Links 7/2/2025

Subscribe to Post Comments

156 comments

1. JohnA July 2, 2025 at 7:14 am

   Re Meghan and her rosé wine. I really could not care less about those two grifters or all the other celebrity labelled wines. However, I was amused that the wine was described as ‘manufactured’. I will stick to the rosé from my local cave in Hérault, that costs around euro 2 a litre ‘en vrac’ (petrol pump style), or 5-6 euros ready bottled.
   1. Trees&Trunks July 2, 2025 at 7:36 am

      I visited Napa Valley and did some degustation. Comparing that with my wine testings in Spain, Germany, South Africa and France I found that the Napa Valley wine is very streamlined. All wines I tested were good. None of them were vinegar-style. But also, and most disappointing, none of them were also fantastic experiences – this wonderful feeling when the taste fills your heart and soul. It was like a wine McDonalds. One bartender explained that this is partly due to the wines being directed towards a younger public with more sensitive tastebuds.
      In Europe I like the spread of wine quality from turpentine to the most exquisite wines you can have because the sensory experience is more intense when you have the whole range.
      1. JohnA July 2, 2025 at 9:21 am

         I have been wine tasting in both Napa, Sonoma and Santa Cruz, as well as in many parts of Europe. Californian wines can be excellent. There are also celebrity wines from France, Spain, Australia etc. I prefer the wine itself, rather than some brand building exercise of sticking a label with a famous face, be that some actor, musician, chef or some other grifter, as the main selling point of the wine.
         That is the beauty of visiting vineyards to taste, and then buy what you like best, rather than by price or celeb!
         1. Janeway July 2, 2025 at 11:38 am

            Take a trip to the Finger Lakes – Seneca & Keuka are both spectacular in their views and their vinifera.
      2. Socal Rhino July 2, 2025 at 11:20 am

         Best wine experience for me was a sample in a cave below a winery in Beaune, France. Best advice I ever received was find a type of wine you like, try lots, and enjoy the cheapest one you like.

         I think buying a Napa or Sonoma wine is like buying a diamond at Tiffany. You are certain to get good quality. But if you hunt elsewhere you will find better values. And it is fun to make discoveries.
      3. Grateful Dude July 2, 2025 at 7:31 pm

         Have you seen Mondovino the movie? I saw the short version years ago, and the introduction of micro-oxygenation in the 90’s (Robert Mondavi) changed a lot of wines. It mellows a wine without aging. Most commercial wines are made like that, but it doesn’t do real aging in oak barrels and so a lot of those flavors are not the same. Could be why Napa wines seem streamlined.
   2. Wukchumni July 2, 2025 at 7:39 am

      I’ll walk the plonk of Meghan’s and give it a go when it gets remaindered at Grocery Outlet as four buck chuck, but until then i’ll have to live vicariously through wine reviews. C’est la Vine.

      You couldn’t call us wine snobs, but for many seasons we have made the pilgrimage to Lodi in order to obtain the freshest box varieties available, which we consume in the wine tasting room, er our Motel 6.
      1. ambrit July 2, 2025 at 9:41 am

         I am not one graced with a “cultured palate.”
         I am lees a “wine snob” as a “wine yob.”
         I generally ask the sommelier for; “Chateau Plonk: Sunny side of the vineyard, please.”
      2. Carolinian July 2, 2025 at 9:47 am

         PBR and peanuts.
         1. Christopher Smith July 2, 2025 at 10:24 am

            PBR is for when you run out of beer
            1. ambrit July 2, 2025 at 11:35 am

               Doesn’t anyone here remember the rustic joys of Mad Dog 20/20?
               1. Neutrino July 2, 2025 at 11:46 am

                  Annie Green Springs went camping at Boone’s Farm. Film Hangover at 11.
                  Don’t ask me how I know. :(
                  1. ambrit July 2, 2025 at 7:20 pm

                     Well do I remember those Sunday morning hangovers.
                     Saturday night was a blur. Sunday morning was all too “focused.” (I took to keeping a pony of beer in the fridge for the “morning after.”)
               2. JCC July 2, 2025 at 11:59 am

                  Yes, especially after pulling a bottle out of the freezer on a very hot day. The best slushies ever. :)
               3. Wukchumni July 2, 2025 at 3:07 pm

                  I remember there was this liquor store you could easily score at in the late 70’s, and invariably in the parking lot there would be a couple of high school classmates in a car pleading with you to buy them some Andre Cold Duck, which seemed to be the choice of underage women drinkers of the era in SoCal.
   3. Dr. John Carpenter July 2, 2025 at 12:00 pm

      I read an article once about the company who actually produced celebrity branded coffee (I think it was). Confirmed everything I thought about this scammy scene. When they ended a license with a former football coach, they simply relabeled the coffee as their new rockstar’s “exclusive” blend.
   4. Bugs July 2, 2025 at 12:09 pm

      Kylie Minogue has a tasty rosé that I admit to buying a couple times. I also love watching Kylie Minogue when she dances around and sings fluffy pop dance tunes so that may be a factor in my purchase.
      1. CanCyn July 2, 2025 at 2:23 pm

         Agree about liking the celebrity being a factor. I wouldn’t touch Meghan’s wine with a 10′ pole (aside, why do they need to do anything? Harry is still a very wealthy guy despite stepping away from royal duties. Everything Meghan does is so cringe and mostly badly received. she must have very thick skin) … back to celebrity wine. I like Dave Matthew’s reds, lovely stuff. Gifted to me first time because someone knew I like his music but have bought it for myself several times since.
         1. Vandemonian July 2, 2025 at 6:12 pm

            Next thing you know she’ll be releasing her very own personally labelled his/hers fragrances. So naff!
            1. ambrit July 2, 2025 at 7:27 pm

               I’m looking for her to “star” in a reboot of “The Prince and the Showgirl.”
               Oh, wait, she already did, I think.
2. The Rev Kev July 2, 2025 at 7:25 am

   ‘marty,
   @martycomma
   china can build hospitals in days as a response to a global pandemic while the US builds concentration camps in days’

   Of course Trump gave some words of wisdom about any escapees from Alligator Alcatraz-

   https://www.youtube.com/shorts/_w1kD-jsxNs

   But as usual, just follow the money-

   https://www.winknews.com/wink_investigations/following-the-funds-florida-fronts-450m-for-alligator-alcatraz/article_177e7f87-a932-48d7-ae47-6a65c15c06a0.html
   1. Wukchumni July 2, 2025 at 8:31 am

      Of course Trump gave some words of wisdom about any escapees from Alligator Alcatraz-

      https://www.youtube.com/shorts/_w1kD-jsxNs

      Walk serpentine!

      Backstroke lover
      Always hidin’ ‘neath the golf head covers
      ‘Til I talked to your caddy, he say
      He said, “You ain’t seen nothin’
      ‘Til you’re down with a Mulligan
      Then you’re sure to be a-changin’ your ways”
      1. t July 2, 2025 at 10:27 am

         I listened to the putty-faved cosplay queen and dear leader speak about the new concentration camp for half an hour. And then I tried to find .gov sources for any of the claims they made about father rapers and mother stabbed – data sources of any kind. Maybe I didn’t search thoroughly. Maybe the DOGE damage and Trump administration opacity prevented my finding any relevant pages. Or maybe the idea is to bus the prisoners in and out to chop cane and pick tomatoes and strawberries and every word that came out of their mouths was a half-wit lie.
3. IM Doc July 2, 2025 at 7:45 am

   About how the GOP bill will affect Medicaid and MAGA

   I noticed over the weekend something that has just really made me reflect on the situation.

   As a physician who taught students and residents all my life, I have thousands of MDs on my social network feeds. Along with many hundreds of colleagues and consultants. I really do not spend much time there, but having a feed like that does provide an interesting gestalt of what the profession thinks in times like this.

   I noticed this past weekend that the feeds were packed with doctors opining on the disaster this loss of Medicaid would be for the poor, how this was going to kill all kinds of people, how we are no longer a civilized country, all kinds of commentary like that…..but that was also interspersed with absolute glee that this was going to destroy Trump and the GOP……you may not know that MDs, 80% GOP in my youth are now 90% Kamala voters and firmly entrenched in the PMC. The other huge difference has been 35 years ago, no one in medicine said a word about politics to each other and never, God forbid, to patients or the public —— nowadays the talk of politics and their support for the Dems is literally everywhere. It is really a stark difference in culture and is something to behold.

   Why do I find my colleagues’ Medicaid commentary so troubling? Well, I guarantee you that a Medicaid patient would find 90% of the time and likely more, calling any doctor’s office for an appointment would lead to a decline in an appt immediately when they find out their insurance. 90% or more of these docs decrying the loss of the program REFUSE TO SEE THE PATIENTS IN THE FIRST PLACE. The low reimbursement affects their bottom line that is needed to pay for the Mercedes, McMansion, and the kids tuition at 50K a year private school. It is really that simple. I have spent a career begging these colleagues to help with Medicaid consults only to be laughed at. The spectacle this weekend has been one of the most chilling examples of hypocrisy I have ever seen. So excuse me if I just have to laugh out loud at all the hysterics. It will be our epitaph.

