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Links 7/30/2025

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Evacuations in Japan and US as major earthquake off Russia triggers widespread tsunami warnings BBC. Live blog.

Tsunami warning issued for Japan’s Pacific coast, high waves observed NHK

July 2025 Mega Tsunami Predicted In Japanese Manga: What To Know Newsweek

* * *

400-million-year-old fish exposes big mistake in how we understood evolution ScienceDaily (Kevin W)

Protecting the Developing Mind in a Digital Age: A Global Policy Imperative TandonOnline (resilc). That horse has left the barn and is in the next county.

Children to be banned from having YouTube accounts as Albanese government backflips on exemption Guardian (Kevin W). One upside of being not a first world country is parents can’t afford to dedicate a device to a kid to serve as baby-sitter. Wonder if we’ll see payoffs as they become adults.

New Guideline Backs Some Blood Tests for Alzheimer’s Disease Diagnosis MedPage. I have asked the members fo the Covid brain trust if the science/testing is as far advanced as this change would have you believe.

#COVID-19

Climate/Environment

Abrupt collapse of Arctic sea ice may come with little warning Earth

Severe Drought Threatens 25% of Crops in Russia’s Agricultural Heartland Moscow Times. Note a neocon publication, but that does not make it wrong on this topic.

Trains halted by shrinking peat affecting tracks BBC

Israel faces unprecedented drought crisis as water shortages loom Ynet

Water scarcity in Pakistan — a geopolitical ticking time bomb Dawn

Heavy rain causes flooding, evacuations and at least 38 deaths around Beijing region Independent

China?

Donald Trump blocks Taiwan’s President Lai Ching-te from New York stopover Financial Times

I drove the cheap Chinese cars that are illegal in the USA. Now I know why YouTube. From a few months back, still germane.

India

Apple Shift Turns India Into World’s Top Maker of US Smartphones Bloomberg

Trump says US intends to impose 25% tariffs on goods from India TASS

European Disunion

Sundown on the Potemkin Empire: Trump’s Trouncing of Ursula Makes For Great Theater, But Little Else? Simplicius. The fact that the EU is going to be buying weapons largely from the US to continue its US-created conflict with Russia (and where US propaganda has succeeded enormously in depicting Putin as a monster) is the vassalage here. This piece also underplays the tariffs. Eve at 15%, they are damaging particularly for EU agriculture, which was sold out to get a better rate for German automakers and unlike China, the EU lacked the leverage to punch back. However, it is correct to point out that the $750 billion in LNG buys and the $600 billion in investment are empty promises. Shades of Trump’s Ukraine “raw earths” deal.

What remains to be negotiated and decided after the EU-US trade deal Le Monde

Israel v. The Resistance

Israeli settler kills West Bank activist who worked on Oscar-winning film Aljazeera (resilc)

Netanyahu’s Forever War in Gaza Is Crushing Israel’s Soldiers and Their Families Haaretz

The Genocidal Partnership of Israel and the United States Juan Cole (resilc)

UK to recognise Palestinian state unless Israel meets conditions BBC (Kevin W). The virtue signaling, it burns.

Is Europe pushing for Palestinian statehood or Palestinian surrender? The Cradle

West Bank: Would Annexation Include Citizenship For The Annexed? Antiwar.com (resilc). HuH? They need to ask?

Israeli tourists face growing anger in Greece while Athens pledges crackdown on protests Politico (Kevin W)

* * *

Trump Threatens ‘Stupid’ Iran Newsweek (resilc)

New Not-So-Cold War

Why is US Intelligence Providing Bogus Numbers of Dead Russian Soldiers? Larry Johnson. Terrific takedown, be sure to read.

Three Dead, 18 Wounded in Russian Missile Strike on AFU Training Site Kyiv Post

No nationwide local elections to be held in Ukraine in 2025 – Central Elections Commission Interfax

Not to an account, but to a volunteer bank. Ukrainians have come up with a new scheme to bypass restrictions on bank transfers Strana via machine translation

Imperial Collapse Watch

World’s Largest Cruise Missile Launched By Russian Nuclear Attack Submarine with Ground and Surface Support Military Watch

Western Pressure On India Over Russia Already Backfired Even If It Partially Complies Andrew Korybko

Trump 2.0

US placed on rights watchlist over health of its civil society under Trump Guardian (resilc)

Exclusive: Inside the Preparations for Trump’s Next Supreme Court Nominee Time (resilc)

Controversial FDA official Dr. Vinay Prasad departs agency CNN (Jason Boxman)

EPA moves to end climate regulation under Clean Air Act Washington Post

‘Open Cruelty’: Transgender Troops Describe Indignities as They’re Kicked Out of the Military Military.com. Lead story. When you’ve lost Military.com….

The Trump Era and The Psychology of Moral Courage Washington Monthly (resilc)

L’affaire Epstein

Trump Says Epstein ‘Stole’ Young Women Working at Mar-a-Lago Spa Time (Kevin W). Trump seems to have lost sight of the rule, “When you are explaining, you are losing.”

Russiagate

Details Buried In Recently Declassified Docs Further Implicate Obama In Russia Hoax The Federalist (Kevin W). This is just whining and diversion unless/until the DoJ indicts some Obama officials.

US media owes Putin apology – Fox News host RT

GOP Clown Car

Paul Dans, Project 2025 Architect, Will Challenge Lindsey Graham for Senate New York Times (resilc)

Democrat Death Wish

Democratic coalition has a crack that is getting bigger The Hill

Democrats turn routine Trump nominees into pitched partisan battles The Hill. So why has this taken so long? But true to form: Senate confirms Emil Bove to appeals court despite whistleblower complaints, controversy The Hill

Mamdani

Poll: New York Dems side with Mamdani on Israel, Netanyahu Semafor (resilc)

Mass shooting becomes Mamdani’s first test as mayoral nominee Politico

When socialists win Democratic primaries: Will Zohran Mamdani be haunted by the Upton Sinclair effect? The Conversation

Groves of Academe

Harvard Is Said to Be Open to Spending Up to $500 Million to Resolve Trump Dispute New York Times (resilc)

Mr. Market is Moody

IMF upgrades global growth forecast as weaker dollar aids world economy Financial Times. Note forecast still lower than before Trump started his tariff threats.

As Trump has pulled back from the highest tariffs, this chart shows the economic shock has eased The Conversation (Kevin W)

AI

Meta Is Going to Let Job Candidates Use AI During Coding Tests Wired (resilc). Remember the scene from the movie version of Edward Snowden, where he beats the other candidates by hours in completing his NSA test? That level of skill is going to rapidly become a thing of the past.

In a bit of synchronicity, just in from reader fjallstrom: AI coders think they’re 20% faster — but they’re actually 19% slower Pivot to AI

Antitrust

Into the Abyss: Trump’s Bizarro New Deal Matt Stoller. Today’s must read. Goes beyond antitrust.

‘Deeply Concerning’: Alarm as Trump DOJ Ousts Top Antitrust Officials Common Dreams

The Bezzle

The General Theory of Enshittification Paul Krugman (Anthony L)

Dog-Walking Startup ‘Wag’ Files For Bankruptcy SFGate

PayPal Expands Crypto Payments For US Merchants To Lower Cross-Border Fees Silicon Angle. So what, 2 FX crosses, from foreign real currency to the crypto back to a different real currency (for most business uses like paying rent and staffers, you need government money), with not just fees but also bid-ask spreads?

Guillotine Watch

Class Warfare

What Is Driving Inflation? Barry Ritholtz. resilc: “The only thing i bought in the last year that wasn’t up massively is a 40″ tv for $118 at WalMuerto.”

Economists Are Struggling to Find Jobs. It’s an Ominous Sign for The Economy. New York Times (resilc)

Antidote du jour (via):

A bonus:

A second bonus:

And a third:

See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here

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207 comments

  1. The Rev Kev

    ‘Baatein Stock Ki
    @BaateinStockKi
    URGENT: People in Maui, Hawaii are trying to escape the tsunami and are BEGGING Oprah to open the private road on her property.
    She’s reportedly still refusing.
    In a crisis, blocking an escape route is inhumane.’

    Question is will she, like last time there was a disaster, go around with a camera crew trying to interview refugees while the camera crew films her doing so? Her reputation is rapidly heading for the crapper.

    Reply ↓
    1. hk

      Supposedly, the map is inaccurate, but….

      Nowadays, I trust reader provided “context” on Twitter less than I do the original “questionable” context what world we’ve come to! :/

      Reply ↓
    3. scott s.

      Not sure what’s up with that “context”, but of course she has a private road that gets you to Kula. But you don’t need to get to 4000 ft to avoid a tsunami.

      Here on Oahu I live in the central part of the island, at 600 ft elevation. The terrain gradually rises to about 1000 ft north of Wahiawa. The EAs on cell phones were going nuts. They were supposed to start the sirens at 4 pm (expected arrival about 7:20) but the the first siren came a bit after three and that caused people to freak out. So traffic in town was horrendous. Many people wanted to get home I guess, so instead of driving up hill maybe half a mile to higher ground they insisted in driving along the coast to get home.

      They did open Kolekole Pass road across the Naval Mag and Schofield Barracks for people on leeward side, but again going up any of the west side valleys a mile or so and you are way above any danger.

      Reply ↓
  3. The Rev Kev

    “Apple Shift Turns India Into World’s Top Maker of US Smartphones”

    So is India the world’s top maker of US smartphones – or are they the world’s top assembler of US smartphones. So what I want to know is what percentage of the components of those US smartphones were manufactured in India and what percentage were still manufactured in China? Apple may soon be in the hurt locker nonetheless. Trump is now saying those 100% reciprocal tariffs on countries buying Russian oil will kick in in the next ten days. Since that means China and India as well, that is going to be a major headache for Apple unless Trump does a TACO.

    Reply ↓
      1. The Rev Kev

        And the materials needed by tech. Who would have ever thought that it was impossible for the US to fight a war against China without the use of refined rare earths that came from, you guessed it, China. I never expected that. The Chinese may be great capitalists but it turns out that they are not willing to sell the rope to have them hanged with. So unfair of them.

        Reply ↓
    3. neutrino23

      iPhone parts come from around the world. Something like 50 countries or more supply parts for the iPhone.

