Why are Colorado rabbits growing tentacles and horns? Denver Post
Insecure about their looks, more men than ever are getting plastic surgery STAT
Climate/Environment
International “State of the Climate” report confirms record-high greenhouse gases, global temperatures, global sea level, and ocean heat in 2024 American Meteorological Society
First-ever detection of a toxic chemical pollutant in the atmosphere Earth.com
Gulf region sees temperatures spike above 52°C (125.6°F) as electricity grids buckle Intellinews
Wildfires spread dangerously close to southern European capitals FT
Hot, dry summers bring new ‘firewave’ risk to UK cities, scientists warn BBC
Mortality associated with fine particles from wildfires may be underestimated by 93% Barcelona Institute for Global Health
Pacific Ocean changes may ‘lock in’ US megadrought for decades New Scientist
Gen Z Wants To Buy Homes in the Country’s Most Affordable Areas—but There’s a Long-Term Downside Realtor
Factcheck: Trump’s climate report includes more than 100 false or misleading claims Carbon Brief
Pandemics
Unpublished data on #LongCovidKids from an Australian clinic — 44% are attending school less than 1/2 the time, “Imagine what this means for their future”
Powerful presentation from Michelle Scoullar, @BurnetInstitute on “Impact, Treatment and Outcomes of Paediatric Long COVID” pic.twitter.com/R7DmUeVsEZ
— Patient-Led Research Collaborative (@patientled) August 11, 2025
Clean Air at School American Lung Association
India
India and China eye resumption of border trade after five years AFP
China?
China cracks down on foreign companies stockpiling rare earths FT
For the first time in human history, China imposes financial sanctions on the EU. Two Lithuanian banks UAB Urbo Bankas and AB Mano Bankas are now banned from transactions and cooperation with any Chinese entity. This strategic signalling. 🧵1/
— MENA Unleashed (@MENAUnleashed) August 14, 2025
China to launch new type of visa for young science, technology professionals Xinhua
Beyond America: The New Routes of Chinese Migration China Observers
O Canada
The Banderite Occupied Government of Canada is just going to absorb every Ukrainian veteran who survives the war into the Canadian military, incredible https://t.co/ujD33Fcm53
— Russians With Attitude (@RWApodcast) August 14, 2025
Syraqistan
Israeli attacks on Gaza kill 32 people as four more die from malnutrition Al Jazeera
Israeli bombardment in Khan Younis has damaged sewage infrastructure, flooding the Nasser Medical Complex and turning its hospital corridors into health hazards.
Doctors and nurses are navigating stagnant, contaminated water. With generators offline, emergency rooms are now… pic.twitter.com/tfRMgQRYSV
— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) August 14, 2025
‘Legitimization Cell’: Israeli unit tasked with linking Gaza journalists to Hamas +972 Magazine
Do not share that video of Marwan Barghouti, as the Jewish Supremacists want you to… so share his defiant images from before starvation and torture. They filmed it looking down at him from a high angle, to enlarge the presence of that diminutive Jewsader Ben-Gvir. pic.twitter.com/P8NfnHEoTa
— Free Palestine TV (@TVFreePalestine) August 14, 2025
Israel to Okay Plan Splitting West Bank in Two to ‘Bury the Idea of a Palestinian State’ Haaretz
The Nuremberg Movement Ian Welsh
***
Palestinian Official: Turkey Pressuring Hamas to Disarm, Resume Gaza Cease-fire Talks Haaretz
Turkey to help Syria with weapons systems, equipment under new deal: report Turkish Minute
European Disunion
Scandal erupts in Hungary over PM Orbán’s summer residence and park with zebras “like Yanukovych had” – photos Ukrainska Pravda
EU, Ukraine both seek regime change in Hungary — top diplomat TASS
Fire hazard junge Welt (machine translation). “Merz, EU and US-Russia summit.”
New Not-So-Cold War
Alaska: “Its a Trap!” The Real Politick with Mark Sleboda (video)
Some Thoughts On The Upcoming Summit Moon of Alabama
Summit Preparation News From Russia Karl Sanchez
Russia’s Summit Preparation Sends an Unmistakable Message to Washington and the World Larry Johnson
Putin outlines prospects for nuclear deal with US RT
🚨 Ukraine Strikes Russia 🇺🇦⚡
Massive drone attacks hit Russian territory overnight — before the Putin 🤝 Trump Alaska summit 🇷🇺🇺🇸#Ukraine #Russia #Putin #Trump pic.twitter.com/fx09G74KI5
— Hindustan (@InsideHindustan) August 12, 2025
What we’re seeing right now – and have been for some time, frankly, but it’s going to get bad in the near future – is Ukraine’s online supporters having a collective mental break.
This is literal, unironic Army Detachment Steiner stuff. https://t.co/158kAtcAgX
— Armchair Warlord (@ArmchairW) August 14, 2025
I always tell people to go read the congressional briefings, so that you have an idea of what you’re dealing with. Understand that the US does not view Russia as a credible threat and believes that it is too economically broken to rebuild. This is the basis of the US position. pic.twitter.com/TGkXWaXBiV
— Dr.Snekotron (@snekotron) August 14, 2025
The Caribbean
US military deploying forces to southern Caribbean against drug groups Reuters
Spook Country
Russiagate Releases Lifting a Veil on Surveillance State Abuses Matt Taibbi
“Liberation Day”
Wholesale prices rose 0.9% in July, much more than expected CNBC
Why are wholesale vegetable prices spiking, and what’s that mean for consumers? Marketplace
Trump Tariffs Are Burdening US Families With ‘Back-to-School Tax’: Analysis Common Dreams
Greedflation Is Back as Corporations Use the Tariff Excuse to Hike Prices BIG by Matt Stoller
Trump 2.0
Building New Rafts: Trump’s Inheritance of the Legacy of the Left Salmagundi
Democrats en déshabillé
Obama takes part in call with Texas Democrats The Hill
Texas Democrats say they will return to state once session ends, California unveils retaliatory map Texas Tribune
Mamdani
Some Democrats Panicked Over Mamdani. Obama Called Him. New York Times
Obviously Mamdani is better than the other corporate ghouls in the race & I’m not telling anyone to not vote for him. But it’s important to get people to start recognizing how the Democratic party captures & kills genuine socialist movements. It’s the entire purpose of the party.