   As for the MAGA people not “getting it”……why would they? The poor among them have been dealing with this clownish hypocrisy all of their lives, why would they pay attention to these buffoons now? Not to mention that the entire media and Democratic Party have taken their credibility, wiped with it, and thrown the credibility down the stool never to be seen again for a generation if ever.
   1. Alice X July 2, 2025 at 8:55 am

      The answer, of course, is for a universal health program, something that few D’rats and no Reptiles are behind. We are not a serious country.
      1. rob July 2, 2025 at 10:25 am

         Hey, what have reptiles ever done to make them as repugnant and vile as republicans? Even those scurrying around on the ground, can look DOWN on those republican “thought” leaders.
         1. Giovanni Barca July 2, 2025 at 3:44 pm

            Garter Snakes and blue tailed skinks are pure and virtuous and have never once taken away medicaid.
   2. Carolinian July 2, 2025 at 9:51 am

      Weren’t some doctors refusing Medicare patients due to low reimbursements?
      1. Alice X July 2, 2025 at 10:34 am

         Some doctors do not accept (standard) Medicare but far fewer accept Medicaid. Then there are seniors who qualify for both. There is also the Medicare Savings program with four tiers, the lowest rung is QMB, which pays for the Medicare Part B premiums, co-pays and deductibles.
      2. IM Doc July 2, 2025 at 11:03 am

         I would guess the vast majority of primary care providers in big cities do not take Medicare – OR they have filled their panels with some amount and feel they can take no new ones. At least with Medicare patients there is some doctor out there somewhere who will accept them. They may have to wait 9 months and there is often constant churn – but at a minimum they can be seen.

         Medicaid is a whole other story. Standard issue private practice doctors do not see them. The corporate non-profits for the most part absolutely forbid their doctors from taking them on their panels. The one exception to this are the last few remaining non-profits that truly have some kind of connection to religious groups – all the others – NO WAY. There are a few exceptions to this – pediatrics and OB GYN are much more accomodating to medicaid. There are some places in the USA with immense public hospital systems that take Medicaid. It is a constant struggle to fund them but they are still working and are some of our best hospitals in the USA. Interestingly, Texas leads the way with this model – it has multiple public hospitals in all of its big cities with very storied histories – Ben Taub in Houston, Breckenridge in Austin, Parkland in Dallas, John Peter Smith in Fort Worth and so on. The poor in the red state of Texas get much better care than pretty much anywhere else in the USA.

         As someone who has cared for these people all my life – there is one important thing to note – The patient’s insurance status and Medicaid coverage is absolutely the LAST THING that matters on their health outcomes. These people have so many other problems it is hard to fathom.

         So if you are on Medicaid as an adult you are just out of luck. And also please note – there are large immense numbers of patients on Medicare who have had some kind of catastrophic issue like a stroke, who then have to go to rehab or some other extended care – who are then forced onto Medicaid. It is the only way this will be covered. At some point, they are well and truly broke. They are on Medicare, but they have to use Medicaid as their supplement. They will find very few docs willing to take them. I am just telling everyone, this is a national tragedy. These people are grandmas and granddads – they have often worked hard their entire lives, and this is how they are treated. Every Democrat in DC knows this – they ignore it – and play political games with these people. Shame on them all.

         As noted above – a very large number of the docs boo-hooing about this on social media over the weekend are docs who have gone to a concierge model. They take zero patients on Medicare or Medicaid. But they do take your 2000 dollars a month. Only the very wealthy can afford it. It is quite frankly the most ludicrous situation ever. But these people have the absolute gall to whine about the GOP taking down the Medicaid system. What a horrible and cruel joke.
         1. Socal Rhino July 2, 2025 at 11:27 am

            I have a specialist who prefers Medicare because of the ease in billing and payment, but she is up front about not practicing to maximize income. I consider her an outlier.
         2. Paul W. July 2, 2025 at 3:18 pm

            I’m confused. I’ve been watching YouTube and reading Medicare pamphlets and I was unsure about what you were saying, that most doctors don’t accept Medicare. This page seems to say 98% of non pediatric doctors accept Medicare https://www.kff.org/medicare/issue-brief/how-many-physicians-have-opted-out-of-the-medicare-program/
            1. IM Doc July 2, 2025 at 3:38 pm

               They “accept” Medicare and have Medicare patients in their panels. But that may not be what you think it is.

               First of all concierge doctors do not accept anyone without the retainer fee right up front. If the patient happens to have Medicare the MD nor their office will usually have nothing to do with submitting claims, etc – it is all up to the patient.

               In every medical practice I have ever worked, internists will accept Medicare patients up to a certain level and then no more. Once the target is reached, the docs will have the front office screen the patients and deny appointments if they are Medicare patients. The usual number in my old practice before I moved was about 50-100 per panel – about 5% or so. So yes, they accept Medicare, up to a certain level, that will not interfere with their desired income stream. The minute that is breached, the Medicare patients are instantly turned away. This is openly discussed at meetings, everyone in the practice knows who is open and closed. For the preceding 5 years before I left, I was the lone doctor in 50 in my practice that was taking new Medicare patients. You can do the math.

               “Accepting” medicare patients in some think tank glossy is a much different thing than “accepting” medicare patients in the real world. The Kaiser Foundation is among the absolute worst in distorting information to make the Kaiser model and others like it into heroes. I would be very very careful extrapolating anything they say into the real world. And I mean anything. Their agenda is not the truth. Indeed, this is quite hilarious to contemplate for me personally. When I was looking to move several years ago, I interviewed in 2 Kaiser locations. In both I was told flat out that taking Medicare patients into the panel up to a certain level like 5% or so was OK. Any more than that was absolutely frowned upon and actively quashed. The Kaiser corporation is among the absolute worst non-profit in the USA in regard to these type of things. But they sure do like to preach and be self-righteous. FYI – this Medicare capping did not come up in any of the other interviews I did. The system gaming is the most pronounced the bigger the non-profit corp is and the more allied they are with private equity.
               1. Randall Flagg July 3, 2025 at 4:50 am

                  I hope that someday a full post on this will be made by you if a free moment is ever to be found. Thank you for the education on this subject
         3. ambrit July 2, 2025 at 7:34 pm

            Would it be appropriate then to muse that we can soon see the “tender ministrations” of Saint Luigi on the upper and middle management of the corporatized medical sweatshops?
            That would be an appropriate ‘front’ in the class war.
   3. ChrisFromGA July 2, 2025 at 10:33 am

      Thanks. As I pointed out in the comments yesterday, the Democratic Party has no intention of doing anything to improve peoples lives; they just want to have a narrative they can trot out every single election year, like :”the GOP is the party of rich bastids who want to take away your health care!”

      Yesterday Susan Collins introduced an amendment to the BBB that would have doubled the amount for rural health care to $50B. The change would have been paid for by raising the tax rate on the wealthy.

      I was rather stunned to read that of the 22 Senators who voted yes, 18 were Republicans. That means only four, count ’em four Democrats were willing to raise taxes to help the poor. The amendment would have been adopted had only 29 more Dems voted yes.

      I quickly figured out that the real game here was to keep the issue alive for the mid-terms. They’d rather defeat an amendment that would do genuine good right now for the sake of keeping the narrative alive that the evil GOP is the only party that hates the poor.

      The party of Chuck Schumer, Kamala Harris and Nancy Pelosi really showed who they are yesterday.
      1. Alice X July 2, 2025 at 10:51 am

         Well, the cynic in me says that Collins and those 18 other Rs had the same idea for the midterms: look we tried to make that bill better, really we did.

         It’s the uniparty of property and wealth.

         The D’rats exist to fight off the left (what little of it there is), not the Reptiles.

         Watch Zohran’s campaign for a primer.
   4. Yves Smith Post authorJuly 2, 2025 at 10:47 am

      In NYC, even Medicare patients are, as one doctor put it, 4th class citizens.

      Of the two doctors I see in NYC, one does not take any insurance (although my plan will reimburse me when I submit a claim). My regular MD accepts Medicare only from established patients (as in ones who age into Medicare).
4. The Rev Kev July 2, 2025 at 8:00 am

   “India-US trade: Is the ‘big, beautiful’ deal in trouble?”

   Lots of moving parts here. The Neocons would love to use India as a battering ram against China in the same way that they use the Ukraine as a battering ram against Russia. But how to convince them to do it – while more importantly how to make a lucrative profit in doing so. If you read this article, the US is demanding that India open up their agricultural sector up. If India did this and eventually needs the US for the food to feed their population, then it is game over for them and will do as they are told. This is a scarlet red line for India as not only do they know how vital it is for India to grow their own produce, there is no way that they could absorb the resulting millions or tens of millions of unemployed farmers if this actually happened. Any Indian government would collapse. In any case, they see with Mexico what happens when you let this happen. So instead Modi is announcing that he is doubling the amount of oil India is buying from the US to placate Trump as that is an easy one for India to do-

   https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/India-Doubles-US-Oil-Imports-to-Please-Trump.html
5. chukjones July 2, 2025 at 8:12 am

   Stanford paid 35,000 people to quit social media.

