Music box made in Geneva around 1780, depicting a tightrope walker
— Science girl (@gunsnrosesgirl3) May 11, 2025
Could Ditching Elections Save Democracy? Boston Review
Waymo granted first permit to begin testing autonomous vehicles in New York City CNBC
Busy Beaver Hunters Reach Numbers That Overwhelm Ordinary Math Quanta Magazine
13 Years Without Rain. How Drought May Have Toppled the Maya SciTech Daily
COVID-19/Pandemics
Scientists Are Fighting Future Pandemics With a Secret Weapon: Airplane Toilets Popular Mechanics
Getting a Covid shot this fall could be a lot more complicated Politico
Climate/Environment
Climate Change Is Bringing Legionnaire’s Disease to a Town Near You Wired
Licence to burn: Victoria is changing the way it deals with rubbish – is it moving too fast? The Guardian
China?
🇨🇳China is building biggest and fastest high-speed rail network in the world
How many rail line are there? 24? pic.twitter.com/OqaYvOQKQF
— Lord Bebo (@MyLordBebo) August 23, 2025
80 years on, Japan’s wartime denial still shadows China-Japan ties CGTNChina’s ‘super embassy’ in London sparks spy panic RT
Global South: Trump is playing into China’s hands Le Monde
Taiwan’s energy dependence is ‘Achilles heel’ amid immense threat by China Fox News
China’s new flying-wing stealth drone rivals US B-2 in scale in leaked images Interesting Engineering
South of the Border
Ecuador is rolling out the welcome mat for U.S. troops. Washington should ignore the invitation. The American Conservative
Trump, Venezuela and China’s Latin America advance Asia Times
US remittances to Mexico at lowest since 2022 Andolu Agency
Violence in Colombia: Deadly twin attacks expose country’s deep security crisis El Pais
Africa
The 10 fastest-growing trading nations in Africa Business Insider
European Disunion
Europe burns as deadly infernos tear through Spain and Portugal in worst wildfire season on record Daily Mail
Europe’s Eclipse of Intelligence – Diplomacy Finn Andreen
After the Alaska Summit, Europe’s Moment of Truth The National Interest
With MAGA’s help, Europe’s far-right marches into the mainstream Axios
Old Blighty
UK’s Farage sets out plan for ‘mass deportation’ of asylum seekers Jerusalem Post
Israel v. Gaza, Yemen, Lebanon, Syria, Iran
Famine has officially been declared in Gaza.
It’s not famine. It’s forced starvation.
And forced starvation is an act of genocide. pic.twitter.com/0HXZyYgHzU
— Mohamad Safa (@mhdksafa) August 22, 2025
Israeli army database suggests at least 83% of Gaza dead were civilians +972
LIVE: Israel kills over 70 in Gaza as UN warns of famine ‘survival crisis’ Al Jazeera
Classified IDF Intel Reveals 83% of Palestinians Killed in Gaza Are Civilians ScheerPost
New Not-So-Cold War
Trump: I may let Russia and Ukraine fight it out The Telegraph
Hungary, Slovakia fear oil cuts after Ukrainian attack on Russian pipeline Al jazeera
Once a top backer, Poland fades from Ukraine peace talks amid domestic turmoil Kyiv Independent
Brief Frontline Report – August 22nd, 2025 Marat Khairullin Substack
Big Brother Is Watching You Watch
Tornado Cash Case Sparks Culture of Fear Among Privacy Tool Developers CCN
Trump and Palantir Build Unified Federal Database Amid Privacy Risks WebProd News
Imperial Collapse Watch
Trump’s plan for DC homeless is giving San Francisco deja vu BBC
Rep. Mike Lawler floats bill to charge fentanyl trafficking as attempted murder NY Post
F/A-18 Crisis: String Of Crashes Rocks US Navy & Allies; What’s Going Wrong With Hornet Fighter Family? The EurAsian Times
Trump 2.0
Trump’s Acquisition of Stake in Intel Highlights Similiarities Between Right-Wing Nationalist and Left-Wing Socialist Economic Policies The Volokh Conspiracy
Trump mobilizing up to 1,700 National Guard troops in 19 states to widen crime and immigration crackdown Independent
Trump blames renewable energy for rising electricity prices. Experts point elsewhere AP
Trump’s Attacks on Institutions Threaten a Bulwark of Economic Strength NY Times
Trump’s FBI Raid of John Bolton’s Home Looks Like a “Five-Alarm Fire” The New Republic
Tariffs
Trump’s aluminum tariffs impact Wisconsin foundry, local manufacturing jobs NBC.