— Power to the People ☭🕊 (@ProudSocialist) August 14, 2025
Police State Watch
Homeless people in detention camps? Fears grow about Trump and the Olympics Los Angeles Times
DC’s Homeless Have Nowhere to Go. Trump Might Send Them to Jail. Mother Jones
Immigration Detention Has Become a Booming Business for Private Prison Giants Truthout
Don’t forget: “crime” by black and brown folks has long been the pretext for bringing the boomerang home, militarizing our streets, & deploying the tactics of colonial control on citizens. It’s how fascism will be snuck into America https://t.co/kLCMfzl7Gv
— Julian Go (@jgo34) August 14, 2025
The thing about US power under Trump is that the capriciousness everyone in the US is experiencing, is exactly what folks in the tri-continents have experienced under even urbane presidents like Obama.
— Laleh Khalili 🇵🇸 (@LalehKhalili) August 14, 2025
Monrovia Man Is Hit and Killed By A Vehicle As He Attempted to Run Away From ICE LA Taco
AI
An internal Meta AI document said chatbots could have ‘sensual’ conversations with children Engadget
Meta’s flirty AI chatbot invited a retiree to New York. Reuters. Commentary:
The AI apocalypse we’re racing towards doesn’t look like a Terminator scenario in which AI violently wipes us out. Instead, the AI apocalypse we’re racing towards is one in which we wind up drowning in so much AI generated nonsense & manipulation that we lose our grip on reality. https://t.co/HHLT7QiAcH
— Librarianshipwreck (@libshipwreck) August 14, 2025
Facts: Google’s push to AI hurts publisher traffic Digital Content Next
xAI Was About to Land a Major Government Contract. Then Grok Praised Hitler Wired
A.I. as normal technology (derogatory) Read Max
GPT-5 Set the Stage for Ad Monetization and the SuperApp SemiAnalysis
OpenAI’s Waterloo? Gary Marcus
‘Absolutely immense’: the companies on the hook for the $3tn AI building boom FT
Big Brother Is Watching You Watch
“Privacy preserving age verification” is bullshit Cory Doctorow
Supply Chain
Nation’s IV Saline Shortage Is Over, FDA Declares MedPage Today
Healthcare?
Eli Lilly Hikes UK Mounjaro Price By Up To 170% As Trump Pressure Mounts Investor’s Business Daily
Eli Lilly endorses Trump’s goal of aligning US, international drug prices Fierce Pharma
Guillotine Watch
Giving Pledge is falling far short of its promise, report finds Philanthropy News Digest
Class Warfare
Why A Farm Workers Union Leader Choose Self-Deportation The Progressive
Italian Amazon Workers Strike and Win. Will Unions Elsewhere Follow Suit? Truthout
Antidote du jour (via):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
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Comments are closed.
‘MENA Unleashed
@MENAUnleashed
For the first time in human history, China imposes financial sanctions on the EU. Two Lithuanian banks UAB Urbo Bankas and AB Mano Bankas are now banned from transactions and cooperation with any Chinese entity. This strategic signalling. 🧵’
Wait! Are they allowed to do that? My first thought was that perhaps Kaja Kallas or Ursula herself could jump a jet to Beijing to make them reconsider but why make the situation even worse.
My first thought was that Baltic Chihuahuas are powerful enough to bark at Russia and China at the same.
P.S. I’ve typed powerful into WIkipedia search, and got a picture or Putin. :) Also, Angela Merkel below.
They only need to bark eastwards. But you may have seen what happens when a hysterical little dog barks too much towards a biggie one. They get a free flight to the next wall.
(lets see how well this ages…)
The not so anticipated meeting in the Oblast Frontier took place at JBER, mainly on account of it having a bitchin’ military acronym for the acrimonious as it were.
Nobody frankly expected Putin to be sporting a flag lapel pin, and to make matters worse, his red, white & blue was larger than the old glory one affixed to blue like glue.
It immediately put Team Trump into a quandary, yeah they could order a larger size pin on the internet and expedite delivery and this being Alaska, it still might take a few days F.O.B. China, better go to Deft Con 1, and carefully cut up one of the flags fluttering @ Elmendorf, and repurpose it proudly on the left chest of the Chief Executive so as to not have a flag size gap.
“Pacific Ocean changes may ‘lock in’ US megadrought for decades’
Gotta say that my first thought at reading that was to recall the fate of the Wukchumni tribes which Wukchumni himself has talked about from time to time. A megadrought hit them if I recall correctly and it was game over, man, game over. Without water, a city like Las Vegas may end up looking like the version of it in the film “Blade Runner 2049”-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZAH3H7ANCk (4:14 mins)
It was Chaco Canyon and the Anasazi who had to beat it, in the face of a decades long drought. House of Rain: Tracking a Vanished Civilization Across the American Southwest by Craig Childs, is an excellent read on what he postulates became of them…
Just the opposite with Wukchumni and other Yokuts sub-tribes who had figured out to be as close to running water as possible in the Sierra foothills where the largess from on high had to flow by, no matter the amount. They were here around 3,000 years until Measles killed 85-90% of the tribe in 1868-69.