   For those that do not use X. Here is a thread roll. I was unable to find anything other than the press release from Stanford. A bit ironic (?) that a post on neg effects of Social Media is presented by social media.

   https://unrollnow.com/status/1938949265893827066
   1. Jason Boxman July 2, 2025 at 9:01 am

      Oddly, no one was paid to quit Twitter. I never did Twitter until the Pandemic, but lately I’ve just stopped using it. Doom scrolling Twitter is useless. I easily wasted 15-30 minutes a day or more just scrolling and occasionally sending a pointless reply that no one would ever read anyway.
      1. ambrit July 2, 2025 at 9:52 am

         I quit my occasional foray into Comments on mass media sites, such as Yahoo whatever, or the NYT when I noticed that most of my anti-narrative comments were being deleted by site admins. I determined that challenging the Narrative status quo on mass media sites led to being “disappeared” digitally.
         Doom scrolling is addictive. Thus, I can see a bright future in “social media deprogramming” movements.
         Brawny man stands up in group and sheepishly murmurs:
         “Greetings mortals. I am Crom. I used to be an arse kicking Northern God. Now I cannot stop playing ‘Call of Duty XIII.’ I need help.”
6. LY July 2, 2025 at 8:16 am

   The embedded tweet under China? section is a repeat of the H5N1 Bird Flu.

   As an hiker/backpacker, ticks and mosquitoes, based on anecdata, are worse than ever. I wear permethrin treated long pants and sleeves, no matter the temperature. Then use picardin on legs, arms, midsection, and lemon eucalyptus extract on my head.

   In NJ, alpha-gal is still emerging, but everyone knows someone who’s had Lyme. I have a friend who’s battling long Lyme and babeoisis. She was working at NASA before going on long-term disability.

   How long until malaria reappears then spreads past its historic range? Same with yellow fever and dengue? this is in top of Zika, ECE, etc.
   1. Yves Smith Post authorJuly 2, 2025 at 8:28 am

      Fixing. Twitter has problems with its embed function. It happens too often that two embed attempts in a row do not result in the second copying to the clipboard, even though Twitter says it did.
7. AG July 2, 2025 at 8:18 am

   re: RU – Glenn Diesen – Richard Sakwa

   I mentioned Richard Sakwa just yesterday Glenn Diesen now posted a conversation with him today, which would be here:

   Richard Sakwa: Democratism & Liberal Authoritarianism
   47 min.
   https://glenndiesen.substack.com/p/richard-sakwa-democratism-and-liberal
   1. Lucy Komisar July 2, 2025 at 2:57 pm

      Sakwa is brilliant on Russia
      And he has given shout-outs to my exposes of conman William Browder
8. Mikel July 2, 2025 at 8:30 am

   Old Blighty:

   Not seeing an active link to the brawl on the beach story, I put the long title into search.

   No exact hit, but:

   I scrolled through page after page of stories of brawling and rioting Britain in just the past two years.

   More to it than hot summer days…
   1. Yves Smith Post authorJuly 2, 2025 at 10:49 am

      Fixed, sorry.
9. AG July 2, 2025 at 8:33 am

   re: war history

   The Naming of Wars: How Wars Are Named
   Hamas-Israel War? Or the October 7 War? And What About Trump Naming the Iran War as the 12-Day War? How Does This Work?

   June 26th
   https://warsandconflictsoftheworld.substack.com/p/the-naming-of-wars-how-wars-are-named
   1. The Rev Kev July 2, 2025 at 10:45 am

      Trump trying to name this as the 12-Day war was just a bit of pr spin on his part. It reflects on the victory of Israel’s 6-Day war so as to give the impression that Israel won this war too. That is why he was so annoyed when the Iranians said that they had won it. Newsflash. The Iranians were digging themselves in for the long haul in a war of attrition as they knew that Israel could not win it. It was the Israeli’s that ran off to Uncle Don to beg him to shut this war down. If it had kept up, then in a few more days time the Israelis would have shot off the very last of their anti-air missiles while Tel Aviv would have looked like Gaza.
      1. Frag Ende July 2, 2025 at 4:39 pm

         Still a little confused. They had Fort Zion on the ropes: both ports and refineries knocked out, Ben-Gurion airport pretty much closed down, iron dome leaky. Why did they stop? Were their own air defences vulnerable? Or just being magnanimous to enhance world opinion?
         1. samm July 2, 2025 at 6:27 pm

            Nukes? Just a guess.
         2. NotThePilot July 2, 2025 at 6:36 pm

            Larry Johnson had an interesting post a day or two back, by an American convert to Shia Islam, that talked about the many ways sincere Muslims are supposed to fight by the book. I agree with everything he wrote, but also think it underestimates how good Iranians can be at creatively coloring within the lines.

            Just my opinion, but I think a big part of it is that the Iranian government is laser-focused on converting military gains to political ones. For contrast, look at how decisively Russia is winning in Ukraine, but even their best possible endgame will be a huge burden on the Russian state. Vis-a-vis Israel & the US, Iran proved all the points it needed to: about their own society’s resilience, about Israel’s fragility, about America’s actual capacity, and that their neighbors really need to rethink their security alignments.

            No guarantees since it’s hard to tell with all the noise, propaganda, and censorship, but if Iran is planning to go after anyone for now, I think it’s closer to home. The timing just seems too exact for the unrest in Armenia and sudden diplomatic incidents between Azerbaijan & Russia. I don’t know if it’s Iran setting something in motion or the West desperately trying to get in front of it first. It’s not a common opinion, but I also suspect the Iranian government is quietly gunning for the Jordanian and Bahraini governments too.
10. The Rev Kev July 2, 2025 at 8:36 am

    “Major Setback for Ukraine as US Cuts Aid Due to Critical Weapons Shortages”

    My take on this is that is that critical weapons are needed in the Ukraine, Israel and for the US military’s own stocks. And I suspect that the US has dipped deeply into their own stocks lately, especially during the Israel-Iran war. And as the US military needs to replenish their own stocks to take on China before too long, a lot of those weapons are going to the own arsenals. As the remainder is not enough to replenish the stocks of both the Ukraine and Israel, somebody had to get the chop. And Washington will always choose Israel over any other country so to nobody’s real surprise, the Ukraine will be hung out to dry.
    1. tegnost July 2, 2025 at 9:10 am

       My take is that military procurement and tariff induced channel stuffing will send the market to the moon and that is all that matters to anyone who matters
    2. Frag Ende July 2, 2025 at 4:58 pm

       Reportedly, their stocks do seem low. I suppose they are counting on Germany, which under Merz is all gung-ho to take up the slack and merrily escort his country and the EU into economic oblivion. Bahr none (silly pun, sorry).
    3. Deluxe July 2, 2025 at 6:42 pm

       https://x.com/TBowmanNPR/status/1940434066438054362
       Here’s the list of US munitions approved for Ukraine but now being held in Poland.
       92 AIM missiles
       30 Patriots missiles (PAC3MSE)
       8496 155mm Howitzer rounds
       142 AGM-114 Hellfire missiles
       252 GMLRs missiles
       25 Stinger missiles
       125 AT-4 grenade launchers. #NPR #UkraineRussiaWar
       
11. Mikel July 2, 2025 at 8:37 am

    Looks Like Trump is Walking Away from the Ukrainian Military Casino – Larry Johnson. “I would call it a burn pit rather than a casino.”

    Hasn’t it been called part washing machine or laundromat as well?
    1. The Rev Kev July 2, 2025 at 8:49 am

       A year after the war is over, it won’t be called anything at all as people won’t talk about it anymore. Kinda the same way that Afghanistan quickly disappeared from the news media after it fell. Two weeks after it fell, aaaaand it was gone.
       1. NotTimothyGeithner July 2, 2025 at 9:28 am

          It may not have been loud, but Biden (Jill) probably couldn’t believe the msm and DC reaction and decided to embrace a more right wing stance so the msm (nepo baby dumping ground) would be nice. “Cut and run Biden won’t be a bleeding heart” would be my guess how the White House decided to move forward.
12. AG July 2, 2025 at 8:37 am

    re: Harvard

    I am not sure if it was posted here – Matt Stoller had this personal text on the occasion of him meeting up with the other graduates from 25 years ago, it was from June 9th!
    
    Monopoly Round-Up: The Best and the Brightest Under Pressure
    Harvard is under attack by the Trump administration. How are the best and the brightest responding? Plus, Apple takes another hit. And is a McDonald’s ice cream machine fix coming?