      Reply ↓
  4. JohnA

    The Wag bankruptcy is a classic case of tech bubble lunacy. I know a few dog walkers, from the days I had a dog and chatted with them when I was out walking my dog. They were local, self-employed, and got business via word of mouth or local advertising. Why on earth would you need to use an app to find a dog walker? And using a dog walking business that gives freebies to celebs? All smacks of unnecessary cost escalation and destroying local services. Who with even an ounce of intelligence would say, yes what a great idea, I’ll drop a few million into their coffers from the fund I manage? Anyone who did so, deserves sacking and anyone gullible enough to use the Wag app is depriving a local dog walker (most seem to be upper middle aged and past the age where getting a job is easy) of a living? Earnings that would also be spent locally. Crazy world.

    Reply ↓
    1. taunger

      If I have just moved, the app is a great way to find someone, then book and pay privately. Don’t know how investors missed that.

      Reply ↓
      1. JohnA

        Just go to a local park, ask someone with a dog about local dog walkers. Chances are they will know. And anyone walking several dogs is sure to be a dog walker. Some even have a van with their contact details etc.

        Reply ↓
          2. t

            There’s a new, equally sketchy looking dog-walking app being advertised on every streaming service.

            Smells like the the company isn’t looking for customers so much as investors.

            Well see.

            A lot Vet techs pet sit and dog walk as a side gig. Easy to ask around. People in training classes often have and can recommend dog walkers.

            I cannot imagine using and app for a dog walker or a farrier or anything related to animals. Maybe that’s just me.

            Reply ↓
          3. cfraenkel

            “convenience”? Sounds like a cat person. Let’s recouch the situation and see where convenience fits in the priority stack. What are the odds you’d use a cutely named app to line up daily after-school care for your 7 yr old? How important is it to be able to whip out your phone and just click a button? Hmm, didn’t think so.

            Reply ↓
  5. JohnA

    Re UK to recognise Palestinian state unless Israel meets conditions BBC. A Labour MP has come out this morning and said that when Starmer gave a speech to a meeting of Labour MPs about this yesterday, he told them he was going to recognise a Palestinian state unconditionally, and got their approval. When he later went public, he came out with the various conditions that had to be met.
    Starmer is utterly duplicious, bought and paid for by the Zionists. He is completely charmless and could not even make a credible attempt to fake sincerity in a million years. No wonder the Corbyn/Sultana movement now has over 600,000 signed up. Labour is dead.

    Reply ↓
    1. Colonel Smithers

      Thank you, John.

      Perhaps, her indoors, a Zionist, and the children, being raised in the faith, had a word.

      One wonders what NC’s British contingent makes of the expressions of interest and fight for the soul. By the latter, I mean a movement to keep out the likes of Schneider and Jones and the Novara and even Canary teams.

      Reply ↓
      1. Vandemonian

        I’m sure I read (can’t remember where), around the time of the Corbyn assassination, that Starmer was in the process of converting to the Faith.

        Reply ↓
  6. Xquacy

    Re: Apple India, Bloomberg

    Apple has been receiving a bonanza from the Indian government that the Chinese simply would refuse upon sound economic logic; India is paying Apple to make its phones here at a loss. Considering both that India’s trade deficit has widened with increasing imports of electronics used in manufacture of iPhones and massive tax breaks for Apple: https://rupeindia.wordpress.com/2025/06/21/growth-of-mobile-phone-exports-and-electronics-trade-deficit/

    Reply ↓
  7. eg

    Re “Economists Are Struggling To Find Jobs. It’s An Ominous Sign For The Economy”

    How does that “vibecession” taste now?

    Reply ↓
    2. Adam1

      HAHAHA!!!

      When I was an undergraduate working on my BS in economics the inside joke was, “When does a recession become a depression? When the economists become unemployed!”

      Reply ↓
      2. Adam1

        It would probably be impossible to tell the difference. Mainstream economics has always been about garbage in garbage out; and hallucinating the facts is part of the job.

        Reply ↓
  8. The Rev Kev

    “Israel faces unprecedented drought crisis as water shortages loom”

    Just as well then that Iran did not blow up Israel’s water purification plants and water infrastructure during that brief war.

    This time. (cue ominous music)

    Reply ↓
    1. elissa3

      For decades, Lebanese of all sects and throughout the political spectrum have feared a long term Israeli policy of annexing or controlling the more plentiful water resources of Lebanon. I wonder if the continued recent occupation is partly informed by this goal.

      Reply ↓
  9. Victor Sciamarelli

    I think there is an important distinction between Israel’s genocide and the Nazi genocide. The Nazis intended their death camps primarily for Jews.
    The Israeli genocide, however, is different; the Palestinian Arabs are merely in the wrong place at the wrong time.
    I’m convinced the current Israeli government will commit genocide on anyone who stands in their way: Turks, Iranians, Kurds, Arabs; all non-Jewish people are a potential target for genocide. And now that Israel dominates southern Syria and Lebanon it’s no surprise another humanitarian crisis appears likely in these areas too.
    And having full US support makes it all possible.

    Reply ↓
    1. Carolinian

      And where will Israel find the Jewish people to fill all that lebensraum? Here’s suggesting the real motive is to keep the tiny ME nation at the center of world attention and a force “easily moving” governments like the US and the EU. It’s about power rather than Judaism. At first that power was about the schemes of prior colonialists but after the World Wars discredited imperialism a new R2P excuse was deployed to keep the colonialist impulse alive. In short: all about the PR. If it was really about creating a safe home for Jews they would have made peace with their neighbors long ago.

      Reply ↓
      1. The Rev Kev

        ‘And where will Israel find the Jewish people to fill all that lebensraum?’

        Well those Haredi families are popping out six or seven kids each and I heard one mother saying that they were having so many so that they can be settlers. But as there will be fewer and fewer secular families proportionately that only pop out about three kids, I don’t know who is going to fight their wars for them or generate the taxes to support them in their lifestyle.

        Reply ↓
      2. Victor Sciamarelli

        You’re asking a rational question about people who are not particularly rational. Nonetheless, John Mearsheimer was interviewed by Tucker Carlsen and he explained that David Ben-Gurion, the founder of Israel, wrote a piece in 1918 describing his vision of a Greater Israel which includes: Green Line Israel, Gaza, the West Bank, parts of the East Bank, Southern Syria, Southern Lebanon, and the Sinai Peninsula. He also said many Israeli leaders today support Ben-Gurion’s vision of Greater Israel.
        Here at the 10:45 mark: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ergs9zzZeY

        Reply ↓
    2. Yves Smith Post author

      Um, they also killed Roma, Catholic priests, and Slavs in bigger numbers than you seem to assume:

      Nazi beliefs categorised people by race, and Hitler used the word ‘Aryan’ for his idea of a ‘pure German race’. The Nazis believed Aryan people were superior to all others. Their devotion to what they believed was racial purity and their opposition to racial mixing partly explains their hatred towards Jews, Roma and Sinti people and black people. Slavic people, such as those from Poland and Russia, were considered inferior and were targeted because they lived in areas needed for German expansion.

      The Nazis wanted to ‘improve’ the genetic make-up of the population and so persecuted people they deemed to be disabled, either mentally or physically, as well as gay people. Political opponents, primarily communists, trade unionists and social democrats, as well as those whose religious beliefs conflicted with Nazi ideology, such as Jehovah’s Witnesses, were also targeted for persecution.

      https://hmd.org.uk/learn-about-the-holocaust-and-genocides/nazi-persecution/

      Rough totals:

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

      Reply ↓
      1. Martin Oline

        Thanks for this breakdown, Yves. It needs to be emphasized there were many victims of this ethnic cleansing. I feel that as time goes by, especially with younger people and the never ending propaganda from Israel, most believe only 6 million people were killed in the camps. I notice the odd total of 6 million Jews + others, but it is a link to a holocaust site. The 12 million killed in the camps is a great disparity to the number of civilian fatalities that were never interned.

        Reply ↓
        1. Harold

          The three and a third million Soviet POWs who were killed in 1941, were in a camp. That is roughly the same as the number of Jews killed in camps. The other three million Jews were killed in the Holocaust by Bullets. Millions of Soviet civilians were also killed.

          Reply ↓
          1. Daniil Adamov

            Of course there’s also plenty of overlap between “Soviet civilians” and “Jews”, as seen at say, Babiy Yar. Supposedly noticeably less so between “Soviet POWs” and “Jews”, but still some. (According to what one of the few real “Jewish commissars”, Boris Slutsky, wrote at the time, Jews were notably underrepresented in the Red/Soviet Army during WW2, but the ones who did serve often went out of their way to compensate for low numbers with reckless daring.)

            Reply ↓
            1. Polar Socialist

              Oddly enough, according to studies being a POW in Germany was the safest place for a “Western Jew” to be in the German occupied areas.

              I also wonder why the Wikipedia table above only says “millions” for East Slavs? Would the 15-17 million (or so) look too big, perhaps?

              Reply ↓
              2. hk

                That would have displaced the Jews at the top spot. Can’t have that. The idea that the Nazis singularly targeted the Jews remains a dangerous myth in the West, especially.

                Reply ↓
      2. Victor Sciamarelli

        You’re correct and I was aware of the millions of other people that were killed by the Nazis. I was trying to make a distinction. The Nazis murdered and warred against the existing empires: Britain, France, Belgium, Netherlands, and US which together controlled most of the world’s resources and investment capital. They were on their way to creating The Third Reich and their empire would rule over the conquered untermensch.
        Israel, in contrast, wants a Jewish State and it’s prepared to murder and commit genocide to create a Greater Israel. It’s not conquering but defending; a dangerous delusion. And with nuclear weapons and the full support of the US it is more dangerous than the Nazis because a nuclear war is possible.

        Reply ↓
    3. Erstwhile

      If any group, then, represents a threat to israel, as understood by the zionist entity, then you think that group will become, or remain, a target of israeli genocide. Would that mean that any two-state solution involving israel is impossible?

      Reply ↓
    4. Adam1

      I agree with Yves, the Nazi’s had not problem using their camps to get rid of people who caused them problems. When I was in college back in the early 1990’s I worked part-time at a museum affiliated with my college. I frequently worked with an elderly volunteer who happened to be an immigrant… she was from Austria. She was Austrian, but was married to a Czech. While in hindsight I don’t ever recall asking her what the circumstances of her husbands arrest were, I do know he ended up in a concentration camp. His Austrian wife was eventually able to get him freed and as an adult I now wonder what she had to do or give of herself to get him freed. The amazing part of the story is that they really did live the VonTrapp family experience… when the Russians invaded Austria they walk over the mountains to Switzerland and eventually emigrated to American and settle in Buffalo.

