in cliches about religion, not political developments and risk as planned.
Finally, let’s remind ourselves of what Israeli historian Ilan Pappe said about Blair as Middle East mediator: “That’s like putting Dracula in charge of the blood bank.”
Thanks for the thorough indictment. Now if we could just find a prosecutor.
The take over here was always that Blair was inspired by our Slick Willie and his Third Way. The Clintons also saw neoliberalism as the avenue to riches.
Movie world has tiptoed around Blair’s image but I think Michael Sheen in Peter Morgan’s “Blair trilogy” may have been good casting–going by your description. Sheen’s portrayals often seem to have something shady about them.
Thank you, C.
Yes. That is correct. Clinton was the inspiration.
Oxford, including the network of Rhodes scholars, facilitated initial contact. That blossomed into exchanges of staff etc. This transatlantic elite soon became deracinated.
For example, Laura Tyson taught at LSE, Mrs Blair’s alma mater, and sat on the board of Morgan Stanley in NYC and London.
Blair’s eldest and middle son sup at the same trough. The elder has brought in Sunak as an investor.
Wowsers. Very helpful. Blair is much worse than I imagined and I fancy that I have an active imagination.
Thank you, Yves.
I add that Blair and his proxy Starmer are protected by the same people.
Blair has Starmer’s successors waiting in the wings, Wes Streeting and Darren Jones. Streeting upsets people, so Jones is the alternative. Starmer is aware of that, hence reliance on Reeves.
Was Starrmer also on Lolita Express with Blair?
I am not sure Blair was ever on the Lolita Express, but Mandelson definitely was – and stayed at Epstein’s New York house. Young Ukrainian actor/model/whatever boys seem to have become upset with Starmer for some reason, hence a relatively nothing to see here media coverage of arson attacks on 2 Starmer properties and a car he sold to a neighbour. No reports of Starmer being pals with Epstein though. However, he did choose not to prosecute the late serial child rapist and necrophiliac Saville, a former BBC TV presenter and DJ when he was DPP.
Blair was definitely around Epstein. A former colleague went to work for his son and a colleague and me both independently of each otjer said how nice it must be to work for the son of a war criminal and paedophile.
Starmer has also not gone after the Pakistani grooming gangs. I guess they are suppliers to the parliament.
They have learned nothing and forgotten nothing, the Blairbons!
You can look up the various Windrush Ventures and Firerush Ventures entities (at least three limited partnerships and a limited liability partnership and a limited company for each) but you won’t learn anything. That was the whole point: opacity. I don’t think the structures became too expensive to operate: I think the new UK rules on the disclosure of the ownership of limited partnerships had to be avoided. No doubt the money is now in Singapore or Delaware/North Dakota/Wyoming.
Thank you, R.
I’m friends with and a former colleague the former regulator who processed the application for Firerush.
Good point about disclosures.
Methinks, Delaware.
Always looking for your informed comments. So “rich”
Summer Wants You Dead Life and Limb
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
That was a fun romp with no grievous injuries sustained, unlike many of the amusing stories therein.
You’ll never catch me on an ATV, I know too many people that have broken bones, had to have their spleen removed, lacerations like you wouldn’t believe, and more.
They’re the grown-up version of monkey bars in elementary school that were there to essentially weed out a small percentage of kids.
My moment of stupidity came circa 1970 jumping off a whale @ Legg Lake and landing on my funny bone in the sand below-not funny breaking your elbow in that fashion…
Scene of decline:
https://www.laalmanac.com/arts/ar725.php
Summer doesn’t want you dead. The South wants you dead-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=po2RGPkXhIw (1:52 mins)
That u-tube was worth the price of admission, ha.
We don’t have any crocodile nasties nor feasting insects except for deer flies who had assembled in V-pack formation around yours truly over the weekend in Mineral King and stealthy little buggers-they’re like time bombs in that you have a good 45 seconds after they land on you before they do their worst and leave you with a sting that’ll smart for awhile-and i’m pretty good at swatting them away fairly promptly in my allotted time frame, here in the deep south, well barely south that is-the dividing line betwixt north & south being 10 miles north of Fresno.
That had to be pretty slippery climbing up that whale.
Handy tool if used correctly by someone who rides responsibly, is in good physical shape, and is generally lucky.
I survived seven seasons using them to spray weeds in the front country. But have seen others serve as painful examples for others.
Quad bikes do indeed look like tremendous fun, and are responsible for more than a hundred serious injuries and a handful of deaths here every year, typically from being ridden in rugged terrain on farms. Spinal injuries are particularly common.
You’ll notice from the photo on the article that they have no roll protection whatsoever, and they’re just large and heavy enough to do some serious damage if you find yourself suddenly inverted, especially if you add a bit of velocity and a non-level surface to the equation. By contrast, it’s quite hard to get yourself squashed under a motorbike, unless it’s a particularly big one.
From To Understand the Economy, This Fed President Is Ditching His Desk
It’s hard to believe, but for many people that Pandemic was either over by May or it never happened:
A reckoning is coming regardless. The virus doesn’t care.
Dead and disabled workers surely must play a role here, and now Trump’s immigration enforcements.
If I may nominate a must-read for today, it is Boston Consulting Group Modeled Plan [for a customized genocide program with bureaucratic deniability.]
This paragaph of seeming banalities indicates the depth of evil: “BCG’s model provided assumptions for the costs of voluntary relocations of Gazans, rebuilding civilian housing and using innovative financing models such as “tokenisation” of real estate via blockchain technology. It also allowed calculation of possible GDP outcomes from reconstruction.”
“Voluntary” relocations with subsidies. Auctioning off the “real estate.” And the almighty GDP, of which country, one must wonder — U S of A and Israel, I’d venture.
In case you were wondering what Hannah Arendt was writing about when she was writing about the banality of evil.
Unlike Eichmann, there will be no trials. For years and years, the U.S. white-collar class has worked to limit its liability and to blunt its moral compass. Maybe one of these people choked on a slider at a Fourth of July barbecue, but that is likely the extent of divine retribution. These days, even God is a limited-liability corporation.
I was noting the proposed scenarios like ‘Gazans would leave the enclave with “relocation packages” worth $9,000 per person’ and ‘Gazans would have been given a package to leave the enclave including $5,000, subsidised rent for four years and subsidised food for a year.’