    Matt Stoller
    Jun 09, 2025

    https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/monopoly-round-up-the-best-and-the
13. Mikel July 2, 2025 at 8:56 am

    “One of many examples of why you should never never never give biometric information to a private company. That includes facial scans before boarding aircraft. That is NOT a government operation; it’s by the airlines, and you can refuse (yours truly has repeatedly). ”

    I’m kicking myself because during a recent early morning flight, I was distracted and looked into it…(facepalm).
    1. Yves Smith Post authorJuly 2, 2025 at 10:52 am

       It’s easier to remember to refuse if you are wearing a mask….they want you to pull it down.
       1. ChrisFromGA July 2, 2025 at 11:30 am

          Good tip, thanks!
       2. Mikel July 2, 2025 at 12:00 pm

          I had to pull it down anyway because they were checking my passport photo pic to my face.
    2. Neutrino July 2, 2025 at 11:50 am

       Will look out for those private biometric scans. I’ve seen the TSA scans with the notice that you can opt out of the photo, or are those the same? Don’t fly much.
       1. Yves Smith Post authorJuly 2, 2025 at 1:31 pm

          If you have a passport, the Feds already have your facial biometric image via that photo, which for years has been required to be of that standard.
14. Henry Moon Pie July 2, 2025 at 9:06 am

    Algorithmic tyranny–

    It is an important piece that lays out the connection between means of production as broadly defined and worldview beginning with Fordism through neoliberal financialization to Varoufakis’s techno-feudalism. What especially caught my attention was the authors’ prescription that echoed something I’d heard discussed elsewhere:

    If democracy is to endure, it must be reimagined not as a retreat to the local or the decentralized, but as a renewed assertion of our collective capacity to shape society deliberately and at scale. We must rediscover forms of organizing that enable rather than dilute collective power. As the sociologist Ruha Benjamin has written, resistance is not enough. We need creation. The vast technical and financial energies now aimed at achieving speculative goals like the AI singularity or Mars colonization could be redirected toward more urgent, earthly matters: housing shortages, economic precarity, the quiet crises of everyday life.

    This is the same “grab the power of the network for good” argument that I’d heard from Daniel Schmactenberger and Tristan Harris on Rogan a while ago. (video begins at Schmachtenberger’s point)

    What’s envisioned is a sort of “people’s Internet” where the algos are driven not by monopolizing attention for the sake of profit but instead by educational goals directed at solving the Metacrisis. To some extent, NC operates that way already not by algorithms but by the hard work of moderators who try to keep discussions free of propaganda, straw manning, making shit up, etc. The Noema authors and Schmachtenberger would do the same, but would add specific goals around reshaping the worldviews of participants away from the Madmen-induced, never-ending quest for more stuff, more travel, more more.

    Now plenty of freedom lovin’ ‘Murcans are very likely to complain that this is Red Guard re-education that seeks to deprive them of their free will, but that objection ignores the fact the we are not free individuals now but instead our brains have been constantly basting in the Madmen’s Bernays sauce all our lives. What Schmachtenberger and Harris propose is a sort of deprogramming that restores our sense of community and the collective, along with improving reasoning and appreciation for the complexity and inter-relatedness of our problems.

    I think that both our Noema authors and Schmachtenberger are driven by what they rightly perceive to be the very limited time available to us to achieve that radical and widespread change in worldview that is necessary before we can ever address the polycrisis effectively, and I sympathize with it. And I have long thought that any web platform that aimed at improving public understanding of the issues before us must be a democratically run collective (NC being the exception that proves the rule while DK is a prime example). I certainly have no objection to someone trying to create such a platform and would happily participate in it, but my intuition tells me that localized, face-to-face organizing, intentional communities, etc. that prepare for collapse must be part of the strategy in case the People’s Internet doesn’t succeed or isn’t even allowed to exist.
15. The Rev Kev July 2, 2025 at 9:09 am

    “Trump says Israel has agreed to conditions for 60-day Gaza ceasefire”

    Trump negotiating with himself? I think that the only reason that he wants a ceasefire is to get the remaining hostages released. And at that point, the Israelis will continue their genocide and Trump will say that he is helpless to stop the Israelis as he has no control over them. But he said something today that made me do a double take. He gave an interview and talked about a lot of stuff and the whole video clip is worth listening to-

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pTFPVP9EFQ (6:53 mins)

    But when asked about the Israeli hostages, he said that he wants to get ‘our hostages’ out. It is about the 2:20 mark. He quickly corrects himself but it looks like he has really identified with Bibi here. His Freudian Slip was showing.
16. Valiant Johnson July 2, 2025 at 9:27 am

    A tulip named A.I.
17. The Rev Kev July 2, 2025 at 9:30 am

    ‘Nature is Amazing ☘️
    @AMAZlNGNATURE
    Tiger: I like my personal space 😑
    Lion: I like your personal space as welI😁’

    Definitely brothers from two very different mothers. And no matter the size, cats can be jerks from time to time.
18. mahna July 2, 2025 at 9:40 am

    Women can be drafted into the Danish military as Russian aggression and military investment grow Associated Press (Kevin W)

    That will reduce Russian aggression, because they will have to mind their manners in the presence of the ladies.
19. Carolinian July 2, 2025 at 9:45 am

    Sounds like Trump wants to obliterate Mamdani. B2s over Manhattan? It would be a shame if they miss their target and take down a certain Fifth Avenue tower.

    The now returned Phil Weiss has a piece on that other NY institution and how clueless it has become about public opinion. Since their newspaper goes out of its way to ignore genocide they assume every one does.

    https://mondoweiss.net/2025/07/the-biggest-loser-besides-cuomo-in-the-ny-mayoral-race-was-the-new-york-times/

    Meanwhile Trump may not deploy B2s but seems to want a real class war with masked ICE agents as the enforcers. He justifies this because his voters opposed immigration but surely they only wanted to stop it at the border, not to create a private army for our increasingly gaga prez.
    1. The Rev Kev July 2, 2025 at 9:54 am

       The New York Times could have told New Yorkers that a vote for Mamdani is a vote for antisemitism. Would people believe them?
       1. ambrit July 2, 2025 at 7:38 pm

          That could backfire in a big way.
    2. OIFVet July 2, 2025 at 10:36 am

       “The folks who believed that the One World Gubmint was sending black helicopters to take over America’s gubmint elected a president to send B-2s to bomb Americans that they disliked and take their country back” doesn’t seem like a far-fetched summary of a future documentary of our times.

       I write this shortly after receiving a message from the embassy that my renewed passport will be delivered to me tomorrow. Given the reactions to Mamdani, it doesn’t seem far-fetched to consider the possibility I might eventually be denaturalized and stripped of my citizenship for being insufficiently pro-whatever the incumbent Emperor of MAGA decides that MAGA stands for that week. Or that day. And the circle starting with my grandpa escaping to America from totalitarian Eastern Europe will be closed.
       1. The Rev Kev July 2, 2025 at 10:58 am

          I’m put in mind of a novelette called “Asylum” by Katharine Kerr in which an American academic goes to England to give some lectures but finds shortly after that martial law is declared in the US meaning that she has to seek asylum in the UK. Of course that novelette came out in 1994 and a lot has changed since.
       2. Carolinian July 2, 2025 at 11:40 am

          Good luck with all of it.

          I do think Trump increasingly seems like a mental case and his spawn may not be far behind. Someone asked Eric Trump is he would run for president in 2028 and his answer was, in effect, we’ll see.

          Can’t have a sovereign without a doofey Prince of Wales.

          BTW gadget fans have pointed out that the Trump Phone prototype looks to be made in China. There are no companies in the USA that can make a smart phone.
       3. Kouros July 2, 2025 at 12:33 pm

          C’mmon, it wasn’t that bad. We had lives worth living. And compared to Pol Pots camps, we were living in Paradise.

          I left when the west cracked open the “totalitarian” state, which absolutely turned the country into shit. Still is. Jesus wept.
          1. OIFVet July 2, 2025 at 12:55 pm

             Ah, but you did miss the sarcasm about becoming what you are supposedly fighting. So Eastern Europe became consummately consumerist (“Hey, capitalism has brought us bananas year-round! Democracy has given us the freedom to vacation in Sithonia and finance it with a fast credit!”), while the US in particular leads the parade the other way.

             Still, say what they might about Balkan wildlings and lazy Southern Europeans, we may be Western “civilization’s” last hope to bring it safely to the other shore due to sheer obstinacy in refusing to change our ways with the speed and enthusiasm desired by those humorless Northerners and clueless Americans.
             1. Kouros July 2, 2025 at 5:42 pm

                Hear, hear!
    3. Yves Smith Post authorJuly 2, 2025 at 10:59 am

       This is a fine piece. Thanks for the link.
20. Patrick Lynch July 2, 2025 at 9:47 am

    Regarding Cracker Barrel’s remuddling: Both the article and many of the comments in the WSJ article show that the rural country stores (not grandma’s house) the CB restaurants were trying to emulate had been gone long enough that no one who commented even remembers them or even knew they existed. I’m just old enough to remember the actual country stores whose insides did look very much like the inside of a Cracker Barrel. Their name comes from the wooden cracker barrel you’d find containing actual crackers sold by the scoop. Some of these rural stores in the area where I live lasted into the 1970s and nothing inside looked like had changed for decades. You could have decorated an entire Cracker Barrel on what was still inside the store near my grandparents house at the time it closed. It would have been very easy to turn the place into a museum but to drive by it now, you’d never know it had ever been there.