      Reply ↓
    5. ForFawkesSake

      This is gobsmackingly incorrect. The labor camps existed years before the final solution and the ‘deaths by labor’ statistic is typically hidden because of the corporations involved. Nazi Germany and their corporations were killing on a grand scale before they decided upon extermination.

      Reply ↓
  10. The Rev Kev

    “Sundown on the Potemkin Empire: Trump’s Trouncing of Ursula Makes For Great Theater, But Little Else?”

    Turns out that deal was not what Trump thought it was. The EU promised that they would invest several hundred billion dollars into the US but now they are saying that it would be up to private firms to do that and they cannot make them do it. The EU said that they would import a colossal amount of LNG into the EU but one problem – there are nowhere near the numbers of terminals that they would need to do so which means that it would take years to build them. If they ever do. And then there is the oil. The EU is not set up to take that variant of oil and would require all sorts of adjusting. Trump then just brought himself a pig in a poke.

    Reply ↓
    1. Carolinian

      Meanwhile Helmer is suggesting that Trump is probably violating US law by flying himself at taxpayer expense to Scotland in order to promote his family’s golf business. Fortunately for Trump he’s now in charge of US law.

      Reply ↓
    2. Darthbobber

      Very much like the “green investment” commitments trumpeted at each climate change summit. Just like tomorrow, always coming, never arrives.

      Reply ↓
  11. Anon

    Regarding “Israel vs. The Resistance,” Breaking Points did a splendid interview with pro-genocide Democrat up-and-coming Senator Elissa Slotkin yesterday. One of the few interviews where the interviewers actually ask the politician hard questions, and seeing Slotkin crumble on-camera is delicious. The whole thing is worth watching, but things start to get spicy around the halfway mark, when Krystal Ball starts with her questions.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFrEJTFbSTc

    Reply ↓
    1. nippersdad

      That was a great interview. One thing not pursued but that I think would have made for great TV was how Slotkin said three times how her specialty was AQ in Iraq. That being the case, It would have been good to know her views on our support for them in Syria since the Arab Spring to the degree that one of them is now head of the state. She also mentions international law several times, but getting her on the record about whether or not resistance organizations like Hezbollah and Hamas are legal would have been nice to see as well.

      She left herself open on several fronts, and I suspect she may not be going to interviews like that anymore.

      Reply ↓
    2. CitizenGuy

      Just wanted to second Anon’s comment. I watched the interview yesterday and I was impressed with how quickly Krystal dismembered her. Even on the subject of should the Democrats support the winner of the New York primary (Mamdani), “well, we here in Michigan don’t want to comment on politics in New York.”

      This is why the Democrats have reached new heights of unpopularity. You can’t even get a democratic senator from Michigan, which has a large middle eastern population, to say what Bibi is doing is ethnic cleansing, let alone genocide. As a former spook (if such thing exists) with hands-on access to intelligence in the area, she can’t even hide behind the claim that she simply doesn’t know the history of the area, and so is reluctant to judge.

      Reply ↓
    3. amfortas

      i almost liked slotkin for the first lil while,lol(im horny)
      but when Krystall(Amfortas swoons) lit in…wow.
      the obfuscation and diversionary tactics…
      man, she learned her tradecraft well.
      and it didnt help, in front of a real jouranalist/interviewer.
      Slotkin regrets this encounter, i’m sure.

      Reply ↓
  12. LawnDart

    Re; earthquake & tsunami

    Klyuchevskaya Sopka volcano erupts in Kamchatka after earthquake — RAS service

    MOSCOW, July 30. /TASS/. The Klyuchevskaya Sopka volcano is erupting in Kamchatka as a result of the largest earthquake since 1952, the Kamchatka branch of the Geophysical Service of the Russian Academy of Sciences has said on its Telegram channel.

    “Right now, Klyuchevskaya Sopka is erupting,” reads the post accompanying a photograph of the volcano’s eruption.

    Imagine fleeing a tsunami for the high-ground offered by a “dormant” volcano…

    Reply ↓
    1. The Rev Kev

      First an earthquake, then a tsunami and finally an erupting volcano. They really can’t catch a break, can they.

      Reply ↓
      1. Bsn

        I’ve always thought that with global warming, as all these glaciers melt, across all continents, weight will be displaced and Earth will re-balance. All that weight being shifted (“a pint a pound the world around”) would likely affect the Earth’s surface – AKA earthquakes & volcanos inspired into action> Anyway, jus’ thinkin’

        Reply ↓
        1. Yves Smith Post author

          You are on the right track!

          I have read a recent study that said the weight of ice was keeping the mantle under some control, and the melting would reduce pressure on it, which will = more volcanic eruptions.

          Reply ↓
          2. Vandemonian

            New Zealand sits on the same Pacific Rim of Fire that runs under the Kamchatka Peninsula. The heat for all those pools of bubbling mud must come from somewhere.

            Frying pan -> fire?

            Reply ↓
          3. JBird4049

            If the Yellowstone caldera goes, so will the Earth as it is gigantic, making the Toba super-volcano, which almost exterminated humanity, look small. The only reason to go to New Zealand is to prolong the suffering.

            Reply ↓
        3. Old Canuck

          True, but its a slow process. The land around Hudson’s Bay is still rising after the glaciers melted 8,000 years ago.

          Reply ↓
          1. Adam1

            While I am not suggesting anything will radically change anytime soon, I think you are ignoring what might be better described as a paradigm shift. An automobile engine no matter how well it is maintained still experiences wear and tear and will eventually fail but not until after it has logged thousands if not a couple hundred thousand miles. Drain out its oil and see how far down the road you get before it stops or blows up (throws a rod). The receding glaciers could be considered normal wear and tear; climate change is more like draining the oil or at least never changing the oil and always running it a quart or 2 low – failure inevitably comes sooner/faster.

            Reply ↓
        4. micaT

          You are referring to the ice age that ended some 30,000 years ago.
          We are still seeing some very minor effects of it. Around the upper midwest and areas up into canada where the ice was measured in miles deep, the ground is still uplifting, albeit very very slowly. Other parts of the world have similar things happening.

          There isn’t enough ice depth left anywhere in the world that melting would have an effect on ground uplift except Antarctica.

          This article does a pretty good job that is understandable to most.

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

          Here is some info on the Russia earthquake from the USGS.
          The July 20, 2025, M7.4 earthquake east of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, Russia, occurred as the result of reverse faulting at a depth of about 20 km. At the location of this earthquake, the Pacific plate is moving west-northwest with respect to the North America plate at about 77 mm/yr. Note, the North American plate extends westward beyond the North American continent. The earthquake’s location and sense of motion is consistent with the faulting on the subduction zone plate interface of the Kuril-Kamchatka Arc.

          While commonly plotted as points on maps, earthquakes of this size are more appropriately described as slip over a larger fault area. Reverse faulting events of the size of the July 20, 2025, earthquake are typically about 60 km by 35 km in size (length x width).

          The Kuril-Kamchatka arc has frequent moderate-to-large earthquakes and has hosted 29 additional M 6.5+ events within 250 km of the July 20, 2025, earthquake over the preceding century. The July 20, 2025, earthquake is located roughly 73 km northeast of the 1952 M 9.0 Kamchatka earthquake, which resulted in a destructive, Pacific-wide tsunami.

          Reply ↓
          1. Birch

            “the ground is still uplifting, albeit very very slowly”

            Slowly in human timescale… maybe. The dock pilings in Dyea Alaska that were driven in for the Klondike goldrush 125 years ago are now completely high and dry. That’s something like a 20 foot rise in the blink of a glacial eye.

            Greenland also has miles deep glaciers that will affect tectonic pressures once they’re gone.

            Reply ↓
      3. Daniil Adamov

        Both right now and historically. Kamchatka is most famous for volcanoes, but most of Russia’s biggest earthquakes happened there too. Though apparently this earthquake was the strongest in 70 years. At least the people who live there are quite used to those dangers, so the damage was apparently slight.

        Reply ↓
        1. nyleta

          How did the Pacific Fleet nuclear subs go ? Base was quite close and even if they are in caves sitting on the bottom when the water receded wouldn’t do them much good.

          Reply ↓
  13. ChrisFromGA

    Slop Generator

    Melody

    As performed by Sade, from “Diamond Life” (1984)

    Diamond life
    Loverboy
    Hallucinates with maximum waste and minimum joy
    City lights and business nights
    When you require cheats, fakes and lies for higher heights

    No place for fact checkers or sensitive hearts
    The truthiness is left to chance
    No place to be ending but somewhere to start

    (No need to think, use the)

    Slop generator … slop generator
    Slop generator
    Slop generator

    Boast to boast, LA to Chicago, Western male
    Across the north and south, thought embargo
    Slop for sale!

    [Jazz bass interlude]

    Face-to-face, each classic case
    Our tech bros box and double-cross
    Yet need the chase

    A license to steal, insurance to hold
    Melts all your brain cells; turns crap into gold
    Their eyes are like devils — their act’s getting old

    (No need to think, use the)

    Slop generator … slop generator
    Slop generator
    Slop generator

    Boast to boast, LA to Chicago, Western male
    Across the north and south, thought embargo
    Slop for sale!

    Slop generator … slop generator
    Slop generator
    Slop generator
    Slop generator

    Reply ↓
  14. Ignacio

    Exceptional summer cold in mid Europe. Indeed exceptional. Two nights ago a very cold night wind in Madrid caught me by surprise. Never experienced anything like that in July in Madrid. It felt like a summer wind in the Saint Lawrence estuary.

    Reply ↓
    1. amfortas

      yeah. 62 this 4am when i came out to drink coffee and listen to the nightbirds.
      this, in nw texas hill country, when it oughtta be 80 at that time of day in late july.

      Reply ↓
      1. Revenant

        In-laws on Île d’Oléron on the Atlantique Coast of France for the summer (without us this year unusually). Reporting temperatures of 16degC (61degF) rather than 26degC+(79degF).

        Definitely unusual weather patterns. But not necessarily global warming or even climate change. My money is on this year’s weather being volcano-driven noise. Hunga Tonga related!