If you believe that would ever happen then I can get you a good price on the Sydney harbour bridge. So who comes up with the billions to pay for those schemes? It won’t be the US or Israel but both believe that it will be funded by countries full of people named Muhammad. But no doubt somebody like Tony Blair would get his grubby mitts involved so that Gazans would be charged from their money for things like transport fees, catering, accommodation, passport fees, exit fees, language lessons, management fees, security fees, etc. leaving them being sent to a place like the Sudan with zip.
On the contrary, by the time the Israelis are done with their work, there likely won’t be that many humans left in need of relocation.
There has to be a PowerPoint file of this somewhere out there in the ether. I really hope that someone in their right mind will get it posted for all to see. These monsters think they’re untouchable. Until they’re not.
Climate disasters and degrowth–
Degrowthers like me have been saying for some time that degrowth is coming; the question is whether we’ll plan for it in order to not let all the burden fall on the poor and Global South. Now the quite Establishment Institute and Faculty of Actuaries in Britain commissioned a study from the University of Exeter examining climate risks as we shoot over 1.5 degrees C warming and head for 2.0 and beyond.
This is what they found about our economic future if we don’t institute degrowth policies. (Context of graph) While even earlier projections showed a loss of 5% to GDP by 2040, the new model, amended based on the impact of storms and fires over the past couple of years, projects a 10% hit to global GDP by 2040 and a devastating hit of 20% by 2060. This compares to a drop of 4,3% in GDP in the USA in the Great Recession and a GDP drop of around 25% in the USA in the Great Depression.
Degrowth is coming because our complex economic system cannot withstand the hits that Nature is delivering without incurring significant damage. We have changed the Earth. Now the Earth is going to change us, our children and our grandchildren.
Heat Wave Hotspots (op cit) was also interesting. It should convince all but the wilfully ignorant. Unfortunately, they seem to be in the majority.
The straightforward “heat index” is defined in the authors’s previous post.
And then we have fools/shills like Dore and Rogan using the 485 million year graph to claim it’s getting cooler. Someone with animation skills needs to take that graph and first zero in on the part of the graph that depicts the Pleistocene, showing the amplitude of climate swings, then down to the late, great Holocene. What it would show is like a plucked guitar string that gradually settles back to rest. The Earth has never seen a climate as stable as the Holocene, the period during which humans built their civilization. Then comes that big spike your graph shows.
We have messed with the primal forces of Nature, ignorant of the truth that blowback does not necessarily impact those who did and continue to do the messing. While it’s put in the context of YHWH’s judgment rather than the reaction of Gaia’s systems to our tampering, the point Jesus makes about the collapse of the Tower of Siloam seems quite applicable:
Luke 13
Put those words in Gaia’s “mouth,” and you have our situation over the past decades. The warnings come from humans with the expertise to know, and it’s been backed up increasingly by “messages” from Gaia that the time grows short.
And we just keep on keeping on like those in the days of Noah:
Matthew 24:38-39
Substitute the breaching of tipping points for the coming of the Son of Man, and you have our situation.
Mass insanity.
Unlike our legal system, the laws of nature operate with majestic impartiality.
I’d call it majestic indifference. We can love Nature all we want to, but should always bear in mind that it doesn’t love us back.
Tao te Ching #5 (Le Guin rendition)
Hard to hear, but supported by observation. Some around here are familiar with Rod Dreher. He wrote some ridiculous theodicy piece today, defending his God for the indefensible, and never mentioned the word climate or even weather. It’s as if they were all struck by lightning from the heavens without the clearly increasing frequency and intensity of these storms. Trump was just as pitiful, resorting to “It’s a 100-year storm.” I’m sure the new developers who pick up the land cheap will take great solace from that “promise.”
Despite all this, I’m fond of the Gaia hypothesis, a planet with the inclination and power to keep things in a narrow band even with increasing solar radiation. But we’re throwing the systems into a radical new adjustment that’s very unlikely to be favorable toward human civilization or current species. As Joni wrote, we’re stardust. Now we’re destined to become hydrocarbons. Sadly fitting.
The wheels of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small …
I have to say, it has been fascinating to watch Jimmy Dore fall for the stupidity of the climate change and COVID deniers. A self proclaimed idiot comedian should be more careful if they are so self aware of their stupidity. The truth is he does not think he is really stupid, he thinks he is the smartest person in the world. His heart might be in the right place but his head is not.
Was just talking to a friend in Chapel Hill, NC where they received another 1000 year flood, fifth in 10 years I think.
One can suggest that a position of climate change denial has little downside for the denier.
While I view that de-growth is inevitable, the USA financial markets (big finance and real estate), consumer goods companies and the USA political and military are pushing the unlimited growth (abundance) model.
One trend that may indicate de-growth is happening is the stock buyback of corporations, seemingly announcing that they don’t need cash for expansion.
But denying climate change can be profitable for media types as it is an everything is OK message, and viewers and advertisers like the message.
And when TSHTF, the deniers can simply say, “Sorry, I got it wrong, but we’re all in this together”.
It is similar to the NY Times when it advocates for foreign wars, gets the wars and when the wars go poorly, publishes a retrospective on how the Times got it wrong.
The Times people who promote wars (save Judith Miller) keep their jobs.
Being a climate change denier has little downside for media types.
The Superintendent for Sequoia NP is the first one out of say 5 Superintendents here i’ve even had a conversation with in my 20 years here, and we text regularly and go out to dinner and chew the fat.
He had previously been Superintendent @ Great Smoky Mountains NP, and arrived here a week before the 2020 Castle Fire (174k acres) torched a fair amount of Sequoia NP, and then the 2021 KNP Fire (88k acres) was largely in Sequoia NP, followed by the winter of record for 125 years that did massive damage to roadways and infrastructure, followed by a perfectly average year and then the Coffeepot Fire (14k acres).
We have public meetings here in town and during one in 2023 with Clay telling the assembled audience that the Generals Highway will be closed for 3 to 4 months due to damage from so much snow combined with barren moonscapes from the fires-incurring the wrath of a few AirBnB’ers in the audience-as if it was his fault a large part of the road was missing, resulting in their missing income for 3 to 4 months?
I came up to him afterwards and whispered in his ear…
‘…can I call you Mr. Disaster?’
Degrowth will be a challenge, from my mother and father came forth 11 of us currently in a little over 3 generations, 6 of them are under 30.
Not one of us grows or raises food, and are wholly dependent on somebody else doing it, not unlike most everybody else in the country.
