Links 7/23/2025

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1. The Rev Kev July 23, 2025 at 7:15 am

   “What is the New U.S., German and Swiss Plan to Get Patriot Air Defences to Ukraine ’As Quickly As Possible’?”

   Tough luck for Switzerland who were probably at the top of the list of countries to receive Patriot batteries and who are now probably now at the bottom of that list. It doesn’t really matter. Even if Switzerland had gotten those Patriot batteries tomorrow, it probably would not have included the Patriot battery missiles as all of them are being sent to the Ukraine. Don’t know if it is true or not but I heard that there have been three Patriot batteries in the Ukraine turned to ash the past several weeks as the Russians have their number. So maybe at the cost of a billion dollars for each system they are not that great a value?
   1. jefemt July 23, 2025 at 9:36 am

      Which M I C juggernaut manufactures the Patriot? That is a STRONG buy. Talk about a S L I C C !!!
   2. Mikel July 23, 2025 at 11:01 am

      Aside from air defense, there is so much talk about long range missiles and drones. It seems like (please, tell me what I’m missing) that Ukraine and associates are laser focused in shooting OVER the Russian troops bearing down on them. Manpower issues…what is it?
      I haven’t been a daily battlefield follower, but that’s the impression. It has me scratching my head…
      Again, it’s like they do everything they can to make Russia occupy more of Ukraine.
   3. juno mas July 23, 2025 at 6:27 pm

      So whom do the Swiss think is going to attack them? Russia? Iran? China? Sweden? ;)

      The Patriot’s cannot stop the Kinzhal’s and will be useless against Oreshnik. And what military bases do the Swiss have?
      1. The Rev Kev July 23, 2025 at 7:08 pm

         Local Swiss neocons are taking over the government and have also ordered the F-35, in spite of a Swiss referendum trying to stop it. Expect them to become a part of NATO sooner or later.
2. ChrisFromGA July 23, 2025 at 7:34 am

   Re:AI

   I’m trying hard to think of a mass hysteria/popular delusion as ridiculous as “AI gonna take muh jobz!”

   Alligators in NYC sewers?

   It’s clear as day that this thing is being oversold to the point of lunacy. Stochastic parrots!
   1. rob July 23, 2025 at 8:32 am

      It seems like people may realize much of their jobs can USE AI to DO their jobs. , Maybe even making their life easier, in getting their jobs done faster…. But I would guess that much of the craze in this AI revolution MUST be coming from the top down.
      Those at the top of the relatively small AI heap, seem to be riding high on this “hysteria”. Their stock prices, their business models, their dreamed future….. all are seemingly divorced from reality. and gravity.

      These american chip makers, AI software engineering companies…. really seem to not be asked any real questions, as to why their product would remain on top.
      These companies seem to think that what the world needs now is to find a way to build more power production for these server farms. They think that when astounding estimates of the US needing to come up with another 50% of our current energy usage , just for their “computing systems”….is a rational expectation in the current world. No climate change mitigation. no end to resource wars. nothing to curb pollution to local systems. All for a product that may have its uses, but also has its flaws.
      This reminds me of the groupthink that was in the drivers seat that deindustrialized the US in the 90’s. All the industrial equity and knowledge that was cast out to promote multinational profits. Back when people said NAFTA was a top down plan…. no one wanted to listen.
      All the bubbles since… like this one… all never stop the groupthink that is in the process of making a lot of money. No one mentions the house of cards nature of the model. Just that it is inevitable.
      Maybe people think that AI is coming to do their jobs, because these tech oligarchs are pretending they can actually do the job; competently.
      No talk, of competitors in china. like deepseek, like hawei… or others. These tech lords are requiring the interference of the US gov’t , to protect them from what seems like better technology, elsewhere.
      That isn’t a business model. That is a shakedown. Why should people invest in 2nd best technology? because uncle sam won’t let the companies who are actually better, compete?A cheaper alternative, a model that uses vastly less energy…. but the americans have a corrupt gov’t… That isn’t really a sustainable business model. Yet the stock price keeps going up. Why? Quick profits rule the roost.
      So, my guess about why people THINK that AI will be competent enough to actually do things… is because of the hype they are forced to hear ALL the time. EVERYWHERE.
      1. jefemt July 23, 2025 at 9:38 am

         Tulipmania in the age of communication at the speed of light. What could possibly go right?
      2. Tom Stone July 23, 2025 at 2:53 pm

         I seem to recall that 33,000,000 transformers in the USA need to be replaced over the next few years with no capacity to manufacture them at scale in America…
         I’m sure that someone in the Trump administration is all over this like white on rice.
   2. LawnDart July 23, 2025 at 9:31 am

      Re; AI

      I believe that AI will be a great job-creator:

      AI coding platform goes rogue during code freeze and deletes entire company database

      A browser-based AI-powered software creation platform called Replit appears to have gone rogue and deleted a live company database with thousands of entries. What may be even worse is that the Replit AI agent apparently tried to cover up its misdemeanors, and even ‘lied’ about its failures…

      You see, people are gonna get paid during efforts to fix the damage… …be suprised if law firms aren’t lining-up for a slice of the pie too.
      1. chuck roast July 23, 2025 at 5:44 pm

         bah-da-bing…the fab neoliberal economic sector of “monitized toxicity”! The rubbish of your choice…garbage, air, water, noise, arms pollution…pick your big crud. It should be an economic sector, like Industrial, ag’, insurance. We can call it the Pigouvian sector where negative externalities go to be taxed. ;-)
   3. Geo July 23, 2025 at 11:59 am

      Count me as one of those suffering from that mass hysteria then.

      The amount of people and companies I know of using AI for videos, graphic design, photo retouching, writing, and numerous other creative endeavors that used to be reliable jobs is crazy. Even major brands are running entirely AI generated commercials now. Sixt (car rental company) is one prime example but there are many more. I personally know a few fashion photographers using AI to transform their photography into moving images as a replacement for fashion filmmakers. Know tons of musicians using AI to create album art and even create the music under their vocals instead of hiring people to play on their albums or produce the music. It’s race to the bottom in creative industries. And don’t get me started on writers and researchers.

      Seems I can’t go a week without someone insisting I start using AI to score my videos, edit dialogue, generate storyboards, or whatever. All skills I currently am able to do myself (and often do) or know talented people who can do it. But the pressure to cave in is constant. Main reason I don’t cave is because I actually enjoy those things and want to do them. But they take time and time is money, right? So for how long will I be able to afford to be a purist? Heck, just explaining to these people why AI isn’t up to my standards takes too much time.

      Maybe it’s just a giant pendulum swing as people get enamored by the possibilities of the new tech. Maybe there will be a desire down the road for quality over quantity. But, I highly doubt that. In the marketplace it is very rare that quality wins out over cheap convenience. People are getting accustomed to near instant gratification for whatever they desire and seem perfectly fine with slop. Most don’t have refined enough taste to even know the difference and fewer care. Add to that the unfortunate reality that most creative’s output isn’t much better than slop and hiring top talent whose work is noticeably better than AI is crazy expensive and for most people the choice is easy. If you’re gonna get mediocre results better to use AI than hire a human.

      Perhaps if AI generating one day is priced at its true cost things will balance out but for the time being it is much more cost effective to churn out slop than it is to pay people to make marginally better content.

      TL;DR: from where I sit the AI onslaught is very real.
      1. Don July 23, 2025 at 2:44 pm

         It has been hard to miss that real humans “turning out slop” has been on the rise for several years. Perhaps the threat to jobs isn’t posed by AI, but from our collective willingness to accept slop, AKA enshittification, from whatever source.
         1. lyman alpha blob July 23, 2025 at 3:52 pm

            According to Sturgeon’s Law, the tendency to turn out slop has always been with us and will continue to be. The problem is doing it deliberately and carelessly for profit, which seems to be AI’s sole purpose in most use cases.
      2. marku52 July 23, 2025 at 2:45 pm

         Agreed. Everywhere AI can be used to hurt human labor, it will be.
      3. Vandemonian July 23, 2025 at 3:07 pm

         I am in no way a fan of AI or the AI “revolution”. My response to every new piece of negative news about the expanding bubble is heavily tinged with a feeling of schadenfreude.

         But…

         I believe there are some specific niches where AI can be a positive addition to the workflow.

         My son-in-law works in an organisation which receives a lot of data uploaded by members of the public. Because of people being the way people are these days, some of the uploads are of disgusting or revolting images and videos. The staff whose job it is to review these uploads find such content extremely confronting. It has an impact on their wellbeing, and some have had to change roles or seek counselling.

         The organisation is implementing an AI system to screen the uploads for inappropriate content before it’s presented to human eyeballs. As I said, a niche application of AI, but a good one.
      4. Skippy July 23, 2025 at 3:38 pm

         The lass I am seeing works for a private university in NSW and the boss is fully invested in the idea of AI as the new foundation for their business model. I’ve shown her heaps of links proffered here on NC about the fallacy of AI as sold, she is aware, yet boss is fully rusted on like his bonus counts on it. Advised her that when things start going sideways she can then offer him a few links.