    That said, their food only marginally resembled anything my grandmother would have made and the quality has been declining for about 15 years. Trying to look Instagram ready is not going to save them when the food is bad, and notoriously understaffed restaurants aren’t going to do anything to improve their service. Cracker Barrel is on the same path as TGI Fridays which the one localish to me died fairly quickly after they ditched all of their “flair”.
    1. Carolinian July 2, 2025 at 9:59 am

       My grandfather ran a country store. Even I can’t say what it looked like since that was before my time. As for Cracker Barrel I’ve eaten there maybe once. Most chain restaurants are all about theme and decor with the food coming out of a big food service truck.
       1. Patrick Lynch July 2, 2025 at 12:35 pm

          According to my nephew who worked there for a few months, mostly boil in bag and microwaved. He won’t eat there and advises others not to.

          My dad moved for a job that also put us closer to mom’s family in 1968, I was 6 at the time, the store close to my grandparents house remained open about another seven years. It was like going back in time. There’s a country store called Jot ’em Down near Lexington, KY that has been in continuous business for at least 100 years. Most of the country stores I knew of got wiped out by Dollar General.
    2. The Rev Kev July 2, 2025 at 10:01 am

       But I thought that “flair” was very important-

       https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ChQK8j6so8 (1:03 mins)
    3. Henry Moon Pie July 2, 2025 at 1:11 pm

       There were still lots of country stores in the Virginia countryside in the late 70s. When we did a family trip in 2001 retracing our youthful steps for our children, we stopped by one in Batesville, VA and the same little old lady was behind the counter, We knew this was our chance to prove our kids wrong about the pronunciation of Jefferson’s domicile, and when we asked her, sure enough, she said the proper (i.e. local) pronunciation was with the “c” spoken like an “s” rather than like the “c” in “cello.”
21. Jason Boxman July 2, 2025 at 9:57 am

    On Cracker Barrel Fans Mourn the Loss of That Old-Timey Feeling

    Another “healthcare professional” spreading the COVID.

    Julie Bidtah is already on board.

    Though the 50-year-old Durango, Colo., resident is no Cracker Barrel regular, the restaurant has been a convenient road trip pit stop over the past four decades. In her view, the old look was, well, old.

    “It is a little bit cluttered,” the healthcare professional said. “It is a little bit dark. And it is a little bit dusty.”

    That’s great Julie, please infect as many people as you can. You’re doing The Virus’ work. A bit dusty, you say? That can’t be sanitary! Just wait until you learn what you’re breathing.
22. Henry Moon Pie July 2, 2025 at 9:58 am

    Stoller’s 25th–

    I’ve written about this being my 50th, and though I didn’t attend, browsing my 50th Anniversary Report gave me some definite impressions not dissimilar from Stoller.

    What struck me was a widespread cluelessness about how dire our society’s circumstances are, understandable perhaps because the overwhelming majority of Harvard grads aren’t experiencing our slow-motion collapse personally as they jet to India to visit their ashram. The one issue that did generate many criticisms of the institution was purported anti-Semitism demonstrated by the nerve of some students and faculty to show solidarity with the Palestinians. There was nothing about the role of Harvard’s Econ Department or the Harvard Business School’s role in pushing the neoliberalism that has ripped our society apart, even though class members included Bernanke and Blankfein. I’ve found not a word about Harvard’s role in advancing surveillance and manipulation of the public even as my class included the security ghoul, Michael Chertoff. And aside from my diatribe about our generation’s failure to deal effectively and honestly with breaching 6 of 9 planetary boundaries and reports from a few who were working on environmental issues, there was little that was climate-related. Instead, nearly every report competed to have traveled the farthest to the most exotic destinations.

    I wonder if the classes of ’68-’70, which all struck and shut down Harvard in the spring of those years, would be any different. For the vast majority, I suspect not. As for Stoller, he now sees beyond the political kabuki and even antitrust to recognize the Metacrisis:

    The introspection we face as our bellies sag is about “our whole selves,” therapeutic, New Age-y ways of seeing life. And that’s ultimately ripping us apart. What we need is a new metaphysical language, a way of saying we owe more to our society than ambition without wisdom. Every part of American society, from corporate leadership to black political leadership to scientific and financial and religious leadership, down to the insiders who run each particular industry, are beset by the same atomized and corrupted ideas. I saw it this weekend. We are the inheritors of a magnificent tradition, of a free society, and yet we do not see it as ours to protect, as ours for which to sacrifice.
    1. Yves Smith Post authorJuly 2, 2025 at 10:19 am

       On your comment on the classes of ’68 to ’70, you might be wrong.

       The college did a LOT of social engineering.

       I thought the riots were in ’71. Correct me if wrong.

       The class admitted that year (so ’75 if I have the years right) was chosen to be the smartest and most academically fixated as possible (this was how Radcliffe admissions had long been run but not Harvard).

       They had the highest freshman suicide rate ever and freaked out.

       They then adopted the “happy bottom” policy, of admitting 25% who were smart and disciplined enough to be very likely to graduate BUT had some evidence in their profiles of being more campus leader types or otherwise not hypercompetitive.

       My freshman year, I was having a meal at one of the houses, I think with another freshman friend, when a senior sat down with us. She launched into a near-tirade about how the classes ahead of her and hers were filled with brilliant, independent-minded, creative people, and the later classes were dominated by dull confirmists.

       You praised Camille Paglia’s rant about careerists taking over in academia in the early 1970s. It was very much like that, without the class element layered in.

       So I wonder how much was a big change in the zeitgeist that was simply an organic turning away from the wild rebelliousness of the 1960s versus many independent but working in parallel efforts to tamp it down.

       I can tell you the sentiment among my classmates and later classes was indeed a turning away from the 1960s: yes, the civil rights and women’s rights and anti-poverty gains and ending the war in Vietnam were all good things. But that was over, time to consolidate gains and move on.
       1. Henry Moon Pie July 2, 2025 at 12:11 pm

          To me, the starkest difference was illustrated to me by a senior when I was a freshman. He had not taken spring exams until the spring of ’71 because they had been cancelled in ’69 and ’70. We never came close to having spring exams cancelled.

          I came to Harvard with my expectations shaped by having our prep school headmaster striding forcefully to the front of morning assembly where he held up the latest Life magazine whose cover featured a long-haired fellow leaning casually on a bust of somebody. It was the class valedictorian and sometime rabble rouser from two years before, and the context was the takeover of University Hall that ended in Pusey calling in the Cambridge cops to bust a few heads. Sign me up, I thought.

          There was a demonstration in the fall of my freshman year that ended up trashing the CFIA, including the offices of AEI and CNN neocon Bill Schneider, and students took over new President Bok’s office in Mass Hall, but after that, very little.

          A lot of energy was shifted to electoral politics by the McGovern campaign. As a sophomore, I canvassed for George in the Mass primary, and later that spring, my roommates and I decided to try starting an H-R Democrats Club because there was none as far as we knew. We went to Archie Epps, Dean of Students, to get permission, and he commended us for the idea, but said that in fact, there was already a Democrats Club, and the contact listed was Jamie Galbraith, whose sign-off we needed to get to proceed further. We went to Jamie’s dorm, and he graciously consented since he was graduating anyway, but he warned us that he thought conventional politics was dead at Harvard, understandable given his experience. We launched the following fall with a Statehouse internship program and a monthly speaker, and more than 300 people signed up.

          Things changed on a dime, and your history of admission policies probably explains a lot.

          The real revolution of our era was probably the founding of The Independent, which gave birth to people like Yglesias.
    2. Kouros July 2, 2025 at 12:37 pm

       Anyone caught on that long line to reach Mt. Everest?
       1. Henry Moon Pie July 2, 2025 at 1:04 pm

          My guess is that the 50th reunion class is getting a little old for such exploits,but there was a picture of one classmate in Antarctica.
    3. AG July 2, 2025 at 1:47 pm

       We need no “new metaphysical language”. It´s all there already.

       Reminds me a bit of the late judge Bork-like rants about the loss of values and all the other nonsense. The people suffering most are doing so precisely because they never gave up on the values. And if you ask those Stoller folks every single one of them could tell you what is wrong and what is right. It did strike me as if he would claim they somehow lost their bearings, as if “that just happened“.

       That´s about as honest as Robert McNamara´s claims that the administration really tried not to kill 2M Vietnamese. But shit, something somewhere somehow went wrong.

       DEMOCRACY NOW below featuring a speech by Noam Chomsky on the 25th anniversary of the end of Vietnam in 2000. So the very same year as Stoller´s graduation. May be even around the same time of the year?