>Not one of us grows or raises food, and are wholly dependent on somebody else doing it, not unlike most everybody else in the country.
That will be a rude awakening for so many that reside in this Nation’s metropolitan areas.
Perhaps we should blame it all on Ken Burns who made the NP even more popular with his “America’s best idea” even as some Congress Critters were plotting how to sell the whole thing off or at least monetize the “product.” Your current super must be relieved to get away from the jammed Smokies which give life to tourist magnets like Gatlinburg, Dollywood and Cherokee. Maybe Disney can revive the Mineral King resort you talked about–skiing plus trees.
Burns was right of course, but perhaps we USians should keep it under our hat. Parisians will still have EuroDisney.
Starting in 2026, the surcharge on foreign visitors entry into NP’s & NM’s is expected to add $90 million income, although the presser declined to say just how fast it would take to get to that amount, nor amount charged in excess of what a red blooded apple pie eating Sons of Freedom (13th edition) local is charged.
Hadn’t heard about that. Got a link?
https://www.nationalparkstraveler.org/2025/07/president-orders-interior-secretary-increase-park-fees-foreigners
The Offshore Oil leases (LWCF) bring in ~ $900M/yr.. The Great American Outdoor Act (2020) institutionalizes this amount for the national and state parks (40/40 split).
Once this money is used on an outdoor recreation project that project must be maintained for public use in perpetuity.
$90M in foreigner fees seems a reach. Will they ask for driver license at entry? Soon enough there will be legal US citizens working as ‘taxis’.
If by de-growth you mean energy use I think it will go up. Climate change will drive up energy use as it already is.
Higher temps will mean more AC as is already happening around the world. Also more heating due to the expanding extremes.
Lower water availability will mean increased energy use for more pumping, pipelines, desalination etc. it’s easier and cheaper to move water than whole populations
Agriculture changes will require new locations and greater shipping costs
Indoor and other newer energy intensive agricultural products will supplement as is already happening around
Data centers and AI are going forward at a fast rate and will continue to grow.
The internet in general is growing and it’s already a pretty big % of the world’s energy use and not looking to go down.
And the developing world is well developing which means more energy use whether for food choices or transportation or refrigeration and AC and Internet etc.
Some of us are gardeners. Anyone else noticing an increase in scavengers and pests? More crows, scrub jays, rats, etc? In our med. small town, people all over are hiring pest controllers to deal with “vermin”. I’ve also noticed an uptick in white flies, cabbage moths (and their worms), stink bugs and squash bugs as well as ants – in the garden. Yields are becoming inconsistent as well. Curious times noticed by local experienced gardeners. I wonder how actual farmers (large scale gardeners) are doing.
We have a delightful gift of globalization. The spotted lanternfly was native to India, China and Vietnam. It arrived in eastern Pennsylvania by boat, and traveled west by railroad until it has reached Cleveland and my grapevines. It knocked them back by about 75% last year, and this year the lanternflies are everywhere around the house and vines. I assume this will be my last crop. A few years ago, a picture of my nearly full carboy with wine from these grapes appeared in Water Cooler. That’s over.
they made it to Michigan a while ago –
2020 – https://www.michiganfarmnews.com/spotted-lanternfly-found-in-michigan-understand-the-threat-and-what-to-look-for
2024 – https://www.clickondetroit.com/news/michigan/2024/09/12/invasive-spotted-lanternfly-detected-in-wayne-county-what-to-know/
https://www.michigan.gov/invasives/id-report/insects/spotted-lanternfly
currently at war with japanese beetles –
“If by de-growth you mean energy use I think it will go up. Climate change will drive up energy use as it already is.
Higher temps will mean more AC as is already happening around the world. ”
AC is a great example of a reinforcing loop. The hotter it gets, the more people run their AC, the more carbon gets put into the air, the hotter it gets.
That only happens now in the Richistan now. They don’t have much luck running AC in the Pakistani countryside where power is on a few hours a day.
For some time, scientists have talked about a “carbon budget.” This is the amount of carbon we can put into the atmosphere (as measured in Gigatons) and still have some chance of not exceeding 1.5 degrees of post-industrial warming. In 2019, we needed to reduce our carbon emissions by around 5% per year to achieve this, and we actually succeeded in 2020 thanks to Covid. After that, it was back to Business As Usual to the point where now, we would have to reduce our carbon emissions (which are again increasing to new records) by 80% in each of the next two years to make it. LOL, or should it be COL.
That’s not going to happen, and we’ll bust right through 2.0 degrees C of warming if something isn’t done to rein in three rapidly growing sources of CO2 emissions: tourism, data centers and private plane use. We’re making the Earth more and more dangerous and hostile to our civilization in order to serve PMC lust for conspicuous consumption travel, billionaire lust to surveil and control us (along with creating “God”), and the desire of the rich to avoid getting our cooties as they jet to their ashram in India.
The philosophy behind degrowth is to eliminate these non-essential–we ought to say frivolous or dangerous–sources of carbon emissions.
It’s fun to blame somebody else for our problems, but the truth is it doesn’t take any more carbon for a “PMC” to fly from New York to London to see Westminster Abbey than it does for a plumber to fly from California to New York to see her family. Calling one frivolous and the other essential is just a political value judgment. They are equally detrimental to “Nature”. And since Nature in its pitiless indifference cares nothing for human happiness, we’ll probably have to give up both.
>It’s fun to blame somebody else for our problems, but the truth is it doesn’t take any more carbon for a “PMC” to fly from New York to London to see Westminster Abbey than it does for a plumber to fly from California to New York to see her family.
That’s fair, but I would add that that may be the only trip the plumber takes by air during a year.
Around here many of the PMC types are flying on numerous trips both domestic and overseas on vacation time that I don’t know how they accumulate. And we haven’t yet got into the antics of the dividend check of the month club around these parts of the Upper Valley of VT/NH.
Are worldwide declines in birth rates a sign of degrowth? They don’t look likely to recover anytime soon.
The catastrophic cuts to Medicaid are likely to accelerate that trend in this country. About 40% of live births are paid for by Medicaid, the potential burden of medical debt on top of the expense of caring for an infant will likely further crush family formation.
I’m not trying to argue this is a magic bullet, there is a lot of work to be done to limit per capita consumption of energy. But declines in fertility have an impact especially for future generations.
There are other factors.