        Reply ↓
  15. The Rev Kev

    ‘Unseen Japan
    @UnseenJapanSite
    On X, Masaki Nobushiro posts a recurring (and useful) drawing about how people wrongly think a 1m tsunami is a cresting wave when it’s actually a wall of water filled with dangerous and deadly debris that’s strong enough to sweep up a car.’

    Moving water is always to be respected and it only takes several inches of floodwater to push a car off a bridge. But what really brought it home was reading the definition of a metric ton-

    ‘A metric ton of water is defined as one cubic meter of pure water at its maximum density (approximately 4°C) and standard atmospheric pressure, which weighs 1000 kilograms or one tonne.’

    For Americans that is roughly a cubic yard of water that would weight about 2,200 pounds. Now imagine trying to resist that small volume when it is in motion. Moving water is always to be respected.

    Reply ↓
    1. Adam1

      An amazing example of it is Niagara Falls, best viewed from the Canadian side. It’s an incredible sight AND it’s only a fraction of it’s natural flow as so much has been diverted for hydroelectric generation.

      Reply ↓
      1. Wukchumni

        I’d seen Niagara Falls on TV and in photos and videos maybe 384 times, and thought I might be jaded when I eventually visited…

        My gawd, standing on the sidewalk on the Canadian side with the falls about to go over only about 10 feet away, felt like a continual 3.8 earthquake, the power!

        All along the drive on the Niagara River from Buffalo, you glimpsed the debris field of the 20th century on the other side of the river, long closed factories and the like, one after another.

        In contrast on the Canadian side just north of the falls was peach orchards

        Reply ↓
        1. Adam1

          “…felt like a continual 3.8 earthquake, the power!”

          They are amazing. My ex-wife as a young kid grew up on 9th Ave until 8th grade (she said she could hear the falls from her bedroom window at night in the summer) which would have been around 1986 when they moved to a suburb north of Niagara Falls – Lewiston.

          I’ve never be afraid of urban life and have at various points lived in lots of different urban communities including semi-sketchy ones… so I’m not the stereo-typical white suburban guy who automatically locks his car doors when exiting the highway in the city… but the one time we did a drive-by of where my wife grew up, I was like this is WAY outside even my comfort zone. There was no casual consideration of parking the car and doing a walking tour!

          It has always been, to me, an amazing difference btwn Niagara Falls, Canada & Niagara Falls, NY! The same AMAZING natural wonder is there for both to exploit, and one side was successful and the other just can’t.

          I was just the in-law, but from what I read… it’s always been about power and politics and nothing happens in NF unless it is approved by the local power people who are all from or family of Niagara Falls, NY when it was an industrial center back in the ‘50s and ‘60s!

          Reply ↓
          1. Jhallc

            Robert Moses destroyed the American side of the Falls with his Parkway (now abandoned) and urban renewal finished the rest of the city off. My father owned a luggage business on Main St. that had been in business for 3 generations. He shut it down in the mid 1960’s. By the 1970’s the store had progressed through being both a wig shop and Adult Book Store. My dad moved out of Niagara Falls to Lewiston where I grew up.

            Reply ↓
      2. CanCyn

        I have friends whose workplace hosted some folks from Saudi Arabia and when they took them to the Canadian falls they couldn’t get them to leave. They just stood in shock staring at the water for hours. They missed a lunch reservation and an afternoon meeting. It really is an impressive sight.
        And, Wuk, those are some of the finest peaches anywhere!

        Reply ↓
        1. Keith Newman

          You can even go under the falls and view them underneath about half way down. Nowhere near as impressive as viewing them from above though.
          The viewing part of the Canadian side is a Parks Canada site. Outside of that are plenty of tacky restaurants and souvenir shops. It’s quite a relief to arrive in the parks Canada area.

          Reply ↓
          1. Jhallc

            The “Maid of the Mist” is quite a view up close to the base and the jet boat ride up the river from Lewiston to the upper rapids is well worth the trip.

            Reply ↓
    3. amfortas

      when my hip was dying, i spent a lot of time in the Llano River, flyfishing(make hay, etc)…so i know a bit about moving water.
      when my place flooded around july 4th, i was reminded of that,lol.
      a foot+ of fast moving water in the road, and all the way into mom’s place and back to the sheep shed…so maybe a 3/8 mile trek, one way, with all that water pushing on me.
      downhill to mom’s gate, uphill to sheeps, then the reverse.
      3 or 4 times per day for 4 days.
      i had charliehorses for a week afterwards.
      water is heavy…and heavier when its moving.
      dont drive into it.

      Reply ↓
      1. Revenant

        There are 2.2lbs in a kilogramme. That’s approximate but certainly not 1.685lbs approximate!

        Are you giving the weight of a cubic yard? I understood Rev Kev to be discussing cubic metres and tonnes, the reference to a cubic yard was to help US readers imagine a cubic metre.

        Reply ↓
  17. pjay

    – ‘Donald Trump blocks Taiwan’s President Lai Ching-te from New York stopover’ – Financial Times

    Normally I would ignore a Financial Times propaganda piece about how soft and weak Trump is on China. But this article is actually informative. If you want to understand why US foreign policy is so hopeless today, just read the Wikipedia entries for the three “China experts” quoted in this article: Bonnie Glaser, Randy Shriver, and Rush Doshi. Note their backgrounds, histories and institutional affiliations. They are diverse but in the end they all come together to serve the bipartisan War Party and our contemporary version of the China Lobby. Glaser and Doshi represent the Democrat side of the neocon propaganda network; both served in Democratic administrations (Glaser is on the board of the National Democratic Institute, the Democratic Party subsidiary of the National Endowment for Democracy). Shriver served Republicans. Among other positions he was the Chief of Staff for Richard Armitage in the Bush administration and now heads a vehemently anti-China “policy center” founded by his former boss. But they represent one voice on US/China policy – the one that is pushing for another front toward WWIII.

    Reply ↓
    1. Jason Boxman

      And somehow too stupid to understand where all our goods are manufactured. No greater example is there of cutting your nose to spite your face.

      Reply ↓
      1. t

        It’s not only Chinese cars getting a road test.

        Stumpy Nubs went to China recently.

        He misses a couple of points on the heyday of American manufacturing but its a fun little video.
        Tool Time

        Reply ↓
        1. Sheldon

          Road test? They never even started them, let alone “road tested” them. Those cars were probably especially prepped and gone over with fine tooth comb.

          Put the cars on a normal american street in ice and snow, heater drains battery, killing the range. Potholes? Parking on a hill, water intrusion, we’ve seen new Teslas trunks filling with rainwater.

          All those screens and electric motors can fail. The “lifetime warranty” is uselesss when the buyer tries to enforce the warranty in a Chinese court, if the company is still even in existence.

          The best car one can buy for economics is an internal combustion simple Japanese car.

          The political angle: This is anti-Trump lite.
          “See the great cars that you could buy but for Trump’s tariffs?

          Reply ↓
  18. Wukchumni

    Yosemite National Park officials are investigating after a 29-year-old woman tragically died in a freak accident.

    Angela Lin was hiking with her boyfriend and two friends along the Tuolumne Grove trail when they heard a loud sound from above.

    “Two to three seconds later, branches fell out of the sky,” said Lin’s boyfriend David Hua. “One big branch struck Angela, and then there were a bunch of smaller ones directly behind me.”

    Hua opened his eyes to see his girlfriend laying on the ground with blood around her head, prompting him to call 911. Hua performed CPR until a park ranger and ambulance showed to the scene. Health officials said Lin was probably killed immediately by the tree branch’s impact. She was never placed in the ambulance.

    “It was just unimaginable that something like this could occur. On such a popular trail, too,” said Hua.

    https://www.mensjournal.com/travel/hiker-dies-freak-accident-yosemite-national-park
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    There’s a rather big branch that fell off of the Sherman Tree about 25 years ago lying on the ground below the massif, but that’s nothing…

    Around the same time period, a couple of fellows had parked their Jeep Grand Cherokee in a pull out on the Generals Highway less than a mile from the Sherman Tree and went for a walk when they heard a tremendous crash, and a 1,500 year old Giant Sequoia below the road decided it was time to go horizontal and landed right on their ride. They had to use the jaws of life to be able to retrieve one of guys wallet from the back seat.

    Sequoia Smashes SUV Car – Sequoia National Park DVD Tree

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lKXdVqEFWM

    Reply ↓
    1. Carolinian

      Sounds like my neighborhood during and after Helene. A large oak fell on a car parked nearby but fortunately the human inside was on the front seat and the tree was in the back. One of my neighbors is still repairing her house following damage from a single giant tree. Almost all other houses though have now been fixed.

      When I hike our many forests I sometimes here the crack of a falling limb but the odds of getting hit are low. Still, probably best not to take such hikes in a wind storm.

      Reply ↓
    2. hk

      Eucalyptus trees shed branches by design in high winds, and some bright minds had to plant a bunch of them along San Diego coast (and on UCSD campus.) It was a common sight to see cars wrecked by falling branches on campus parking lot and occasional cases of people hit by big falling branches (some fatally).

      Reply ↓
      1. juno mas

        The arborist who encouraged the planting of Australian Euc’s in California was, of course, a Californian. Some Euc’s are small and attractive, but the tall, bark-shedding, invasive trees that have crept into every city south of San Francisco should mostly be chopped and chipped.

        Reply ↓
        1. Wukchumni

          Almost all the buildings we saw in Cusco and en route to the Sacred Valley in Peru were made of brick or adobe as the only baum of size we saw was the Pigpen of trees-Eucalyptus.

          I asked our Peruvian guide where they came from, and he smiled and told me: ‘your state-California’

          We spread the Aussie ‘wealth’.

          Reply ↓
          1. lyman alpha blob

            I haven’t spent a lot of time around eucalyptus trees myself, but I’ll wager that the Norway Maple could give them a run for their money as the “pigpen of trees”. They are notorious for dropping branches, among other bad habits, and a couple years ago I was in my garage during a big storm when I heard a very loud crack from one of the Norways behind it. I remember hoping it wasn’t a big one that snapped, because my garage, and maybe me with it, would be crushed. Luckily it was just a medium sized branch and no damage done.

            If I were the type to wish for the extinction of any species, the Norway Maple would be at the top of the list. For now I will settle for burning the downed limbs in my fire pit directly under the trees that provided them as a caution to the offending dendrons, one they have so far chosen not to heed.

