Links 7/5/2025

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33 comments

1. The Rev Kev July 5, 2025 at 7:16 am

   ‘Massimo
   @Rainmaker1973
   The difference between a dog and a cat’

   A guy put out a reply to that funny video which nails it-

   ‘James
   @SarcasticNomad1
   Replying to @Rainmaker1973
   The cat is how we all see ourselves.
   The dog is how we actually are.’

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2. chukjones July 5, 2025 at 7:43 am

   A Mask is Never Just a Mask. A working link for those interested.
   https://archive.ph/GYnhV

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3. chukjones July 5, 2025 at 7:51 am

   Droughts worldwide pushing tens of millions towards starvation, says report.
   This reportage does not show up in the daily weather/news reports in the US. No wonder people are surprised when a “rare”, “unprecedented”, or “a hundred year” event occurs, as in the recent Texas floods. Americans are being gaslit in so many ways.

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4. The Rev Kev July 5, 2025 at 8:04 am

   As much as it was a nasty surprise to find your mobile ringing in a fully-closed supposed Faraday bag there is a bright spot. You now know a method to test whether any particular Faraday bag actually works. Just shove your mobile in one and have a friend ring it. If you can hear it ringing, return it as inferior goods with a demand for a refund.

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   1. duckies July 5, 2025 at 9:20 am

      It’s deja vu all over again. I thought last time hard cases were recommended over bags.

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   2. duckies July 5, 2025 at 9:27 am

      Sorry for double post. Here’s the link to the posts I’m referencing, if anyone’s interested:
      https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/11/links-11-23-2024.html

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   3. Paleobotanist July 5, 2025 at 9:59 am

      Danish butter cookie tins work great as Faraday cages. And they are free after you eat all the cookies.

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      1. The Rev Kev July 5, 2025 at 10:11 am

         Of course you could use a chip packet-

         https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-11-28/employee-sacked-over-chip-packet-deception-faraday-cage/9196732

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5. KidDoc July 5, 2025 at 8:22 am

   Interesting – when we paid more for (real, less processed and pesticide laden) food, our BigMed costs were much lower. US longevity peaked in 2014…

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6. Carolinian July 5, 2025 at 8:27 am

   Re Secret Trump Letter–a dog bites man story if ever there was one. While the Biden admin simply refused to negotiate, whether with Putin or over Gaza, Trump pretends to negotiate while trying to shoehorn reality into a form that will gratify his never ending self myth. He’ll have that Gaza Riviera or bust. Trump wants to conquer the world on the cheap while his near twin Netanyahu wants to conquer the Middlle East by getting “easily moved” (bribed and blackmailed) America to do it for him. Oh and please buy some Trump perfume.

   I never much cared for the Hunger Games movies but we seem to be living that grotesquery. Show biz has taken over everything.

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   1. Will July 5, 2025 at 9:58 am

      I’ve recently heard it described as the cliffhanger nger style of governance.

      Stenographer: “Mr President, will you [___]?”

      DJT: “I might. It’s a tough decision. But I’ll make that decision soon. Probably in the next week or two. Or maybe not. You’ll have to wait and see.”

      Announcer: “Will The Don [___]? Won’t he? Tune in next time…”

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7. The Rev Kev July 5, 2025 at 8:36 am

   “California Triptych”

   This article is a must read over a cup of coffee and is really good. You look at the smog of the past, the fires and the water situation talked about in this article and you realize that Los Angeles is like a huge Jenga tower. The one thing that the author never mentions – which I find notable in itself – is earthquakes. One good solid one or maybe the big one will bring that whole Jenga down to the ground. Is anybody planning how to evacuate a city of some 12 million people where you might have broken roads, broken railway lines and maybe a wrecked airport?

   In passing, I was reading up about the St. Francis Dam collapse and I wonder how many people have even heard of it-

   https://venturamuseum.org/journal-flashback/the-st-francis-dams-death-toll/

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   1. chris July 5, 2025 at 9:05 am

      Dear Rev, the USGS and other US organizations have a good idea of what earthquake risks there are for Los Angeles and San Francisco. It’s such a regular question that it’s on their FAQ list. I think the reason people don’t think about it is the consequences are horrifying to consider.