After the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision which led many states to severely restrict abortions, analysts of the health sector noticed a significant increase in young men asking about and getting vasectomies.
I seem to remember that vasectomies are in principle reversible if one does not wait too many years for that, but still: another nail in the coffin of population fertility.
I was born on the cusp of the pill being available and it seemed as if every family in our very ordinary San Gabriel Valley neighborhood had 4.7 kids that our 4.7 kids went to school with~
I don’t think degrowth is coming, soon or ever. What I think we’ll see is catastrophe followed by no growth. We appear to have lost the ability to recognize the limits of our current approach. We seem incapable of planning for a future that is not a small perturbation around current conditions. The people in charge of our economies have zero interest in changing unless they have to, and even then, they will attempt to resuscitate the prior system until their children’s grandchildren die.
I think we’ll see a rolling apocalypse that comes around for an increasingly larger share of humanity. I think we’ll see an increasingly shrinking set of people who live in what we now consider decent conditions. And I think things will proceed in that manner until a large portion of humanity does something so spectacularly stupid that they all die, or, we have a planetary totalitarian regime that ends the current empire’s hold on the globe.
Yes I have to agree with you. If humanity had the smarts to avoid this climate armageddon, it would have been starting 50 years ago.
Instead its been decades of dick-waving, which if anything, is increasing. And with President Duck now as the dick-waver-in-chief, all is lost.
Branko Milanovic: Pensioners for War.
Milanovic is succinct and cool. Likely, Milanovic also is correct. Unfortunately.
It has occurred to me lately that USanians going on about “our democracy” is also some form of learned-helpless boredom. None of the “our democracy” poeple that I know of have been to a demonstration. Their idea of political action is to sneer at their adversaries and hope that the deportations and kidnappings end before Black Friday.
Just one height of boredom:
What’s the point of having this superb military that you’re always talking about if we can’t use it?
–Madeleine Albright
Correct answer: “To protect your dumpy ass, Madame Secretary.”
Read Milanovic.
thanks
The problem is, as it has been from time immemorial, that if the people making the decisions suffer not one bit from the real consequences of death and starvation and homelessness, then to them it’s a chess game.
And for the complacent people who don’t make the decisions but can watch the action from the comfort of their lounge room or on their phones? They can watch movies with titles such as Invade Iraq, Starve Palestinians, Bomb Iran. And later over dinner they can discuss the plot, and the actors, and how they think the action could have been improved.
And they cannot imagine that this is real somewhere, and might one day happen to them.
re: Nazi Germany vs. Israel today
fwiw by Nefarious Russians Blog:
Israel vs Germany: Who Killed More?
In this grim genocide numbers game, Israel doesn’t come out looking so good.
Yasha Levine
Jul 05, 2025
https://www.nefariousrussians.com/p/israel-vs-germany-who-killed-more
Well there is a difference between the Nazis and the Israelis. The Nazis did their genocide wholesale while the Israelis are doing their genocide by retail.
Goose steppers were much nappier dressers, advantage 3rd Reich over tacky Israeli khaki.
Have you seen their silly combat hats? That should take more points off (or add to thhe weight of their many sins).
…. and with many more countries aiding them (Izra-Nazis).
Do you mean that there are many more countries actively helping Israel commit its genocide nowadays than there were for Germany then?
I am not so sure. You must remember that European countries occupied by Germany enthusiastically participated in the holocaust (e.g. France, Netherlands, Ukraine, Estonia); so did other countries that remained more or less independent (such as Italy, Croatia, Romania). Plus several other countries that did not (e.g. Switzerland) or belatedly (e.g. USA) took part in WWII sent, through “refoulement”, many Jews to their death.
Perhaps there are more countries actively supporting Israel (with weaponry and ammunition, intelligence — e.g. AWACS, active operations in the region and in Gaza itself, sanctions against UNRWA, etc) than there were supporting the Germans with their genocidal rampage, but I doubt there are “many” more. Just like then, most countries simply remain uninvolved.
Saint Francesca Albanese (no pun intended here, she’s a saintly figure, very smart and quite hot) has released a report on the contributors and the economics of genocide. Lovely to watch her press conferences.
re: Taibbi
again by Nefarious Russians Blog:
Matt Taibbi gobbled by the Vampire Squid in the Vampire Castle
Matt’s political “convictions” were always tied to where the opportunity and adulation was coming from.
Yasha Levine
Jul 02, 2025
https://www.nefariousrussians.com/p/matt-taibbi-gobbled-by-the-vampire
Now that’s just funny as heck. Probably not the reaction Mr. Levine was going for.
Here’s the public excerpt from Taibbi’s 4th of July article.
In Spite of Everything, Celebrate this Fourth of July
https://www.racket.news/p/america-is-more-than-a-political
It is funny in a way as I was looking for info about Azerbaijan due to Conor´s text today and checked Almut Rochowanski´s blog Discomfort. It had nothing and out of curiousity I looked into her bookmarked blogs of colleagues and there were the “Nefarious Russians” who I had only heard of…
So I am looking for geopolitics and Azerbaijan and am ending up with Matt T…
Matt Taibbi writes:
“Independence Day is when we embrace being sneered at and dismissed as lowlifes by the civilized world. At least, that’s what I’m choosing to do today:”
Kneecap sing:
“I’m an Haitch Double-o Dee, low-life scum that’s what they say about me.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1J_DVutL-w
The world is converging on a strange attractor.
I’m not that keen on Levine either and he throws around “corrupt” like a frisbee we are all supposedly eager to catch. Moralizing is a dubious self boost.
But Taibbi/Kirn–and they do now seem to be joined at the hip–have put themselves in a box by trying to defend Trump as some natural alternative to the “corrupt” Dems. They should both stick to reporting rather than opinion spinning. Taibbi can still be a good reporter even if he makes “millions.” These days the left/right divide is very fuzzy indeed.
I haven´t had time for ATW lately.
Though I woul still argue based on the many show that I have seen in the past 2 years that what they do is not journalism but entertainment. Or I believe it is truly what they are aming for with whatever means.
And doing entertainment puts you in avery difficult spot. Because the last thign you want as an entertainer is being moralistic.
Sorry, that comment wasn´t intended for posting.
Don´t know how it ended up here.
That many typos are much even for me.
“But Taibbi/Kirn–and they do now seem to be joined at the hip–have put themselves in a box by trying to defend Trump as some natural alternative to the “corrupt” Dems.”