       I suggest Stoller listen to this geopolitical analysis. Things don´t just happen. Especially it is not true for elites. That´s why they are called that. They make the things happen And even if you are not at the center of it. You know the truth. Of course it´s up to you to choose a side.

       And it is valid as ever. Including Chomsky´s very personal notion that essentially the US did win in Vietnam…

       audio only, starts at 10:50-19:50 / 21:20-41:10
       https://www.democracynow.org/2000/5/12/noam_chomsky_on_vietnam
       1. Henry Moon Pie July 2, 2025 at 3:36 pm

          I did listen to the recording and would agree with most of what Chomsky said (his evaluation of what would happen to Vietnam was quite off) in his usual catalog of USian misdeeds delivered in the typical detached, rather cynical fashion. I found in it no answers to what Stoller or I raise about the Metacrisis. To the contrary, it was just another recitation of what powerful, immoral rulers do.

          The question is: what values unite the American public beyond one-who-dies-with-the-most-toys-wins that is truly ecumenical in the USA. What creates the kind of solidarity among a large enough group of people that a mass movement might actually be possible, a mass movement that would ask people to risk their status and comfort as would surely be required to overthrow our mad overlords? What broadly held values can convince people to give up some consumption in order to address our planetary boundary crisis?

          Stoller didn’t find any such values evident as he attended his 25th reunion. I don’t find them in my 50th class report. Surely, this nihilism is not confined to Harvard, though it may be an especially fertile breeding ground. John Vervaeke, a cognitive scientist at U. of Toronto calls it a “meaning crisis.” Daniel Schmachtenberger calls it the Metacrisis. Whatever you want to call it, the evidence is that the lack of meaning or values is both causing individual suffering that expresses itself in all of Durkheim’s warning signals at the same time as it’s preventing our societies from tackling the many past-critical crises afflicting us or even mounting a credible resistance.
          1. Vandemonian July 2, 2025 at 7:04 pm

             Thanks Henry (and Yves, and others).

             I certainly share your concerns that the societies we inhabit have become unmoored, lacking principles, values and ethics.

             But when you (we) talk about “…our societies…” and “…afflicting us…” I wonder about the boundaries encompassing “our” and “us”.

             Does this malaise permeate the whole world, or just the “west”? How are things in Russia? In China? India? Iran?

             Or Is it just “us”?
             1. Henry Moon Pie July 3, 2025 at 1:27 am

                When I say us, I mean the West, especially the Anglo countries, but neoliberalism and consumerism have afflicted all but those tiny Leaver cultures under assault from those forces.
23. Jason Boxman July 2, 2025 at 10:07 am

    From Digital Workers Have Arrived in Banking

    This is delusional.

    Scott Mullins, Managing Director, AWS for Financial Services, said the question of how to integrate digital workers with a human workforce is top of mind across the finance industry.

    “How do we coordinate that work together?” he said. When it comes to digital workers, he added, “How do we manage those folks? How do we actually instruct those folks? What’s the new operating model? Those are the answers that we’re all working on right now.”

    Scott, these are not “folks” dude.

    I want to huff whatever these people are smoking, seriously.

    BNY said it took three months for its AI Hub to spin up two digital employee personas: one designed to clean up vulnerabilities in code and one designed to validate payment instructions. Each persona can exist in a few dozen instances, and each instance is assigned to work narrowly within a particular team, Russell said. That way no digital employee has broad access to information across the company, she added.

    So, no, that’s not a digital employee anymore than any other build job is. It’s either gonna poll the code base or someone or some process making a commit to the source code repository is gonna trigger a job. Either way, it isn’t a digital employee. It’s some combination of a software process that executes and leans on some LLM to do things. And keep in mind, the things the LLM does in the form of running different commands, if it is a foundation model, I guarantee you somewhere “rm -Rf /” is in there.

    The attack surface on these LLMs as “agentic” things that spew commands that execute in company secure environments is going to be a thing of legend.

    And it’ll get its own email address, hooray.

    So I wonder if 2026 will be the year of useless emails and text messages from LLM “employees” to employees have to deal with, kind of like all kinds of other time wasting emails and Slack chats from automated systems?

    Believe hard. Never ask why.
    1. ChrisFromGA July 2, 2025 at 11:19 am

       A “digital worker” would need to have an identity, so that they can be fired/held accountable when they screw up. The thought of automated processes fixing vulnerabilities in code is fraught with peril:

       1. False positives
       2. False negatives
       3. Applying a patch without understanding dependencies and breaking something else;
       4. Only works for Rumsfeldian “known knowns” that have already been discovered; worthless for zero days or vulnerabilities that have no published fix (but might have a compensating control.)

       Back to identity – these things (automated build jobs) typically run as some sort of service account with limited access. If a build job fails then a real engineer has to investigate and fix.

       I concur with your point that this is all a load of horse manure being fed to us with giant pitchforks. Replacing people with batch jobs falsely marketed as “digital employees” won’t end well but it might help some shady outfits pass an audit.

       As in, “hello Mr. Auditor, our security team has 100 digital agents, please pass us!”
       1. Jesper July 2, 2025 at 11:48 am

          For me part of the hype about AI is that everything is seen as AI. I’ve seen claims that putting up automatic out of office replies in emails is one example of using AI.

          What I thought defined AI was the use of artificial neural networks but what I see and hear are applications that are automating tasks (replacing scripts, macros etc) are said to be AI. It is getting to the point that an old mechanical alarm clock can be said to be AI….

          I seem to remember that this:
          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_JPMorgan_Chase_trading_loss

          included some poorly designed scripts and macros in Excel. In the language of today then I suspect that a badly designed script would be seen as a failure of AI while to me then a badly designed script did exactly what was it was programmed to do and the error was made by the one who designed/wrote the script.

          Generative AI using artificial networks do look both impressive and cool but I suspect the biggest impact now is that boring, repetitive and well defined tasks are being automated (not using any artificial neural networks) and once the tasks are automated then the people whose jobs it used to be to do those taks they end up being redundant.
       2. The Rev Kev July 2, 2025 at 7:35 pm

          ‘A “digital worker” would need to have an identity, so that they can be fired/held accountable when they screw up.’

          Which means that no manager will be fired or held to account for any screw ups They will just blame the “digital worker.”
    2. Henry Moon Pie July 2, 2025 at 3:53 pm

       “How do we manage those folks?”

       Will colorful “Go team!” t-shirts and morning rah-rah meetings help in the same very effective way they handle flesh-and-bone workers? /sarc

       “Let’s see some enthusiasm over there, LLM # 25892! Give me 10 reasons why you love working for the greatest man in the world.”
    3. hazelbee July 2, 2025 at 5:41 pm

       If I had to engage my inner cynic…

       this reads like a CV / brand building piece for for BNY and the CIO Leigh-Ann Russell. Maybe a PR team involved for whatever reason, with a reach out for another quote from JPMC.

       Lets reimagine it…:D

       Digital Workers Have Arrived in Banking

       becomes
       Cautious experimentation with AI tentatively used by BNY

       or
       AWS needs a story, cobbles one from BNY and JPMC

       or lets dissect…

       so an AI hub manages in 3 months to navigate the complexities of the bank to manage to get two small, safe, human verified automations included as part of their workflow. That just reeks of ivory tower centralized innovation, rather than say trust, delegation, experimentation at all levels.

       Automations that.. engineers with cursor/windsurf etc might already do off their own research and curiousity in… oh say 3 days or weeks not 3 months?

       the article tries to paint BNY and JPMC as on the cutting edge. but I just read that and think cautious, corporate and behind the curve.

       Mmmm . actually, reading to the end, I bet this is AWS driven. They’re pushing us hard on AI – e.g. Amazon Q, Bedrock. This is a piece aimed at other banking CIOs with an AWS account manager (and they all have an AWS bill).
    4. ambrit July 2, 2025 at 7:53 pm

       This all somehow reminds me of the old joke about what a ‘real’ psychic is.
       A real Psychic (AI?) calls you at an outdoor telephone to warn you not to get on that bus. The bus later crashes and burns.
       When AI begins to initiate actions and conversations on its own, without specific prompts, then I’ll believe. Until then, all I can see are more sophisticated automated menu trees. No actual cognition required, nor in evidence.
    5. alrhundi July 2, 2025 at 7:57 pm

       This does raise the question of whether there will be Agent Managers that are specifically managing or developing these agentic AI. Or perhaps it’ll be an agent of its own!
24. Ignacio July 2, 2025 at 10:09 am

    Italy limits outdoor work as heatwave breaks records across Europe. Guardian (Kevin W)

    These days pundits talk a lot about geopolitical risks and “investing” in weapons. In my opinion having failed miserably with “green new deals” they change focus to be seen as doing something meaningful. The article in the link links to a second article: Spain records highs of 46C and France under alert as Europe swelters in heatwave in which you find the next paragraph:

    Researchers estimate that dangerous temperatures in Europe will kill 8,000 to 80,000 more people a year by the end of the century, as the lives lost to stronger heat outpace those saved from milder cold.