From earlier in the month, still germane:Europe to halt postal services to US after tax deal scrapped Euronews
Fearing Customs Chaos, DHL Joins Others in Suspending U.S. Shipments New York Times
Musk Matters
Musk set to pay $500 million to 6,000 workers fired without severance after his Twitter takeover The Independent
Democrat Death Watch
Playbook: Can Dems talk their way out of the wilderness? Politico
Democrats alarmed over new data showing voters fleeing to GOP The Hill
Immigration
National Guard mobilizing up to 1,700 troops in 19 states amid immigration, crime crackdown NY Post
The Legal Labyrinth of Immigrant Detention The Regulatory Review
Our No Longer Free Press
RSF calls on National Guard to respect press freedom while deployed in Washington, DC ifex
Pritzker signs bill to protect freedom of press, Illinois journalists WCIA.com
Mr. Market Is Moody
Dollar falls against every major currency as US stocks post worst global underperformance since 1993 Cryptopolitan
The US housing market’s historic slump could send inflation plummeting in the coming year Business Insider
U.S. unemployment claims surge to nearly 2 million, the most in almost 4 years Fortune
AI
The Trillion-Dollar AI Bubble Nobody Sees Coming technobezz
The role of predictive AI warfare in Gaza has been catastrophic, and is a perfect showcase of the mass digital surveillance system that Big Tech and the security state have built finally being used for targeted assassinations and mass slaughter. pic.twitter.com/wFCfAEwcOh
— Chris Hedges (@ChrisLynnHedges) July 14, 2025
Google games numbers to make AI look less thirsty The Register (Kevin W)
AI chatbot therapy is becoming a weird trend and it’s full of red flags Cryptopolitan
Elon Musk unveils Macrohard AI project that could ‘simulate Microsoft’s entire operations’ Interesting Engineering
The Bezzle
Interpol recovers $100m in Africa cybercrime sweep on crypto miners and scam networks DL News
Guillotine Watch
Virgin Galactic announced they will be selling tickets to travel to space this summer 😳
Ticket price: $450,000 For 90 Minutes
Initial Deposit: $150,000 (25k non refundable)
Pay remaining $300,000 before you fly pic.twitter.com/xeeHWeByMk
— Shannonnn sharpes Burner (PARODY Account) (@shannonsharpeee) June 26, 2023
Blue Origin takes you to space (100km, 350,000ft) and allow passengers to float in zero gravity for a few mins before returning back. You need to deposit 150,000$ to begin the process to reserve a seat for the 11 min flight. Tickets are said to cost between 500,000-1 mill $+ https://t.co/Zaxve127Pc pic.twitter.com/wyXxwNRdux
— Mauman (@mauman707) April 15, 2025
Antidote du jour (via)
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here
“African Union endorses campaign to finally fix the maps that massively understate how big the continent really is”
Not just Africa. Everywhere-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLqC3FNNOaI (3:57 mins)
True story…Last night I was wanting to check out a world map and I told myself, “And I need one that gets the size of Africa correct to know it’s good.”
Then I saw all the stories about this breaking knews and it put a smile on my face.
The Gall–Peters Projection may be just what you need-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gall%E2%80%93Peters_projection
Damn, Africa is huge.
It’s “knews” for those of us “in the know”. 🙃
Check out this perspective:
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/africa-share.jpg
Bucky Fuller, who was able to look at things with a new and unique perspective, had a (wait for it) dymaxion map of the world. Decades and decades ago.
https://www.bfi.org/about-fuller/big-ideas/dymaxion-map/
If you want to read a great book, “Critical Path”. I had the great fortune to hear him speak circa time the book came out. Sadly, so often, we seem heel bent for leather to consistently take the wrong path!
Critical Path with Kiyoshi Kuromiya, adjuvant.
St. Martin’s Press, New York City, New York. ©1980, hardback; paperback.
Find Critical Path here
Tellingly, in the above linked article the accompanying photo of the map is cropped and has Africa cut off.
And there is always something new coming out of it.
As in, who would have predicted that Russia would have its own Afrika Korps?