Still in America, but much more down South in Peru, there were the Moche / Mochica, who got the worst of both worlds: they endured a super El Niño / La Niña event starting in 536 with 30 years of downpours, followed by 30 years of intense drought.
After that devastating 60 years period, archaeological remains provide evidence of the sudden collapse of their civilization: large urban centres and their temples destroyed by fire (intentionally, centres of power seem to have been specifically targeted); abrupt cessation of ceramic production (for which they are world famous; if pre-columbian ceramic is displayed in a museum, then it most probably is Moche production); constitution of small communities surrounded by defensive walls (very uncommon till then). After lingering on for a century in a state of internecine warfare, the Moche disappeared completely.
Considering everything, the Moche, and the Anasazi, held remarkably long before their demise was complete. I wonder whether our civilization could even endure 60 years of genuine climatic whacking.
I felt we were just another bad drought year away from bad juju happening in Cali during the punishing 2012-16 drought, but then pulled out of it.
That was merely a 5 year skein in the scheme of things~
It’s what death cult capitalism is committed too!
I had similar thoughts looking at the Abilene plant in the FT article on AI. Gotta build a hundred trillion dollars of water cooled waste infrastructure on cheap land where there’s already scant water.
The one with all the money when the collapse hits won, right?
You might want to consider putting the word “Links” in the title of this post.
That’s a lot of clapping to be done by the Parliament of Canada.
Do they get to keep their swastikas and their Nazi paraphernalia? Will the Canadian government pay for laser surgery to have all those embarrassing tattoos removed from some of them? I read that after WW2 Canadian leaders brought over Ukrainian ex-troops as they thought Canada was too lefty and these people would help push Canada to the right. Mission accomplished. So what happens with this new influx of hard-core Ukrainians? What will Canada be like in twenty or thirty years time? Personally I think that they should load all the surviving Azov troops aboard a troopship to go to Canada. And when halfway across the Atlantic, sink that boat. It would save Canada a lot of grief.
wonder how badly their extremist views will clash with the mass influx of Indian immigrants and employers abusing LMIAs. Things are not so good here, for instance they host the CNE (Canadian National Exhibit) in Toronto every summer where you can go on some rides and eat increasingly weird deep fried foods. It runs for about 2 weeks with about 5000 employees, usually students applying for them before they go back to school. Last year it was something like 35,000 applicants for 5000 positions. This year it was 50,000 applicants for 5000 positions. But the diaspora led by Freeland will probably help them quite a lot
Or tell them they need to take some special showers before entering Canada!
No doubt CBC is working on a Banderite of Brothers mini-series, with a voice over from the ghost of Lorne Greene.
Can’t wait for Hollywood to come out with films about the war in the Ukraine. Hey, I’ve got an idea. Maybe Sean Penn can play Zelensky, Angelina Jolie his wife, Ben Stiller could play Zaluzhnyi and Jean-Claude Van Damme could play Podolyak. It’ll be a blast with all those actors who supported the Ukraine-
https://www.imdb.com/es/list/ls591808880/
But for the actor that gets to play Putin, does Putin own a white cat that he strokes?
Not true. A ghost I know told me that Mitzi Gaynor’s ghost told him that Loren Greene’s ghost is po’d because the actor’s ghost who played Hop Sing told Loren Greene’s ghost to scramble his own damn eggs, and to just beat it. Now Loren Greene’s ghost is hiding somewhere in the epstein files because Loren’s ghost thought that it was a planned project for a reboot of the x-files and he wanted in, and thought that he might wrangle a plum role for Michael Landon’s ghost, who needs a job because he’s got a bad cough and wants to get it paid off, at least that’s what Mitzi’s ghost told me, hovering just a few feet away, you know the way she does.
I got to get outta here.
…just as I suspected
Better Canada than Britain. But first, the trials..?
“OpenAI’s Waterloo? [with corrections]”
What if – stay with me here – what if the present iteration of AI will be as good as it gets. Sure they might add a few bells and whistles on it but don’t expect major improvements. The present state of AI has basically run out of road and if anything might get worse as it starts to incorporate data training sets that include more and more AI outputs. Certainly AI can be put to productive use in a number of fields with proper supervision but in general use? Nah, not really. Twenty years from now they will write about it like we write about MySpace now.
As good as it gets: Menschliches, allzu menschliches. AI still doesn’t have real free will, but most humans never use that, anyway.
Rev Kev: The present state of AI has basically run out of road
Sure. And so? Other approaches exist besides transformers and LLMs.
I am worried about near-term non-LLM AI developments
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/tEZa7PouYatK78bbb/i-am-worried-about-near-term-non-llm-ai-developments
The guy is worried because he’s part of Eliezer Yudkowky’s ‘Fear the Coming of Skynet’ crowd, to be clear. He writes: –
-There exists a parallel track of AI research which has been largely ignored by the AI safety community. This agenda aims to implement human-like online learning in ML models, and it is now close to maturity. Keywords: Hierarchical Reasoning Model, Energy-based Model, Test time training.
-Within 6 months this line of research will produce a small natural-language capable model that will perform at the level of a model like GPT-4, but with improved persistence and effectively no “context limit” since it is constantly learning and updating weights.
-Further development of this research will produce models that fulfill most of the criteria we associate with “AGI”.
I don’t think anything big is going to emerge in the next six months. But the guy’s right about there being other interesting lines of research out there besides LLMs and they’re producing promising results.
In fact, read what he says. Because he makes a series of very valid points.
