Octopuses Fall for the Rubber Hand Illusion, Just Like Humans, Pointing to a Sense of Body Ownership Smithsonian Mag
Stick Nation – A Community Featuring User Submitted Reviews of Unique Sticks Found in the Wild Laughing Squid
Moths Can Hear When Plants Are in Trouble and It Changes How They Lay Their Eggs ZME Science
Were Stonehenge’s Bluestones Transported by Humans Or Ice? 100-Year-Old Discovery Sparks Debate IFL Science
After $380M hack, Clorox sues its “service desk” vendor for simply giving out passwords Ars Technica
Climate/Environment
Will Climate Change Really Take Away Our Breakfast? The Ecomodernist
Mapped: 16 times extreme weather drove higher food prices since 2022 Carbon Brief
‘I barely sleep for four hours’: Are pesticides robbing farmers worldwide of sleep? Chemistry World
Feds cancel $4.9 billion loan for Grain Belt Express transmission line project Missouri Independent
Insurance claims from LA fires could ‘fully exhaust’ $21bn state fund The Guardian
Pandemics
The Pandemic Has Been a Portal (for a few of us) The Gauntlet
China?
Big Pharma is increasingly reliant on Chinese biotech advances FT. Commentary:
Big Pharma is collapsing and no one’s telling you why. The real reason isn’t politics or profits. It’s China. And the game is already over.
Big Pharma is increasingly reliant on Chinese biotech advances https://t.co/blM9wHOnWG
— William Huo (@wmhuo168) July 23, 2025
Here’s conclusion:
Exhibit Q18, filed.
Big Pharma is finished. Not because China cheated. But because America abandoned the idea of building for the public good.Now the reckoning is here. (11/11)
— William Huo (@wmhuo168) July 23, 2025
BRI GENERATES RECORD INVESTMENTS IN EARLY 2025, AS FOREIGN MEDIA PUSH CONTINUES China Digital Times
Espionage and Pentagon takeovers of mines as China’s Rare Earth Metals ban slams weapons makers Kevin Walmsley
Africa
The architecture of military IP imperialism: the UAE, intellectual property theft, and secrecy jurisdictions as legal black boxes Review of African Political Economy
Old Blighty
‘Work until we die?’ Independent readers outraged over retirement age review The Independent
Syraqistan
UN Secretary General’s Office in response to the new absurd Israeli-US suggestion that UN is responsible for preventing aid from reaching Gaza today:
“Israel must enable safe and unimpeded aid delivery, allow the entry of critical equipment and fuel, must open all crossings and… https://t.co/SZiS2cThmI pic.twitter.com/Itd9hbfI2p
— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) July 23, 2025
It’s worse than “Gaza is being starved and destroyed and no one cares.” It’s that hundreds of millions *do* care and are powerless to stop it. We need a world where that can never happen, where the masses actually have political power.
— Eman Abdelhadi (@emanabdelhadi) July 22, 2025
***
Just now: The Knesset approved 71-13 a resolution backing the unilateral annexation of Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Netanyahu voted in favor. Centrist Yesh Atid party did not participate in vote.
Motion is non-binding and will not impact the legal status of West Bank. pic.twitter.com/Ino54jogAN
— Jacob N. Kornbluh (@jacobkornbluh) July 23, 2025
***
Drone attacks cut oil production in Iraqi Kurdistan by more than 70 percent The New Arab
Syria requests military support from Turkiye to ‘counter ISIS’ The Cradle
UK, Germany clear path for Turkey to acquire Eurofighter jets Turkish Minute
Iran, Russia, China agree to expand nuclear coordination in Tehran meeting The Cradle
Why China cannot sway Saudi Arabia to shift away from US weapons Amwaj
European Disunion
“It’s Military Keynesianism” German Foreign Policy
Esad Širbegović – Genocide Triumphalism in Srebrenica by Germany’s Christian Schmidt Brave New Europe
France’s first couple sue right-wing influencer Candace Owens over claims Brigitte Macron is a man Euronews
New Not-So-Cold War
Maidan Part 2 Julian MacFarlane
Kyiv sees first anti-government wartime protests as Zelenskiy attempts to gut anti-corruption bodies Intellinews
>Zelensky regime kidnaps thousands of men off the streets, beats them to a pulp, and sends them to die at the front
I sleep
>Zelensky reduces authority of US-installed anti-corruption agency
REAL SHIT pic.twitter.com/731WE9ywMx
— Russians With Attitude (@RWApodcast) July 23, 2025
Rinse & Repeat 🙃 https://t.co/GPJ2up7orn pic.twitter.com/Zx00TTx6U1
— Anatomy of Truth 🇨🇦 (@e_l_g_c_a) July 23, 2025
Zelenskyy promises to submit bill to guarantee “independence of anti-corruption institutions” Ukrainska Pravda
Ukraine proposes holding meeting between Putin, Zelenskyy by late August Anadolu Agency
There’ll be no Ukraine peace breakthroughs today — or this year Ian Proud
Caucasus
The US is about to drive a massive stake into the South Caucasus RT
Is Trump’s Armenia-Azeri peace plan yet another road to nowhere? Responsible Statecraft
L’affaire Epstein
US judge rejects Trump administration’s bid to unseal Epstein grand jury transcripts The Guardian
Justice Department Told Trump in May That His Name Is Among Many in the Epstein Files WSJ
It’s amazing that we have video of Epstein pleading the fifth on him and Trump socializing “in the presence of females under the age of 18” and it was never used during the 2016, 2020, or 2024 elections https://t.co/kUxr1eSOME
— Robert Skvarla (@RobertSkvarla) July 24, 2025
Trump’s Epstein Fiasco Takes Darker Turn as Dem Senator Drops New Bomb The New Republic
GOP dysfunction over Epstein leaves Senate Republicans angry with House The Hill
Pam Bondi abruptly cancels her appearance at the CPAC “Summit on Human Trafficking” due to a ‘torn cornea.’ pic.twitter.com/FhVIwXdGgB
— FactPost (@factpostnews) July 23, 2025
Imperial Collapse Watch
Why Oil Sanctions No Longer Work Foreign Policy
Effects of international sanctions on age-specific mortality: a cross-national panel data analysis The Lancet. From the findings: “We estimated that unilateral sanctions were associated with an annual toll of 564 258 deaths (95% CI 367 838–760 677), similar to the global mortality burden associated with armed conflict.”