            Reply ↓
    3. eg

      At a high school in Oakville, Ontario about 30 years ago a tree fell on a portable, collapsing the roof and splitting the classroom such that the teacher at the blackboard was on one side and the students in their desks on the other — each couldn’t see the other, though they could hear across the barrier. Miraculously there were no serious injuries.

      Reply ↓
  19. Jason Boxman

    At an employer I know, they are “All In” on AI, with a weekly status update on organization-wide adoption. A senior engineer posted and elaborated on “prompt engineering”.

    As far as I can tell, the author used an LLM to produce his blog post as well. The classic “em-dash” is present throughout, and no one has an em-dash key on their keyboard.

    It seems silly to blockquote it, because the blog post isn’t even by a person; But it does suggest the idea originated here:

    After 147 failed ChatGPT prompts, I had a breakdown and accidentally discovered something

    If you can fail hundreds of times at prompting correctly, maybe the tool is garbage?

    The reddit post proceeds to describe a prompt to ask the LLM to write you a prompt. And this “seems” to work, which I put in quotes, because the more tokens you give the thing, the more stuff it has to produce statistical output stochastically that might somehow relate to what you dumped in in the first place.

    Genius, says I!

    I never thought the world would implode from all sides at once.

    Reply ↓
    1. ChrisFromGA

      I’ve concluded that software engineering has failed as a field. It no longer merits any respect.
      It has no goals or principles other than cranking out schlock as fast as possible to bring in revenue for corporate masters.

      Having left the field largely 10 years ago, I can say that the battles I fought with management over code quality and “doing things the right way” were all lost.

      It’s on to some more respectable field, like astrology or shooting dice in a back alley.

      Reply ↓
      1. Martin Oline

        You got out in time to keep your dignity and sanity. It won’t be too many years before AI is known as Autistic Intelligence.

        Reply ↓
    2. t

      Our MS configuration at work has an autocorrect set up to throw in a n- or m-dash for reasons we have never figured out. We also have to upload and attach docs in systems that will not allow n- or m-dashes in filenames.

      Several time a week, I have to manually change a name to revert back to the hyphen. It’s another failure of AI, as far as I’m concerned.

      (I’ve also noticed that the Word “Editor” or some gremlin randomly throws in double space or drops spaces so that when you reopen a doc that was just fine, mistakes that didn’t exist when you saved are there and flagged for grammar or spelling.)

      Reply ↓
      1. Jason Boxman

        I’ve never been on a team that does; the software either does it automatically (CMS, Word, ugh) or we just don’t do it. But I’ve mostly always done docs-as-code shops.

        Reply ↓
        1. Acacia

          Not surprising. I’ve never met a coder who knew the typographic function of the three types of dashes. And if I were writing code all the time, I’d find it pretty annoying if some ‘smart’ autocorrect always converted var–– (i.e., decrement var) to var–.

          Reply ↓
        1. Revenant

          I had a custom keymap for them. I loves me an em-dash!

          No longer bother with the custom keymap because I no longer write anything long enough to require it. Nearly all slides, not Word docs…..

          Reply ↓
    4. johnnyme

      One weird trick I discovered a while back right here on this blog: if you type two dashes (-) in sequence in a comment, the backend software will convert them into a very ndash looking character (–) and if you type three in sequence (—) it will convert them into a very mdash looking character.

      I sometimes wonder if the use of mdashes is intentional as a way of detecting LLM generated text and preventing it from degrading future training sets.

      Reply ↓
  20. Lazar

    After reading an article about submarine carrying largest cruise missile, I wanted to link a nice video about that class, on Combat Approved Youtube channel. To my suprise the channel is no more, though it was there a few days ago. The other day Real Reporter channel was also removed (another great Russian channel in English). Not so long ago, a channel of non-English TV show was deleted too (luckily that one is available on Rumble). Combat Approved and Real Reporter had excellent quality content, and were also watched by not-pro-Russian people. Kalashnikov company channel was gone long ago. Rosoboronexport is still there, but I wonder for how long. It seems like Youtube is doing a serious purge, as some news articles suggested recently. The Empire is going scorched earth.

    Reply ↓
    2. Polar Socialist

      Combat Approved is produced by Zvezda (Star), a TV channel owned by Russian Ministry of Defense. A small wonder it was allowed to run this long on Youtube.

      Reply ↓
  21. Jason Boxman

    How Conservative Christians Cracked a 70-Year-Old Law (NY Times via archive.ph)

    The I.R.S. recently said that churches could endorse candidates from the pulpit, a shift from a longstanding interpretation of American nonprofit law.

    America is not a serious country.

    In the Blue Room of the White House, once the cameras recording the Easter prayer service cut off, the conversation at President Trump’s dinner table turned to one of the biggest political goals for conservative Christian activists — eliminating a law that banned churches, and other tax-exempt charitable groups, from endorsing political candidates.

    Seated across from Mr. Trump that April night, Robert Jeffress, pastor of First Baptist Dallas, told the president about how his church faced an I.R.S. inquiry over its tax-exempt status under the Biden administration, after hosting a rally with political figures.

    Maybe we can have theo-fascism next!

    Reply ↓
  22. The Rev Kev

    I thought that I read something a coupla days ago of how YouTube is aggressively banning Russian – and maybe Chinese – channels because reasons.

    Reply ↓
        1. The Rev Kev

          Yours actually but for some reason my own reply got bumped down to the bottom of the page. Strange are the ways of the Gods of the Internet.

          Reply ↓
          1. Lazar

            Strange are the ways of the Gods of the Internet, especially when one does not click reply but starts typing in a box that is already there. :)

            Reply ↓
              1. hk

                I think comments and replies on NC just work weirdly. One of the commenters had a really informative explanation (although an educated guess, he/she said) about how these things probably operate….

                Reply ↓
              2. .human

                I’ve had that happen to me. If I open another tab to check for spelling or a detail then come back, somtimes the focus has changed. Software will always be buggy where we expect intuition (I’m lookin’ at you AI).

                Reply ↓
                1. cfraenkel

                  I wouldn’t be blaming AI for something like that…. this iteration of “AI” hasn’t been around long enough to have made it’s way into a mainstream browser (yet). Apps on your phone… that’s another story.

                  Reply ↓
  23. The Rev Kev

    ”Open Cruelty’: Transgender Troops Describe Indignities as They’re Kicked Out of the Military”

    You’d think as they kicked these solders to the curb, that the least they could do was to shout after them ‘Thank you for your service.’

    Reply ↓
  24. Henry Moon Pie

    I made it to 72! It was very much in doubt a couple of times, but my doctors at University Hospitals in Cleveland managed to handle all the crazy things my body threw at them, and I’m grateful to them. I go weeks now without seeing a doctor since I’m just being treated for the prostate cancer now, and that only involves an injection every three months and a daily pill. There are also follow-up tests and scans that are all good now, indicating that there are no signs that the rectal cancer and the pheochromocytoma are still around. In addition to another birthday, this extra time has also allowed me to reach my 50th wedding anniversary and meet a third grandchild.

    And thanks to the NC Commentariat for all their kind words and encouragement along the way.

    Reply ↓
    2. The Rev Kev

      That’s good news, mate. And congratulations on your 50th wedding anniversary and your third grandchild.

      Reply ↓
    3. BillS

      Great news that you are sticking around! Congrats on the anniversary and grandchild.

      I really love reading your comments!

      Reply ↓
    9. Maxwell Johnston

      Good for you! Hang in there…..and thank you for sharing the details of your medical travails with us. It’s not something to look forward to, but none of us are getting any younger…..and forewarned is forearmed (well, at least to some extent).

      Reply ↓
    12. XXYY

      Dude! You’re a great example of stoicism in the face of adversity, something we all need to believe is real and not just something that happens in movies. Very inspiring, if I may say so.

      Looking forward to your 75th.

      Reply ↓
    14. Colonel Smithers

      Thank you for the wonderful news. Congratulations upon the birth of your latest grandchild, too.

      Warmest regards and good wishes.

      Reply ↓
    15. Rod

      Happy Birthday, and reprieve, and 50/3 bonus.
      Seemed dicey last year…
      Life is good.
      I appreciate your candid personal updates as well as your shared perspectives— and at your nudge now enjoy Nate Hagen’s observations. Thanks.
      Hope you have a garden doing as well…despite the persistent wet.

      Reply ↓
  26. ChrisFromGA

    I really hope that the Fed governors vote unanimously to hold rates steady later today. The independence of the Fed is at stake. Send a message – nobody circles the wagons like Jay Powell and his merry band of hustlers!

    (Note to self – order popcorn. An all caps rant at 2:30PM EST from Powell’s bete noir seems highly likely.)

    Reply ↓
    1. nyleta

      Mr Bessent had to show some cards today, he is maintaining Ms Yellen’s emphasis on T Bills instead of coupons and increasing Treasury buybacks. Once their man is in the Fed expect YCC with stable coins in the mix somewhere to keep the donors happy.

      Real domestic purchases are still slowing and real estate investment is dropping quicker and interest rates are staying where they are this time. The clock is ticking.

      Reply ↓
  27. Carolinian

    This is good

    https://scheerpost.com/2025/07/30/how-tariff-man-is-bringing-back-the-gilded-age/

    Give Twain full credit: when writing that novel, he also intuited that the economic juggernaut driving his Gilded Age would come crashing down in what proved to be the devastating panic of 1893. The country had indeed suffered 11 previous panics, most of them regional or relatively short-lived. This one would be different. As New York banks held fire sales of assets to meet a cash crunch, some 340 banks nationwide simply suspended operations, while industrial output shrank by 15%, and unemployment hit an unprecedented 19%. Adding to the difficulties of workers, the McKinley Tariff of 1890, named after then-representative (and not yet president) William McKinley, had imposed record-high duties of 50% on imports and so raised the price of many basic consumer goods, which should sound all too familiar in the age of Trump. The panic then became a full-blown, four-year depression that sent thousands of the unemployed, then called Coxey’s Army, marching on Washington to demand redress from Congress.

    Honestly given that Trump is proving to be just as bad as Biden (or worse) on foreign policy I’m beginning to think we would have been better off with Kamala as president. At least no one would be taking her seriously.

    TINA is a drag.