      Our famously optimistic government thinks there’s a 1 in 3 chance of a 7.5 magnitude earthquake hitting the Los Angeles region in the next 30 years. A 7.5 magnitude earthquake near any urban center in the area would destroy the infrastructure. Also, LA is the largest customer base for natural gas in the state, with about 21 million customers. So after an earthquake of any significant magnitude, you have a high risk of explosions and fires too. Depending on the season, those fires and explosions could generate wildfires.

      We don’t talk about these kinds of events because there is no answer. I don’t understand why property in that part of the country is considered to have a value greater than zero. I don’t understand why any insurer considers risks in that area to be manageable. The only sensible concept to manage what could happen is to depopulate the area. That won’t happen. I don’t know if we’ll ever see ocean front property in Arizona but I’m sure sometime in the next 30 years we’ll see a disaster in SoCal that prompts a wave of migration out of the state.

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      1. The Rev Kev July 5, 2025 at 9:16 am

         I suppose that if you live in LA you are either super optimistic of just living in denial or think that such things can only happen to other people. Many years ago I was watching a doc on the likely effects of a major quake in LA and it mentioned a major police station. After noting that after a disaster police stations can become command posts for operations afterwards, it noted that this major police station was actually built on a fault-line. That’s not good.

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   2. Skip Intro July 5, 2025 at 9:31 am

      And mountain lions and tornadoes ! Connoisseurs of LA doom will enjoy Mike Davis’ Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster

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8. sfglossolalia July 5, 2025 at 8:38 am

   This Reddit thread has some suggestions for effective faraday bags: https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/zabl4q/whats_the_best_faraday_bag/

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   1. Yves Smith Post authorJuly 5, 2025 at 9:46 am

      Aha, good leads…and of course there is a GORGEOUS and pricey one from Switzerland.

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      1. urdsama July 5, 2025 at 11:08 am

         Yipes!

         It’s more expensive than most cell phones. But I bet it works.

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9. TomFinn July 5, 2025 at 9:02 am

   Re: Faraday bag; I’ve a neighbour we call Copper John and I’ve been meaning to approach him about making thin gauge phone boxes with slip over lids. Sort of like those 4-5 cigar holding cases.
   Was wondering if there’d be a market…

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10. ZenBean July 5, 2025 at 9:16 am

    However, like all Syrians present in Europe, he had until recently been protected from deportation due to the risk of ill-treatment he faced in Syria as long as Bashar al-Assad remained in power. […] Austrian refugee aid organizations, which supported the Syrian’s appeal to the ECHR, condemned the deportation. “Based on the information available, it is not possible to seriously rule out that the person concerned is at risk of being subjected to inhuman treatment, even torture, in Syria,” the group Asyl Koordination notably criticized.

    LeMonde mentions it only briefly: the deportee is an IS member. So I think he’ll be just fine in Syria, now that Bashar is out. What claims for asylum could Sunni hardliners possibly have in Europe, now that they have a state alligned with their values?

    It’s a shame Vienna didn’t deport him immediately after his conviction thereby depriving the Baathist of subjecting him to some love. Nothing contributed more to the skyrocketting ant-immigrant sentiment in Europe than the refusal of the NGO-judicial complex to weed out and get rid of the bad apples we imported after 2015.

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11. Jonhoops July 5, 2025 at 9:16 am

    A youtube video testing a couple of Faraday bags from Amazon, also tests a couple of home remedy faraday claims.

    https://youtu.be/xmFDXMTc0d4?si=8qAJzxI4408JcTbG

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    1. flora July 5, 2025 at 10:04 am

       Thanks. This is a good video.

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12. flora July 5, 2025 at 9:28 am

    re: Why does the Bible forbid tattoos?

    Because they’re a mark of slavery? A mark of the beast?
    or
    Because the writers foresaw the rise of DARPA?
    Jimmy Dore, utube, ~11+ minutes.