Apology for Decadence: Pleasures of Empire at World’s End Liberties Journal
Layer Upon Layer. Aurelien
“Liberation Day”
US agrees trade deals with Indonesia, Philippines – but Chinese firms a step ahead: analysts South China Morning Post
Trump-Japan deal cheers markets, but may be ephemeral Asia Times
EU to merge US retaliation packages into single €93 billion counterpunch Euractiv
Trump 2.0
Trump EPA will propose repealing finding that climate change endangers public health The Hill
Trump’s AI Action Plan Includes ‘Zombie’ Moratorium on State Regulations Common Dreams
Five Interesting Things about the White House AI Action Plan Interconnected
Trump Launched Nearly as Many Airstrikes in Five Months as Biden Did in Four Years Antiwar
Trump just lost the QAnon Shaman guy from 1/6. pic.twitter.com/SGGmPFcCZJ
— Politics & Poll Tracker 📡 (@PollTracker2024) July 23, 2025
MAHA
FDA’s artificial intelligence is supposed to revolutionize drug approvals. It’s making up studies CNN. Perhaps this is one way for Big Pharma to compete with China.
Immigration
RussiaGate
In Brutal Document Release, the Russia Hoax is Finally Exposed Matt Taibbi
Russia sat on intel of Hillary Clinton’s alleged ‘heavy tranquilizers’ use, new docs claim Fox News
AI
Google’s AI Is Destroying Search, the Internet, and Your Brain 404 media
Alphabet’s Revenue Skyrockets, And AI Overviews Gobble More Of The Search Pie Ad Exchanger
Why Are We Pretending AI Is Going to Take All the Jobs? BIG by Matt Stoller
Surveillance Pricing
Delta Air Lines Tests AI-Powered Personalized Pricing PYMNTS
Police State Watch
ICE budget set to triple in 2026 Stephen Semler
Accelerationists
This Silicon Valley Stuff’ll Get You Killed Edward Ongweso Jr. Well worth a read.
Elon Musk Has Somehow Created a Bad Diner Discourse Blog
Our Famously Free Press
Harvard Journal Abruptly Cancels Issue on Palestine, Sparking Accusations of Censorship The Harvard Crimson
The Bezzle
Krispy Kreme, GoPro both soar as the next darlings of this summer’s meme stock resurgence Yahoo! Finance
Class Warfare
Hunger Threatens to Plague “Golden Years” of Older Americans Due to Trump’s Cuts Truthout
“This is a thing where you build.” Working Class Storytelling
Antidote du jour (via):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
“Ukraine proposes holding meeting between Putin, Zelenskyy by late August”
Russia has already pointed out to the Ukrainians that heads of state only turn up when the final agreements have been negotiated and the documents ready to sign. And negotiations like that take months and months. Zelensky only wants a meeting with Putin as it will legitimize his position as leader of the Ukraine when in fact he should be long gone. But it does not matter here as the Ukraine is only a proxy and this is really a war between Russia and the US – plus a bunch of hanger-ons. To settle this war for good there would have to be an agreement between the US and Russia then and I cannot see Trump doing that.
Is Zelensky a head of state or a former ruler imposing martial law?
Definitely Door Number Two.
What’s the over/under on Z retiring to Panama vs. being Diem-ed?
My money is on Zelensky “retiring” to Miami and hooking up with Alpha 66 for “security services and investment opportunities.” He’ll need some heavy hitters to secure a peaceful retirement.
I see him getting a starring role in Miami Visegrád as Sonny Crockettchuk.
Thanks for a big smile even with all the dour news.
My money is on his buying the mansion next door to Juan Greedo from Venezuela as he lives in Miami too. They will have so much in common (sniff, sniff).
I hope to see him starring at a Lwow gas station as Benito Mussolini.
The real question about this not-meant-to-be meeting is: “Would Zelensky wear a suit?”
Gooooooood Moooooooorning Fiatnam!
Our President, currently involved deep into precedence, today announced an inquiry into Gary Hart’s dalliances in the run-up to the 1984 election, ‘The public has a right to know!’ the Chief Executive practically barked out.
Raking up history/anything for the prevaricator in chief to deflect the Epstein thingy.
The people have a right to know what we want them to know. We want them to know about all the stuff that makes our opponents look bad and all the stuff that makes us look good, even if we have to make it, bad and good, up. Why? because we really do not care a fig about the public except as voters. What do we need them for? We have donors to satisfy. There are interests that have to be taken care of. For me, DJT, the “Big Man”, there is Barack Obama to humiliate, denigrate, and injure in as many ways as possible. But, all the other stuff is politics as it is now and as it has been. You don’t like it that way? Golly, that’s a shame.
…isn’t there a handy aspirin factory in Sudan to blow up real good?
If it was a birth control drug factory, the Republicans would see that as a twofer.
Well now, Carole King sure looks suspicious. A full congressional investigation is in order!
It is interesting to juxtaposition Stoller’s piece on AI with Ed Zitron’s earlier this week. Even Stoller who’s commentary and analysis I find insightful falls for the trap that AI is a thing and inevitable.
I share Zitron’s view that when the economic reality of AI finally overpowers the hype it will be very ugly.
It’s a bit strange, because AI spending is concentrated in so few companies. The structure of today’s economy is so heavily monopolized, this can play out in strange ways.
These companies have high margins, huge revenues and low debt. There’s no bankruptcies coming. They’ll just have to spend money on something else.
I’ve noticed this a lot too. Even people who should know better are making assumptions about the future of AI that are completely unsupported by reality.
I think part of the problem is that AI is such an arcane technology that even very bright people think they can never understand it, and so go with the prevailing analysis in the media. The result is that everyone thinks everyone else knows better than they do, not a good basis for understanding something.
Did this happen in previous drifts and bubbles? Maybe it’s an inevitable feature.
Begs the question why would so many in US business[tm] push such a hyped technology, ringing in a glorious utopian future, and with it a gold rush of investors[tm].
In light of William Huo opinion in links … one ponders if US businesses – full of admin bloat – are desperate to find staff that can deliver on its absurd policy decisions. Its hoped that AI can completely bypass the human condition which is further complicated by decades of neoliberalism on US society e.g. ED, lifestyle, health, perception of global realities, 24/7/365 Bernays for breakfast, lunch, dinner spanning generations , et al.
Seems like the same mindset that broke many a indigenous population and then the blame is laid on them for not getting with the program. Seems like a doom loop for the squillionaire class driven by path dependency with a side of investor expectations ….
‘Politics & Poll Tracker 📡
@PollTracker2024
Trump just lost the QAnon Shaman guy from 1/6.’
Of course if actual journalism was still a thing, some enterprising editor would send out a team of reporters to interview all those who had been arrested over 1/6 and how they feel about Trump now. See how many are sticking by him and how many have changed their minds which I bet a lot of people would like to know. But then again they, like the QAnon Shaman guy, might also say ‘F*** Israel’ and maybe that is why no editors want to go there.
Shaman’s Blues, by the Doors
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwrJelMk5e4&list=RDcwrJelMk5e4
There’ll be plenty counting noses when it counts next year.
I guess about a year ago a convicted child molester had taken up residence in Tiny Town after doing time in the all bar motel, and I wouldn’t have known, but my mom friends in town seem to have pedophile radar, as their kids are at risk from such an individual laying down roots cheek by jowl (hopefully not!) and it isn’t as if anybody knows when a regular criminal that got released from prison decides to live here, but child molesters are the lowest of low… which leads me to our President
He isn’t the most graceful obfuscate’r you ever saw, and the desperation certainly means he knows what went down on Lolita Lane back in the day~
Will the purge to come take down all of the pedophiles in the not quite ready for crime time players network?