Maybe, but I also question whether that appearance is a result of the ambient TDS that is so shot through the media these days that neutrality looks pro-Trump at this point. For instance, I have been hearing about the immanent collapse of the US because of Trump since he got elected in 2016, and “:this time its real” from the second time on. Yet, World War 3 hasn’t started, the shelves at stores are no more empty than they were during the Biden administration, martial law hasn’t been declared, elections have gone on as normal, and so on.
Bluntly, I could have made a fortune betting against catastrophic predictions (usually by the Dems) about what Trump was going to cause. And yet those predictions keep coming and the apocalypse never shows up. In fact, if anything, it gives me hope that the courts have smacked down Trump on his Salvadoran detention scheme as opposed ot the way Bush II largely got a pass on his misuse of material witness deteention from 2001 to 2004 (remember that?).
Trump has implemented enough bad policy deserving of serious criticism, like allowing DOGE to privatize uncoscionable amounts of government data and abuses of civil rights by ICE, that there is no need to make stuff up. Yet, the Chicken Littles keep telling me that immanent catastrophe that never comes really will this time. The problem is even if the sky eventually falls, Chicken Little was of no help because he was going to tell me they sky would fall no matter what. To the contrary, he polluted the information-space with his garbage. These days I start to wonder whether actual the bad stuff even happened or if that was just BS I fell for on account fo that ambient TDS that is everywhere.
So maybe Matt Taibbi is doubling down on not seeing the evil of Trump, or maybe he’s right. I don’t see a good epistemic vantage from which to determine which is correct.
I was paying attention in 2016. I did not hear predictions of the “imminent collapse of the US because Trump” then. Maybe at Kos and MSNBC but sites that were more mainstream seemed to think Russiagate was more than enough as an indictment.
an aside: Russiagate was John Brennan’s thing, as has recently been revealed.
Ex-CIA chief John Brennan may have opened himself up to perjury charges over Trump-Russia hoax
https://nypost.com/2025/07/06/us-news/miranda-devine-ex-cia-chief-john-brennan-may-have-opened-himself-up-to-perjury-charges-over-trump-russia-hoax/
My humble thoughts, that the overall concern after 2016 was chiefly among the loyalists it was only ever Hillary turn to receive the high office and be anointed as the First Ever to do it. However, hubris and lack of any humility , plus a sheer unwillingness to canvas for votes in certain swing states / locales bit those ( mostly loyal to a fault ) Dems and a smattering of the Republicans where it hurt the most, just not in the wallet of the elite thinkers and the consulting class.
Yet fast forward to and particular after November 2024, it’s the very real nature that they are not rid of this meddlesome, orange haired now 79 yo menace. And instead of a Midwest nice, stoic evangelical VP in Mike Pence as in the first term, they are now looking at several likely standard bearer candidates to follow Trump starting in 2028.
“Exclusive: DOJ, FBI conclude Epstein had no “client list,” died by suicide’ ”
This will be a slap in the face for his supporters and I bet most of them do not believe any pronouncement coming from the FBI or the DOJ. Not after the past coupla years seeing them in action. The conclusion is obvious – Trump made a deal. Probably for protecting and hiding all the identities of all those wealthy people, he will be able to use that as leverage of them and he will have all the cards that he needs. Trump wouldn’t even cough up the 60 year old JFK files but just fobbed off his supporters. And ‘died by suicide’? Anybody remember the joke going around at the time? Why are drapes like Epstein? They both don’t hang themselves.
Epstein’s client list = Keysex*er Söze?
* the x is silent
Axios story looks like clickbait. Unsigned memo is a tell.
Is that designed to get ahead of some revelations, as a counter-narrative?
Wouldn’t be the first time.
Yeah I am not sure anyone is going to believe Bondi. The right onlineos0here and /conservative basically has been propping up the “Biden has a list and is hiding it” conspiracy theory for awhile. I don’t think they are just going to turn on a dime and believe this.
I suspect that Trump did a deal: Trump to stop insisting on releasing the JFK files, CIA/FBI to cover up the Epstein loose ends.
What does “FBI conclude Epstein had no “client list,”” even mean? If Epstein had clients, then thre is a list, even if it is not in their possession. No list would mean no clients. But if there were no clients and no list, then why would Epstein commit suicide? Is this COVID brain at work?
It’s a riddle, wrapped in a condom, inside an enigma.
You give too much dignity to this claptrap.
Red Carpet treatment for Bibi’s visit tomorrow. Clean hands for Mossad, it’s all in the past. Sara Mileikowsky has loaded up their used diapers and other stained laundry into the Wing of Zion™ (yes, it’s actually called that) for white-washing tomorrow morning.
Nothing to see here, people. Move along.
At least it leads to some comedy gold. For example:
https://xcancel.com/Jebus/status/1942262797187821953#m
“Jokes on Epstein, turns out the state didn’t have any evidence
never kill yourself”
The funniest thing is that in a couple of days or weeks or months somebody is going to claim that they want to run for office to clean up Washington and a bunch of morons are going to fall for it yet again.
Two weeks off work is now “micro-retirements” and “threatening to one’s career”?
Value is a mental illness.
After reading the article, I understand “micro-retirements” as a euphemism for quitting regularly, or taking unpaid holidays.
Of course, some companies offer paid sabbaticals of several weeks after several years of work.
“Micro-retirements” being the trailer park version, I guess.
US “micro-retirement” = 1/2 of what Europeans call “vacation”
I think two things are happening. First, the kids are used to the ‘gig economy’, where if you don’t work you don’t get paid. Made up of lots of small gigs across the year and also perhaps across the week. Grandparents could tell them about long service leave and vacations, but these are now extinct for many in today’s world.
Some do gigs because they can’t find permanent jobs. Some do this because they can’t cope with 9 to 5 work due to mental illness so they do a part-time job and learn to live on not much, and if lucky they have a support network. Some have a passion for writing or other arty pursuits and fit them around temp jobs. And then some do this because they are children who will never grow up, chasing fun and dodging boredom.
This sort of employment has to raise stress levels, and stress increases the chance of depression and other mental illnesses. And AI will make it 100 times worse for our young.
Los Angeles to halt ‘disaster tourism’ buses through Palisades fire zone Los Angeles Times
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tour bus operator:
‘On your left a celebrity you’ve kind of vaguely heard of is having a yard sale, $1.8 million for a 4,650 sq foot lot , it’s a ‘tear-up’.’