    These are estimates of course and in might get not as bad or much worse. The risks lie in the upper margins. So, we are now focused on security because wars happen but we are still doing nothing (serious) about climate change which is poised to kill quite a lot and with near certainty. Is it re-arming the proper way to go? Will it increase or reduce security? Won’t it interfere with climate change policies? The madhouses are on the run to nowhere.
    1. Alice X July 2, 2025 at 1:35 pm

       hmm – 46C by my head calculation is 115F – add ANY humidity and you’re in big trouble.

       I watch UK Novara Live each day and last week they were wilting with 30C/86F.
       1. ambrit July 2, 2025 at 7:57 pm

          Hah! We here in the Rancid Underbelly of the North American Deep South are used to dealing with daily temperatures of 95F and heat indices of 105F in the summer.
          All I can say is that this is not Mammoth hunting weather.
          We have developed mitigation strategies.
          1. Alice X July 2, 2025 at 11:42 pm

             >We have developed mitigation strategies.

             The Euros not so much yet, though we all will need to up our game with the climate to come.

             We’re toast.
25. The Rev Kev July 2, 2025 at 10:32 am

    “An ancient village ran out of water. So it moved and started over again’

    The article here is about a very small Himalayan village 13,000 feet up in the mountains. But when I read articles like this I wonder about places in the American west and how the cities there could cope if the water kinda went away. No water, no city. How do you abandon a major town or city in the US? Too costly to buy up so I guess that people will just drift away one family after another. Will there be an effort to salvage the materials in the buildings there or will it just be abandoned? When I write this, I realize that there is a great novel to be written about this happening. Starting with a modern, connected city and have the people there see it be abandoned over the years and who the people who decide to stay and stick it out – and those who have no choice but to do so.
    1. MaryLand July 2, 2025 at 11:21 am

       The Worst Hard Time is a book based on the true stories of people who slowly abandoned their town of Dalhart, Texas during the dust bowl years. It hits hard.

       https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Worst_Hard_Time
       1. Retired Carpenter July 2, 2025 at 9:24 pm

          Thanks for suggesting this book. I will ask for it from our local library. Here is a song by Iris Dement (with Emmylou Harris) about leaving “Our Town”.
    2. Kouros July 2, 2025 at 12:41 pm

       The time of Waterknives is fast approaching…
    3. Wukchumni July 2, 2025 at 12:44 pm

       Here in the Half-Pint Himalaya, they reckon the Wukchumni settled around these parts 3,000 years ago, no doubt attracted to the idea of water that never stops flowing down from on high, as every drop not nourishing the ground underfoot is destined to pass our way due to the gravity of the situation in a 10,000 foot descent to the foothills.

       Surface water is relatively rare in SoCal~
26. Amateur Socialist July 2, 2025 at 11:10 am

    The question made me think of Frederik Pohl and CM Kornbluth’s The Space Merchants

    Water scarcity forces the replumbing of major coastal cities to deliver both fresh and saltwater with a significant premium for the former. In one scene a character spends a king’s ransom ordering a “Hot fresh water shower “ to his hotel suite.

    No I know it can’t work, it’s just a sci fi novel.

    (Edit badly placed reply to Rev Kev above)
    1. Kouros July 2, 2025 at 12:43 pm

       Hong Kong had problems with water. How did they solve it?
       1. ambrit July 2, 2025 at 8:00 pm

          I understand that “they” made the poor of Hong Kong suffer a bit more than usual. I would be happy to be corrected by real Hong Kong dwellers.
       2. Revenant July 2, 2025 at 8:37 pm

          Reservoirs in the New Territories. The lease expiring on these was a major factor in the indefensibility of HK Island, which China had ceded in perpetuity….
27. ChrisFromGA July 2, 2025 at 11:43 am

    It is quite remarkable how evangelical so-called Christians make for some of the most bloodthirsty folks:

    https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/defense-news/article-859667

    US Ambassador Mike Huckabee said that US B-2 bomber planes “need to visit Yemen” after the Houthis launched a missile towards Jerusalem on Tuesday.

    That’s definitely what Jesus would do. Extra points if you end up blowing a few billion to kill a child, Mike.
    1. Kouros July 2, 2025 at 12:46 pm

       Emmanuel Todd has some interesting explanations and suggestions here.

       He also claims that American Evangelicals nor Orthodox Jews in Israel are truly Christians or Jews…

       https://substack.com/inbox/post/167278786
28. Mikel July 2, 2025 at 11:50 am

    Donald Trump says US has struck trade deal with Vietnam…

    In general, I had been thinking lately that for all the “losing the wars”, military contractors were not the only US businesses that had winning results for their bottom lines.
    1. marym July 2, 2025 at 2:52 pm

       “President Donald Trump said Wednesday that the United States has struck a trade deal with Vietnam that includes a 20% tariff on the southeast Asian country’s imports to the U.S.

       Trump’s announcement on Truth Social said that the deal will give the U.S. tariff-free access to Vietnam’s markets.

       Vietnam also agreed that goods would be hit with a 40% tariff rate if they originated in another country and were transferred to Vietnam for final shipment to the United States.
       …
       Trump wrote that “Vietnam will pay” that 20% duty, but tariffs are taxes on foreign goods that are paid by the importers of those products.
       …
       It was unclear from Trump’s post when the deal will take effect, or if it has been officially signed by both parties.”
       https://www.cnbc.com/2025/07/02/trump-trade-vietnam-deal.html
       1. nyleta July 2, 2025 at 4:53 pm

          Depends on how transhipment is defined, I thought most of these exports came from Chinese owned factories existing in Vietnam, so maybe not transhipped ? In other words a cosmetic agreement, but still a 20% tariff for US citizens to pay. US exports to Vietnam are very low so no big deal on that side.
       2. Mikel July 3, 2025 at 3:24 pm

          The corps still like the cheaper labor.
29. flora July 2, 2025 at 11:59 am

    Taibbi and Kirn. ATW, no paywall.

    America This Week: Live From Sun Valley

    https://www.racket.news/p/america-this-week-live-from-sun-valley

    Opens with a wry commentary about the current state of modern US MSM. Pretty good.
30. Tom Stone July 2, 2025 at 12:37 pm

    I’ve been trying to understand the actions of the Trump regime and the basis of its policies.
    The attacks on law firms, declaring Mexico an adversary on a par with Iran, alienating the entire Hispanic community and the Military ( Gutting the VA, calling the troops “Suckers and losers, the birthday parade, using Marines domestically), Threatening Greenland and Canada with invasion…the list goes on.
    I have come to two conclusions, this is about the need to dominate by a man who is weak, he is mortal and at age 79 his body is telling him that daily.
    This is not rational behavior, there is no coherent strategy, by any measure Donald Trump is deranged and his behavior is likely to become more extreme as time passes.
    That’s two Presidens in a row who are totally bonkers and this one’s actions will more likely than not lead to societal collapse.
    1. Kouros July 2, 2025 at 12:50 pm

       Many comments that I have seen on the internets were kind of ‘Murica, fuck yeah!

       So he did tap in a strong vein of similar thought and feel (mostly feel)…

       And I would like to see any clips from MSM News channels describing in any negative terms Trump’s push to aquire Panama, Greenland, Canada…
    2. OIFVet July 2, 2025 at 1:20 pm

       And yet he mostly gets what he wants, with very little damage to himself, if any. What does this say about the rest of us?
       1. Jeremy Grimm July 2, 2025 at 3:05 pm

          I am not sure what that says about the rest of us. What do you propose we should do? Should the rest of us write letters to our Congressmen, call to complain, send emails? Should we all get together, join hands and march in protest? Should we vote the bums out in the midterms?
          1. OIFVet July 2, 2025 at 4:21 pm

             Apparently we should do nothing, because it’s all been all tried before and it doesn’t work.
             1. ambrit July 2, 2025 at 8:04 pm

                It worked quite well back in 1776.
                America was born out of a revolution. It could well be reborn out of one. It might not be very recognizable as America as we presently know it, but, the times, they are a changin’.
             2. chris July 2, 2025 at 9:19 pm

                Well, I quote Adolph Reed in repeating that we didn’t vote ourselves into this situation and we’re not going to vote ourselves out of it. I think we have a chance of starting to change things with Mamdani. If he really does show that government can deliver, and even deliver using old ideas like state run grocery stores, then people will notice and start asking why more people can’t have that where they live. This will of course bring out the long knives from the people who enforce TINA. But it will be a start. And if enough people push back and demand something different, they will discover there are not many people in their way.

                But we need, at least 90 million people pushing on this in an organized fashion by my estimates. Anything less than that will be ignored and subdued.
31. ChrisFromGA July 2, 2025 at 1:03 pm

    Diddy walks:

    Sean Puffy Combs Trial Verdict

    Acquittal on the three most serious charges, including racketeering.
    1. Alice X July 2, 2025 at 1:40 pm

       Yeah, he still got two felonies, maybe ten years each, twenty if back to back. They best keep the champagne on ice for a while longer. I haven’t followed the case closely and cannot opine about the merits, being too worried about the corporate crooks who are never charged, but any woman can weigh in on experience with male dominance. I’d bet.
    2. Alice X July 2, 2025 at 6:14 pm

       Diddy doesn’t walk:

       Live Updates: Judge Denies Bail for Combs, Citing History of Domestic Violence

       Hours earlier, the mogul had celebrated in court after he was found not guilty of sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy but convicted of transporting people for prostitution.