    Reply ↓
  28. Lieaibolmmai

    RE: New Guideline Backs Some Blood Tests for Alzheimer’s Disease Diagnosis

    Yes, IMHO, viable for diagnosis, but so what? They still do not care that these high Plasma phosphorylated tau (p-tau) proteins effect mircotubule stabilization so no one will get better. And this is important since microtubules seem to be responsible for consciousness and memory.

    Reply ↓
  29. lyman alpha blob

    RE: Israeli tourists face growing anger in Greece while Athens pledges crackdown on protests

    Good on the Greeks. The Greek authorities are claiming that anti-war protests have become antisemitic protests, but that appears to have come after being contacted by Israeli authorities. I’m sure some genuine antisemitism does exist in Greece – I’ve heard it personally – but the Greeks really don’t like occupiers, having been occupied themselves by various other nations for hundreds of years. “Antisemitism” charges by the Greek government seem like a convenient way to stay in Israel’s good graces.

    The Israeli minister claims that Israelis are spending lots of money in Greece (because apparently that is the most important factor, and trumps morality), and they are. But they are also buying up a lot of Greek property and driving up the cost of living. The protest in Agios Nikolaos is very near the town I visit on Crete. When I was there earlier this year, the locals were pointing out some new, extremely expensive villas that had popped up in recent years. They mentioned that Israelis were buying quite a few of them and wondered if their town might turn into a “little Israel” before long.

    Mitsotakis better watch himself on this issue, because he is at odds with the Greek people. Good to see people actually standing up and doing what they can, rather than just virtue signalling like Western leadership is attempting to do.

    Reply ↓
    1. Carolinian

      I read somewhere the Israelis are buying large chunks of Cyprus–perhaps as a lifeboat from the lifeboat. But wii Bibi let his people go?

      Reply ↓
      1. raspberry jam

        There are currently no exit bans on Israelis except possibly those on active deployment. I just had in person meetings with several outside of Israel last week and among those attending at least one was on active reserve duty. Nobody had any issues leaving the country aside from the hiccup around the Suweida issue in Syria that led to a couple of days of flight changes before the US ambassador to Turkey informed the Zionists they were going to do a ceasefire. Cyprus has long been the first location outside of Israel they go for vacations; it’s close and cheap relative to other options.

        Reply ↓
        1. Carolinian

          I was being sarcastic but are you denying that exit was denied during the 12 day? We read that some were leaving by boat and private airport.

          Reply ↓
          1. raspberry jam

            I am not denying that exit was blocked during the 12 days. The Zionist regime declared a state of emergency when they began attacking Iran (before the counter barrage) and put flight holds on Ben Gurion and Haifa (and probably Eilat too but I don’t know how many international flights go through there) for the duration plus a few days. They didn’t close land borders though and many Israelis left overland through Egypt. My Israeli colleagues were discussing their various options to leave the country to make the meetings if the conflict had continued for another few weeks.

            Relatedly, I mentioned around the time the conflict paused that one of the things I would be watching for over the coming weeks/months (as I expected then there would be a pause until early next year, after the Israeli holiday season and Knesset recess, in order to give the Zionists time to re-prepare) was if any of my colleagues moved their children out of Israel for safety. This to me would indicate they believe things are truly serious and even if they would not evacuate themselves they might get their children out. The last few days of the conflict most of them left Tel Aviv for less populated areas with extended family. Right now one is on holiday in the US with his children. I’m waiting to see if the children return or if they find a way to keep them in the US with family for the next school year.

            Reply ↓
    2. raspberry jam

      I’m currently in Athens, in one of the, ah, grittier/”bohemian” areas (Exarchia) and one of the fascinating things is seeing the mood of the city expressed through graffiti, and there is a lot of it here. Just as an example of the anti-Zionist sentiment that appears common here, this morning I got coffee at a spot that would not have been out of place in Portland, OR in design and atmosphere. On the walls they did a thing where they allowed patrons to draw/write directly on the walls. One can tell where the typical Israeli has been in these cases as they will write “Bring them home NOW”. Someone else had come along and done the typical tagger move of drawing a line through that (I believe that is graffiti-speak for rejecting the statement, to put it in family blog terms). Next to it were several other tags “Free Palestine” “Down with the Zionist Regime” “Israel is committing war crimes” and the like.

      Reply ↓
      1. lyman alpha blob

        I only spent a day in Athens earlier this year, but saw a LOT of similar graffiti. I’ve mentioned previously a series of bridges right outside the Heraklion airport in Crete that were hit with anti-Zionist graffiti – “Zionists not welcome here”, “Be human – Free Palestine”, etc.

        Now I’m wondering how long the graffiti had been there and if it’s been allowed to stay up. Anyone from the commentariat who can speak to whether Greek authorities are even trying to remove the anti-Zionist slogans?

        I do remember posters all over Athens in the 90s featuring Bill Clinton’s face with a bullseye on the forehead, and nobody seemed to be in any big hurry to remove those. This was when the US and NATO were dismantling Yugoslavia, forcing refugees into Greece, among other countries.

        Reply ↓
        1. Revenant

          I was in Donegal on the west coast of Ireland last week. As far from Israel as possible in Europe and nobody buying high end villas – hell, no high end villas – and there were plenty of Palestine flags flying. The Irish do not like occupiers either….

          The British soldiers and police who had served in the Irish war of independence were sent to Palestine and post-1948 Israel to teach civil control, including using sectarianism to divide the resistance.

          Churchill sent the Black and Tans after independence to police Palestine
          https://archive.is/ClHsJ

          “Even though the land could not yet absorb sixteen million, nor even eight, enough could return… to prove that the enterprise was one that blessed him that gave as well as him that took by forming for England a little loyal Jewish Ulster in a sea of potentially hostile Arabism.”

          Ronald Storrs, Military Governor of Jerusalem 1917-20, commenting in 1937 on the rationale of the 1917 Balfour Declaration.

          https://www.declassifieduk.org/israels-brutality-against-palestinians-draws-on-british-rule/

          Reply ↓
  30. AG

    re: German censorship & Ukraine War

    3 long texts assessing the current state of German law

    The last one focusing on the Ukraine War and the legalities over domestic opposition in Germany:
    (use google translate):

    intro:

    “Since November 2023, bans on clubs and associations have been increasing, particularly in the Palestine Solidarity Movement. At the same time, proceedings for “incitement to hatred” or “condonation of criminal offenses” have risen dramatically – mostly in the context of Palestine Solidarity, but also when positions on the Ukraine war differ from those of the German government. It’s clear: With war policy come bans .

    Many organizations, including us as KO, are in the sights of the domestic intelligence service and the Interior Ministry. We are mentioned in particular because of our work in the Palestine Solidarity Movement . The “Verfassungsschutzbericht” is not neutral reporting, but rather a marker of the positions and organizations that are to be criminalized. They therefore always serve to create division . Those targeted are to be isolated and excluded from the movement and society. Certain insinuations and narratives serve this purpose, such as that the movement is being “infiltrated.” Against this background, we want to address various questions in this series of articles: Why is the fight for basic rights necessary? What conclusions can we draw from past bans? And how should we deal with potential future bans?

    The first article, by Klara Bina, reflects on the significance of the struggle for fundamental rights against the backdrop of romantic notions of class struggle and in the context of the contradictions of bourgeois rule. These contradictions lead to problems both for the working class and its struggle, as well as for the bourgeois class and the maintenance of its rule. The text aims to champion the “small” struggles for fundamental rights and identifies a gap in the discussion of the KO (and beyond): there is a lack of understanding of the emergence of class consciousness in the context of historically concrete class rule.”

    part 1

    Prohibitions and the fight for fundamental rights
    – A plea to understand the struggle for fundamental rights in the context of the contradictions of class rule
    by Klara Bina
    March 19th, 2025
    https://kommunistische-organisation.de/klaerungunddebatte/verbote-und-der-kampf-um-grundrechte/

    part 2

    Bans on associations in the Federal Republic of Germany
    by Lennart Groh
    April 17th, 2025
    https://kommunistische-organisation.de/klaerungunddebatte/vereinsverbote-in-der-brd/

    part 3

    Germany is moving towards martial law

    Overview and conclusions on three years of repression against war opponents and Russian-speaking people in Germany. The recent arrest warrants and house searches of activists from the humanitarian association Friedensbrücke-Kriegsopferhilfe (Peace Bridge-War Victims’ Aid) are the latest peak in the repression against people who publicly oppose the prevailing opinion on the war in Ukraine. The accusation of the criminal offense of “supporting a terrorist organization” in this context, under Sections 129a and b of the Criminal Code (StGB), represents a new dimension in the trend to dismantle international law and democratic principles of the German justice system.

    By Alexander Kiknadze
    July 30th, 2025
    https://www.nachdenkseiten.de/?p=136655

    Reply ↓
  31. lyman alpha blob

    Stoller today –

    “I’m not a conservative, I’m a Democrat…”

    Hate to break it to you Matt, but if that’s the case, then you are a conservative. The Democrat party is full of Reagan Republican types these days. Didn’t you get the memo from Chuckie Schumer?

    I will now finish reading the rest of the article, but Stoller’s constant Team Blue boosterism is quite tiring and really makes me doubt some of his other opinions. And I read his book Goliath and thought it was great.

    Reply ↓
    1. AG

      Why would you recommend Goliath?
      (asking as someone with harsh views on the few Stoller texts that I read – yet not knowing his long forms. I don’t agree with Walter Kirn on several key issues either but I still enjoy much of his stuff.)

      Reply ↓
      1. lyman alpha blob

        Stoller gives a great history of anti-trust in that book, with a lot of concentration on some lesser known political figures from the New Deal days who did a lot of the heavy lifting. It’s been a few years since I read it, but I’m pretty sure it was in that book where he noted that a lot of the best New Dealers came from state colleges and were not Ivy League “best and brightest” types.

        The history he presents of Teddy Roosevelt as a trust buster was also enlightening. The way he tells it, the trust busting wasn’t necessarily due to any anti-big business ideology on Roosevelt’s part. It was more due to the fact that these businesses had too much independent power, and Roosevelt thought that as president, he should be in charge. Once JP Morgan learned to ask Teddy’s permission first, he was pretty much allowed to conduct business as usual.

        Reply ↓
        2. Carolinian

          I think Stoller has been better since the return of Trump. Stoller no longer has to embarrass himself by defending Biden.