Wuk, I just had to laugh out loud at your word-smithing here. Thank you so much for my first chuckle of the day.
(the ghost of Howard Cosell asking Donald…)
‘‘What Did the President Know About Unlawful Carnal Knowledge, and When Did He Know It?’
“Oh and look at Donald Trump juke and jive to avoid the Epstein files, Dandy Don. He runs just like a little monkey …”
“With broken field running skills like that he should try out for the Jets.”
Howard Baker?
I wouldn’t get your hopes up. Epstein has been gone six long years now and when you think about it, the only ones that have gone to prison over this sordid saga was Epstein himself who committed so many of these crimes, Maxwell who set up so many of those young girls to be victims….and that is it. Not a single one of the likely hundreds of men – and women – who took part have ever been fitted for an orange jumpsuit and their names are being protected to this day. The entire apparatus of the state, the main stream media and all good thinkers will continue to see to that. And like the JFK files, in the year 2080 people will still be demanding that the Epstein files be released with the same results of people demanding the release of the JFK files now.
If you were Maxwell Edison majoring in meddling and doing a long stint in jail, what would you demand in return?
A silver hammer?
Lol, that Ghislaine is still alive is curious. Is that the hand of Robert’s ghost? Or maybe Dad is still alive.
Ghislaine was apparently known as ‘Lady of the House’ in running Epstein’s enter prizes.
Wonder what they call her in the Big house?
p.s.
She’s kind of a Rudolf Hess, in that she’s worth more alive in jail
p.s.
Notice how Epstein only becomes an issue again after the passing of the Big Beautiful Bill and other gotten gains?
It’s as if the Pachyderms squeezed enough out of him, time to go now.
Yeah, I’ve been considering this myself; Democrats are all about this now that it no longer matters. It’s almost as if they mostly or fully supported BBB, and “fascism”, and thus why we see no real resistance to any of it. Theater is all that they’re about.
I’m waiting for Trump to solve the JFK assassination mystery by releasing the part of the Zapruder film that was edited out by the Deep State showing JFK whipping out a gun and shooting himself. Case closed! No more story here, just like Epstein!
Strong with the uniparty, all the pedophilia!
Why I ask did not Bush II, Obama, Biden ……. go after Lolita Island.
Imagine if the democrats of 1973 covered for Watergate!
Now Imagine if the Democrats had hired the same “plumbers” to do a job on the Republican headquarters and tell me whether there would have been a Watergate/whatever investigation?
I am pretty sure that the only reason we are getting anything about Russia!Russia!Russia! Is because 1. Most of the Republican participants are too mainstream not with the Musk/Thiel agenda and 2. Those in power are both vicious and petty and had it used against them. Otherwise ther wouldn’t even be th dibs and drabs coming out. Too much of the malfeasance, both public and private, is just too bipartisan.
The blackmail is the bigger story. Why is it that the most horrible bills always pass by one vote?
BBPoS, Roberts flipping on Obamacare and calling the mandate a non-tax, Pelosi whipping the House Dems to extend the Bush Tax cuts.
They have the goods on enough of Congress to make them change their votes. Roberts, too.
If so inclined you can find sex offenders on Megan’s list. I’m not sure exactly where you live but I did find one location housing multiple offenders in what I believe to be your general area. In my more densely populated area we have quite a few sprinkled around town. It’s hard to know just what to do with such people. Particularly if they are driven by innate urges, is rehabilitation possible?
“…one location housing multiple offenders…”
That could be a halfway house.
It’s amusing to see the West’s allies calling each other “Russian minions.”
“Stick Nation – A Community Featuring User Submitted Reviews of Unique Sticks Found in the Wild”
I am given to understand that dogs have set up an internationally renown Stick Museum whose exhibits includes sticks carried by Toto, Lassie, Rin Tin Tin & Beethoven. It has a well regarded rating of Four Paws.
Maybe they should also have done some research in Baton Rouge.
Why Baton Rouge? I know of the “Dog Stick Library” in BR, but any other reasons?
It means “Red Stick” in French.
IIRC the local Indians left a marker (red stick) in that location.
And Snowy (Tintin)!
Milou.
My favorite picture of my dog, she is carrying a stick, she also liked deflated balls, old shoes and stuffed toys. I think we need a museum of the dog. Just so everyone can see the collection.
Insurance claims from LA fires could ‘fully exhaust’ $21bn state fund The Guardian
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Big Heat® practically guarantees that conflagrations such as the LA Infernos will be commonplace as climate change kicks into high gear and congrats to Altadena and the toniest of the tony towns in LA: Pacific Palisades, for your heroic FILO on state funds~
Can’t really hike with my knee being on the fritz, but I can prune.
Every tree has dead branches on it, and a standard issue couple hundred years old oak tree typically has around 7-8 wheelbarrow loads of dried wood, RTB’s. (ready to burns)
Live wood doesn’t catch fire all that easy, and that’s my insurance policy of sorts for each tree I give the treatment to, and if I do it right, you’d hardly notice my handiwork when looking up into the canopy.
Live wood doesn’t catch fire all that easy, and that’s my insurance policy
This is my prayer as well. I just busted my shoulder and am left hoping that my pruning to date will suffice for the year.
From the William Huo X stream on the demise of American big pharma comes this quote which I see as a most concise and cogent epitaph of the American experiment:
“America chose finance over factories. Intellectual property over real invention. Private equity over public health.”
Only reference missing is to the MIC.
Peace Y’all
It’s gunna get worse now that the Trump regime is trashing American research & development which big pharma used to be able to plunder for free. American advancement in the 20th century was to a large extent powered by American research & development whether you are talking about atomics, computers, the internet – or pharmaceuticals. So is American big pharma going to go back to funding their own research & development or will they be stuck paying the Chinese for their research & development – while having to pay actual money for it. Maybe that is why Trump is threatening other countries with huuuge tariffs unless they re-locate their pharmaceutical plants to the US. Doesn’t solve the problem of the R & D however.
Ripoff & Duplicate
We used to say Rob and Develop
For a Job Guarantee, it chose the MIC.
Udderly Krupp’d
Kruppification?
Those are two great ones👍👍
Another William Huo special. His tweetstorms would be more insightful if he actually read the articles he links to.
The chatgpt wording and sentence structure gets me.
My brain seems to have developed a filter where as soon as it notices the distinctive chatgpt wording and sentence patterns, it completely disengages. Some kind of self-protection mechanism. It’s always done the same with stuff about the Kardashians.
re: Tucker Carlson Germany
A quick comment on an interview made with Carlson by German editor of BILD daily tabloid.
The fact is weighing heavily that nothing Carlson apparently expressed with admirable clarity German colleagues could say too. Which is of course a shame.