    Government To Monitor You Through ELECTRONIC TATTOOS! w/ German Christine Anderson

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bb0JI-1e4pw

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13. The Rev Kev July 5, 2025 at 9:47 am

    “Trump says he made no progress on Ukraine in his call with Putin”

    Does Trump imagine that the purpose of the world is to make him happy? Macron rang Putin a coupla days ago and demanded that there had to be a ceasefire first, then followed by negotiations. Putin told him yeah, nah! Trump must have known about this call so did he expect Putin to fold to his demands for an immediate ceasefire when he rang? And that is what Trump meant when he said that there was ‘no progress’ and how he was ‘disappointed’ and how he was ‘not happy.’ That Putin would not roll over for him like how people like Rutte did. Trump has tried for months for a ceasefire and each time Putin and Lavrov and Peskov repeat Russia’s demands & conditions. But since this will be a comprehensive defeat for the US/NATO/the Collective West this is not going down well so Ukrainian soldiers continue to be sacrificed in the hope that something turns up for them. I note now that Trump has gone back to calling it Biden’s war and how he was accidentally dragged into it or some such bs. He knows that then when the Ukraine collapses, that the neocons will blame it all on him so that they escape any blame whatsoever.

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    1. JMH July 5, 2025 at 10:02 am

       Does Trump imagine that the purpose of the world is to make him happy? Yes.

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14. Solideco July 5, 2025 at 9:47 am

    Matt Blaze (professor & security researcher) looked at Faraday bags and similar in 2021 with mixed results.
    https://www.mattblaze.org/blog/faraday

    But this bit from near the end stood out:

    It’s important to recognize that a Faraday pouch, no matter how effective, only prevents radio communication. A malicious phone might do harmful things that don’t involve the use of radio. For example, it could still record audio, and wait for the phone to come out of the pouch to exfiltrate it. So for the truly paranoid, even the best possible Faraday cage might not provide sufficient protection.

    The use case for Faraday pouches is narrow, and you have to understand the threat against which you’re protecting for them to provide any benefit. For example, if you’re concerned about being tracked to some sensitive meeting, you need to isolate the phone before traveling there, not merely once you’ve arrived.

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15. TomDority July 5, 2025 at 9:54 am

    “Prices of Both Housing And Rent Are Decreasing In China Ian Welsh (Micael T). This = deflation. It may seem beneficial in cost of living terms, but deflation if it settles in is worse than inflation. For instance, it destroys the value of productive investment. The best assets to hold are cash and very very very high quality bonds.”
    So, why is deflation worse than inflation as applied to this article describing one sector -housing – where deflation implies a multi-sectorial decline? please explain and support “it destroys the value of productive investment.” To me, productive investement would, for example, be investement in equipment to make product at a profit for a long time… long enough to expense the equipment, pay labor a living wage (made easier because “beneficial in cost of living terms”).
    Now, in the engineered economic structure of today….it says a lot, that a fungible asset type is better to hold than a tangible asset – and is that good as far as, the means and desired aims and ends of the Declaration of Independance ??
    ..”We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
    and re-stated in the Constitution
    “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

    Cuban philosopher and poet José Martí says that,
    “Their mistakes must be forgiven, because the good they did was greater than their
    faults. Men cannot be more perfect than the sun. The sun burns with the same light
    rays that warm us up. The sun has spots. Ungrateful men only talk about the spots.
    Grateful men talk about the light.”

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16. Carolinian July 5, 2025 at 9:55 am

    New Seymour Hersh–no paywall–says that his spook sources tell him that the Iran nuclear program has indeed been disabled and therefore they are much delayed in making the bomb they weren’t trying to make and supposedly still aren’t. Hersh seems to feel the honor of the US military has been traduced or some such.

    https://seymourhersh.substack.com/p/was-it-obliteration

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    1. ilsm July 5, 2025 at 10:34 am

       Talking with mad hatters, Cheshire cats and tweedle Dee and Dumm.