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/map-true-size-of-africa/
https://thetruesize.com/#?borders=1~!MTUyODU5MDg.MjQwNzQ5Ng*NTc1NjM5(MjgyNTYzOQ~!CONTIGUOUS_US*MTAwMjQwNzU.MjUwMjM1MTc(MTc1)MQ~!IN*NTI2NDA1MQ.Nzg2MzQyMQ)Mg~!CN*OTkyMTY5Nw.NzMxNDcwNQ(MjI1)Mw
When I was in high school there was this wide map of the world on the wall in one of my classes and what made it special, was it had 2 New Zealand’s for some reason-one in it’s proper place, and another on the other side of the map. Nobody caught the error, I suppose.
We had that too. I think it was just to give you a reference point to show where it continued on the other side.
And overlaps
Truth be said, I was ok with a couple New Zealand’s, now a couple of Haiti’s, maybe not.
Presumably, they added the duplicate strip to keep the tip of the Aleutians on the same side of the map as the rest of Alaska and didn’t want half a NZ?
And all of these projections are concentrated on issues of representing land areas. I’ve yet to see a world map that gets across the fact that the earth’s surface is 75% water.
Gee, I feel so under represented.
There have always been plenty of equal-area world map projections to choose from, but there is no map projection that can depict the whole surface of the Earth without severe distortion.
Rather than trying to choose one type of world map for a classroom, better to make sure that every classroom (or better still, every desk) has a globe. Kids should be taught that maps are tools, each kind best used for its intended purpose.
Come to think of it, the rotatable orthographic world view in Google Earth, when fully zoomed out, isn’t too bad. It helps to convey the main idea.
Looking back at my own schooling, in Canada during the 1970’s and ’80’s, I see that the cartography instruction was deficient. I didn’t get introduced to the problems of map projection until senior high school geography (which was an optional course.)
At the elementary school level, when I was growing up in east end Montreal, there had been a lack of equipment. There was but one globe in the whole school, which we weren’t allowed to touch, and only a couple of atlases, which always seemed to getting pulled away.
The atlases themselves were okay. For example, one of the atlases on my shelf today is a 1969 Hammond Canadian school edition, which has several pages duly explaining the most common map projections and their trade-offs. It’s not like the guys who made the atlas wanted to make people think that Baffin Island is the size of Argentina!
I suspect, though, that most of my school teachers at that time had themselves received little instruction in cartography. I do remember my fifth grade teacher once warning us that, “Canada is big, but not that big.” But that’s as far as things went.
For me it was part of elementary school geography (in Cold War Eastern Europe). Analogy with flattening an orange peel is something that was easy enough to understand. Even then just the look at various projections made me realize that inaccuracy in sizes looks better than inaccuracy in shapes.
Europe burns as deadly infernos tear through Spain and Portugal in worst wildfire season on record.
Portugal and Spain have enjoyed a very rainy spring this year (records broken) resulting in larger than usual growth of herbs and cereals. This might have resulted in lots and lots of dried straws this summer that might have facilitated the fires. This is my working hypothesis and i would suggest that straw clearing before fire season would be advisable.
Saw some video clips from Spain and they were pretty bad. One had a fire crew caught when flames turned direction and their truck died. They made it out but one was burned pretty bad. It looks like something out of a bad Aussie bushfire season. I understand that France has sent more than 60 firefighters with trucks and two plane to help out here.
Yeah Rev. It made me recall the terrible fires in Australia.
I understand that there are a lot of Eucalyptus trees in Spain with them making up about 28% of the forests in the Spanish region of Galicia alone. I bet that they did not help-
https://livesandtimesblog.com/2018/03/19/galicia-against-the-eucalyptus-remedying-an-australian-curse/
Stuff the timber and pulp industry, they gotta be culled.
AKA the ‘Gasoline Tree’. Also played a major role in the massive 1991 Firestorm disaster in the Oakland hills.
Had a rare summer thunderstorm in the foothills yesterday, with almost no interval between lightning & thunder, and enough rain to wet all surfaces thoroughly, unleashing the smells of nature-not nourished by falling water for the past 5 months.
Had a few lightning strike fires happen locally, and within an hour C-130’s had made quick work of what was called the Salt Fire, all 2 acres of it.
As they say in the biz… if it generates a flame, it will be named!
I wondered if your elevation got your share. Quite the tempest on my side of the ridge. More to come on Monday but today is back to sweaty.