“Your country is sinking! Russia is rising. You should be angry at your own politicians.”
https://archive.is/5o1ju
What has been the impact of this interview on mainstream political discourse in Germany, if any? NachDenkSeiten is fringe media, isn’t it?
I guess there is no single discourse any more.
If any legacy have picked it up I can´t tell. Most likely under “crazies”.
BILD however traditionally is the German paper with the largest circulation. Around 650k now.
NACHDENKSEITEN they say has 500k online readers. But even if it’s 200k. It still makes a difference.
The fact that in the government press conference Merz himself recently spoke with Florian Warweg from NACHDENKSEITEN and addressed the outlet by name is an acknowledgement.
Of course in the larger scheme of things such events don’t change the path we are taking here until the elite itself will be overthrown (picture me chuckling) which won´t happen..
p.s. a few circulation numbers of papers in Germany. BERLINER ZEITUNG and JUNGE WELT are missing. Which says something about the site:
https://meedia.de/news/beitrag/19754-quot-zeit-quot-quot-welt-quot-und-quot-taz-quot-legen-dank-digital-abos-zu-quot-bild-quot-quot-faz-quot-und-quot-handelsblatt-quot-verlieren-deutlich.html
The Ecomodernist–
More Pritzker-funded obfuscation and what-aboutism communicating their fundamental message that we should just leave everything to the billionaires and their retainers. In this case, just keep destroying our soils, waterways and oceans with more and more chemicals poured on Frankenplants so the Pritzkers et al. can continue raking in the Benjamins with Business As Usual.
Rachel Pritzker’s Ecomodernism is trying to pump mind-numbing Montovani elevator music into our brains when what’s called for is Sixties Dylan:
“But that doesn’t take into account future technologies which will solve the problems created by our current technologies, which we created to solve the problems caused by our past technologies!”
These people are hopeless and I hope they will soon leave Earth on Elon’s starship to colonize Mars.
Given their intense faith in technology, I think it would be appropriate for them to crew Elon’s Starship launches as he tries to work out a few minor issues.
In fairness, that Ecomodernist article did get at least one positive review. The exec director of the Breakthrough Institute, the non-profit behind the Ecomodernist, thought it was great (scroll down a bit). If the name sounds familiar in this context, it should. Ted is the nephew of Willliam Nordhaus, the “Nobel prize” winner in economics who brilliantly calculated that 3 degrees C of warming would cause a hit of only 2.1% to the global economy by 2030. a number recently blown out of the water by the University of Exeter’s study done for the Institute and Faculties of Actuaries in the UK.
It’s such a cozy little club.
More bleakly amusing than Nordhaus’s numbers (and he had company from other economists) was, at least in the case of the USA, the methodology he used to derive them.
He started by noting that agriculture only accounted for a bit over 6% of our GDP, assumed that it was the only sector heavily impacted by climate change, and opined from this that even a 50% decline in agricultural production would cause only a 3% decline in gdp, some of which could be made up by assumed growth in other sectors.
It takes a serious commitment to radical subjective idealism (which for my money is the shared foundation of mainstream economics) to believe that a 50% cut to the food supply would produce no consequences beyond that.
That alone makes it scarcely worth the trouble to bother with the other preposterous assumptions.
‘Look I know you claim to be starving because of climate change making growing food a herculean task, but Ag only makes up 6% of GDP-assume a cheeseburger.’
Since I’m in a Black Sabbath mood these last few days, I’ll see your 60s Dylan and add some 80s Soundgarden, who probably wouldn’t have been anything like the band they were without Ozzie & friends paving the way.
Hands All Over
Hands all over the eastern border
You know what, I think we’re falling from composure
Hands all over western culture
Ruffling feathers, turning eagles into vultures
Yeah, into vultures
Got my arms around, baby brother
Put your hands away, you’re gonna kill your mother*
Gonna kill your mother, kill your mother
And I love her, yeah, and I love her
Hands all over the coastal waters
The crew men thank her, then lay down their oily blanket
Hands all over the inland forest
In a striking motion, trees fall down like dying soldiers
Yeah, like dying soldiers
Got my arms around, baby brother
Put your hands away, you’re gonna kill your mother
Gonna kill your mother, kill your mother, no, no
And I love her, yeah, and I love her, and I love her
* Just in case it wasn’t clear from the context, the mother being killed is the Earth, not your actual Mom.
I’ll see that and throw in the opening to Saints and Liars tune Be Here Be Now,
A hard rain will come
And wash away your pride
It’s not all it’s cracked up to be
The devil by your side
Was just thinking about a side note, a music combo that is tangential to Soundgarden and as well to Pearl Jam…. Temple of the Dog, ” Hunger Strike”…
Early 90s the video got plenty of airplay on MTV.
But I can’t feed on the powerless
When my cups already overfilled
But it’s on the table
The fire’s cooking…
This has become a very cool medley. Speaking of powerless, here’s something from More Perfect Union about the joys and politics of living next to a BitCoin mining operation in Texas.
“Trump’s Epstein Fiasco Takes Darker Turn as Dem Senator Drops New Bomb”
‘The Oregon Democrat said that his investigators had discovered that four big banks had flagged to the Treasury Department $1.5 billion in potentially suspicious money transfers involving Epstein, much of which appeared to be related to his massive sex-trafficking network.’
That’s a lot of money that. It may turn out that all those underage girls for wealthy clients may have only been a side business to keep his clients happy as that would not cost $1.5 billion. Question is then, what was his main line of business then? And where was all that money going to? And more to the point, where was it coming from? I’m guessing not drugs or arms as that does not seem to be his thing but perhaps the financing of some murky outfits and some dodgy ops? Off the books ops perhaps? Naturally none of this will ever be followed up on.
Larry Johnson outlined these the other day.
May have been “settlement” funds.
Epstein cover up is big subject to get to the bottom!
Jeffery Epstein was the social face of what (murdered for investigating this) journalist Danny Casolaro called the Octopus. Additionally, he arranged money laundering, the illicit proceeds were from the usual sources, drug running and guns (remember Ollie North? He’s here), extortion (the Octopus, through the BCCI which it controlled, provided young girls, including pre-pubescent, to the royals of the United Arab Emerites) , and outright thievery (Promis software).
On the UAE,
According to one U.S. investigator with substantial knowledge of BCCI’s activities, some BCCI officials have acknowledged that some of the females provided some members of the Al-Nahyan family were young girls who had not yet reached puberty, and in certain cases, were physically injured by the experience. The official said that former BCCI officials had told him that BCCI also provided males to homosexual VIPs/ 74 ’, The BCCI Affair, by Senator John Kerry and Senator Hank Brown, page 70.
This is the best Epstein roundup out there. From “Spook Air” to the “Lolita Express”: The Genesis and Evolution of the Jeffrey Epstein-Bill Clinton Relationship, Whitney Webb, Mint Press Network
There is little doubt in my mind that this rot goes back to the 80’s. Too many horrible things were jammed down Congress’s throat in the 90’s – NAFTA, GATT, Glass-Steagall Repeal. Thanks for the link.