In similar vein:
GPT-5 is, uhm, not what we expected. Has AI just plateaued?
https://www.zmescience.com/future/gpt-5-is-uhm-not-what-we-expected-has-ai-just-plateaued/
In contrast, the day before Google showcased Genie 3 which blew my mind: https://deepmind.google/discover/blog/genie-3-a-new-frontier-for-world-models/
Thanks for that link. I wonder if the Chinese are also working on something like this. I would not be surprised. There is another possibility that so much wealth has been pushed into models like GPT-4, that there may be an active effort to suppress any other approach including what this author was talking about.
“Catastrophic forgetting” seems to have become a thing.
Thanks.
Out of desperation yesterday, I asked ChatGPT 5 about why my Dell U2720Q starts to randomly go blank after my Mac Mini 2018 wakes up, sometimes. I knew this was a risk, but wow does it return some garbage.
It came up with a plausible sounding scenario, which might be true, but also claimed a firmware update might address the issue; it does not. I inquired and it now searches the web, and found no evidence the firmware update does anything. It also suggested Apple is aware that this issue exists, and that it is known, but that is also not true.
Of course, some of the information is true, as I’ve been fighting with this in various ways for years, so I’m pretty familiar with the nature of the problem at a high level, and what levers I can pull to engage in trial-and-error. But a less knowledgeable user would take it all at face value, it looks completely legitimate and reasonable in every way.
I’d never ask it about something I’m not familiar with, because I’m very likely to get a not insignificant amount of false information returned.
Not sure how any of this becomes worthy of hundreds of billions of dollars of spending and the massive infrastructure buildout that’s occurring, sucking up water and energy throughout the United States.
There might be some future in smaller, composable models, trained on domain specific data, but LLMs are garbage and will always be garbage. And they’re basted entirely on fraud and copyright infringement. The entire “industry” would cease to exist, were this recognized as it should be.
But, too big to jail always applies in America.
I hate to seem like a jerk, but you should NEVER NEVER NEVER elect to use LLMs. You are supporting a planet-destroying product. Aside from crap answers.
Thank you so much for saying this. I applaud you for banning any AI slop from this site. It pollutes almost everything I read at my job and in the comments across the Web.
At work in my evil multinational, people are literally under orders to use it and I have to approve where it’s incorporated into customer delivery. I’ve given up fighting and now I just give them the warning that everything touched by slop needs to be rechecked by actual human beings. It took me about a month to get it removed from my workstation Microsoft applications but it’s gone. I could go on and on. Our C-suite are so gung-ho on it that the denouement will be absolutely brutal.
Then the C-suite will get their bonuses and get promoted.
At my evil multinational they have official policy that due to the risk of information leakage, we need official approval for every query we want to make. And then they ignore the policy.
Gives HR a plausible reason to fire anybody for any reason at all, as everyone seems to be using it for various reasons.
Just found myself fired two weeks ago – administrative dismissal. BS, I was the more senior guy there with a few new and very new (1 month) on the same grid, kept. My work is cutting edge nationally. And while the idea for the cuts is balancing budget, they saved far less with me than the new person. I am getting a compensation package, a newby wouldn’t.
My point, with Claude AI I can apply for a potential job in less than 30 min. Input job, input detailed resume, input points of emphasis and in less than 30 seconds I get a tailored cover letter and a tailored resume that may need a bit of personal touches.
I can get also summaries on certain topics, like types of energy-climate models used to model policy responses based on various scenarios.
It is shit at categorization and classification though and I found to be shortchanged. I payed for two mnts so I was supposed to get better service and continuity. I expected that even some coding would be run behind the scenes, after proding and cornering the entity. Lies, lies, lies. I got 10% proper classification rates.
Meanwhile most people will eventually do the same, as the HR systems are already winning that arms race with rapid, automated denials as applicants have been complaining of this for years now. The whole system is rotten. Applying for jobs today is all aggressive brute force or farming it out to taskers in India. And then increasingly you’ll sit through a condescending “AI interview” where a fake persona interviews you and looks for proper facial cues on your part. Dystopian hell.
I’m sorry to hear of your job loss. I hope you’re able to find another soon if that is your wish.
Yea, same here. I hope you get a better job soon.
Thanks. It was more like a dream job, so it is a hard blow. Will see what pans out. One day I’ll let Yves onto my bureaucratic thrillers – I love them, but not when I am involved. Playing high stakes games with governments and see who blinks first is my usual Wednesday, just because I am doing my job. I am in the wait to see who blinks situation now.
Given the level of crapification already evident, LLM AI’s best days may be behind it. Like cheap, ubiquitous Ubers, the era of cheap chat bots burning VC billions to goose growth stats is at an end.
No where near the end.
The Hype train is still alive and well. So is the money train.
Surrounded by Zuck – Inside Google Gemini
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dYxX4fcCu4&list=PLS6u2ztKAYl2NQox739TWH3RTt4kYKfQZ
“”The Market Can Remain Irrational Longer Than You Can Remain Solvent.””
But, the crawler on Bberg TV says:
“Altman will spend trillions on AI infrastructure”
We don’t know what he knows about AI.
Maybe, he DOESN’T know what he knows about AI.
“Tech Lords of the Flies”
A plane full of High on AI Technocrats plunges in the ocean not too far away from a deserted island, and most survive the crash thanks to government intervention. They get into an argument over who gets to be named Piggy, and seeing as it’s an apt name for all of them, they decide to all take that moniker. Piggy Peter is in charge of coconut derivatives, and all goes well until they die of hunger, because there actually weren’t any coconut trees on the island.
Instead of them being oddly grouped into a single plane, how about sending them to the outer reaches of space and preferably they are sent to where Weyland Yutani corporation directs. Call it a galactic important meeting of the minds, a future WEF or a slickly styled TED talk confab.