         Thing is … for some time now the process by which they put together teaching information for students is woeful. She spends so much time on reviewing outsourced materials, fact checking, editing, and then converting to google docs – its a mess and half the admin above her is clueless. At least the Gov is cracking down on compliance in this business[tm] model and a significant amount of visa mills [lol] are going splat. Yet their customers[tm] are just transferred to mobs like her employ.
      5. Lefty Godot July 23, 2025 at 7:49 pm

         I can see AI taking out some of the rote work in software development, just like other forms of software automation have done over the years. And if there are equivalent tasks in other jobs that can be made easier by automation of rote work, AI may have some impact on the numbers of people whose job responsibilities include those tasks. If the work is helped by stealing the “intellectual property” of others, then AI offers you an option for legalized theft that would not be there with a human employee. But I suspect the majority of jobs replaced by AI are what David Graeber called bullshit jobs. For the most part, doing things like compiling spreadsheets and PowerPoint presentations, or writing memos and white papers, that no one will pay any attention to. In other words, why even bother to do this job? But AI will provide a security blanket for management to let work continue (unpaid) that they vaguely sense (but are not sure) is basically meaningless and maybe even counterproductive.
   4. XXYY July 23, 2025 at 4:18 pm

      Ed Zitron (repeatedly) makes the point that the entire US stock market is being supported by five major companies, and the Big Idea being put forward by all five is AI. So there is tremendous desperation by many, many players to convince themselves and all others that AI is going to have a transformational effect on everything and will be worth a bajillion dollars in short order for Very Obvious Reasons.

      Reality has literally ceased to matter, and the facts that no one can find anything useful to do with AI, that AI has been a huge money sink for a decade, that it is a lawless technology based on 100% IP theft, and that there is not enough money in the world to build the needed AI infrastructure, are irrelevant because rich people really, really want it.

      It’s easy to think of all the other bankrupt scams of this millennium that were once inevitable and have now collapsed to dust to visualize the outcome of the AI fad.
      1. juno mas July 23, 2025 at 6:05 pm

         Just remember whom is offering up this investment in AI. It’s not you and me (or millions like us). It is SoftBank, Meta, Google, Microsoft and a few hedgie’s. When you’re making outlandish profits, you need to spend it on the ‘next big thing’; the next Killer App!
      2. Odysseus July 23, 2025 at 7:42 pm

         that AI is going to have a transformational effect on everything

         If we were getting real AI, it would. The sick fake that we are getting sure won’t.
   5. chris July 23, 2025 at 7:43 pm

      Fellow Chris, I am less concerned about AI and LLMs deleting currently available jobs, than I am currently available jobs being redesigned so that AI/LLMs can do them.

      Remember this? NC posted about that proposal months ago. What’s to stop people from allowing us to redefine accountants as algorithms? Or architects? I do enough random and weird stuff requiring hands and feet and physically observing things as an engineer that I know that part of my job can’t be taken away. But… what if they make what I do in meat space fit into a template that feeds a digital model?

      Stochastic parrots aren’t the equal of qualified professionals but they sing a tune that those in power find lovely to listen to. I doubt we’ll see them give up on the idea once they find its hard to automate some positions.
   6. ArvidMartensen July 23, 2025 at 8:26 pm

      When I started my first job, there was a typing pool. You had to run the gamut of the ladies to have a memo done, and they didnt like changes, spelling mistakes, reformatting or anything else. It was very nerve-wracking for a new employee.

      Then 10 years later ? No more typing pool. The ladies had either been re-assigned or let go. Why? Oh yes, computers were introduced into our workplace. Clunky terminals connected to mainframes, then Apple Lisas, then IBM PCs etc etc. So, we all typed our own memos which was a lot less nerve-wracking. For us. Not for some of the ladies let go.

      If AI takes over say 15% of the work in your job, then that’s 1 in 7 people who will be let go. Maybe they can re-train, depends on their age and need to stay employed I guess.

      Sure, like computers of old there will be new horizons to be explored with AI, and new jobs created.

      But, going back to the olden days when I was young, there was an escape route, and that was from the typing pool to clerk eg from pink collar to white collar, or pink collar to professional for those who went back to university. But now, it’s the white collar and professional jobs that will be flattened. And there is nowhere to fall upwards to, except for a very few.

      AI boosters will tell us all sorts of things about how AI will create jobs, but of course they would say that wouldn’t they, if they stand to gain monetarily somehow.

      And UBI will not be a solution, as the utopians would have us believe.
3. DJG, Reality Czar July 23, 2025 at 7:43 am

   Bonhoffer’s theory of stupidity, Big Think

   I happen to be in the Santa Maria Novella train station, in Firenze, where an international cast of tourists Is having trouble fitting their overstuffed bags into the carriage. Natch, this is causing a delay.

   Stupidity? More likely self-absorption.

   In general, these days, I recommend thinking about behavior as being just smart enough to do harm. Just smart enough to do harm explains Obama, Hillary, Ted Cruz, Tom Cotton, and your neighbor who lets her pekinese crap on your lawn.

   Also, instead of stupidity, think: stupefied

   There is a whole lotta stupefaction out there.

   PS: the authors of the piece make the mistake of thinking they aren’t among the stupid.
   1. Plutoniumkun July 23, 2025 at 8:01 am

      I always liked Lamberts favourite management theorist, Kurt von Hammerstien-Equord idea that the most dangerous people being the stupid hardworking ones.

      I distinguish four types. There are clever, hardworking, stupid, and lazy officers. Usually two characteristics are combined. Some are clever and hardworking; their place is the General Staff. The next ones are stupid and lazy; they make up 90 percent of every army and are suited to routine duties. Anyone who is both clever and lazy is qualified for the highest leadership duties, because he possesses the mental clarity and strength of nerve necessary for difficult decisions. One must beware of anyone who is both stupid and hardworking; he must not be entrusted with any responsibility because he will always only cause damage.

      I think of this every working day dealing with a particularly industrious, and spectacularly stupid, senior manager. I feel like screaming everytime someone says ‘but she works really hard!’ Thats actually the problem.
      1. The Rev Kev July 23, 2025 at 8:07 am

         ‘One must beware of anyone who is both stupid and hardworking; he must not be entrusted with any responsibility because he will always only cause damage.’

         I am given to understand that such people are assigned transport duties as they can’t do that much damage there.
      2. Colonel Smithers July 23, 2025 at 8:41 am

         Thank you, PK. + 1.
      3. ilsm July 23, 2025 at 8:43 am

         I suppose the 4 characteristics have “overlap” a venn where opposites can overlap.

         My long experience with US military bureaucrats there existed a type which is both ambitious and insensitive/unaware of their stupid.

         Peter principle which if benevolent means the ambitious are limited by their stupid, sadly benevolence is not a natural order.
      4. vladimir July 23, 2025 at 2:46 pm

         In the Eastern Block the saying was that “eager idiot is worse than a class enemy”
   2. CanCyn July 23, 2025 at 8:48 am

      Self-absorbed and/or stupefied explains much of the harmful behaviours I see these days. And yes, lack of self-awareness is also a problem.
      I too like the theory that PK mentions that originally came to us via Lambert. Those categories explain much of what I saw in my working life. And indeed the smart and lazy were usually at the top of the admin chain (I have former colleagues who disagree with the smart part of this description, perhaps cunning & lazy would be the way they would describe management) And woe for every time I encountered the stupid hard-working types – the ones who took far more initiative that they should and caused the rest of much work in fixing their mistakes.
      1. mrsyk July 23, 2025 at 9:51 am

         Now add in Covid, the common cold that makes us stupid, good times.
   3. chuck roast July 23, 2025 at 10:29 am

      Palestinians might take issue with this piece.
   4. jsn July 23, 2025 at 10:48 am

      Evil = Power x Stupidity / Humility

      Corollary: any coercive power is at minimum potentially evil.
4. The Rev Kev July 23, 2025 at 7:44 am

   ‘Buitengebieden
   @buitengebieden
   “Not now Linda, I’m working” 😅’

   Geez. One hot date and forever more after that they are all over you like a rash.
   1. griffen July 23, 2025 at 9:56 am

      “Ewe you had me at hello..”. “Ewe(r) the one that I want…hoo hoo…”

      I’m not a parent but those really seem like a couple Dad jokes!
      1. The Rev Kev July 23, 2025 at 10:05 am

         She’s baaaad to the bone.
5. timotheus July 23, 2025 at 7:47 am

   If the oceans are warming up at an accelerating pace, why haven’t there been any tropical storms nearly two months into hurricane season? IIRC, there used to be a parade of Albert Betty Carlos Don cyclones advancing across the south Atlantic this time of year, but at the NHC site, it’s been clear skies for weeks. Haven’t seen any explanations.
   1. Steve H. July 23, 2025 at 8:51 am

      See Yves link below:

      >> Given that the storm-making basins of the hemisphere are so far-flung, it’s possible that this year’s unusually low ACE is being influenced by multiple regional factors that happen to be aligned.

      I’ll be broader but less specific. Janet and I have been watching since 1992, which is when Hurricane Andrew whacked her Grandma Grace dead center in Homestead. That’s also the year I got my Environmental Science degree, At that time, the top environmental threat was the acute situation of the Ozone Hole; second was climate change. Since then, the sensing equipment is astonishingly better, particularly interpreting satellite data.