       Nothing new there, Hersch takes the inputs used by the senior national security salesmen as fact, proof and uses a lot of appeal to authority.

       As if there were 7 B-2’s in the air at one time.

       Queen of Hearts level absurdity.

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17. KD July 5, 2025 at 9:57 am

    Why Does the Bible Forbid Tattoos?

    Tattoos are associated with paganism, similar to moustaches (and why devout Muslims shave their upper lips or have very small moustaches in accordance with Hadith). Interesting in European societies, tattoos and moustaches became associated with 19th century militarism/Prussian ways, leading to the Amish beard look and no tattoos. (Interesting that the Muslim beard thing seems to have caught on with US vets of the endless wars in Iraq/Afghanistan, perhaps inverting or diluting the original cultural meaning of the Amish beard look. Got to presume it is something of a backhanded compliment to the fierceness and courage of the enemy.)

    Pretending tattoos have something to do with the practice of slavery in Egypt, well Egypt was pretty civilized at the time, why was there no contemporaneous Egyptian record of Moses, the Israelite slaves, the plagues, and the army perishing in the Red Sea? Maybe because it never happened? I guess you could theorize the prohibition on tattoos was an attempt to bolster a historical myth of origins, but reality is that pagans love tattoos, its an easy way to create a group identity.

    https://www.oldest.org/artliterature/tattoos/

    If we look at the Egyptian mummy, 30 tattoos, and presumed high status (tattoos are expensive and time consuming, if you really wanted to mark slaves, you would just use a branding iron). Note the tattoos are occult symbols used to ward off evil, and those occult symbols are undoubtedly connected to pagan religious beliefs and practices. Also, you can look at the Egyptian priestess of Hastur, and hey, these symbols mark her as belonging to a cult of a pagan goddess, maybe that is something a monotheist committed to the invisible God of Storms and War wouldn’t want on their skin.

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18. PlutoniumKun July 5, 2025 at 10:01 am

    Prices of Both Housing And Rent Are Decreasing In China Ian Welsh (Micael T). This = deflation. It may seem beneficial in cost of living terms, but deflation if it settles in is worse than inflation. For instance, it destroys the value of productive investment. The best assets to hold are cash and very very very high quality bonds.

    I like Welsh, but this is a truly awful take on what’s happening in China. A huge proportion of household wealth in China is bound up in domestic property, possibly the highest proportion in the world. A drop in property prices equates to a direct loss in wealth to ordinary Chinese people. The private rental market in China is actually quite small, so any gains in dropping rents are will only help a small minority and is probably irrelevant for the economy as a whole.

    It’s an open question as to how damaging deflation actually is – some sources argue that it can have positive impacts (although historically there aren’t many good examples). But certainly in China now there is little incentive for anyone to do anything but hold cash unless you want to gamble on the very volatile stock market. The evidence suggests that real deflation hasn’t really got hold yet – the much rumoured price war in cars and other household goods hasn’t happened yet, most likely because of government pressure on companies not to do so. But with the scale of overcapacity it seems inevitable that it will happen.

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19. The Rev Kev July 5, 2025 at 10:09 am

    “Mounting unrest in Romania over austerity measures”

    Not surprised in the least. When Nicușor Dan “won” the Presidential elections a coupla months ago, he made his speech of acceptance in front of a crowd. But instead of thanking his supporters or showing off his family or giving commiserations to the losing candidate, the first thing he said was that he was going to have to impose austerity on Romania because of the economy. It was like a slap in the face for Romanians who were already aware that the guy they really wanted was sidelined by the Romanian establishment with the help of the EU. And that is why his plan ‘received positive early feedback from the European Commission.’

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20. The Rev Kev July 5, 2025 at 10:48 am

    “You Can Now Rent a Flesh Computer Grown in a British Lab”

    Might be a bit of a worry that. Imagine that you had one and hooked it up to a speaker system only to hear the words ‘Ki-i-i-i-l-l-l me!’ That would be nightmare fuel that.

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