          And let’s be real–Monopoly is the name of the American game, now more than ever. We even have get out of jail free cards.

          Reply ↓
          1. lyman alpha blob

            Very true, even thought the original Monopoly game was designed as a warning about the evils of capitalism and how eventually one person would own everything.

            Reply ↓
    2. Milton

      I would agree with Stoller. He is not a conservative but a liberal–therefore a Dem. What no one seems to notice is that all party conservatives or liberals are right wing, with maybe the moderate squad being centrist.

      Reply ↓
    3. The Rev Kev

      Obama himself said ‘his economic policies are “so mainstream” he’d be considered a moderate Republican in the 1980s’ and quoted him several times over the years. He seemed to know a lot about Reagan.

      Reply ↓
  32. AG

    p.s. censorship Germany

    Which is why any hope for a change to the positive in Germany (and Europe at large) is displaced and ill-fated. Here incrementally the law itself has been altered backed by overwhelming parliamenary majority.
    That’s made to last.

    For comparison: When vaccination was supposed to be turned mandatory 2021 parliament in the last possible moment voted against because at some point when MPs were with their backs they had to strike a decision with potentially long-lasting and undeniable consequences and had to cede to scientific facts. (as to the quality of the vaccines and side effects.)

    In contrast politics is no natural science and thus decisions are never to be regarded as final. Since there is no 100% proof to them being wrong. (One can always argue “I had a different view back then and there was no mandatory definitive counter evidence”).

    Which is why I argue that there is eventually only poetry or laws of nature (in the political sphere = superior military force.)

    Reply ↓
    1. Carolinian

      That’s quite the scoop if true.

      Putin is sympathetic to Israel because many Russians there but he had to step in before to save Syria from chaos boyz US and Israel. Time to do so again in Iran? With Trump perpetually mouthing off the world needs an adult in the room.

      Reply ↓
      1. Mikel

        If the thought crossed my mind that the way to pressure the USA and associates was by pressuring Israel, more so than pressure thru Ukraine, then I also could suspect it crossed the minds of Russia.

        And it’s not like Israel is doing a good job of hiding its support for Russia’s opposition in Ukraine.

        Reply ↓
        1. raspberry jam

          I’ve given quite a lot of thought to both possibilities you suggest and I think both are in play. But we must consider:

          – is Israel agreement capable?
          – what would it take to get Israel to commit to denying hostilities with Iran, Syria and Lebanon + sending weaponry to Ukraine on a long-term basis if they are being driven by the US?
          – what would it take to get Israel to commit to denying hostilities with Iran, Syria and Lebanon if these are being driven by the Ben Gvir/Smotrich Jewish supremacist faction of Netanyahu’s government + Netanyahu’s need to stay out of prison?

          I don’t have an answer for any of these, btw, I don’t have any special insider knowledge other than a better-than-average direct relationship with and understanding of daily life in both Israel and Russia thanks to personal contacts. But I’ve thought for a while now that Russia holds the key to peace in the region, and long term Russia will be Israel’s guaranteeor of safety when the US withdraws. I just don’t know if we’re to the point yet where Israel will change allegiances. They may need to suffer a more humiliating and devastating defeat first and if that happens they may blame Russia for ‘supporting’ Iran, against themselves.

          Reply ↓
      2. Mikel

        But I also have to leave open the possibility that this could be turned to pressure on Russia through Israel.
        Still too much left unsaid by Russian officials.
        And too many countries are acting a little too weird when it comes to that little country in the Mid-East.

        Reply ↓
  34. Googoogajoob

    Never ceases to amaze me how cynical the coverage of Mamdani is – the man is not the mayor and yet somehow he’s responsible for the shooting that recently occurred and the media organs are more than happy to fart out that tune.

    Reply ↓
  35. Adam1

    AI is just so BAD…

    I was going to reply to a comment related to mine about Niagara Falls and I wasn’t sure what the depth of the Niagara Falls was at the top. Here is what Google’s AI gave me…

    “At the top of Niagara Falls, the Niagara River is approximately 160-170 feet deep according to Maid Of The Mist.”

    Sounds all realistic, but if you click on the Maid of the Mist like (which it did provide) it clearly says on THEIR website that the “170” foot depth is at the BOTTOM of the falls!

    How is AI going to do anything right if it can’t tell the difference between the top and the bottom of something? And that’s before we even start talking about legal liability for mistakes!?!?!

    I’m betting this bubble historically goes down as the #2 bubble next to Tulip bulbs.

    Reply ↓
    1. Terry Flynn

      Been chatting to someone on TwitterX about AI accuracy. He referred me to someone who explicitly showed that popular not correct stuff got reported by AI.

      I asked a question on there as to whether academics or other experts had detected ability of AI to separate “people with a high h-index because of huge citations showing one or more of their papers to be wrong” from “people with a high h-index because they are cited for the right reasons”. ChatGPT thankfully in a totally anecdotal quick test by me comparing myself with certain others seemed able to do this. However, this person, and I myself using different AI program, found much more serious problems, with output biased towards certain sources (sometimes companies).

      Reply ↓
  37. Tom Stone

    The State of Israel is explicitly destroying the Palestinian people, who are Semites and peacefully protesting this slaughter is antisemitic.
    And in the UK peacefully protesting Genocide is an act of terrorism.
    Okey Dokey.

    Reply ↓
  38. AG

    re: Ukraine presidency for Zaluzhny?

    via Moon of Alabama

    Job Application à la Ukraine
    An aspirant for the presidency of Ukraine presents his job application via Vogue-Ukraine (in Russian)

    see for the “application”:

    https://vogue.ua/article/leaders/valeriy-zaluzhniy-pro-koreni-identichnosti-silu-yednosti-y-naygolovnishi-istorichni-uroki-dlya-ukrajinciv-60251.html

    MoA:
    “Writes Strana (machine translation):

    According to the article’s liner notes, in the column, the ambassador “discusses the roots of identity, the power of unity, and the main historical lessons that Ukrainians are forced to learn right now.” Zaluzhny also writes a lot about himself: his childhood with a quote from the teacher Vasily Sukhomlinsky, traditions in the family, the first embroidery.

    In his opinion, the citizens of Ukraine have learned several important lessons in recent years:

    “we did not allow ourselves to be deceived, because we are the people and the state”;
    the greatness and power of the enemy are not always what their leaders and propagandists imagine them to be;
    a neighbor who helps you in trouble helps himself first of all;
    “the enemy, who has not broken you on the battlefield, will immediately begin to break you in the rear”, only more insidiously;
    there are no miracles in war.

    The magazine accompanied Zaluzhny’s column with a photo of him as an imposing bourgeois.

    One wonders who is the one who really pushing him.”

    Reply ↓
    1. ciroc

      Tatyana +3 Today, 13: 00

      It is known that Zaluzhny, in Zelensky’s circle, has developed and continues to have a complex of his own media inferiority. Namely.

      Zaluzhny believes that in Zelensky’s circle he was clearly underestimated in terms of his merits compared to others. And he clearly likes to drink in company.

      For example, one photograph of Zaluzhny was taken against the backdrop of a portrait of Bandera by Zaluzhny himself, when he was left alone in the room.
      This photo testifies to the existence of a psychological inferiority complex in him, which for his own satisfaction Zaluzhny would like to personally compensate in his own eyes and the eyes of those around him, according to the principle – “if you don’t praise yourself, then no one will!”
      Like, look at me, how I love Bandera and am devoted to Banderaism, but you don’t appreciate me!

      Judging by the photograph of Zaluzhny for the article, this psychological inferiority complex in Zaluzhny was also noticed by psychologists in London.
      But there is one nuance here. People with an inferiority complex, like Zaluzhny, are very dependent on the opinion of others about them. They are easy to manipulate, because in order to be noticed in society and praised; for the recognition of their significance and merits by other people, they are ready to do anything – including pleasing their foreign curators! And this makes them extremely dangerous for the fate of their own people and country – makes them weak-willed national TRAITORS, toys in the hands of others!

      That is why London chose Zaluzhny to replace Zelensky for Ukraine!

      https://en.topwar.ru/268901-u-nas-vojna-a-on-v-kostjume-za-5000-funtov-ukraincy-negativno-otreagirovali-na-glamurnye-foto-zaluzhnogo-iz-londona.html

      Reply ↓
    1. Yves Smith Post author

      Thanks for the note but I hate to tell you that the video he cites is crap. It’s been widely criticized in the expat community here. The people who get in trouble did stupid things like tried opening bank accounts with tourist visas and then changed visa categories, which made the old bank account type invalid, or came here on a retirement visa, on which working is illegal (even as a digital nomad) and then start earning income. And you don’t lose your money when a bank closes your bank account, FFS; they either give the money to you or transfer it back to the foreign account from which it came.

      This debunks the Martyanov video:

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joNZWfj61Hc

      If you move abroad, their house, their rules. The people who got in trouble didn’t get visa advice and got caught.

      It is true a lot of people come here who wind up broke, but the big reason is sexpattery: gullible older Western men being fleeced by extremely manipulative Thai women. The agony aunt column of the local paper was full of sob stories like that, and the author would inevitably say something like “What did you expect to happen?”

      See t

      Reply ↓
      1. AG

        Yes, thank you!!!
        I suspected something like this but not really knowing anything about it, suspicions take you only so far…

        Reply ↓
    2. XXYY

      I remember reading an article by a zookeeper who noted that if he heard on his radio that a zoo animal had escaped its enclosure, he would run to help put it back. The one exception, he said, was if a chimpanzee had escaped, in which case he would run to his car and drive out of the area as fast as he could.

      I have always wanted more details on this, but I take it that at the very least they’re extremely dangerous to humans. Whenever I see “chimp raised by humans” stories, I always wonder what risks these humans were running and if they knew they were doing so.

      Reply ↓
  41. The S

    Is anyone going to talk about the CEO of Blackstone real estate getting shot & killed? A few more incidents like this and we might be able to afford housing again

    Reply ↓
      1. The S

        Believing police reports in this day and age is asinine. Football is just a children’s game with dwindling popularity. The CEO who makes housing more expensive for everyone in the USA would effect a lot more people than a sports league

        Reply ↓
        1. lyman alpha blob

          I think the issue here is that the shooter was supposedly found with a note about having CTE and asking for his brain to be studied. Many ex-NFL players have had CTE, and it has been attributed as the cause the led to violence in some CTE sufferers.