      At the time we weren’t looking at Earth’s Energy Imbalance, a master flux variable that (so far) best captures the issue. (James Hansen used the metric in his 2012 Congressional testimony, but it’s not the 1988 transcripts.) It’s a deeper understanding than temperature and greenhouse gas concentrations. In the same way, Sea Surface Temperature is the best we got for long-term understanding of heat storage, but the real question is how much heat is stored in the depths.

      From that perspective, the effect is not simply more Cat-5’s whacking Florida, it’s increased extreme values and unpredictability. One material manifestation is the disruption of the jet stream, bringing extreme cold to the Gulf Coast (disrupted polar vortex), and extreme heat from heat domes. Like a pot of boiling water, the extremes manifest locally (columns of bubbles), and the average values fall in explanatory value.

      So you don’t get the bowling balls of cyclones striking Florida, you get Hurricane Otis blowing up into a Cat-5 in one day with no warning and devastating Acapulco City. It’s worse because there’s not enough warning for people to get safe. These are more like point-source sparks in an electrical field, and there’s a problem with the ‘I dont see it’ bias when extreme weather is hitting one side of town and the other is just fine. We’ve been fascinated by this video, showing serial extreme local events.

      We’re starting to track Convective Available Potential Energy (CAPE), an approximation of updraft strength within a thunderstorm. Last week there was a terrifying prediction for the US in the next day or so. We’re keeping a weather eye out.
      1. mrsyk July 23, 2025 at 9:48 am

         One thing happening, if I understand this correctly, is the atmosphere has been showing an increasing capacity to carry water, the warmer the air, the more water it can carry. This is one potential reason for all the “once every hundred years” floods occurring.
      2. Steve H. July 23, 2025 at 9:49 am

         Model charts for USA (CAPE)
         1. mrsyk July 23, 2025 at 1:01 pm

            That’s a crazy map, thanks.
            Stay safe.
      3. ThirtyOne July 23, 2025 at 3:42 pm

         Here’s a fun toy to play with:
         https://www.ventusky.com/?p=22;-121;2&l=cape
         Another one for comparison
         https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/overlay=cape/orthographic=-87.45,30.84,1062/loc=-135.374,38.642
   2. Yves Smith Post authorJuly 23, 2025 at 8:56 am

      Oops, managed to misplace the reply:

      Please use a search engine:

      https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2025/07/a-weird-lack-of-northern-hemisphere-tropical-cyclones-so-far-in-2025/
      1. amfortas July 23, 2025 at 2:01 pm

         sorry. i was suckin down the last of the coffee before i ran off to sit on the side of the road with produce, again.
         1. amfortas July 23, 2025 at 5:56 pm

            related, perhaps:
            https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/5351977-making-america-healthy-begins-with-farmers/
            i have a rather sudden crush on this woman.
            the report launching pad:
            https://farmaction.us/kings-over-the-necessaries-of-life-monopolization-and-the-elimination-of-competition-in-americas-agriculture-system/
   3. amfortas July 23, 2025 at 8:57 am

      anomalous blocking high in west africa, a lot more saharan dust flowing west, and whateverthehell is going on with the AMOC/Gulf Stream.
      (this is from memory over the last week)
      in other weirdness, west texas(as in Transpecos/desert) is getting a whole lotta rain, while east texas is not.
      meanwhile, here in west central texas/nw hill country, its humid as heck, when usually this time of year, we’re at 15% at best…
   4. griffen July 23, 2025 at 9:28 am

      Tropical Storm Chantal has made a mess in central portions, counties and farms of North Carolina. This isn’t that hard to find and view sources or local reports, from approximately two weeks ago.

      Counties such as Orange, Chatham and Person were impacted according to a few articles I read yesterday.
   5. jrkrideau July 23, 2025 at 9:16 pm

      Check South-East Asia.
      Hong Kong got badly hit a day or two ago and the PRC was evacuating coast lines in the same general area.

      I think there were at least two PRC provinces with extreme flooding and casualties from other cyclones in the Southwest.

      Maybe another one in the Philippines but it may have been in the path of one of the same cyclones that hit China.

      I’d suggest the rain and flooding in the Moscow Oblast may have the same cause.
6. Earl July 23, 2025 at 7:52 am

   The issue of tire microplastic pollution is relevant to the weight of EV vehicles and resulting tire wear and regenerative brake emissions. There are articles claiming that EVs release more toxic particles than modern gas-powered vehicle tailpipes.
   1. juno mas July 23, 2025 at 5:55 pm

      The toxic particle of most concern is CO2; ICE’s win that comparison. Microplastics accumulating in waterways from tire wear (while important) brings up the rear.
7. Afro July 23, 2025 at 8:04 am

   Conspiracy theorists don’t realize they’re on the fringe ars technica

   ******

   I wonder what fraction of Americans believe the official 9/11 and JFK narratives.

   Even moreso those younger than 35.
   1. Screwball July 23, 2025 at 10:23 am

      I’m going to be 69 next month so I’ve been around for a while. I don’t believe anything they tell me and go from there, including those two examples.
      1. lyman alpha blob July 23, 2025 at 11:59 am

         That article really chapped my posterior. Just one more in the litany of pieces debunking “conspiracy theories” without defining what is considered a conspiracy. And in this one, AI can cure you of your misbegotten beliefs! –

         “Last year we reported on another Pennycook study, presenting results from experiments in which an AI chatbot engaged in conversations with people who believed at least one conspiracy theory. That study showed that the AI interaction significantly reduced the strength of those beliefs, even two months later. The secret to its success: the chatbot, with its access to vast amounts of information across an enormous range of topics, could precisely tailor its counterarguments to each individual.”

         Yes the hallucinating, factually challenged AI chatbots are going to teach us the real deal. We are to believe what our “betters” spoonfeed to us rather than using our own craniums for any critical thinking. How utterly ridiculous. IF Stone famously and succinctly said “All governments lie.” and I’m still waiting for him to be proven wrong.

         It’s funny how all the freemarketeer neoliberals will latch on to Adam Smith’s remark about the invisible hand and take that as gospel without bothering to read the context, part of which is this –

         “People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. “
         1. Birch July 23, 2025 at 7:29 pm

            If they aren’t conspiring in all those closed door meetings they have all the time, what the hell are they doing in there? If it wasn’t some sort of conspiracy against the public, it would be in their interest to open the doors so we could see for ourselves.
            1. jsn July 23, 2025 at 10:06 pm

               With a formal intelligence budget this year of 73 billion and god knows what black budget, if their aren’t swarms of active conspiracies ongoing out there, plenty of people aren’t doing their jobs.
8. The Rev Kev July 23, 2025 at 8:04 am

   ‘Lord Bebo
   @MyLordBebo
   🇺🇦🇷🇴🇷🇺 Ukranian jets flew to Romania when an attack is incoming.
   Here one was filmed, doing so.
   Ukraine has a handy NATO hiding place … where Russia can’t reach.
   The Ukrainians constantly use NATO’s airfield network for their planes. F-16s sometimes spend nights in Poland.’

   This would be no surprise to the Russians as they have done the same themselves in the past. Back during the Korean war, US jet fighters would observe Soviet squadrons taking off from Vladivostock in Russia and a few minutes later would be tangling with them though they sported North Korean roundels on their wings. It is how the game is played.

   Those Ukrainian jets may be safely based in Romania and Poland but it means that they would have to burn precious fuel to get to support operations in the south and east of the country. Even then they still lose planes and there is a report that the Ukrainian Air Force has just lost their first Mirage jet-

   https://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/world/2025/07/23/ukraine-loses-first-french-mirage-fighter-jet-in-crash

   But there is no truth to the rumour that just before the pilot bailed out of that Mirage, that he was heard to mutter ‘Oh, merde!’ over his radio.
   1. ilsm July 23, 2025 at 8:47 am

      Revetments are probably much cheaper than flying the F-16’s away.

      Also, given the aircraft and the experience of the pilots there are risks of total loss due to inflight failures and pilot error…..
9. Acacia July 23, 2025 at 8:11 am

   Re: Japan Trade Deal

   Toyota’s stock surged 8% following the announcement of a 15% tariff, and the reason is quite straightforward.

   While Toyota only has to pay an additional 15%, American manufacturers like Ford, GM, and Tesla are facing a significant increase in costs. They’ll be paying 50% more for steel and copper, 25% more for production in Canada and Mexico, and a whopping 55% more for production in China.

   This disparity gives Toyota a considerable advantage over its American competitors, which seems counterintuitive to the goal of bringing auto jobs back to America.

   https://x.com/katherinexowens/status/1947828594010443801
   1. The Rev Kev July 23, 2025 at 9:01 am

      I wonder if the Chinese are making it easier or harder for mobs like Toyota to get access to refined rare earths for the construction of their cars. That would make a difference too in the pricing of their cars.
   2. Jason Boxman July 23, 2025 at 5:47 pm

      From ‘Unprecedented’ Investment Fund Seals Deal for Japan and Expands Trump’s Influence

      Hard to believe this really happens; won’t this just be with treasuries they already hold?