‘The hope is by the 2028 LA Olympics when they run the torch relay through here, that nothing can catch fire in the vicinity.’
“Ukraine mess: finding a way forward”
Stephen Bryan has been a supporter of the Ukraine but he can see the writing on the walls. Nonetheless he is still desperate for some kind of Ukrainian win. So he suggests going back to the Istanbul agreement of three years ago but far too much has changed on the ground for the Russians to go back to that agreement. For a start it would require them abandoning what is now Russian territory back to the Ukrainians. Not legally possible. The Russians want a deal that addresses root causes so that this war does not start up again in a few years. Putin has said it. Lavrov has said it. Peskov has said it but western leaders keep on pretending to be shocked by Russia’s terms although they have repeated them ad nauseam. ‘But Russia does not have either the resources or the money to do much on its own’ to rebuild Donetsk, Zaphorize, Kherson and Crimea? How about borrowing from China and using battalions of North Korean workers for reconstruction. There are already plans for the later. And a coalition government isn’t going to cut it as the Nazis will still be there threatening anybody that tries to make peace with Russia, even though they all have tickets booked out of the country in case of collapse.
Oddly enough, Putin himself claimed in last December that Russia does have the resources and manpower to rebuild Donbass and Novorossiya. And they plan to do it by 2030.
It seems that while the federal government is doing the heavy lifting, like roads and railroads, the Russian cities and oblasts are providing support for specific purposes. For example, I think the city of St. Petersburg is paying for the restoration of the Mariupol Dramatic Theater while the city of Moscow just promised to fund rebuilding and restoration of four Donetsk city districts that used to be the front line.
I don´t know who wrote it here or someone in some other space but several RU cities have a sister city in UKR to help reconstruct and invest in.
German reporter Patrik Baab has reported about how the Russians have been heavily building back Mariupol.
Which had a fun side cause I heard of some German journalist whose wife´s relatives live there and whenever they talked everything was fine – any damage done was always somewhere else – the war by far not as destructive as Western media wanted us to believe.
I can’t find the link, but there is a vision plan for Mariupol that converts it from an industrial city to an urban/tourist city that takes advantage of it shoreline and milder climate for car-free zones, recreation, and the like. These ‘visioning’ sessions for a future Mariupol are ongoing at this moment. They are exploring modern design concepts and transforming the city to something very different than the past.
Watch the late Soviet film “Little Vera” to see Mariupol and how it looked back in the day. Oddly charming, though very rust belt port.
No need for Russia to borrow to rebuild … unlike the US/Europe, Russia can fund reconstruction without using the “everyone needs to get in on the skim” grift model. See China, also.
It’s amazing what you can do when you don’t have to fill every beltway contractor’s rice bowl.
So, he has advanced to the third stage of grief, bargaining.
Russia has had to make inroads for their “buffer” into Sumy and Kharkov, and I doubt they will want to roll back those. In fact, they will undoubtedly want to roll forward from where they currently have lines even farther. The method they are using seems to be to take small towns one after the other, but when encountering heavily fortified urban areas they try to encircle those and cut off the defenders’ supply lines. Which is not the fastest way to go about things, but maybe best for minimizing human losses. It will be interesting to see where things stand by the end of next month, as there are half a dozen larger Ukrainian fortified areas that could fall if the AFU gets stuck trying to plug too many holes in the dike with not enough troops.
Somewhere in Poland, there must a wormhole. Otherwise it would not be possible for migrants to materialize in Poland without having first crossed the Belorussian/ Ukrainian border (in which case Poland would have to grant asylum not Germany). Warsaw loves to both have its cake (EU-laundered German transfer payments) and eat it too (refusal to live up to any EU legislation it doesn’t like). I can’t really blame them though. If there’s one state you can bully like that without any consequences, it’s Germany.
Also known as “giving them enough rope to hang themselves”. Also, they are not destroyers, but “destroyer escorts” (they are actually 2,000 ton frigates).
So, no change there. :)
This has the potential to make the police work more efficient. Back in the day, they had to plant all the evidence manually.
Madre Fire in California explodes to nearly 80,000 acres ABC News
Triple-digit heatwave starting Tuesday, elevating fire risks LAist
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Its gonna be a hundred and hell soon and how they find people who want to fight fires in the midst of high heat is a mystery to me, but thank goodness they’re on the fire line (and you too-the scourge of your convictions doing time on the outside)
Oops.
From Food Aid to Dog Chow? How Trump’s Cuts Hurt Kansas Farmers. (NY Times via archive.ph)
It’s backwards of what went on in the Great Leap Forward, Chinese grown food was exported and 30 million Chinese starved to death.
Everything used to be exported from the Pawnee County Co-Op until they weren’t any buyers because of Benedick Donald’s bonehead moves.
There is going to be a lot of missed meals soon…
“How to redraw a city”
They were talking about the city of Paris and the huge avenues pushed through that city in the 1870s. If I recall correctly, there was major fighting in that city several years before as the French army brutally put down the Paris Commune. So those avenues had two not so well publicized features. It would make it more difficult for rioters to gather together and it would make it easier for the military to advance into that city in case the need arise again.
“He is annihilating the crooked streets and building in their stead noble boulevards as straight as an arrow – avenues which a cannonball could traverse from end to end without meeting an obstruction more irresistible than the flesh and bones of men – boulevards whose stately edifices will never afford refuges and plotting places for starving, discontented revolution breeders.”
– Mark Twain, commenting on Haussmann’s boulevards
Micro retirements . . . aka vacation. But these guys are talking about unpaid vacations. Seriously? Sorry Gen-Z, I just don’t ‘get’ you.
‘Hey you kids!
That’s Dichondra grown from heritage seeds you are walking on’
I was about to post something similar and your post appeared.
It began: What in the neoliberal economics is this? They can’t even conceptualize paid vacations as “a thing”.
The next battle on the linguistic class war front after the ”quiet quitting” concept
TACO flips like a burger at your Fourth of July picnic on tariffs:
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5387416-trump-tariff-letters-first-batch/
Someone needs to buy him some steel toed boots, so that he can kick the can like a DC pro!
You ask how much I need tariffs, must I explain?