Hilarity ensues when the Xenomorph welcoming committee on LV 426 proves where everyone sits on the food chain. And that committee has a big bad Matriarch Queen ruling it all.
> “Privacy preserving age verification” is bullshit – Cory Doctorow
Doctorow is right, of course. But I’m not sure I agree with him that the pols have had the wool pulled over their eyes, or at least not all of them. Starmer’s government is kinda amazing in how open it is about being authoritarian.
But also interesting is how well a good name can work. Remember when “green diesel” was something people could talk about with snorting in derision? Same with “clean coal”.
“An internal Meta AI document said chatbots could have ‘sensual’ conversations with children”
What if the real problem is that the people that wrote that internal AI document were using as a basis the idea that ‘What would Mark Zuckerberg think?’ as guidance. It would explain a lot.
Actually, Zuck figured out that you can’t fool old people all the time, so he is going after the children.
Re: post about congressional briefing on Russia
Whoever produced this “keep the grift going” document included the excuse for any failure.
It will be Russia’s “cyber and informational campaigns”. (It also will fit with the desire for more and more censorship and surveillamce).
They never see the problem being their own reliance on cyber and informational campaigns.
80 years to the day of the end of WW2, a conflict that certainly shaped my life in that there was no reason for yours truly to not be a Bohemian’s Bohemian in the old country were it not for the war interceding on the me to be.
Daddy-o got to witness the twofer one of the fascists-who stole his family’s money and the communists-who stole his family’s property, before skedaddling exit stage left from must what have been Kafka come to life.
WW2 also set the outer limits for waging war-as in there are none really, as opposed to WW1 where poison gassed WW1 vets became an onerous burden in the aftermath of the war for all combatants involved and were banned-a ban adhered to by all sides in WW2.
Atomic, by Blondie
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_WLw_0DFQQ&list=RDF5QfcsHQ-BM
Who knew that the children and grandchildren of the Nazis would seep their way back into power through organizations like NATO, the EU and others. Must be quite confusing to WW2 vets who fought and beat them on the battlefield only to see them being rehabilitated in the 21st century.
Yup-it’s disgusting- the Ukraine project a continuation of the hitler project, only run by Zionists.
The original NAZIs were invited into America via Operation Paperclip. Then the rot spread.
To Yves theme of her article today:
Less compensation for you, workers
So inflation doesn’t stop, but companies wabt to cut back on raises. Oh and keep those lofty profit margins that they have gotten used to. Let the “But no one wants to work!” comments begin!
“The Banderite Occupied Government of Canada is just going to absorb every Ukrainian veteran who survives the war into the Canadian military, incredible…” https://t.co/ujD33Fcm53
Potential blowback positioned closer to the USA. Also, the USA has its own traditions with absorbing similar types and that could continue.
Well they do have actual modern combat experience. Werner von Braun says “jawohl!”
In their own way, so do many mass shooting survivors in the USA.
How many Ukranian soldiers will be left after the war?
How old will they be? Retirement age?
How many will want to continue a military career?
Will the government move them over at the same rank?
So many questions.
Not at all surprised to learn Mamdani’s been shoveling happy horse[bleep].
B Flat: I haven’t read the article in Time as yet, nor do I intend to. Keep in mind that Time has always tried to seem cutting edge (admittedly, with a dull knife) and forward looking. Wasn’t there the famous cover when Time declared Springsteen the future of rock ‘n’ roll?
Recently, Time declared Giorgia Meloni the future leader of Europe, Europe’s new helmsman. The problem, though, as many Italian journalists pointed out, with quotes, was that the article was rather tart about some of Meloni’s many weaknesses.
So Mamdani is engaged in a dialectic. If he can use Time for what’s worth, it may get him elected mayor. There may or may not be further discussions with the drudges at the Time empire…
He may not want to be Time’s “Person of the Year”. Those covers are like an assassin’s gallery.
And Forbes “30 Under 30” is starting to look like a collection of mugshots.
Also not surprising that the genius’ who kneecapped since proven to be largely centrist bernie and destroyed their voter base are chanting “hold my beer” on this front as well. A cynic might say they will triangulate cuomo into office and be extraordinarily proud of themselves for no good reason at all.
From Insecure about their looks, more men than ever are getting plastic surgery:
Yep, apps are trash. If you aren’t in the top 10% of men, you find out really quickly when nothing happens after hours, days, weeks on the apps, and no one you like ever matches you. It’s truly punishing as an experience, and you learn what worthlessness is.
I think perhaps social media is one of the most destructive inventions after the automobile and petrochemicals. Spend enough time with it, it breaks you.
Relatedly
My BS detector immediately goes off in these cases. If you aren’t winning with women by that point, you really think you’ve finally won?
Good luck with that.
That’s like these random text spams I get, “hello?” and then a picture of an attractive woman follows or precedes it. Pig butchering scams.
Love from a random wrong text? Possible, sure, likely, lol no.
“’Secondary tariffs could go up…’: US official warns of higher sanctions on India if Trump’s talks with Putin fail; asks Europe to ‘put up or shut up’ ”
Modi has been complaining that the US is still importing stuff like fertilizers, chemicals and refined uranium from Russia for itself without any tariffs imposed. Maybe Modi can ask Russia if all that stuff can be imported from Indian ports instead to mess with Donald.
As for Europe, they could tell Bessent that they can be still importing Russian oil or they can be paying money into NATO. But they can’t do both so pick one.
While I was putting myself through school I turned to handyman work to pay the bills. I had some steady clients in real estate, and a few times (as a favor) I’d take on hoarder cleanouts: it was stomach-turning, as some people literally bury themselves in their own filth. Not quite as badly, I pitched in to clean-up and sort after my grandfathers died– accumulations of lifetimes of useless shit. These experiences had an effect on me.