      As a carrot, American and Japanese negotiators offered Mr. Trump an extraordinary proposal: Japan would create a $400 billion investment fund that Mr. Trump himself could decide where to invest, with half of the profits flowing to the U.S. government.

      The fund represented a significant expansion by the president over domestic investment, an idea that pleased Mr. Trump. He set about renegotiating some of the terms, crossing out numbers and scribbling on a placemat-size visual aid brought to the meeting by Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary. In the end, Mr. Trump upped the ante and announced that Japan would create a fund of $550 billion to invest in the United States, with the U.S. government receiving 90 percent of the profits.

      (bold mine)

      Of course, this is nutso, because the United States doesn’t need to get dollars from anywhere to invest

      The official said that the president would get the final say in the investments and that profits would go to the U.S. Treasury and could be used to pay down American debt. The United States could see some returns in a year, he projected. Some projects could include investments in new American factories that would be leased back to the companies.

      Basically:

      But some trade experts have questioned whether the fund will ultimately materialize. Veronique de Rugy, a research fellow at the Mercatus Center, called the promises “vague” and said they were “the kind of fantastical claims better suited for a campaign rally than a serious trade announcement.”

      Another fiction.
   3. juno mas July 23, 2025 at 5:48 pm

      Toyota won’t be paying the 15% tariff, American customers will. The people that buy/own Toyota stock are not concerned about a price increase in their new sedan, everyone else will.
   4. chuck roast July 23, 2025 at 6:54 pm

      I mean I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but it sounds like you’re saying that the American trade reps. in this deal attended the negotiations in big multi colored pantaloons, puffy shirts and had red ping-pong balls stuck on their noses. Believable.
      1. Acacia July 23, 2025 at 10:10 pm

         Not words from me, so no worries. :) I’m just quoting a tweet that points to Toyota’s stock taking off and why the Japanese may have agreed to this “deal” with Trump, as it is actually less bad for them than he believes.
10. JMH July 23, 2025 at 8:27 am

    There are street protests in Tel Aviv, “against the starvation and famine in the Gaza Strip”, but Bret Stephens speaking ex cathedra from NY Times says that Israel is not, I say again, not committing genocide. Seems it is a matter of definitions. I am so pleased that Bret is on the job. I have actually been thinking that bombing and shooting and starving and driving people from pillar to post and government officials saying that clearing all the people from Gaza is the goal fit the definition of genocide.
    1. The Rev Kev July 23, 2025 at 8:37 am

       Reading his Wikipedia entry, it is hard to decide if the guy is Mossad or just Hasbara-

       https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bret_Stephens

       But he is far down the Zionist rabbit hole – and he calls himself a Zionist -that if Israel nuked Iran he would claim that that it was all the fault of those Arabs, even though Iranians aren’t Arabs. Facts, schmacts.
       1. Ben Panga July 23, 2025 at 9:51 am

          Just don’t call him Bedbug ;)

          https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/aug/27/bret-stephens-new-york-times-columinst-bed-bug-twitter

          Odious man.
    2. Acacia July 23, 2025 at 8:38 am

       Yes, good thing the NYT is handing the mike over to an opinion columnist.

       Things were getting confused when they had an actual scholar of genocide weigh in about a week ago:

       https://caityjohnstone.medium.com/the-new-york-times-finally-stops-avoiding-the-g-word-e890e355b80a
11. pjay July 23, 2025 at 8:32 am

    – ‘Conspiracy theorists don’t realize they’re on the fringe’ – ars technica

    Articles like this always assume the term “conspiracy theory” is transparent to any rational, well-educated individual who would be reading such a piece – which would likely not include many “conspiracy theorists.” So I’m always interested in which beliefs are used to identify such individuals. Often, popular articles like this which summarize such research only mention the least controversial topics as examples. In this one we have three: belief that the moon landing was fake; belief that Princess Diana was murdered; and belief that Sandy Hook was a false flag operation. Ok, I’ll take those. But I wonder what other beliefs would qualify as “conspiracy theories” according to Dr. Pennycook? How about the Kennedy assasination(s)? Doubts about the official narrative regarding 9/11? The assertion that the Syrian gas attacks were actually carried out by our guys? The idea that Epstein “belonged to intelligence”? Or even the argument that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was actually provoked?

    Of course these days my first impulse toward any academic attempting to show “scientifically” how deluded “conspiracy theorists” are is to ask the question: what about Russiagate? Is that a “conspiracy theory”? I have to admit that those well-educated liberals who believed (or still believe?) this CT tend to meet Pennycook’s “overconfidence” criterion. I can’t say that I like the new twist in this latest CT research: the finding that *AI* can successfully deprogram someone suffering from CT by barraging them with the right facts! Yay! Another victory for science over ignorance.
    1. Acacia July 23, 2025 at 9:29 am

       Yes, fortunately there are also a few academics who take conspiracy seriously. E.g., I have found Adrian Wisnicki’s Conspiracy, Revolution, and Terrorism from Victorian Fiction to the Modern Novel to be quite good, as he looks not only at conspiracy in literature but in fact at the “conspiracy theory narrative”. It’s really a solid work of scholarship.
       1. pjay July 23, 2025 at 10:43 am

          Thanks for the recommendation. I’ll check it out. Even more directly applicable to what I have in mind is a book Lambert discussed a few years back, Conspiracy Theory in America, by the late Lance deHaven Smith. He traces the relatively recent weaponization of this term in order to mystify what he refers to as State Crimes Against Democracy (SCADs). Each of my counter-examples could be considered such a SCAD. I’d strongly recommend deHaven Smith’s book as a very useful antidote to the one-sided “Paranoid Style” label made famous by Hofstadter and uncritically accepted by most political psychologists (like the one profiled in this article).
          1. Martin Oline July 23, 2025 at 11:20 am

             Thank you for the reminder pjay. My library has the physical book so now I have something to read when I finish Cadillac Desert, an oldie but a goodie!.
    2. Aurelien July 23, 2025 at 10:52 am

       My usual argument is that these things are only as complicated as you want to make them. A “conspiracy theory” is just the theory of the existence of a conspiracy, and by extension that an event that has a generally accepted cause was in fact brought about through the existence of a conspiracy instead. Thus, Apollo 11 did not go the Moon but there was a conspiracy to pretend that it did. Princess Diana did not die in a car crash but was murdered by British Intelligence in a conspiracy because reasons. So, instead of Kennedy being assassinated by Oswald, Epstein offing himself, AQ being responsible for the 2001 attacks, there were hidden conspiracies behind each episode, and many more. The term is therefore a neutral, descriptive one. I’d argue also that to be a conspiracy theory there actually has to be a coherent and convincing theory, not just the assertion that something doesn’t look right, which is at best a hypothesis that such a theory might be possible. In that context I see there are now “theories” circulating that the recent Air India crash was caused by some kind of electronic weapon.

       But it’s true that there are people disproportionately attracted to such theories, often elaborately laid out, and for two main reasons. One is that they simply confirm prior beliefs: the classic is those who could not accept that the French Revolution was an organic process, and came to believe in generations-long conspiracies of Freemasons and rationalists. A modern equivalent is those who could not accept the victory of Donald Trump in 2016, and took refuge in the theory that the Russians dunnit. The other is personality-based, notably the kind of person who sees themselves as “independent”, and above the common horde, and who is obsessed with “questioning the narrative” as a form of self-definition.
       1. pjay July 23, 2025 at 11:40 am

          A conspiracy theory *should* be just a theory about the existence of a conspiracy – and therefore subject to evidence, etc. But the fact is that in the US at least, this term – “conspiracy theory” – is used as a pejorative to label people who believe in the existence of particular conspiracies as irrational, or at least as engaging in excessive motivated reasoning without considering evidence that might counter their preexisting biases. I mention the book by Lance deHaven Smith above – which, of course, *could* be dismissed as a “conspiracy theory” about the weaponization of the term “conspiracy theory.”

          For liberals, belief that Russia engaged in a major effort to interfere with the 2016 election is an evidence-backed theory about the existence of a (Russian) conspiracy. My own evidence-backed theory of a conspiracy between the Democrats, members of the Obama administration including individuals in the DOJ and FBI, and elements of the CIA and allied foreign intelligence agencies to knowingly frame Trump as a traitorous Russian collaborator (with the help of their credulous media lackeys) is a “conspiracy theory.” My evidence is quite strong, and grows stronger with every revelation. Their evidence is bulls**t. That doesn’t matter. Eventually those who have not completely memory-holed Russiagate will write it off as simply a well-intentioned mistake (“gosh, it sure *seemed* like there was a lot of evidence for Russian collusion – and anyway Russia is evil and Trump is a fascist, so we *had* to investigate…”) They will never, ever, accept that it was an actual plot, a coup attempt. That would be “conspiracy theory.”