I need you, oh, my tariffs, like roses need rain
You ask how long I’ll levy you, I’ll tell you true
Until the 12th of never, I’ll still be postponing you
Hold me to it
Never let me go
Hold me to it
Melt my momentum like a PT Barnum show
I’ll levy you ’til our export markets lose their bloom
I’ll levy you ’til MAGA has lost its perfume
I’ll levy you ’til the poets run out of rhyme
Until the 12th of never, and that’s a long, long time
Until the 12th of never, and that’s a long, long time
Twelfth of Never, by Johnny Mathis
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGhqR3VIn1M&list=RDrGhqR3VIn1M
If TACO keeps moving those goalposts back, he’ll need to put them in the stadium parking lot.
“Micro retirement”
That used to be called a holiday
From Celia Farber:
Cloudseeding Company “Rainmaker” Founded By 25 Year Old Thiel Fellow Augustus Doricko, Was Seeding In Texas Flood Areas 2 Days Before Flood: “Stewarding The Natural World.”
https://celiafarber.substack.com/p/cloudseeding-company-rainmaker-founded
Pretty silly stuff, flora. Anything to avoid the truth. Where’s Pat Robinson to blame it on gay marriage?
Maybe. I would once have thought so, now I’m not so sure.
I misread you last line as “Where’s Pat Paulson to blame it on”, which gave me a laugh. I might name him as a write-in candidate. Can he serve from the great beyond? / ;)
A stalled front or storm is not due to cloud seeding.
The more energy we pump into the atmosphere, and the environment in general, the more we will see rare events like this become common.
Humans are great at seeing patterns, but horrible at understanding chaotic change.
Maybe Mrs. Robinson has something to contribute. ;)
But then we are in the era where there are very serious problems and the worst actors in the world are put forth to solve them.
I was surprised to see back-to-back comments this morning from regular guests on CNBC:
.To understand AI, rewatch The Sting. AI is probably the biggest long con in history.
.Musk should focus on cars. Self-driving is going nowhere, will never be used broadly.
When is makes it to CNBC.
Research says AI isn’t intelligent at all, it uses probability to fake intelligence. A very human trait.
Looking at how it actually works, and it seems that it steals the work of others.
And then is used by various people to cheat in all sorts of creative ways: in PhDs, job applications, student essays, student marking, making sure sick people can’t claim on insurance (uniquely american so far), making sure customers with complaints will never get to speak to a real person etc.
And, to target and kill people by some small middle east colony and its friends.
So, AI is a bit of a misnomer then. What about ASS, for Assassinations, Stealing & Scamming.
With ICE now the preeminent domestic law enforcement agency dedicated to internal threats I suspect that there are a number of senior people at the FBI who are unhappy with the situation.
I expect ICE to expand their role as much as they can and I expect the FBI to do what they can to frustrate that effort.
Counterterrorism makes for great PR and bigger budgets, internecine war between ICE and other federal law enforcement agencies could become very entertaining.
.
ICE Carmen Miranda warning:
You have no rights if you look vaguely Hispanic
The protest in Kenya continues with the police opening fire on protesters. 10 dead at this time. They are protesting police violence.
https://xcancel.com/MyLordBebo/status/1942248817992044830
🇷🇺 The Russian Minister of Transport Roman Starovoit shot himself in Odintsovo after being fired by Putin.
Former Kursk Region Governor Alexei Smirnov, who was recently detained for embezzlement during the construction of fortifications in the region, testified against Starovoit, a source for 112 claims.
Starovoit was indeed investigated for his involvement in thefts during the construction of fortifications in the Kursk region, according to a source in law enforcement agencies for RBC
Presumably, he faced up to 20 years in prison.
After receiving the news of his sudden dismissal, Starovoyt went home, grabbed his Makarov pistol, drove to a nearby park in his Tesla and shot himself.
He was about to become the suspect in a case of massive embezzlement tied to defense construction in Kursk.
Tesla likely has video of this case due to the car’s video cameras.
Tesla likely has video of this case due to the car’s video cameras
shades of the iaea
Our Home, the Earth, Is A-Changin’
Come gather ’round people
Wherever you roam,
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown.
And accept it that soon
You’ll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you is worth savin’,
Then don’t think that swimmin’
Can save you and your own.
For our home, the Earth, is a-changin’.
Come writers and critics
Who prophesy with your pen,
And keep your eyes wide.
The chance won’t come again,
And don’t speak too soon
For the wheel’s still in spin.
And there’s no tellin’ who
That it’s namin’,
May not be you now,
But it’s no time to grin.
For our home, the Earth, is a-changin’.
Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don’t stand in the doorway
Don’t block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
The fires and floods are outside ragin’,
And they’ll soon breach your bunkers
And smash down their walls.
For our home, the Earth, is a-changin’.
Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land,
And please realize
What you’ve refused to understand.
Your sons and your daughters
Are soon to be damned
By your love of consumption,
Your clinging to the presumption,
That all is well in the land.
For our home, the Earth, is a-changin’.
The carbon’s been spewed,
The curse it is cast.
The slow rise now
Will soon be fast.
As the present now
Will later be past
Our hope is rapidly fadin’
And the disaster now
Will be far from the last
For our home, the Earth, is a-changin’
“The Times They Are A-Changin‘” Bob Dylan
Dedicated to Amfortas and those lost in the Texas floods.
Has any heard from Amfortas? Crossing my fingers
I like to think he is simply too busy saving people and animals 24/7 like a local superhero.
Of course. He would.
Elon wears his political war wound like a crown
He calls his new party America
‘Cause he likes the name
And he’ll fund the finest candidates in town
Elon, Elon likes to push his money around
He makes a lot, they say
Spends his days plotting
For a 3rd party way
He was born in Pretoria came here via Canada, eh
When the New York Times said, ‘Elon is dead to us
And the war’s begun’
Oh, the old school media is a son of a gun today
And he shall be Elon
And he shall be a good man
And he shall be Elon
In tradition with the rocket plan
And he shall be Elon
And he shall be a good man
He shall be Elon
Elon sells Space-X in DC town
His family business thrives
They blow up occasionally
As he sits on the porch swing watching them fly
And Jesus H Christ on a cracker, he wants to go to Mars
Leave the Earth far behind
Take a rocket and go sailing
While Elon, Elon slowly dies
And he shall be Elon
And he shall be a good man
And he shall be Elon
In trajectory with the DOGE departure plan (whooo!)
And he shall be Elon
And he shall be a good man
He shall be Elon
And he shall be Elon
And he shall be a good man
And he shall be Elon
In trajectory with the DOGE departure plan (whooo!)