Jan Yoors’ The Gypsies was a read that also made a powerful impression on me. I repeatedly “death-cleaned” to the point where I can now pack and scoot in a morning, if that. It truly does feel like a burden has been lifted, not having to give time or attention to stuff which has little or no value to me.
People Who Choose to Live With Less Report Higher Happiness and a Stronger Sense of Purpose Than Big Spenders. What Is Voluntary Simplicity?
Voluntary simplicity isn’t about poverty or renunciation and moving into a cabin in the woods. Instead, it’s a conscious choice to live with enough rather than more…
“Palestinian Official: Turkey Pressuring Hamas to Disarm, Resume Gaza Cease-fire Talks”
Hamas should totally listen to Turkiye and Qatar here because Syria listened to them as well. Oh, wait…
Well, the Syrian way seem to be how to get an Islamist terrorist organisation recognized as a legit regime.
Of course, now that al-Jolani is having seconds thoughts, he may soon trigger IDF’s AI and Israel will be forced to defend itself with a salvo of bunker busters.
I wish Erdogan gets the Nobel Prize for Peace.
He totally deserves it, given the number of speeches he gave about how much he cares about Palestinians in Gaza.
Hundreds of National Guard Troops Flood the National Mall
I moved to DC on the 1st anniversary of 9/11. I hauled my bike out and pedaled around the mall and the federal buildings. I cruised the building where I would be reporting to work. There were cops everywhere…walking around; sitting in their cars…all waiting for the reprise.
You get used to cops in DC. They are a large part of the human landscape. It’s the most copped-up city that I have ever visited. There are the ubiquitous DC metro cops, transit police, Capitol cops, US Marshalls, embassy police and any number of specialty cops. There are security quasi-cops in every federal building including the museums. There are private cops in regular buildings. The only buildings beside your own that you can enter without seeing a cop are the churches and hotels.
I was once detained by the DC cops up in back of UDC in a micro-embassy area. I was on foot. The cops questioned me for about 30 minutes before letting me go. During the interim at least 30 cops cruised by to kibbitz with their buds and see what was happening. A mostly residential area, they came out of the woodwork, all bored out of their skulls.
I understand the implications of Trump’s actions, but this is DC…just another layer of cops.
I’m fortunate my only encounter with any law enforcement with real weapons was seeing in 2016 through the White House fence guards with long rifles or SMGs, not exactly sure now. I can’t believe that was the case before 9/11 2001.
Well, that and the time in 2019 when I light up the scanner for substances at the airport, in Asheville or Greenville, I don’t remember, because on that trip I’d gone to a shooting range and cluelessly wore the same sweater to the airport that week. I got escorted into one of the holding rooms, and at that point you realize how real life can get real quickly. Thankfully, they ran the glove test again after running a gloved finger over my clothes, and let me go, and I didn’t miss my flight.
It’s a thin line between just another day of freedom, and the state taking away that freedom. And at that instance, whatever the rationale is doesn’t much matter. You’re in the system, now. And your rights are as illusory as those that detain you believe them to be.
Stay safe out there!
The Salmagundi piece: TLDR.
I read it so you don’t have to. Despite somehow thinking DOGE went after the Pentagon, Martin Jay effectively chronicles Trumps lessons from the 60s and 70s, from the Yippies to Huge Hefner to become a transgressive icon. It was an era in which someone who would become as anodyne as Kenny Rogers could write “Just Dropped In”, or redneck Charlie Daniels could write “Uneasy Rider”, and was hilarious, invigorating and disorienting to live through.
The senescence of Neoliberalism has released a wave cultural dynamism from that era into the sterile economic ocean oligarchic depredation has left where our economy once was, and Trump remembers how to surf its forms, even while he has no idea what the larger structural forces are… Then the article peters out into intellectual name dropping and posturing (which it largely was from the outset).
If some other patient soul gets for from it than this, I’d be delighted to have a greater ROI on the time I put into reading it!
Well, I went ahead and read this whole thing as well. The main reason was that I wanted to see where the hell Jay was going with this long, name dropping intellectual history in which he kept repeating variations of “on the one hand…,” “on the other hand…,” “I’m not saying this…,” “Nor am I saying that…” The longer I read the more determined I was to stick it out to see what his conclusions actually were, and what this discussion might suggest for any current progressive politics. But there *were* no conclusions, nor were there any suggestions for contemporary action – nada. He just ends it, copping out by echoing Gramsci: “we are clearly at one of those turbulent moments when the old rafts are coming apart and new ones are in the process of being fashioned.” Things may lead this way, may lead that way… etc. Aarggh!
However, I did get something from this jsn, though I doubt it would repay your investment in time. I understood where Jay was coming from, because his academic world of critical “social theory,” born with the emergence of the New Left, that he traces in his history (and to which he has been an important contributor) was my world as well as a student in the 70s and early 80s. However, by the end of my grad student years I had begun to perceive how this particular mode of inquiry was becoming more detached from the real world of class and politics and turning into a means by which “radical intellectuals” could fight the “revolution” from the safety of their campuses and journals. And they could do this while explaining – and condescendingly criticizing – the disappearance of “working class consciousness” among all those hard hats supporting Nixon, or later Reagan. Of course many more traditional Marxists and other working class activists were already quite critical of this emerging tradition. Some, like the Ehrenreichs around this time, were presciently predicting where this would lead politically.