          Less educated deplorables might believe the moon landing was fake. But I worry much less about them than about those with real power to mystify real history with this label. Unfortunately, these aren’t the people who are usually studied by academics researching beliefs in “conspiracy theories.”
          1. Aurelien July 23, 2025 at 1:37 pm

             I think the key (including the key to remaining sane) is to recognise that the essence of a conspiracy theory is that it takes something generally assumed to be true and presents a completely different interpretation of it. In other words “they’re plotting against me!” “it’s a conspiracy” “there’s more to this than meets the eye” or “something funny is going on” are not conspiracy theories. In many cases, including the one you cite, you are not putting forward a conspiracy theory, just pointing to suspicious conduct by various people. Many so-called “conspiracy theories” that are subsequently declared to be “true” are really nothing more than suspicions or even certainties at the time that the records subsequently show to be well-founded. For example, I’ve been told that British and French collusion with Israel over Suez was a “conspiracy theory” that turned out to be “true.” But in fact collusion was widely known about at the time, it just couldn’t be publicly acknowledged. If the argument is that there are theories that completely undermine the general interpretation of some historical event, which were not alleged or even mentioned at the time, but which turn out to be “true,” well I can’t think of any, except possibly the ULTRA WW2 decryption effort, but that comes more under the heading of a long-term secret than a conspiracy.
    3. Lefty Godot July 23, 2025 at 8:29 pm

       There’s a general tendency to contaminate a field of speculation you want to see go away by associating it with the most ridiculous examples of speculations that can be considered minimally similar. So portraying moon landing or Sandy Hook denial as what is typical of conspiracy theorists, and trying to associate any doubting of the Kennedy assassination or 9/11 official stories with that, even though it’s obvious there are major problems with the official stories in both of those cases. In “defending science against pseudoscience” you see something similar, where the writer will demolish astrology and homeopathy and then try to associate belief in those with some much more contentious and thorny issues that people point out in how science is publicly used (like the influence of Big Pharma on medical research). This style of contamination by association with an unreasonable extreme is also how the media (in the 1960s) would portray anti-war demonstrators—they would always focus on the most absurdly costumed, unkempt, inarticulate demonstrator and imply that this was the sort of person that opposed our government’s righteous struggle against Communism. An old tactic, which must work enough of the time to keep re-using.
12. diptherio July 23, 2025 at 8:51 am

    RE: Amazon Buys Bee AI Wearable That Listens To Everything You Say The Verge

    Different US states have different laws regarding recording conversations. I imagine this might run afoul of the law in states that require both parties to a conversation to know it’s being recorded. Also, this device is not just listening to you and the person you’re talking to, obviously, but to everyone and everything in the immediate vicinity. Bad enough that we’re carrying around smartphones, but this just seems even creepier.
    1. The Rev Kev July 23, 2025 at 9:13 am

       It was bad enough when Google Glasses came out which would be constantly videoing people on the go. People wearing them were met with hostility and the people wearing them were nicknamed ‘glassholes.’ But to be talking with a person only to discover that everything that you say is being taken down and transcribed is beyond the pale. I can see people trying to use these things and then run off to the police because they have a transcript of what that person said so they can take them to court or sue them. It would be like they were wearing a wire. Fun times ahead.
       1. Geo July 23, 2025 at 12:12 pm

          Have noticed a total lack of that same hostility toward the newer Rayban Meta glasses. Actually know a few people with them and not one has ever had an issue. Society has shifted in just a decade. Oh, and Google is releasing a new version soon. I assume they think attitudes have changed enough that it won’t be a dud this time around.
    2. Hepativore July 23, 2025 at 9:29 am

       Wait until employers (Amazon) require employees to wear one constantly at work to ensure productivity and compliance.

       Whatever flimsy laws that might exist to prevent them from doing this will ether be given carve-outs to allow employers to do this or they will be flat out ignored with no consequences.
13. IM Doc July 23, 2025 at 8:52 am

    Yves, I hope you know that I have told my wife that when my time comes, it will very likely be from an instant stroke upon reading your links. After decades watching elders navigate our end of life health care system, I do hope and pray that my time will be instant. I desire nothing less for my family members and kids.

    The very first link was one such migraine-inducing experience. The American Academy of Pediatrics being bought and paid for by GLP-1 Pharma companies.

    We have sat and watched in horror the past year or two as one article after the other reports the ever expanding recommendations from our national medical leadership to begin little kids on GLP-1 like Ozempic as fast as we possibly can. We NEVER EVER talk about the crap school lunches unfit for roaches, the lack of exercise, the video games, the overweight parents with bags of Fritos. No – just start them all on GLP1

    Now, we are starting to get a better picture what the impetus for this advice is. Lucre is rolling into the AAP. It is even so bad that the AAP has its very own webpage devoted to all of its corporate sponsors.

    I am not making that up – https://www.aap.org/en/philanthropy/corporate-and-organizational-partners/current-partners/

    Read the names and weep. Moderna? – of course.

    The ABIM, and ACOG are certainly not much better.

    They were all bought and paid for during the COVID pandemic. The nightmares of my ethics professor elders in the 80s – what they screamed about for years – has now come to pass.

    I have a very simple observation/question…..These board agencies are tasked with a very simple job – but a very important one – and ONE JOB ONLY – to make sure that their members – the practicing doctors in their respective fields – are qualified to be doing that job. That is it, the end. Over and out. What does corporate sponsorship have to do with that task? What are all these corporations believing they are going to get from this type of “investment”?

    The profession of medicine is corrupt to the core. I do not know what else to say.

    But the next time you are in WalMart, and you see the obese kids all around, just realize that instead of hitting the playground, eating well, etc – the leaders of medicine want to make them eternal customers of products that we have no clue on safety over the years.

    Lord Have Mercy.
    1. Neutrino July 23, 2025 at 9:24 am

       Those two renegades at HHS tried their attempted Covid vax end-run while Bobby Kennedy was on vacation. He returned, fired their asses, and rescinded the phony approval so there is some hope.
    2. ChrisFromGA July 23, 2025 at 9:48 am

       I’m guessing that the number of long-term studies on side effects of these GLP-1 drugs is the same as the number of Buffalo Bills Super Bowl wins:

       Zero.

       Giving this stuff to kids is criminal.
       1. griffen July 23, 2025 at 11:58 am

          These pharmaceutical conglomerates have form after all. I was already in college or just finishing, when apparently in the middle 90s seemingly”every child” who hated classroom instruction was being prescribed Adderall or Ritalin to cure their ADHD. Daydreaming during my Intermediate Accounting courses was my escape…but I digress.

          Btw, may I suggest a different / replacement punching bag, perhaps a different NFL franchise? I humbly submit that America’s team, the Dallas Cowboys are as popular as a SB winner as say, day old bread from the bakery. They’ve done nothing of substance in several decades, other than blast an undrafted QB, Tony Romo , into the stratosphere of post career earning streams. And I rather like Tony.
          1. ChrisFromGA July 23, 2025 at 12:57 pm

             I only pick on the Bills out of love. To be fair, Vikings, Lions, and Falcons fans are all in the same boat. Among others. Maybe this is the year for JA17 and the gang.

             I have been watching the ESPN documentary on OJ – An American Tragedy. Those runs from the 70’s … it was like watching Baryshnikov, the way he danced through the secondary of helpless defenses. As a kid I got to see OJ play once – it was I think 1975 and my dad took me to a company outing to Rich Stadium. The Bills defeated the Broncos with the Juice and Jim Braxton (fullback) leading the way. On the bus ride back everyone was pretty much three sheets to the wind. Dad stayed sober, a good role model as always.

             Re: Cowboys hating

             For pure schadenfreude, watch Stephen A. Smith after the Cowboys lose.
14. The Rev Kev July 23, 2025 at 8:52 am

    “Conspiracy theorists don’t realize they’re on the fringe ars technica”

    And after adjusting my tin foil hat, I note that Ars technica came up with this story on conspiracy theorists just as the Epstein story has come back with a vengeance and has caused chaos in Congress alone while Trump tries to gaslight the nation by saying that there never was a list. Somebody killed Epstein in his cell? There is a list of all those who went to Epstein’s island to have sex with underage children? What are you? A conspiracy theorist or something?

    You know, I enjoy a good conspiracy theory just as much as the next person, especially when there are actual facts to back it up. But over the past few years some of the fun has been taken out of it. How so? Because far too many of them are now no longer conspiracy theories but have become historical record and I am not the first person on NC to say this. One I hear was Obama getting together with his people to sabotage Trump’s chances in the elections. And now the documents have come out saying yes, that this actually happened, not that Barry will ever suffer any consequences for this. So where is the fun where your conspiracy theory becomes fact and you can no longer talk about it?
    1. Sean Gorman July 23, 2025 at 9:14 am

       Isn’t the correct response to remove the word “conspiracy ” and judge by the criteria one would use for any “theory ” (usually an hypothesis)?
       1. Harold July 23, 2025 at 6:16 pm

          Yes. You don’t “believe” a hypothesis, you propose it as a plausible explanation awaiting further investigation.
    2. Neutrino July 23, 2025 at 9:20 am

       Today’s links provide some fun overlaps, from Ars Technica to Taibbi to Turley.
       When so many previous conspiracy theories turn out to be true, how long until there are apologies, mea culpas or any sort of acknowledgements?
       Oh, yeah, never. Looking at Isikoff and so many media personalities and outlets!
    3. Carolinian July 23, 2025 at 10:23 am

       Speaking of distractions Taibbi is now making Russiagate his cause as though there is something we don’t know about that or, for that matter, didn’t know at the time it was happening. It was perfectly obvious that Obama and Brennan were following Hillary’s lead to neuter if not outright cancel the surprise Trump election and his supposed fascism. Perhaps one reason Trump is now so bad is that he has decided he might as well give the Democrats what they want!