       As I was saying.
       1. ChrisFromGA July 2, 2025 at 7:40 pm

          Oops. I jumped the gun on that, for sure.
       2. ambrit July 2, 2025 at 8:08 pm

          So, the courts did a Jack Johnson on the man. Johnson was basically innocent. Combs, not so much.
          See: https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/what-is-the-mann-act-here-s-what-to-know-about-20416836.php
          1. Alice X July 2, 2025 at 8:37 pm

             Take out the at least once infamous racial component and there is still reason. Combs is not under funded or under represented so perhaps the law will end in justice.
          2. ChrisFromGA July 2, 2025 at 9:22 pm

             Don’t forget about Chuck Berry.
32. Tom Stone July 2, 2025 at 1:53 pm

    I started to make a list of crises we can expect this year starting with wildfires and no ability for the Fed Gov to respond to them, the same goes for other National disasters.
    There’s also inflation, widespread hunger due to gutting SNAP, ICE getting more out of control, the consequences of deregulation and the abandonment of due process, the likelihood that UkroNazis and their American friends doing something nasty to express their displeasure with being stabbed in the back…
    I’m sure the commentariat can add to the list.
    The Trump regime’s responses are likely to be unhinged, if you appreciate black humor you will have your fill of it and more.
    1. nyleta July 2, 2025 at 7:15 pm

       Del Monte foods gone in Walnut Ck, only heard of the place because of FreeBSD….debtor in possesion. Guess those 50% steel tariff’s didn’t help with canned food.
33. Wukchumni July 2, 2025 at 2:37 pm

    We’ve had a couple of small wildfires in disparate locations in Tiny Town the past few days, the bigger one @ 200+ acres and the smaller one closer to 50. Much too early (in the old way of thinking) for conflagrations such as these, but this orb does what it wants!

    Can’t really hike because of my bum knee, but I can work in the yard and have been plucking off standing dead wood within the reach of my big 15 inch/14 foot long pole saw, gyrating back and forth in what might pass for some dance move from the disco era.

    As I coax some distinguished member down off their perch, a long since expired section might come easily with just a tug and down goes the branch office clean as a whistle, others are more needy and require you to give it the old college try of 5 minutes of punctuated see saw sessions on a larger lapsed limb.

    Gets my mind off of matters that matter out in the mad hatter world, and it lessens the fire risk while keeping me active.
    1. Vandemonian July 2, 2025 at 7:16 pm

       I take it as a given that you wear a hard hat when performing your arboreal terpsichore?
       1. ambrit July 2, 2025 at 8:14 pm

          Just as “real men” don’t wear a raincoat while fornicating, I’ll assume, (which makes me the ‘ass’ here,) that Wuk doesn’t worry about the hard hat issue.
          Don’t worry about the proverbial “big 15 inch,” it is all a matter of perspective. (I just wondered if there is a hashtag #foreshortening?)
34. Jeremy Grimm July 2, 2025 at 3:01 pm

    “Zillow’s Real Estate Blacklist Is in Effect: What Homebuyers Can Do”
    Housing in the u.s. has been in serious trouble for decades. This link hints at a scary turn in the buying and selling of real estate. Brokers and agents, attorneys, house inspectors, title insurance corporations, home insurance companies, loan agents and banks all add their large bites out of real estate sales and little and nothing has been done to restrain their appetites. The multiple books of old, the MLS [Multiple Listings Services] are gone. The web based listings are helpful to sellers in the same way as the MLS books, but also more helpful to buyers. In the old days, agents were advised not to let the public look at the multiple books, although I was never sure why that was. With the listings on the web it makes it much easier for buyers to get a feel for the market in various local areas and see images of the kinds of properties that are available. Hip-pocket listings were a problem in the old days solved by ousting offending agents and brokers from the local board of real estate and blocking their access to the multiple books. I think this link is mistaken in the nature of Zillow’s move. I believe it is more than and effort to “stem the rising tide of ‘exclusive inventory'”. I can understand Zillow’s desire to punish hip pocket listings but their zeal in:
    “…banning home listings that have been marketed publicly by a real estate agent — which includes everything from planting a for-sale sign in the front yard to posting on Facebook — without being shared in the local databases that feed home listings to the rest of the real estate industry, including Zillow and other search websites, within one business day”
    suggests echoes of the practices Amazon applied to build its monopolistic web sales portal. Adding Zillow or one of the other web portal multiples to the long list of Brokers and agents, attorneys, … loan agents and banks taking their bite could do for real estate what Amazon has for done for the many small business operations doing business through their portal. The MLS was an important tool for local real estate boards to control the buying and selling of real property. That tool in the hands of Zillow or Redfin or one of the other currently competing web services could become a dangerous weapon for building a particularly profitable and terrible monopoly.
35. Alice X July 2, 2025 at 4:41 pm

    >Chile communist Jeannette Jara to lead beleaguered ruling coalition at election

    Well, capital has the means for manipulation but not the morals for the many’s material benefit, so deflection will be at the fore for the November election.

    I have thought often of moving back there. I would vote for her if I could.
36. Alice X July 2, 2025 at 6:05 pm

    Chris Hedges with Rob Larson:

    Why You Should Hate the Rich Even More (w/ Rob Larson)

    after his book

    Mastering the Universe: The Obscene Wealth of the Ruling Class, What They Do with Their Money, and Why You Should Hate Them Even More
    1. Alice X July 2, 2025 at 6:25 pm

       Aristotle writes:

       When Oligarchs seize control the only two options are tyranny or revolution.
    2. Alice X July 2, 2025 at 6:49 pm

       I have long said that the Democrat Party cannot be reformed.

       I can only hope that Zohran proves me wrong. If I could go canvas for him, I would, if I could donate to him, I would.

       Maybe I can do something.

       I’ll be looking for my hopium pipe.
       1. AG July 2, 2025 at 7:12 pm

          on that subject latest Chris Hedges (it´s so new I haven´t listened)

          Will Zohran Mamdani Empower or Betray the Working Class? (w/ Kshama Sawant)
          While Zohran Mamdani’s victory warrants celebration, groundbreaking socialist campaigns of the past have fallen short on their promises to working people. Will Mamdani’s movement suffer the same fate?
          Chris Hedges
          Jul 03, 2025
          60 min.
          https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/will-zohran-mamdani-empower-or-betray
          1. Alice X July 2, 2025 at 9:12 pm

             Thank you!

             The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.
37. ChrisFromGA July 2, 2025 at 9:31 pm

    Yet another atrocity being committed by the Trump administration:

    https://thehill.com/newsletters/business-economy/5382842-trump-tells-powell-to-leave/

    Trump has installed a henchman in FHFA, Bill Pulte, who is the CEO of Pulte Homes, a publicly traded homebuilding company. Talk about a conflict of interest!

    Pulte has made allegations that Powell lied to Congress about some sort of renovations to the Fed HQ.

    Powell is a former lawyer and ought to sue Pulte for defamation. This thug should be brought to justice.
    1. ChrisFromGA July 2, 2025 at 9:49 pm

       I should elaborate … Pulte has a conflict of interest because, as CEO of a homebuilder, he stands to make more money for himself and the shareholders from lower interest rates. By thuggishly trying to trump up charges against the Fed Chair, he has abused his office and sullied the reputation of the FHFA.

       Where are the Democrats to call for this clown’s resignation?
38. Kris July 2, 2025 at 10:10 pm

    Re: China? How can the NYT write a whole article on how the US doubled down on fossil fuels without even mentioning the deliberate, longstanding U.S. push for fracking and natural gas exports – twisting European countries’ arms to force them to buy it and build mega-expensive LNG terminals, meanwhile shooting themselves in the foot by naysaying cheap Russian energy – most visibly headed up by Hilary Clinton but really the front edge of our foreign policy for years on end?
39. Jason Boxman July 3, 2025 at 12:02 am

    Would be funny if hardline conservatives save us from Medicaid cuts like they did from Obama’s grand betrayal

    Trump Administration Live Updates: Handful of G.O.P. Holdouts Are Keeping Trump Bill From Moving Forward
40. Jason Boxman July 3, 2025 at 12:32 am

    The hits continue; NC vehicle registration is up to $120 for me now; and I guarantee you that my car’s property value ain’t $12,208 were I to resell it, lol.

    Auto insurance didn’t go up, this time, at least. I managed to negotiate down my Spectrum bill, which blew my mind.

    If Trump’s fk the poors bill passes, NC is gonna take a hit on Medicaid, gonna be fun. Not to mention nuking FEMA from orbit.

    This year is lit.

Comments are closed.