For me, this essay shows me where I’d probably be today if I continued on this path rather than return to what I’d consider a more materialist, “real world” perspective. It’s not that this world is any less ambiguous, contradictory, or even “ironic” that the world of academic Social Theory in which Jay lives. But there is something about the latter that keeps its occupants separated from – “alienated,” if you will (Jay must have used that term somewhere in this essay!) – from the experiences of the majority who have fallen for Trump’s pseudo-populist BS. It’s not that Jay does not describe their plight (the first paragraph or two actually does a decent job of this). But somehow he can’t quite touch their reality without abstraction.
Thank you, sounds like you’re a crucial 5 years older than I am and your experience with this milieu frames a meaningful context, there by recovering the utility of several hours I’d written of!
I like the gary marcus posts, but…
The good news here is that science is self-correcting; new approaches will rise again from the ashes. And AGI—hopefully safe, trustworthy AGI– will eventually come. Maybe in the next decade.
Why is every currently impossible goal always to be overcome in ten years?
To me, ten years is pretty synonymous with never, but then my intelligence, such as it is, is only computing on about 2000 calories a day, plus beer (I count those calories an externality…look over there! A cat!) which either may, or may not, improve the outcomes…
Obviously, clean fusion will be essential to power AGI!
10 more years…
It’s just around the corner. Any day now.
After the Jackpot, that number will be squared to 100. That’s 90 years to get back to where we were before the Jackpot. And 10 more years.
Because failure to achieve meaningful progress towards AGI in the past 60+ years of research by 1000s of computer scientists will for sure be totally corrected and overcome in the next ten.
I am so tired of this kind of hype and lazy “prediction” about the future.
This is some form of incrementalist thinking which falls prey to the Beagle fallacy. It’s like people think “intelligence” is going to be achieved via more transistors on a chip (Moore’s Law). There may be a more precise diagnosis for this kind of dubious claim about the trajectory of technology. It’s certainly common now.
Re: Unionization of Italian Amazon warehouse
Thé Amazon warehouse in Laval, Quebec was unionized last year. Amazon’s response? They shut down the warehouse and every other warehouse in Quebec.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/unionized-amazon-warehouse-quebec-concern-1.7441043
To add to the essays about what is going to happen at the Alaska summit, besides the Chicken Kiev luncheon and Trump’s cricca tripping over their woo-woos to show the Russkies who’s the boss, I recommend Barbara Spinelli.
Spinelli has a long career as a writer and politician, and like good Italian journalists and essayists, of which there are many, she understands that history is in layers. Italians are constantly examining how these layers sit upon one another and intermix.
https://barbara-spinelli.it/2025/08/15/alaska-i-due-sogni-e-lincubo-nato/
In Italian, and worth your while if you read Italian. Spinelli also happens to describe in this essay pretty much where I am politically. A detail: NATO and the EU elites are still in denial that they made a tactical mistake, provoked a slaughter, and lost a war.
Happy Ferragosto to those who celebrate.
Ferragosto is a tools-down holiday established by Augustus Caesar (yep, he who also renamed the month after himself). The wheat harvest ends in the Mediterranean basin about now, so this is the time for rest and repose: Read Virgil’s Georgics.
It is also the Assumption of Mary, Mother of God. So you may want to think of it as the Day the Santissima Madonna goes to the beach along with many of the other Italians.
The Orthodox call today the Dormition of the Virgin. Ahhh, falling asleep at the beach.
I celebrated with a pranzo ghiribizzoso. Suffice it to say that the first course was prosciutto crudo from the Undisclosed Region garnished with three wonderfully purple figs that had been battered and fried as tempura.
This aligns with Spinelli’s analysis:
Olga Bazova
“Ukraine has been constructive, avoiding maximalist demands”
Are these people for real? Ukraine is in NO position to make ANY demands at the moment, but they did make them, and they are absolutely maximalist, given the position Ukraine is in right now.
Indeed. The coalition of the Willing (Macron, Merz, Starmer + Zelensky) plus mysteriously failed-up Mark Rutte keep bringing up the idea that Russia has to withdraw from the four oblasts it now occupies and maybe even turn over Crimea.
And here I thought that only Hillary Clinton was this wigged out.
Thanks for the Spinelli link.
It’s fun to watch the Italian TV news these days (good old RAI News 24, the Italian CNN) and see the coverage of the meeting of the century. In Alaska, of all places. The Russian journalists arrived yesterday and were not favorably impressed. Here is a tongue-in-cheek summary by Kommersant’s always amusing Andrei Kolesnikov (in Russian, but machine translating does a good job capturing his natural Russian skepticism):
https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/7960334?from=top_main_2
Buon Ferragosto! If anyone wants to invade (and conquer) Italy, this is the holiday week to do it…..although the current heat wave is enough to exhaust all but the most intrepid attackers. The entire country is shut down (except for the restaurants and cafes, obviously). Tomorrow night, we will celebrate by having dinner in a recently opened all-organic azienda agricola trattoria across the valley. Doing our bit to support the local economy and enjoy life.
About boys with no sense of purpose.
Almost every public hiring agency, where the good long term career building jobs are has some variant of this: “Women and minorities encouraged to apply.”
Ian Carroll did a masterful job of describing how Blackrock ends up controlling 80% of the proxy voting of world corporations, to and including forcing DEI through their boardrooms into their hiring policies.
Ian Carroll the real Blackrock
https://pic.x.com/Gsj3BYNZtm
A continuation of the plastic surgery discussion, NY Times perspective
Does Your Face Need Work? She’ll Tell You.
Looks like archive.ph hasn’t captured this one, just the intro.
I can never imagine that, thankfully.
I think IM Doc has pointed out in the past that people don’t necessarily understand what they’re playing at when they get work done, and there are real long term consequences that you’re stuck with.
America really is a vapid country.
Check out Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance (2024). It’s a bit cloying in some ways, but a pretty hard-hitting and politically incorrect slam of the USian obsession with the image of youth.