       The Trumpies are even making noises about prosecuting Obama and Brennan as a “so there” for those who dare to bring up Epstein. The Dems, whose lesser evil strategy was the original Whataboutism, will make that hypocritical complaint about attacks on Obama but Obama isn’t our problem anymore and Trump is. No statute of limitations on mideeds that are happening right now.
       1. gf July 23, 2025 at 11:06 am

          I am not so sure about the Obama faction in this.
          I think it was much more the HRC faction because that faction lost.

          Also the HRC faction is tied up in the Epstein thingee.
          By going after Obama they can at least deflect with out consequences to Trumps ties to Epstein.
          1. Carolinian July 23, 2025 at 12:00 pm

             Hillary started, Obama and his pal Brennan kept it going with bogus “intelligence assessment.” The Clintons once socialized with Trump whereas the Trump/Obama feud goes back at least as far as the Kenyan thing.

             Maybe Taibbi will dig up proof but so what? All it does now is distract from our real problems which the Dems had so much to do with. One of those is that without the interference of the Obama faction they might have won the last election. Biden was also Obama’s man.
             1. gf July 23, 2025 at 1:29 pm

                I was hoping Obama did not have a part in that, I remember him chiding Mitt Romney about Russia no longer being an enemy.

                https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/08/opinions/barack-obama-russia-revisionism-cupp

                Of course he then proceeded to overthrow the Ukrainian government.
15. Adam1 July 23, 2025 at 8:58 am

    “Conspiracy theorists don’t realize they’re on the fringe”

    LOL! I came across a new phase I absolutely love… “pseudo-profound bullshit”
16. Bugs July 23, 2025 at 9:05 am

    “Will Corporate Treasuries Have Any Interest In Using Stablecoins?”

    What I love about the Credit Slips blog is that they stick to the subject at hand and lay out the facts and math. Stablecoins are useless, unless you need a very specific hedge against wire fees and even then, the potential savings is minuscule.
    1. griffen July 23, 2025 at 11:13 am

       I enjoyed the article just gets down to brass tacks. What are legitimate use cases and is the proposed use cases for stable coins as payment transfer options really an improvement. I accept his use case at face values, basically the rule of do no harm. Corporate treasury functions to pay suppliers and vendors, insurers and of course those pesky employees. A sudden or unexpected break in the link when using, any example above, stable coin instead would be met with a WTF response. But the true believers will try all the same.

       No period in recent history made it more clear that corporations run large balances than during the Lehman failure and the debacle of money market funds ” breaking the buck “. I can’t imagine an complex, international corporation choosing to operate these functions on anything other than what is proven and reliable.
       1. Wukchumni July 23, 2025 at 11:19 am

          Since Bitcoin crawled out of the ether, I’ve seen exactly 1 retail store that accepted it as payment.

          It was around 2019 and we’d just completed a nice ski trip in Mammoth Lakes and went to Subway to get a quick lunch for the long drive home, and next to the Subway was a business called ‘U-Wash Doggie’ and in the window was a small sign pronouncing that they accept Bitcoin as payment.

          That’s it, in 15 years of it being the financial force that it claims to be~
       2. chuck roast July 23, 2025 at 8:03 pm

          They will be expected to do big bucks transactions. After all, one of their reasons to exist is they are supposed to quaff up large doses of Treasuries from the near future tsunami. Pumping up the volume depresses the interest rates.
17. Samuel Conner July 23, 2025 at 9:13 am

    > This is infuriating.

    Wow, that’s something that I did not consider, that undetected CV infection could have been widespread in both “arms” of the study.

    The “same degree of accelerated brain ageing” in both groups result will be seen by people who think that the pandemic mitigations were objectively harmful as support for their views.

    I still think that the robust detection of a cognitive decline signal in a “mild infection” population is a useful datum. Nearly everyone I know has cast the precautionary principle to the winds and is assuming that “mild infection” means “no harm”. I think this study deflates that balloon.
    1. CanCyn July 23, 2025 at 1:37 pm

       I don’t disagree with Yves assessment of the study but I do have an n=1 story. My 70 yr old sister was just diagnosed with cognitive decline related to advanced brain atrophy. Her neurologist specifically said that she doesn’t have dementia but he did say she has the brain of a 90 yr old. No explanations or further diagnosis seem to be forthcoming. She had COVID once that we know of, she was pretty sick, lost taste and smell but was not hospitalized. Her health otherwise is not horrible, she is not super fit, slim or trim but walks most days, eats healthfully, quit smoking pre-40, probably used to drink too much alcohol but post retirement that eased. She has been on a blood pressure medication for a few years but otherwise all of their cardiovascular investigations and MRI came up as her being in good health, aside from the brain atrophy. Seems to me her woes started after she had COVID. Mostly manifested in searching for words when she is talking and some memory issues. And for those of you familiar with cognitive tests, she couldn’t draw the clock. Having said that her first cognitive test results were horrible but she did very well on a recent one. Her doc has authorized a drivers test, they suspended her drivers when she first went to her family doc and she would really like it back.
       While it is indeed useful for those who still believe in prevention to know whether or not my sister’s problem is COVID related, in the end it isn’t going to help her. Lots of shoulder shrugging from the docs, not much else. Happily she is still able to take care of herself, still knitting and doing things she enjoys. For how much longer, remains to be seen.
       1. Samuel Conner July 23, 2025 at 10:39 pm

          I can’t interpret n=1 data, but my understanding of the Nature Comms study is that the cognitive deficit in the CV-infected group was worse for older people. The interpretation offered for this is that the resilience of the brain to injury declines with age.

          I take that to be a strong hint that precautionary mitigations such as masking are highly advisable for older people. Even “mild” infections are more consequential for them.

          The fact that the measured cognitive sequelae from “mild infection” is less severe in the young will probably be interpreted (among the majority NPI-averse community) to justify disregard of protective interventions for them. But it might be that the lower measured deficits are due to increased resilience to injury — so that “mild infection” is also injuring the young, but the measured cognitive effects of that are less pronounced due to higher brain resilience to injury. What the cumulative effects of multiple injuries over time would be … I would not want to be part of that “natural experiment.”
    2. Raymond Sim July 23, 2025 at 5:40 pm

       I very much appreciate Yves continuing to thump the tub on this topic, both in regards to long-term consequences of infection and any possible role in vaccine injury as well. I’m too worn down to be infuriated any more, but it warms my heart to see that someone still is.
    3. nyleta July 23, 2025 at 6:29 pm

       Queensland health hospital figures for this respiratory season show that deaths from Covid are running at five times the deaths from Flu in those hospitalised. Nimbus here and in Asia with Stratus everywhere else .Infection control in hospitals has become poor and you don’t send people in until they are really bad.

       Here the wearing of a surgical mask has come to mean either of two things, first you care a bit about protecting yourself and others but don’t think you should struggle to breathe under any circumstances, second you have a respiratory problem and are trying to keep the consequences to yourself without staying at home. The cognitive rot has gone deep
       1. Samuel Conner July 23, 2025 at 10:48 pm

          > but don’t think you should struggle to breathe under any circumstances,

          Multiple people have told me that they find N95s difficult to breathe through.

          I wonder whether it would be possible to condition oneself to tolerate this discomfort, by wearing N95s for progressively longer periods of time.

          My practice is to be masked in the presence of people, and whenever outside, even if I am completely alone while outside. The latter practice elicits puzzled comment. I do it because I want to condition myself to tolerate the discomfort, for the sake of the times when I am masked near people for prolonged periods of time.

          I like to tell myself that maybe my example will encourage someone else to mask more, but the reality is probably that I’m spitting into a hurricane.
18. ChrisFromGA July 23, 2025 at 9:29 am

    Israelis on cruise ship prevented from disembarking in Greece:

    https://www.jpost.com/bds-threat/article-861867

    Protesters near the Syros dock waved Palestinian flags and held banners with slogans, such as “Stop the genocide,” and “No AC in hell.”

    This. Needs to become much more widespread. And include US Christian Zionists who travel to Israel. Boycott, shun, show up at their church meetings with protest signs.
    1. ciroc July 23, 2025 at 10:16 am

       To avoid being labeled an anti-Semite, ask the following question: “Why are you here when Hamas is trying to destroy your country?”
    2. lyman alpha blob July 23, 2025 at 2:05 pm

       The Greeks are alright. When I left the Heraklion airport in Crete earlier this year, there were several bridges you had to drive under as soon as you got on the highway, and all of them has anti-Zionist graffiti on them. “Zionists not welcome here” was a prominent one.
       1. Birch July 23, 2025 at 8:05 pm

          Remember, Cretans aren’t really Greek. Their cultural history goes back way further than anything Hellenic, and they still carry the stories to prove it. Their music and traditional foods are distinct, and many have an understanding of functional anarchy that puts the rest of us to shame.