Also, I remember that Lynda Carter had some connection to the BCCI – she was married to someone involved, IIRC.
Bill Casey’s fingerprints are all over this thing, a good reminder that Epstein was by no means the top turd of the manure pile.
The most comprehensive reporting on the entire sordid story was originally published in November 2018 by The Miami Herald. This will answer most of your questions.
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/article220097825.html
This reminds me of Catherine Austin Fitts efforts to create a national mortgage database: The Missing Money
(Meant as a reply to the above)
“Were Stonehenge’s Bluestones Transported by Humans Or Ice? 100-Year-Old Discovery Sparks Debate”
Yeah, it wasn’t ice that transported all those stones to Stonehenge. If it had, then you would expect there to be a lot more of them scattered around the region and perhaps used in other Stonehenges.
Indeed…
All over the Sierra Nevada you’ll see what are called ‘Erratics’ and they’re oftentimes boulders the size of an SUV seemingly out of place, as they were on top of glaciers when the ice age went away and they fell to grace all over the place.
They would have been boulders that flaked off the tops of mountains and fell onto the glaciers until momentum and gravity gave way.
As you say, there’d be a bunch of other like sized boulders in the vicinity of Stonehenge, were the ice theory to be the way it went down.
‘Stray’ erratics do actually pop up in odd places, often due to post-glacial flooding muddying the waters, so to speak. For the most part though, they leave clear and measurable trails. The biggest objection to the bluestone erratic theory for Stonehenge is that there is no evidence that the glaciers reached Wiltshire. The area was tundra, not moving ice.
Neolithic people certainly did like moving stones and rocks around. The passage tomb at Newgrange in Ireland (it predates Stonehenge by about half a millennium), has many probably decorate stones likely around from significant distances. When as a 12 year old I climbed the mountain of Knocknarae I was told to bring a stone from the coast to add to Maeve’s Cairn (a neolithic tomb) for luck. I’ve often wondered if that was a faint trace of an early tradition of travellers bring rocks as symbols of their home to the great sacred sites.
Being ahead of the curve, I don’t eat breakfast.
Somedays, waking up is worth it.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/jul/24/jeremy-corbyn-and-zarah-sultana-agree-to-launch-leftwing-party
thanks
Is it to replace the Democrat Party in the USA? Oh, that we had a Jeremy Corbyn clone.
Actually, we had the original, but he’s too old and anything socialist brings out dem knives.
>Trump Launched Nearly as Many Airstrikes in Five Months as Biden Did in Four Years
I don’t think this will prevent Trump from winning the Nobel Peace Prize. After all, Obama won it, too.
“‘Work until we die?’ Independent readers outraged over retirement age review”
‘And before anyone suggests a 0.2 per cent tax on billionaires – whether we like it or not – they can leave the UK, fly in from time to time if they really want to, and then we’d lose the huge amount they do pay in tax.’
Sure they can leave the UK anytime they want but the money they get in the UK can’t go with them. Just pass a law that says if they earn money in the UK, then they have to pay their taxes in the UK and not shuffle those profits to somewhere like Ireland where they pay much lower taxes. In any case, are they actually paying any taxes at the moment? Their attitude seems to be ‘I have a lot of employees who pay tax as does the corporation I own so why should I pay tax myself.’ Not a direct quote but as good as.
We had this discussion in Oz many years ago and people were saying that they were paying taxes into the government all their working lives and wanted enough to keep them going in retirement The attitude of officials was that ‘Oh no, we spent all that money a long time ago so it doesn’t count.’ Except here in Oz after WW2 a tax on wages was levied to be put towards those workers retirement funds and it was actually on worker’s pay dockets at the time. So what happened? After a few years all those contributions were amalgamated with general revenue and if you ask the government about that, they will give you a blank stare.
Byzantium fell because the big and very big land magnates refused to pay taxes to the imperial tax collectors. As such no armies were available to fight and the wolves at the door slowly finished the job.
The Paleologs ended up runing the remains starting as big land magnates…
Applicants for seasonal positions at Everglades National Park in Florida are being asked to explain how their commitment to the U.S. Constitution “inspired” them to apply for the job, and how they would “help advance the President’s Executive Orders and policy priorities.”
The application form, for interpretive roles, says responses are optional and won’t be used for scoring the candidate’s suitability for the job.
But the question pertaining to President Donald Trump’s Executive Orders — “How would you help advance the President’s Executive Orders and policy priorities in this role? Identify one or two relevant Executive Orders or policy initiatives that are significant to you, and explain how you would help implement them if hired.” — might raise legal questions.
https://www.nationalparkstraveler.org/2025/07/update-nps-seasonal-job-applicants-asked-views-constitution-executive-orders
So they are moving towards personal loyalty oaths now?
Hair furor’s kampf followers claim not, but it would appear so…
“Ask not what I can do for you. Ask what you can do for me!”
Coming soon, ads in online forums calling for “Election Enactors” to help portray the 2024 midterms.
I keep finding myself repeating Michael Moore’s question in his film: “Dude, where’s my country?”
A long time friend and fellow South Carolina (now at any rate) resident posted something perhaps quite close or comparable from Ft Sumter several weeks ago. Something posted on the main entrance or just easily visible, though I don’t think it matched the “loyalty oaths” referenced in that article.
I reserve the ability to be wrong but it’s not intentional here to be wrong. Troubling signs… Signs, signs everywhere a sign, blocking the scenery…
That’d be tough, Union or Confederacy?
I really don’t recall. I skimmed through the postings that day or weekend of July 4th, only pausing for those featuring a William Wallace ” Freedom ” meme….
Maybe it had that 1984 sort of appeal, to rat upon someone in the proletariat (?)
Maybe they just want to make sure no dangerous Palestine supporters will talking to the tourists about the gators.
Truly the Adelsons are getting value for dollar (400 million of them).
The person I know that works for the Forest Service has gotten one of these loyalty oaths and just ignored as do her fellow workers. But she’s Civil Service.
As for Donald’s the Federal Government c’est moi, he always did have a penchant for Sun King decor.
Maybe this has to do with Alligator Alcatraz which is in the Everglades. What would you do if you saw someone who had escaped from there, etc.
Clorox company files lawsuit against IT contractor. Sounds like a Keystone Kops sorta firing squad, where really just the lawyers win on billable hours.
To my views, that hacker didn’t just walk into your corporate network without evil intent. Whocouldanode. I mean if common two factor authentication can be utilized that fudging easily then IT protocols just seem useless, per the example in the article.