It seems like German made things have declined in quality all across the board. :)
https://www.welt.de/politik/deutschland/article689da6e7f3b33007198415e0/Innenminister-Dobrindt-Der-importierte-Judenhass-nimmt-zunehmend-eine-bedeutende-Rolle-ein.html
“Imported hatred of Jews is playing an increasingly significant role.”
Putin is typing up a nuclear arms treaty to give Trump his Russia deal. Outlined in Politico… https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/08/14/heres-the-big-deal-trump-and-putin-could-actually-reach-in-alaska-00508946
Essentially, Trump has no grand deal in Ukraine. But no pesky allies to bother with in a bilateral deal. Instead he is promoting a separate peace with Russia. As this occurs, Ukraine and Europe are alone with Russia…Trump will be throwing them under the bus.
I generally dislike Trump. But an arms treaty with Russia is good. Regardless of Trump.
Can anyone think of a reason Trump wouldn’t?
anyone hate arms control agreements?
Weren’t the previous governments of Biden and Trump insisting that China had to sign and abide by such a treaty, otherwise no deal done?
Trump does. Back in 2019 he withdrew the US from the INF nuclear treaty that went all the way back to 1987. Why did he do that? Probably because he had been told that the US had the nuclear drop on Russia so now was the time to cash it. Only they didn’t and it was the Russians that have the drop on the US-
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-49198565
“Vladimir” reading, while Trump winged it, having listened to the same translator simultaneously with the rest of the world. Not possible that even if they had been given a copy, Trump would have read it.
“Especially you…” must have been Sergey Viktorovich. Rude
Yes, it felt that the Russians have the drop on the US.
I channel surfed before and after. From Fox to MSDNC, it can be summed up as:
It was obvious. It was shameful. Most of it clearly followed a script the way RW radio used to. They were so frustrated that these two men walked off in peace, unconcerned by their questions. At 3 AM on Tuesdays, do they gather together to conjure John McCain?
Precisely, HMP.
US journalists seem unable to utter the name ‘Putin’ without appending a string of epithets: dictator murderer, war criminal.
Odd, that they don’t do the same for Netanyahu.
If I were inclined towards the art of drawing, I’d draw up a scene of McCain raging in the fourth ring of Hell, while Satan himself comforts him.
A new entry in the emerging field of slightly skeptical media coverage of AI. This is admittedly a big change from even 6 months ago, but still comically underestimates the likelihood that AI will turn out to be the most recent bubble in the long line of tech bubbles we’ve seen this millennium.
Sadly, this tepid critical analysis seems to take for granted most of the assumptions that AI ‘gurus’ are making, and just takes little bites around the edges, e.g.:
In other words, of course everyone is going to start using AI and it’s going to work perfectly, but certain normal business mishaps may still occur. The idea that the whole thing is a huge scam based on fundamentally flawed technology is evidently still an unthinkable thought.
The problem is that the AI bubble is far more dangerous than self-driving cars or cryptocurrency or web 3.0 or NFTs because the half dozen or so tech companies that hold up the entire US stock market (and their investors and supporters) are making vast and patently absurd financial bets that will be ruinous to the whole economy when they come crashing down.
re: Ukraine front
Moon of Alabama with interview excerpt:
“The Ukrainian Soldier … is just not there.”
August 15, 2025
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2025/08/the-ukrainian-soldier-is-just-not-there.html#more
“(…)
Pulling these forces from other parts of the frontline will leave holes in those parts for Russian forces to further attack through. The breakthrough will thus be repeated elsewhere. This process can be repeated and repeated until the whole Ukrainian defense breaks down and the army retreats in panic.
Only a few of the western defense analysts have seen this coming. One is Konrad Muzyka of Rochan Consulting. He has good relation with many Ukrainian officers and has regularly visited units at the frontline.
Below are excerpts from a long interview with him that was published yesterday in Rzeczpospolita, the Polish ‘paper of record’.
Ukraine lacks troops, not equipment
Excerpts (machine translated, edited for clarity):
(…)”
Only a few of the western defense analysts have seen this coming, because they all bought nonsensical numbers suggesting that attrition works the other way around. They all got high on their own supply. Or maybe they saw it coming but kept their mouths shut, in order to get the paycheck.
To jump on “the AI apocalypse will not be terminator/skynet” bandwagon, I would suggest that the easiest endgame is a world in which a generation of c-suite occupants are hired contingent upon their signing away the rights to their output as training material for their eventual AI replacements. The same would be done with their governmental equivalents at every level. Unlike the various superbrain scenarios, this would be fundamentally doable with current technology and software. I mean, what AI nerd doesn’t think themselves capable of assembling a functional equivalent of Trump or Biden, of Cook or Dimon. They’d be cheaper, easier to sandbox out of world domination, and physically less grid dependent. Integrate cute kitten videos and your Apocalypse Meow will allow the populace to go down smiling.
If you want to see where the trend of “AI companions” is likely heading, I can strongly recommend Fukada Kôji’s Sayonara (2016):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifzmYpSWXlc (trailer, 2:08)
This film explores something completely different from usual Hollywood depictions of an imagined future with AGI, and IMO is much closer to what is happening now. Aside from having a moving and poetic story (I won’t give any spoilers), this is the first film to include a gynoid performing with a human actress (Bryerly Long). It may be a little difficult to find, but it is really worth tracking down.
Thanks.
Camera looks good. I just hope they haven´t messed it up by plastering it with that score 🙃
Synopsis from his latest “Love on Trial” (2025):
“A rising J-Pop idol named Mai finds her career in jeopardy when she falls in love, violating the “no dating” clause in her contract.”