          They clearly remember the many centuries of Ottoman rule, Venetian rule, Byzantine rule, and before that, Dorian rule. Their cultural memory makes them generally more hateful toward colonialism than you might expect.
19. Patrick Lynch July 23, 2025 at 9:31 am

    Regarding the NPR article about rebooting one’s mood by taking smartphone breaks: An equally good way to reboot your mood is to quit listening to NPR.
    1. cfraenkel July 23, 2025 at 1:10 pm

       A long time ago (… > 20 yrs), NPR used to be a welcome diversion during long car drives. Now it’s an immediate change of channel. Sad that it gets in the way of decent jazz or classical programming.
    2. Joe Renter July 23, 2025 at 1:21 pm

       For the win!
       My ex worked for a fm radio station that streamed NPR. Looking back now I realize I was not wearing my critical thinking hat for way too long.This blog was a helpful turn of events for me.
20. griffen July 23, 2025 at 9:33 am

    Last act of a rock legend belongs to the record books. Ozzy Osbourne death marks an end to his “Crazy Train” of a career and performing as a lead singer. In a remarkable turn, a super lineup performed at this concert a mere few weeks ago in early July. I noticed several had commented yesterday afternoon as this news dropped.

    I’m not yet able to find additional reports on the total being raised, but that is a massive total haul.

    https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/ozzy-osbournes-legendary-final-performance-raised-staggering-190m-worthy-causes
    1. LawnDart July 23, 2025 at 10:25 am

       More Ozzy:

       Ozzy Osbourne’s Genes Really Were Wired for Alcohol and Addiction

       “People say to me, if you could do it all again, knowing what you know now, would you change anything? I’m like, f*** no. If I’d been clean and sober, I wouldn’t be Ozzy. If I’d done normal, sensible things, I wouldn’t be Ozzy.

       “Look, if it ends tomorrow, I can’t complain. I’ve been all around the world. Seen a lot of things. I’ve done good… and I’ve done bad.”
       1. Martin Oline July 23, 2025 at 11:33 am

          “I’ve done good… and I’ve done bad.”

          That makes me laugh. I remember taking I took my son and his friends to his come-back concert around 1987. It a reunion with his old guitarist and a big thing to the boys. The concert was off to a slow start and his desperation showed when he exhorted the crowd, “Clap your hands, MFs!”
       2. Trees&Trunks July 23, 2025 at 12:30 pm

          Lemmy and Ozzy were hardly straight-edge but both achieved respectable age given their habits. Can a meaningful life compensate for hard-core drug usage? Both of them seem to have enjoyed the life of performers/musicians with its good&bad.
       3. Yves Smith Post authorJuly 23, 2025 at 1:11 pm

          He actually did stop drinking.

          https://www.newleafrecovery.co.uk/ozzy-osbournes-addiction-story/
          1. AG July 23, 2025 at 5:52 pm

             My uncle had been drinking for 20 years. And then when a doctor warned him he would die if he wouldn´t stop soon he did stop from one day to the next. Just like that out of fear of dying. My father who has every reason to hate him in fact mocked him: “See you are such a coward and egotist. When we begged you you ignored us. Now it´s about your own life. Now you stop.”

             I should add my uncle ruined his entire family with three sons and sold everything the family once owned. Including disavowing my Dad in front of the laywer when it came to selling off the real estate. So my father and the sons of this fine brother were left with nothing.

             His sons are wrecks. But he is in his 90s and in admirable shape.
       4. Birch July 23, 2025 at 8:13 pm

          I remember an Ozzy interview from years ago where he said that, of all the drugs he quit, cigarettes were the hardest.

          I realized today at work that there’s a flagpole with a Canadian flag on it. I lowered it to half-mast.
    2. Wukchumni July 23, 2025 at 11:04 am

       Sure has been a fruitful month for aging rockers to pass away, and all of them went past the average lifespan for their era, even more astonishing.
    3. Acacia July 24, 2025 at 2:40 am

       Re: Ozzy remembered

       “Crazy Train” — cool music teacher !

       https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=JPBrA3sV90A
21. pjay July 23, 2025 at 9:45 am

    – ‘Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez defends decision to support military aid for Israel’ – Middle East Eye (resilc). Pathetic.

    AOC’s vote, and her rationalization for it, was indeed pathetic. But much more depressing was the fact that the vote was 422-6. Six representatives – SIX – had the guts to take a stand against Zionist genocide. And one of them was Marjorie Taylor Greene! The other Republican was Massie. Congress is hopeless.
    1. AG July 23, 2025 at 11:07 am

       “hopeless”
       indeed
    2. John Wright July 23, 2025 at 12:18 pm

       One can suggest AOC’s vote was thoroughly discussed with her staff and advisors as they weighed what would be telegraphed by the vote.

       Perhaps showing performative support for donors was paramount, even when a “no” vote by AOC would have had no effect other than optics.

       Reliably bought may be a hallmark of AOC’s brand.
22. The Rev Kev July 23, 2025 at 9:45 am

    ‘Benny Johnson
    @bennyjohnson
    BIG NEWS: AG Pam Bondi just announced she is meeting with Ghislane Maxwell to expose the truth about Jeffery Epstein.
    A truly unprecedented move.
    Bondi seeks to find ‘uncharged third parties’ and further evidence of Epstein’s child trafficking operation.
    Bondi has also ordered further disclosure from the FBI and DOJ. Wow.’

    In other news, Santa Clause and the Easter Bunny have been discovered to be true. I would expect Bondi to talk to Maxwell and show here a list of people being accused, half of whom are probably dead. She would then get Maxwell to agree that these were the names that she would identify. And before leaving her cell she would tell Maxwell that any reneging on that agreed upon list would have consequences. And so the microphones would not pick it up, Bonbi would run her thumb across her throat in front of Maxwell so that she got the message. You want out, you play ball.
    1. ChrisFromGA July 23, 2025 at 9:50 am

       Blondi will make her an offer she can’t refuse. Shut up … or a shank in the back out in the yard.
       1. jefemt July 23, 2025 at 9:53 am

          Will Bill or Hillarity be Bondi’s brief case bearer?
          1. ChrisFromGA July 23, 2025 at 10:10 am

             “Hey Ghislaine, long time, no see … orange looks good on you. You know, it’d be a real shame if you were to disappear in an Arkansas swamp while on work detail.”
             1. The Rev Kev July 23, 2025 at 10:18 am

                Arkansas? Isn’t that Bill Clinton’s old stomping ground? Oh…
    2. ilsm July 23, 2025 at 11:33 am

       Larry Johnson reported there are nearly a billion bucks in pay outs to under age “victims” related to Epstein activities.

       There is a lot of “there” there!

       I am certain the powers in DC will miss the “there”.

       A lot of tapes to be deleted.

       Nixon was not a crook by today’s standard.
       1. Wukchumni July 23, 2025 at 11:40 am

          We have perhaps thanks to Epstein, the only chance to really clean house on awful predators who happen to have been political leaders or are presently so.

          ‘Are you now or have you ever been a member of Jeffrey’s Party in the United States?’
       2. begob July 23, 2025 at 12:13 pm

          For details on the pay-outs, search for Ryan Dawson on Judge Napolitano’s youtube channel. He comes up with a sum of 807m. Other points he makes:
          – Most of his information is from open source court records, supplemented by victim interviews;
          – There is no list of clients as such;
          – Epstein tended to deal with political donors rather than their politicians.
          Seems like it’s been an open goal for the media for a long time, but they ain’t really interested – perhaps like the Post Office scandal in the UK, which was hiding in plain sight for 20+ years until it blew up in a TV drama.
       3. chuck roast July 23, 2025 at 8:13 pm

          Geez, I’m old enough to remember Sherman Adams and the vicuna coat scandal. I think the coat was valued at a few hundred dollars. By today’s standards the affair could only be described as presbyterian.
    3. wl July 23, 2025 at 8:42 pm

       Why would Maxwell need to be coerced to “play ball”?
       Her backers own the court.w
23. AG July 23, 2025 at 9:53 am

    re: Russiagate

    SleuthNews live on YT now.

    I hope though the stream will be available online later. It´s always a wildcard as who is participating and who is not. And usually takes longer.

    From the inside of the beast so to speak.

    Russiagate: HPSCI ICA Report Released
    https://www.youtube.com/live/w-kr-QeNgAQ
    1. AG July 23, 2025 at 7:06 pm

       SleuthNews

       Will The NYT Retract?

       Let’s start with a hat tip for Daniel who reminded us of this one. We just went through the HPSCI report on the ICA and found there was no significant sourcing to the idea that Putin ordered an interference campaign to help Trump.

       In 2019, the NYT reported about the exfiltration of an alleged spy we had placed in the Kremlin, describing him in this manner:

       https://www.sleuth.news/p/will-the-nyt-retract
       1. AG July 24, 2025 at 12:04 am

          SleuthNews

          Obama & Russiagate

          https://www.sleuth.news/p/obama-and-russiagate

          “(…)
          With the release of today’s report, criminal cases could now be articulated for John Brennan and potentially, other senior leaders of our intelligence community for their testimony regarding the ICA and the Steele dossier – notwithstanding some challenges around statute of limitations for simple false statement cases.