And he shall be Elon
And he shall be a good man
He shall be Elon
Levon, by Elton John
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEgEmTgAEUk
I have been reading in horror about the kids swept away from their camp in Texas. I send my two little ones to camp everyday and can’t imagine them being wholesale wiped out from what should have been a predictable storm/circumstance. Was reading more about the area and, unless I’m mistaken, the actual location of the camp was known as something like “Flash Flood Valley”. You would think a place with a name like that would have had some sense as to what was coming.
It’s hard to filter through the politics involved in this aspect but I wonder if they will ever be able to show that the orange man’s cuts to the NOAA/weather budgets, or whatever it was, contributed to the tragedy.
I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy. The absolute anguish of those parents/families must be surreal. But I’ve been thinking about that every day since the ongoing genocide in the ME started so, just one more horrific thing to reconcile in our reality.
According to some of the less unhinged accounts, the NWS had extra people working because of the storm and issued their 1st flood warning 12 hours before the flood. Also, the Orange man bad / Doge cuts don’t go into effect until next year… yes, there has been some early retirements. I’d much rather look at what happened during the 12 hours between 1st warning and catastrophe vs playing DC blame games
https://www.texastribune.org/2025/07/06/texas-disaster-warning-emergency-communication-bill-kerrville-floods/
Texas lawmakers failed to pass a bill to improve local disaster warning systems this year
A GOP state lawmaker who represents Kerr County says he likely would vote differently now on House Bill 13, which would have established a grant program for counties to build new emergency communication infrastructure.
Some good environmental stories today. I have a picture somewhere of my brother and I standing beside Santa Elena canyon in Big Bend. According to the Texas Monthly story this is now dry.
Which Workers Will A.I. Hurt Most: The Young or the Experienced? (NY Times via archive.ph)
As Yves Smith has mentioned in the past, new analysts need the drudgery of deep diving into financials for example to get the feel of it and develop the expertise. It’s no different with software engineering, with nearly anything I’d imagine.
This is a preventable debacle shaping up, where in the quest for higher profits, companies aren’t training their and their competitors future mid-level and senior workers. Talk about capitalism eating itself, and training and development themselves are considered disposable and needlessly costly.
The damage in terms of loss of societal knowledge is going to be widespread and punishing. Apply what we can no longer do in terms of manufacturing, and apply that to our “knowledge” economy where no one knows anything, and lacks the capacity to assess whether LLMs are outputting garbage, which is inherent in how LLMs work and inescapable.
Well, clearly they aren’t going to be sitting around collecting Medicaid, thanks Trump!
Where are those mid-level coders going to come from, exactly, magic fairy land? See my original point.
Soon the first ~5 years of white collar work experience will go the way of “on the job training”. For you kids out there, back when I was young (70s), companies would hire promising young people and actually train them on how to do a job while they were actually doing it! None of this 3 years experience required for an entry level position. They’d hire someone with no experience!!! I guess the employers pushed this “training” to colleges and trade schools so the kids rather than the companies had to pay for it. Not sure how they’re going to fix this one. Probably hire kids from non-AI countries.
Of course, this assumes the AI vision pushed by those highly biased sources quoted above comes to fruition. But with all the money being thrown at the problem, I’m not sure which door is scarier: a) welcome ai overlords or b) we spent trillions and all we got were some parlor tricks.
Somehow, I find myself wondering if this won’t be mostly an American disease. I’d bet that China, and Asian countries more generally, will look ahead and manage the integration of AI without destroying the balance between entry-level and experienced workers, and maintain the education and expertise of their workforce.
Watching the European Womens´ Soccer Championship taking place in Switzerland right now you see how little difference there is between the sexes once all that flurry of make-up and fashionism is removed. Both in looks and behaviour.
p.s. Which is a argument against the queer lable exaggerations and branding at times. Adding a new “gender” every year.
The difference is that most people woudn’t bother watching a female football game.
The Pluralia article is a howler.
Who is funding this site? Is it the Russians?
There is such a yearning for the pre 1918 empires, unbelieavable.
I feel deeply insulted, of course, but I can push the personal bias down, down and look into some of the statements:
“British Prime Minister David Lloyd George and French Premier Georges Clemenceau also played their favorite fantasy role of being indulgent ancient oriental despots by “awarding” Romania with the rich lands of Transylvania, subjugating its ancient Hungarian and German peoples to yet another regime of extortion, oppression, poverty and contempt.”
The Trianon treaty was in 1921 I think. In 1918, december, Romanians (the majority) in Transylvania already voted to join Romania (those in Basarabia did that a year earlier). And in 1919, during the Paris peace conference, Romanian Army occupied communist Budapest.
The great powers didn’t award Romania anything, just recognized an already established fact on the ground.
The Poles, the Czecs, etc suffer from the same treatment.
Tha language is tendentious like taken from the worst British Yellow gutter press – which is most of it nowadays (I am looking at you The Economist: “blood thirsty Assad”).
Oh, yes. It’s pretty breathtaking, though of course you don’t really have to pay people to write like that. But it probably helps if you do and also provide a list of who are the goodies (benevolent Hungarian aristocrats!) and who are the baddies (that cad David Lloyd Geoge!). Actually, maybe it’s not us but the Hungarians who paid for it? I’m not sure we care that much about who is the rightful owner of Transylvania and Slovakia.
re: Early German mass murders – The Teutonic Order
via JUNGE WELT
machine-translation:
Between Vistula and Neman
“Mark of Cain of the Conquerors”
The colonization of Prussia in the 13th century amounted to genocide. The Teutonic Order, dissolved 500 years ago, served as a myth for nationalists of the “German East.”
By Ingar Solty
https://archive.is/Fv7S6
UK development of robots for “space debris” removal contracts –
“The ADR Mission is a significant step in proving the UK’s ability to conduct complex activities known as rendezvous and proximity operations, including capture of uncooperative space debris.”
Could “uncooperative space debris”, be redefined in the near future as say Russian or Chinese satellites? Sure, they are going to test their robots on dead UK satellites, but then???
> Could “uncooperative space debris”, be redefined in the near future as say Russian or Chinese satellites? Sure, they are going to test their robots on dead UK satellites, but then???
Hell to the mutha-family-bloggin’ yay-yay … that’s going to be the orbital equivalent of what some military dive team did to NordStream.