Re: Bosnia and Srebrenica
I see this kind of writing a lot, Bosniaks own internal failures are blamed on others. Until recently (2018) Federation was ruled by Party of Democratic Action, a Bosniak nationalist party, which has held power since 1990 founded by Alija Izetbegovic who led the Bosniak side in the war and now run by his son Bakir. Elder Izetbegovic dodged the war crimes tribunal by dying and was, same as the other Balkan leaders, highly corrupt. Bakir is no better, his daughter’s company only has state run enterprises as clients and his wife had her Masters and PhD revoked for falsifying her transcripts.
So you had a massively corrupt regime which uses nationalistic rhetoric and cries of victimhood to cover up its own corruption and incompetence, all the while enriching the ruling family and those close to it. Izetbegovic family has been the running the Bosniak part of the Federation into the ground for 30+ years, but yeah, the real problem is the Serb and Croat entities not wanting to be part of that shitshow.
From Greg Collard at Racket News, public, no paywall:
Russiagate Explained: The Sins of the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment
Notable problems with the “Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections” report. The ICA’s most salacious, oft-reported parts were a scam.
https://www.racket.news/p/russiagate-explained-the-sins-of
Perhaps it’s time to start worrying about Yves? I suspect and hope she’s far away from this:
https://x.com/DD_Geopolitics/status/1948389950732607568
Please no misplaced worries. The country is very large. I am in a coastal city south of Bangkok.
But this has escalated into stoopid. Thailand sent F-16s to bomb. No way can Cambodia win a serious fight. I have no idea what the two sides are thinking.
Stay safe, glad to hear you’re nowhere near this madness.
That border has long been a site of friction. This is the strongest I can remember though. Usually it settles down after both governments are happy that they look like tough protectors of their respective nations.
I’m reminded that reading John Pilger about the Cambodian side of that same border was what fully radicalised me back in the 90s. Learning that a decade after the horrors of the Khmer Rouge were revealed, the British SAS were training them disgusted me. They were of course just continuing in secret what the US had been doing more openly until Congress complained. And all because it was the Vietnamese that kicked the KR out of power.
Wait, what? The British SAS were training Khmer Rouge fighters? I shouldn’t be surprised. After all, the US were training Jihadists much to the disgust of the trainers themselves.
I can’t find the original Pilger, but here’s a more recent telling:
…between 1985 and 1989, the Special Air Service (SAS) ran a series of training camps for Khmer Rouge allies in Thailand close to the Cambodian border and created a ‘sabotage battalion’ of 250 experts in explosives and ambushes…
KR lost power in 1979, so this is ten years later. And a big part of why that part of Cambodia is still full of unexploded mines.
On landmines, the legendary Cambodian child soldier turned deminer, Aki Ra’s story is horrifying and fascinating.
https://indypendent.org/2006/04/enemy-mine-the-story-of-a-cambodian-veterans-personal-war-on-landmines/
https://asiasociety.org/incredible-journey-aki-ra-former-child-soldier
He wrote a short memoir that I used to have, but cannot find now online. It’s very moving.
Whenever the Brits had to leave a colony, they made sure to leave a festering conflict behind, to make sure that the countries would never become prosperous and peaceful. Just pure spite.
The way the Brits partitioned India to generate maximum hatred between the Hindus and Muslims in perpetuity is another example. Hindus massacred Muslims and vice versa as a result of the lines drawn and edicts given by the Brits at the time of partition.
As a Brit, there are few nationalities I meet without feeling some colonial (or post-colonial ****ery) shame.
Perfidious Albion!
In the Cambodia case we were strictly helping out our American cousins though. Indochina was never British. We were fuller participants in the Malay bit of the blind anti-communist slaughter.
Also in places where they never had proper colonies (like Balkan, Ukraine, Caucasus), because that is what they do. Death and destruction is a just a game to them, a great game.
The border has been very tense for decades – tensions predates the KR. Ultimately, it’s a wild forested and mountainous area with mostly ethnically mixed (various linguistic groups that aren’t clearly Thai or Khymer), and nobody had the sense to draw a clear line. Mostly it’s been the Thai’s, as the bigger neighbour, thats always tried to push the line – its never been in their interest to agree to an international settlement.
It was made worse in the aftermath of the Vietnamese invasion as the Vietnamese never gained full control of those border areas (mostly because they had to move the bulk of the army up north once China started threatening) and the Thais took their chance. Both Pilger and Chomsky wrote about how the SAS were involved in training KR guerrillas, although I suspect it was overstated – it was mostly the Thais who thought they could control it, plus China maintained strong links with the KR for as long as it remained viable and launched attacks on Vietnam as a distraction. The US/British links to the KR remain murky and ambiguous, but there seems little doubt that they saw an opportunity to gain a bit of revenge on the Viets. Basically everyone in the region decided that weakening Vietnam was a good idea, but as usual, everyone failed.
Cambodia is a deeply corrupt country, and its long suspected that maintaining tension on the border with Thailand suits the leadership, even while it’s now known that they are very chummy with some Thai elites (Thai politics is itself deeply divided politically and ethnically). It is something of a tragedy that Vietnam was put under such pressure to withdraw quickly before they could restore some sort of structural order to the country. Instead, they put in an ex pal of Pol Pot in charge of (he had fled when he realised he was next in line for the regular decimations). The UN and various aid agencies then got involved and somehow managed to make things even worse.
One thing often forgotten, is that prior to the US bombing it to hell, Cambodia was considered something of a model SE Asia country. Singapore actually sent civil servants there to study it as a model of development. But it was seriously divided between the paler skinned elites (ethnic Vietnamese and Chinese) and the native Khymer. Paul Pot, exploited this for his own purposes, resulting in a hell on earth for most of the population.
It is my understanding that $20,000,000,000 of the financing committed to open AI is contingent on it becoming a for profit company by the end of October.
If that doesn’t occur Chapter 11 could have some interesting consequences for the market…
Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern confirm merger talks to create coast to coast railroad AP
“To be approved, any major rail merger must show it will enhance competition and serve the public interest under rules established in 2001, in the wake of that pair of mergers.”
There are 4 class 1 railroads in the US, with the two Canadian systems having N-S appendages into the US. One can imagine BNSF and CSX going for Me Too! Trump’s DOJ and Surface Transportation Board would likely rubber stamp this monstrosity.
Now how can creation of a duopoly will “enhance competition and serve the public interest”? The industry carries less freight than 20 years ago while trucking is up by 30%.This was the impact of Precision Scheduled Railroading (PSR). It resulted in reducing the workforce by 1/3 and 40% margins. This was accomplished largely by ripping out physical plant, abandoning huge market segments and radically reducing carload traffic.
I suppose the only upside is one or two US systems would be far easier to nationalize some day in the distant future.
Heck, even a Monopoly game has four railroads
That’s at start, but monopoly correctly teaches that ‘all the traffic will bear’ profits accrue to the monopolist. And the players all love it, serfs not so much.