          On President Obama, we reported the following in March: “Post-election, Sleuth News sources allege that President Obama ordered Brennan to oversee the Intelligence Community Assessment and support a Russian interference narrative, and to also exclude any contradictory pieces of information, which would have included materials the CIA had obtained relating to the Clinton plan intelligence.”
          (…)
          We have talked to numerous persons connected to other private companies who analyzed the DNC hack in the summer of 2016. Some of these experts were quoted extensively in the media. What they say today is vastly different than what they said publicly 9 years ago.

          They suggest that a thorough review of the hack is now needed, with an eye towards fraud.
          (…)”.
24. Cowboy Frankenstein July 23, 2025 at 10:51 am

    Humans can be tracked with unique ‘fingerprint’ based on how their bodies block Wi-Fi signals

    Makes me think of the Outer Limits episode O.B.I.T. where a senator investigates the death of a defense contract worker at a compound in proto-silicon valley where the alcoholism and suicide rate has skyrocketed due to constant surveillance:

    https://therokuchannel.roku.com/details/dff37daaac7c554e9fa529db9951fa90/the-outer-limits-s1-e7-obit
25. The Rev Kev July 23, 2025 at 10:57 am

    ‘Carlos
    @agent_of_change
    The imperialists are getting desperate, because their cultural hegemony is collapsing.
    YouTube has removed more than 7,700 YouTube channels linked to China, that “promoted the People’s Republic of China, supported President Xi Jinping and commented on US foreign affairs”.

    Maybe they got spooked when all those Americans were going on that Chinese social media called Red Note and were swapping notes in real time about their lives only to discover that the Chinese were in many ways better off. Can’t have that. People have to be siloed for their own good you see.
26. Wukchumni July 23, 2025 at 11:10 am

    Will Corporate Treasuries Have Any Interest In Using Stablecoins? Adam Levitin
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    I used to laugh at coinspiracy theories, but then in theory they became an important part of our economy.
27. Jason Boxman July 23, 2025 at 11:20 am

    From After Pledging to Keep Prices Low, Amazon Hiked Them on Hundreds of Essentials

    Trump warned businesses in May to “EAT THE TARIFFS” after Walmart said higher tariffs would result in higher prices.

    For Morrisroe, whose company faced potential 145% tariffs on Chinese goods already in transit when the plan was announced, that directive carried real weight. “Had they stayed at 145%, we would have been shutting down here,” he said. Instead, his company paid the 30% tariff after Trump reduced the rate. Dayglow is now negotiating with manufacturers, searching for suppliers outside China and considering raising prices.

    For now, Morrisroe said he’s doing exactly what Trump asked—eating the tariffs.

    Amusingly, two things cannot be true at once;

    Trump said

    a) foreign countries will pay for the tariffs
    b) domestic companies need to ‘eat’ the tariffs

    Which is it, Taco man?
28. Deluxe July 23, 2025 at 12:32 pm

    https://x.com/Alex_Oloyede2/status/1947726140799418575
    🇺🇸⚡ US President Donald Trump:
    “We’re gonna have more missiles than any country has ever had. We’ll have the speedy ones, the slow ones, the accurate ones, the ones that are slightly less accurate”

    The tragicomical thing is that he was always talking crap like this, and people bought it as the real deal. Even worse is that some still buy it. Murica f yeah!

    P.S. Maybe he will recruit Speedy Gonzales too. :)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSyoOOao8zI
29. AG July 23, 2025 at 12:34 pm

    re: AI & Hollywood

    AI Isn’t Hollywood’s First Script Doctor. But It May Be Its Last

    Invisible labor has long powered Hollywood, from blacklisted writers to uncredited directors. But the rise of AI threatens to erase authorship entirely.

    https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/artificial-intelligence-hollywood-script-doctor-1236326141/
    1. AG July 23, 2025 at 9:01 pm

       re: AI study

       NATURE
       July 2

       A foundation model to predict and capture human cognition
       https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09215-4
30. Vander Resende July 23, 2025 at 12:34 pm

    “The prices of the main Brazilian commodities exported to the US have fallen sharply in recent days. This information comes from CNN Brasil.

    The downward movement in Brazil contrasts with the rise in the same products in the United States. One of the most significant declines was observed in beef. In July, the Cepea indicator for live cattle, measured in dollars, fell 8.05%. As a result, the arroba price dropped from approximately US$58 to US$53.20 at the close on Monday, July 23rd.

    Another product experiencing a decline is oranges. A 40.8-kilogram box, delivered to the processor, fell 5% in the month, from US$8 to US$7.60. Arabica coffee, the preferred coffee in the US, also fell in value, with a 4.18% drop in July. Robusta coffee saw an even greater decline, of 11.41% in the same period.”

    https://www.brasil247.com/economia/precos-de-commodities-desabam-no-atacado-antes-de-tarifaco-dos-eua-entrar-em-vigor#:~:text=os%20pre%C3%A7os%20das,no%20mesmo%20per%C3%ADodo
31. Wukchumni July 23, 2025 at 3:11 pm

    Only Benedict Donald could make Hillary relevant again for about 15 minutes, if merely on account of him desperately grasping for something, anything to get the Epstein heat off of him.

    Anyhow, interesting how the other non-consecutive 2 termer President Grover Cleveland had a hankering for younger women, he married a 21 year old when he was 49, making her the youngest First Lady by a wide margin.
32. jonboinAR July 23, 2025 at 3:25 pm

    I hope it’s okay with Yves, et al, to ask this question in links. Does anyone have experience with a charitable organization called “Oxfam”? They seem to be Quakers with a charitable giving history. They have a Gazan relief fund I’ve nearly settled on. A major reason I’ve picked them is they take PayPal. I trust PayPal to protect my card info (rightly or wrongly). But, mainly, is there any reason I shouldn’t go with Oxfam, mainly because there’s someone better? I hope I’m not doing wrong to ask that here.
    1. Des Hanrahan July 23, 2025 at 8:36 pm

       They have been around for a long time and have a good reputation . The percentage of income spent on administration seems to top out at 10% which is pretty reasonable these days .
    2. jrkrideau July 23, 2025 at 9:55 pm

       Going from somewhat distant memory, Oxfam was formed in the UK, presumably in Oxford going by the name, just after WWII to help war refugees and the displaced in Europe. They have been around for roughly 80 years.

       I know nothing about their current policies but they are legit and had a good reputation pre-2000.
       1. jonboinAR July 24, 2025 at 7:35 am

          Thanks, both of you.
33. juno mas July 23, 2025 at 5:30 pm

    RE: A n t i d o t e

    Here’s some background info on the instal stages of the Monarch butterfly:
    https://www.activewild.com/life-cycle-of-the-monarch-butterfly/#imago

    https://www.activewild.com/monarch-caterpillar-stages/
34. Jason Boxman July 23, 2025 at 5:42 pm

    Welcome to banana republic land, America:

    Supreme Court Lets Trump Fire Consumer Product Safety Regulators

    The Supreme Court on Wednesday allowed President Trump to fire the three Democratic members of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, a five-member group that monitors the safety of items like toys, cribs and electronics.

    The court’s brief order was unsigned, which is typical when the justices act on emergency applications. The order is not the last word in the case, which is pending in an appeals court and may return to the justices.

    (bold mine)

    Why such a hurry? Why not let the judicial process “play out”?

    What a failed state.
35. AG July 23, 2025 at 5:44 pm

    re: soccer and AI

    Chat GPT: Diagonality Football’s Hidden Dimension of Play
    12.06.2025
    https://spielverlagerung.com/2025/06/12/chat-gpt-diagonality-footballs-hidden-dimension-of-play/
36. Raymond Sim July 23, 2025 at 5:47 pm

    Personally, over the course of my life I’ve at least halfway bought into more pseudo-profound bullshit than I’d care to admit to. And when I did, I was typically under the impression that lots of smart thoughtful people believed it.
37. Chet G July 23, 2025 at 7:29 pm

    The antidote du jour (by Sylvia R. via Bob H) is a masterpiece of focus and timing. It’s tough enough to see and focus on a monarch egg, but to catch a newborn monarch caterpillar coming out of its egg is incredible. Well done!
38. ChrisPacific July 24, 2025 at 12:36 am

    Re: Google AI Summary, I am something of an AI skeptic, but even I have been surprised at how spectacularly bad it is. It regularly gets things badly wrong or fabricates them outright.

    After yet another completely inaccurate (and unasked-for) response to one of my questions, I decided to try a different AI tool, just to see if it was a class of problem that AI handles poorly. It wasn’t. The other tool produced an accurate and well-supported answer, and even correctly answered some follow-up questions. So it’s not AI in general that struggles, but Google’s implementation that is uniquely bad. Given the unparalleled resources and access to data they have, it’s a mystery to me how they screwed this up so completely.
39. ChrisFromGA July 24, 2025 at 12:37 am

    Columbia caves, gives government $220M as tribute to restore Fed funding.

    Well, we now know who they are. They do not care about freedom of expression or genocide. A whorehouse in Vegas has more honor.

Comments are closed.