          Reply ↓
  42. amfortas

    7-30-2025
    ups
    Oh, well.

    I have a faceborg account that I almost exclusively use only for announcements about farm stuff.
    My Boys and future daughter in law set it up, since FB has evolved way beyond my ken since I abandoned it maybe ten years ago(still cant figger out how to work a lot of the …ahem…”features”…)
    so anyhoo, I was checking this am to see if anyone in town missed my last appearance on the side of the road, and wanted fruit and veg or whatever delivered, since I was going to town today anyways.
    Welp, there’s a big bar of “friend recommendations”…”people you may know”…that I am unsure how to hide or remove.
    Ive already “friended” almost everyone I know well in town, and they have much further reach than I have, or want.
    Well, in that bar of people was what looked like the ups chick(how does the algorithm know?)…same first name, same general likelness, lives where I expected her to due to where ups hub is, etc…so I stalked,lol.
    It sure as heck looks like her, based on a million times seeing her smiling and waving from the side of the road, as well as the first time she stopped to jaw…i was maybe 15 feet away….and the second time, when I was right outside her open door, holding on to the mirror bracket.
    If this is her, she appears to be happily married to a cop and have 3 little girls.
    Sigh.

    Lol.
    I wish them well….she’s nice, and deserves to be happy.

    And here I remain….
    this time, my third exercise in OCD-in on a woman with far too little actionable information…lasted 9 months…mostly consisting of her smiling and waving and me tipping my hat.
    At least this one didnt end in acrimony, I guess.
    And it didnt involve texting!
    I had body language to plug into my ocd model…as well as vocal cues and facial expression(we were both wearing sunglasses; so no eyelanguage)…which is an improvement over the other two.
    I know…and have known from the beginning…that all this was silly…and rather more than a long shot.
    But like the other two chicks, it gave me a distraction, and someone to think about as I go about my secret purposes…and someone to talk to in my head(a thing I do…ive talked to everyone from Nietzsche to Alcibiades…to jennifer aniston).

    I followed my own protocol of passive attention/just bein friendly….only overt moves I ever made with this woman was simply making sure that my timeless self was wandering across/down the road to go check for eggs at around the time she usually appears.
    Which is what I normally do , anyway,lol.
    (to lessen the snake tax I must pay)
    but in this period, I paid attention to time(weird for me, I set an alarm on my fone, after the first time she stopped to talk).
    Understand, all 3 of my major relationships have begun with strange, even unconventional, meetings…and all 3 were largely accidental….and I suddenly, out of the blue, said something to the effect of “you and me, babe…how bout it?”. Last, and most important one, lasted 26 years….and i’ll prolly never get over it.
    So I prefer that the woman pursues me, lol.
    Because I am strange and can be overwhelming with my firehose of stories and information and snatches of poetry and whatnot.
    All of my attempts…in 40 years…of overtly pursuing a woman…asking for a date, or whatever…have been met with fear and rejection…mostly polite, btw…because I am always polite.
    But I never mastered the art of small talk.
    and i am a consummate weirdo.
    cant hide it, anymores.
    in the wilderness too long, i guess.
    Again.
    Oh, well.
    And.
    Sigh.

    Reply ↓
  43. XXYY

    From the Semafor piece:

    Democrats have grown more supportive of the Palestinians’ cause and more critical of Israel. In 2023, for the first time, Gallup found that more Democrats’ “sympathies” were with the Palestinians, by an 11-point margin. In a poll released this year, the gap had grown to 38 points.

    We should all take a moment to think about how remarkable this is. The US information system has been 100% all-in on backing Israel and the Zionist movement for the entire living memory of most people reading this. Any contrary information has overwhelmingly come from citizen media. The situation described here indicates a tremendous tectonic shift in the way Americans are getting their information and how they are thinking about it.

    I like to think this is a huge victory, though we will find out in time.

    Reply ↓
  44. Wukchumni

    We in Cali dodged a barrage of word salad, unburdened by the possibility of Kamala running for Governor.

    Reply ↓
  45. ChrisFromGA

    Stories from an alternate universe:

    A clearly transformed Fed Chairman showed up for his 2:30 PM Press conference wearing a hoodie with both arms cut off and a UNC Chapel Hill football cap. After dispensing with his brief introductory remarks, Chairman Powell took questions from the press.

    Transcript:

    Steve Liesman CNBC: “Chairman Powell, why did you keep interest rates steady when unemployment is 4.1% and the balance of risks is clearly towards rate cuts?”

    Powell: (mumbled incoherently) Next question.

    Nita Nuprez, Bloomberg Business: “um, Chairman Powell, President Trump has demanded …”

    Powell: Next question.

    Larry Charles, Fox Business: “Mr. Powell, you had two dissenting votes on interest policy, can you speak to”

    Powell: “Well, Larry, we executed well in all three phases of the game, including special teams. It’s on to Cincinnati.”

    At this point a well-dressed young lady who may be Chairman Powell’s new girlfriend stepped up to the podium and announced:

    “I think we’re done here. Thank you and have a nice day.”

    Reply ↓
  47. upstater

    Finally saying the quiet part out loud:

    Bessent says new Trump child savings accounts are ‘back door for privatizing Social Security’ AP

    Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Wednesday that the children’s savings program included in President Donald Trump’s tax break-and-spending cut law “is a back door for privatizing Social Security,” reigniting an issue that has dogged Republicans for years.

    Bessent’s remarks, which he made at a forum hosted by Breitbart News, were striking after Trump’s repeated promises on the campaign trail and in office that he would not touch Social Security.

    Reply ↓
  48. Jason Boxman

    The United States is such a wasteland for sane COVID policy. Looking at nasal sprays, you still can’t get Enovid here, the only product that had at least one human testing study that demonstrated a faster recovery time to a negative PCR after infection. Naturally, Enovid is $50-$60 per bottle.

    Betadine with Iota-Carrageenan seems available in Canada but not in the US; I did stumble across a US distributor, but only because someone kindly posted a link to their web site on Reddit last year. These look to be $20/ea. There’s a cited study on the Iota-Carrageenan:

    Efficacy of a Nasal Spray Containing Iota-Carrageenan in the Postexposure Prophylaxis of COVID-19 in Hospital Personnel Dedicated to Patients Care with COVID-19 Disease

    A new(er) product called Profi hit the scene last year; This is not vetted by the FDA, and has no human or animal trials. It claims to use a novel approach to coat the nose to protect from infections. It’s made by Akita Biosciences. ($25/ea)

    I believe China was working on a similar kind of approach with nano-particles?

    The biopolymers behind a multimodal nasal spray

    Some of Akita’s competitors have landed in hot water with federal agencies by overselling their own nasal sprays as COVID-19 preventives. The FDA has sent warning letters to at least five manufacturers: Salvacion USA, maker of Covixyl Nasal Spray; CofixRx, maker of a nasal spray of the same name; Amcyte Pharma, maker of Nasitrol; Global Life Technologies, maker of Nozin; and Novid Group, maker of Novid Nasal Spray. In 2021, the Federal Trade Commission also sued Xlear, alleging that the company “falsely pitched its saline nasal sprays as an effective way to prevent and treat COVID-19”—a violation of the COVID-19 Consumer Protection Act.

    In their paper, Joshi and Karp acknowledge the limitations that come with a lack of human data. They suggest future studies in large animal models, like nonhuman primates, whose noses more closely mimic those of humans. Tarik Massoud, a radiologist at Stanford University who reviewed the paper for C&EN, also suggests “beta testing” in a small cohort of patients.

    And Nozin is available, and claims:

    formula combines ethanol with antioxidant rich natural emollients. This topical antiseptic is applied to the skin at the nasal vestibule at the front of the nose. Application is moisturizing with a fresh citrus scent. No prescription needed.

    These are $24/ea, and seem applied by swab, rather than a spray; I’d rather see some kind of study of efficacy on these.

    For those still trying to avoid COVID as much as possible, maybe some of this information is useful.

    I’m tempted to keep a fresh Envoid around, a kind of break glass in case of emergency, such as right now, and adopt Iota-Carrageenan as a daily drive.

    In a civilized country, there’d be a best practices approach to avoiding airborne disease using a layered defense approach documented at a functional public health agency that’s widely trusted and respected, in my fantasies that was the CDC. Then I woke up in 2020 in the current nightmare.

    Reply ↓
  49. chris

    OK NC Commentariat, I have just experienced a live in the wild example of an exciting nexus object. It combines AI BS, app driven enshittification, capitalist class war, and clueless design. Behold, the InstaCart Caper Cart!

    Now, I know what you’re thinking… you’re saying to yourself, what if there was a way to take the self-checkout register with me through a store, while giving the store even more opportunities to track my behavior? And what if, I could experience that while using a shopping cart that wasn’t much of a shopping cart, because it doesn’t have a lower shelf, delicates/child/purse basket up top, wasn’t waterproof, was heavier than a regular cart, and would be frustrating to use because in addition to the scanners the floor of the basket is a calibrated scale measuring the weight of everything you put in the basket? I mean, who wouldn’t be lining up to use such a device? I’m sure everyone would be proud to use it knowing how many cashiers and store staff that they were eliminating…

    Instacart was testing these in my home town today. The people doing the testing were nice enough but after a few minutes of conversation it became clear that making their design fit for purpose was something they had never considered. For example, consider what it would be like to purchase a heavy object and have to hold it out so that the scanners could detect the barcode correctly. Not easy to do with a decent sized ham or the Thanksgiving bird.

    It was clear that their main design parameters were to minimize shrink, maximize shopper surveillance, and eliminate the need for more staff. The Caper is what happens when design people don’t talk to the people who will be using the device. I can’t imagine the elderly or parents with small children having the patience to work with this thing. It’s frustrating enough when you have to wait for the check out to be reset because a scan didn’t take. Now, imagine having to constantly re-order your cart, while you’re trying to shop, because a scan didn’t take. And the scanners and the scale won’t work if they’re too cold or too hot or too wet. I honestly can’t think of a better example of our corporate masters trying to shove the dog food down our ungrateful gullets.

    These people will do everything except make shopping easier by hiring more people at a decent wage. The Caper is what happens when you try to carve more profit from the bones of a corpse you’ve already picked clean.

    Reply ↓

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