Re Genocide Triumphalism in Srebrenica – An eye opening book I read a few years ago was Michael Parenti’s “To Kill a Nation,” about the events in the former Yugoslavia back in the 90s. He maintains that there was never any hard evidence at that point that over 8,000 people were slaughtered in Srebrenica (book was published in 2000). No mass graves were found, no reburial sites found, and no mines where the bodies were supposedly brought to. The book also looks at the KLA, the Albanian organization that was busy killing Serbs and Croatians and Muslims they disapproved of. Parenti claimed that killings were done by both sides, and the KLA was perhaps more violent than the Serbs or Croats. The bombing of Yugoslavia by Clinton was meant to destroy the last Communist nation in Europe and had nothing to do with genocide except to use it as a cover. I’ve tried looking on the internet for sites disagreeing with Parenti’s conclusions but so far have not been able to find any.
For anyone who wants another example of narrative control and false flags, this is Michael Parenti discussing the aforementioned book (which I also highly recommend). His speech warms up shortly after the 25:00 mark.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApaMIJiOt-c
Anyone interested in the region and the events should also check out documentaries by Boris Malagurski.
https://malagurski.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boris_Malagurski
Yes. I assume the author is a Bosniak and thus biased, but for me it is despicable to compare Srebrenica to the actual genocide being carried out in Gaza. Serb forces executed a number of captured Bosnian fighters, and probably some fighting-age male civilians, in Srebrenica, which was a war crime no doubt. But the “Srebrenica genocide” was a propaganda construct by the Bosniaks and the US/Western forces, with the help of their media lackeys, to justify their own war aims. It is bitterly ironic to invoke this meme as the author does, since it was used extensively (and still is!) to justify step one of the US/NATO march to the Russian border. Further, “Srebrenica” (the “genocide”) became a rallying cry (along with the equally one-sided Western story of the “Rwandan genocide”) for the likes of Madeleine Albright, Samantha Powers, and their later acolytes to justify subsequent “humanitarian” interventions wherever we decided it was needed.
In addition to Parenti, Diane Johnstone and Edward S Herman have done excellent work in balancing out the completely one-sided story of the Yugoslavian disintegration that is dominant in the US. Johnstone’s book on the subject is very good; here is a commentary she wrote on Srebrenica:
https://www.counterpunch.org/2005/10/12/srebrenica-revisited/
One of the best “balanced” overviews I’ve seen (i.e. one that counters our cartoon version of events) was the four-part series by Ed Herman than appeared in Monthly Review many years ago. He discusses Srebrenica especially in Part II of that series:
https://monthlyreview.org/2007/10/01/the-dismantling-of-yugoslavia-part-ii/
Note their valuable sources, including accounts from some military and UN officials based on direct experience and classified records.
The author is obviosly part of some concerted propaganda effort, NGO or whatever (International Expert Team bla bla). One does not need to be Brian Berletic to figure that out. The article is run-of-the-mill discount-Anne-Applebaum level stuff. Since this is family blog, I will refrain from commenting about those that still buy into the narrative presented (including the Hedges guy). On a positive note, Brave New Europe is indeed a matching name for a site promoting real life version of dystopian society not unlike those described in works of fiction like Brave New Word (freedom and democracy and all the EU values /s).
There was a genocide in Srebrenica, by USA proxies, just like in many other places (in the region, and globally). Naser Orić and his gang of “democracy-loving moderate jihadists” have slaughered thousands of civillians and burned countless villages in the name of western values (much like the bloodshed happening is Syria right now). Thousands of those did get justice delivered them, and their bodies ended up presented on MSM as victims, because that is how orvellian world operates.
Is Trump’s Armenia-Azeri peace plan yet another road to nowhere? — Responsible Statecraft
Betteridge’s Law violation! This plan ain’t goin’ nowhere, and that dog won’t hunt.
Kudos to Conor Gallagher who was onto these south Caucasus machinations long before the MSM caught wind of them.
Some people are calling the Zangezur Corridor “The Trump Bridge”, which is clarifying. As with Trump’s ‘raw earths’ deal in UKR (which ain’t gonna pencil out either), this proposed 100-year lease of the Zangezur Corridor to some USA-based private outfit allows future USA lawsuits against RU in the event that acts of violence and sabotage (carried out by various RU/Iran-sponsored groups armed with drones and the occasional boulder, channeling Monty Python they might name themselves ‘The People’s Front of Armenia’ or perhaps ‘The Armenian People’s Front’) damage the assets being leased for a century by said USA organization. This will give the USA a legal justification to seize permanently (i.e., steal) any frozen RU assets. No matter how things pan out, the USA will get its pound of flesh. “Show me the money!” — Jerry McGuire.
It’s a clever move which certainly gives RU/Iran headaches. I tip my hat to the Trumpians, who are doing their best to leverage the USA’s residual power over the world’s financial and legal systems. It might be a losing hand, card-wise, but they’ll squeeze all they can out of it. In the short run: well played, boys. In the long run: the USA’s empire is running on fumes.
Corridor to where, the Caspian Sea? Russia and Iran just showed the other day who controls those waters.
I am also quite convinced that the treaty between litoral countries finalized not long ago had all kind of clauses about the presence of outside parties there…
‘allows future USA lawsuits against RU in the event that acts of violence and sabotage’
In what possible court that the Russian Federation still recognizes? Most courts in the west like the ICC have revealed themselves to be broken vassal institutions. I don’t think that there are any left by this stage and I don’t think that this is one for the Hague either. But does the US really want to go there? If it is enacted, then that gives the Chinese a precedent to take the US to court for all those attacks on Chinese engineers and belt & roads infrastructure in places like Pakistan.
And as much as I found your comment interesting, I think that you missed out on mentioning the Popular People’s Front of Armenia. :)
Democratic, you have to squeeze democratic in there. “Popular “ is populist so evil
Robert F Kennedy Jr has promoted contrarian ideas around issues such as vaccines but another, more sartorial, choice has also raised eyebrows – an insistence on wearing jeans while exercising.
On Saturday, the US health secretary took a strenuous hike up Camelback Mountain, situated near Phoenix, Arizona. Despite the temperature rising above 90F (32C) on the morning of his hike – Phoenix hit 107F (41C) later that day – Kennedy conducted the hike in dark blue jeans, posing for pictures along the way in a sweat-drenched green T-shirt.
The choice of jeans by the 71-year-old confused some of those who encountered him. “It was about 92F, I think, temperature-wise, at that point, so very impressive for him to have done that at his age,” Matt Larson, a hiker who talked to Kennedy on the trail, told Fox 10.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jul/22/rfk-jeans-arizona-hiking-photo
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
That’s pretty dangerous, I know for me personally walking when its 80 degrees or more is pretty much a no go, and who wears jeans in the desert when you’re going for a hike, or for that matter anywhere?
It’s always the mark of somebody that doesn’t know better.
Cotton kills~
Hulk Hogan, Shirt-Shredding Superstar of Pro Wrestling, Dies at 71
COVID is that you?
(bold mine)
Because we don’t look, we don’t know. I grant you people died of heart attacks long before COVID hit the world. Nonetheless, it is a vascular disease.
If I had to bet, I would bet that Cognizant employees are evaluated on how many incoming calls they handle per hour. This would give them a tremendous incentive to hand out information quickly to all comers without bothering with any boring and time-consuming verification procedures.
I would like to think that Cognizant and similar companies will crater after this event, and hopefully companies will begin to insource their it support and security.
But I have been wrong before!
As usual I am overwhelmed by the links, but more distressing I am overwhelmed by the starvation of the Gazans. As I have commented recently I am reading Alex de Waal’s Mass Starvation- The History and Future of Famine from 2018. There is a wealth of grim information. As to history he brings up the the Nazi’s Hunger Plan for Eastern Europe, just partially implemented only because it was beyond the capacity of the Wehrmacht. As to the future he could not see the impending full implementation of such a plan by the Zionists. Just imagine, the Zionists are implementing such a Nazi plan.
Alex de Waal has been called upon with his expertise in a number of recent interviews (DN, Novara Live, Greenwald) for his outlook on the forced starvation of the Gazans. He appeared again today on Novara Live (UK):
https://novaramedia.com/2025/07/24/un-people-in-gaza-are-walking-corpses/
The Israelis are saying on the news-
There is no starvation in Gaza.
It is all the fault of Hamas that food is not being distributed there.
It is the fault of the UN for not shipping in food into Gaza.
I should note that this was all in the one single news segment. Needless to say, the Israelis are ******* liars of the worse sort.
From Al Jazeera:
Israel presses ahead with Gaza ‘concentration camp’ plans despite criticism
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/7/16/israel-presses-ahead-gaza-concentration-camp-plans-despite-criticism
And from Haaretz. Article is paywalled but the headline is enough.
Analysis | Concentration Camp, Illegal Orders and War Crimes: Israel’s Madmen Have a Grim New Plan
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-07-15/ty-article/.premium/concentration-camp-illegal-orders-and-war-crimes-israels-madmen-have-a-grim-new-plan/00000198-0dac-d5b0-ab9f-6ded7b240000
Mearsheimer calls this what it is on Judge Napolitano’s show. Strong language from Mearsheimer.
The reaper of souls is on a busy stretch this week, or it seems to be so…Got a text from an old high school friend. The pop culture Icons we grew up with as GenX are filing out the door onto a slab. Yeah, I did capitalize Icon with purpose and intent. I grew out of my WWE and NWA wrestling shows weekly by my early 20s, but I haven’t forgotten. “Hulkamania, Brother.”
Hulk Hogan was a hilarious wrestler / heel in Rocky III. Come here, Meatball.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/obituaries/hulk-hogan-wrestling-icon-pop-culture-mainstay-dies-71-rcna220822
I’m a Gen-Xer myself, but a bit of an old soul … as far as I’m concerned, when we lost Jerry, the age of innocence was over, as was my youth. I turned 30 the following year, and we all know what that means.
So glad I got to see “Captain Trips” play with the Dead live several times.
As far as the Hulkster, well, I hope he is breaking tables somewhere with the Junkyard Dog.
Elon Musk Has Somehow Created a Bad Diner Discourse Blog
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It’s a cheap knockoff of the Guggenheim Museum, but with patty melts.
two things that leapt out of the intertubes at me, today, as i took breaks from my laboring:
https://x.com/alon_mizrahi/status/1948457123178021339
and
https://x.com/alon_mizrahi/status/1948057616690938348
Dude is on fire.
(and leapt out in the sense of walking along the trails, not noticing the squirrel after a buffalo goard or the rabbit jess sittin there, but they see me get too close and bolt)
A glimpse of hope — RT.com headline says “France to recognize Palestine.”
Could be just another Macron dirty trick, or it could be a another breakdown of the rules-based order, further isolating USrael. Did you notice that Trump and Bibi are sort of evil twins? Trump’s the fat, undisciplined one; Bibi the driven madman.
its like high school in both the small towns i escaped from(i crossed the Pine Curtain in 1993 or so): rich clique has done so much stupid and evil shit that they know they are gonna get caught…so they start shittalking the unpopular kids and/or the weirdos(this really happened) to distract/deflect attention from their own crimes.
even at such a small scale, it generally works.
covered up at least 3 rapes that i was aware of(because i was the guy taking them to the abortion clinic, down there just south of downtown houston)
The “rich jocks” vs. the rest of us thing has some value, I think.
Trump shows the persona of a “jock sniffer” — the kind of kid who wasn’t athletic enough to make the team but could hang around to bring them water and snacks. See his purchase of the USFL New Jersey Generals, immediately going after Herschel Walker as a sort of trophy, & trying to buy the NFL Buffalo Bills (and failing, thank God!)
He’s also a cheat at golf, I’d wager. Though he has a decent swing and understanding of the game.
my only experience with golf was as an ezgo mechanic for a year or more, doing warranty work far and wide.
and those fu%%ers would lob high speed projectiles into our work area like it was their job.
didnt have that issue at the community golf courses.
been kinda averse to golf, ever since.
Lesson: rich folks are pretty shitty people.
i still hold to that, after 35 years, not having been shown evidence to the contrary.
Just like Auric Goldfinger. Look at how he ended up. Stymied by the Intelligence Services.
Does Orange Julius realize what a petty little shitbird he looks like, feuding with Jay Powell?
Powell is standing firm. Trump looks like a clown. And by bombing Al-CIA-ani, Bibi just pimp-slapped Trump.
I think this is related:
Trump is losing independent voters
re: US Europe
latest FOREIGN AFFAIRS
How U.S. Forces Should Leave Europe
And Why Trump Should Start the Process Now
by Christopher S. Chivvis
July 23, 2025
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/how-us-forces-should-leave-europe
re: Epstein joke
Danny DeVito 3 years ago with “It´s Always Sunny in Philadelphia”
50 sec.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9x3YZ5pnF8k
just fer grins:
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61567549483279
just dont tell em who i really am,lol.
Just sent you a friend request.
Don’t tell them who I am either 😉
https://www.facebook.com/colt.swayze.1
Ditto. Verify it by looking at my profile, home state, city, etc. I confess to the profile pic being pre-COVID.
So much grifting
Ken Paxton Claimed Three Houses as His Primary Residence, Records Show
Where’s the jail?
And jail should happen
My bet is nothing of the kind takes place, though.
LOL, of course. This country is a joke.
If you investigate a rich politician, you find an azzbag, what a shock.
Rules are for the little people – likely Leona Helmsley, paraphrasing a bit.
Worlds smallest snake, thought to be extinct, found in the wild in Barbados:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/jul/24/worlds-smallest-snake-rediscovered-in-barbados-20-years-after-last-sighting
I take comfort in this sort of anecdote suggesting that Mother Nature is a lot more resilient than we think she is. Long after we Deagal ourselves off the roster of live species and join the Dodo Bird league, other species shall survive.