Lotsa little fires all over the western slopes of the Sierra, the Little Fire in the Kern River Canyon not being so little @ 2,500 acres and scant containment.
p.s.
This myriad of lightning strike fires gives you an idea of what it was like before we claimed California as ours, in that there would be nothing to stop them whatsoever in Elysieran Fields on high and they might burn out early or go until they ran out of fuel in rocky areas.
What an effective cleaning out system Mother Nature had going on, nothing ever got too overgrown as everything was susceptible to fire in a big way. forget about trees getting purchase and becoming as clogged as it is now in the forest, where too many areas look like an amateur gardener growing carrots and planted them way too close to one another, resulting in waif-y carrots and too much foliage up top.
Allow me to shed a tear in solidarity with the perennial warmonger John Bolton. I really hope they don’t have to waterboard him to get him to confess.
Trump coy on raid of critic John Bolton’s house: ‘I could know about it. I could be the one starting it’, Fortune. Full quote, emphasis mine,
“I could know about it. I could be the one starting it. I’m actually the chief law enforcement officer. But I feel that it’s better this way,” Trump said.
Where was The New Republic’s outrage when the Biden Justice Department went after critics of U.S. foreign policy (e.g. the raid on Scott Ritter’s home or the raid on and subsequent prosecution of three leaders of the African People’s Socialist Party)? [1,2]
Now that the FBI raids the home and office of a member of the establishment and distinguished servant of the war machine like Bolton, the same deed somehow becomes evidence of “an escalation of authoritarian power.”
[1] https://scheerpost.com/2024/08/10/cn-condemns-fbi-raid-on-cn-columnists-home/
[2] https://www.democracynow.org/2022/8/10/black_socialist_chairman_fbi_raid_response
Well, if the rabid neocons aren’t safe, who is?
So where’s the circular firing squad when you need it?
They were too efficient at their last gig. Advertisements in the usual venues are seeking replacements now.
Alas, in the case of a dyed in the wool neocon like Bolton, even the water torture would avail us naught.
His cohort has been so trained in “thought control” that he probably has lost all sense of what is ‘real’ and what is not.
What should be interesting to find out is who exactly Bolton fronts for, and whether or not this little stunt is a shot at them, through him.
The comments on the Neuralink article are positively glowing, meanwhile I’m just waiting to hear how this device can eventually be remotely turned off or something.
If you don’t pay your monthly bill can they send “Repo Men” to repossess it?
“I’m so happy!”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00dIBvdVYbI
(Invader Zim video clip)
The first episode of the last season of Black Mirror provides a full template for it…
Re; Imperial Collapse, Big Brother, The Beezle, “Defense”… I think this may have been overlooked…
Executive Order 14307—Unleashing American Drone Dominance
The Secretary of Defense, the President of the Export-Import Bank of the United States, the Chief Executive Officer of the United States International Development Finance Corporation, and the Director of the Trade and Development Agency shall, to the maximum extent permitted by law, prioritize and support the export of United States-manufactured civil UAS and related systems through the use of, as appropriate:
(i) direct loans and loan guarantees;
(ii) equity investments and co-financing;
(iii) political risk insurance and credit guarantees;
(iv) technical assistance, feasibility studies, and grant mechanisms;
(v) market access facilitation; and
(vi) any other incentive mechanisms authorized by law.
US spending on UAS (unmanned aerial systems) in 2026 is exponentially higher than fiscal year 2025, and the executive order cited above pushes a very-aggressive timeline for implementation. There is much civilian/military overlap here.
24/7 AI-assisted drone surveillance is coming to your town within a year or two, but so are pizza-delivery drones… it evens-out, right?
I wonder where the parts for all those drones will be manufactured (cough*Chyna*cough). Could this turn out to be another rare earths scenario?
Or might said parts have back doors openable only by Chynese state intruders?
So what you are saying is that Chyna could seize control of all those drones spying on and following ordinary Americans every day of the week and send them to hover instead over every politician and every billionaire in America. Can you imagine the panic in some quarters – and the laughter from everybody else?
I see a big future in American sales of those Russian “anti-drone” shotgun shells.
See, (I know it’s a ‘reddit,’ but scroll down to the comments. Crowdsourcing ideas for anti-drone tactics. Who says America ain’t great.): https://www.reddit.com/r/ForgottenWeapons/comments/1cv9gsm/russia_is_testing_experimental_antidrone_shotgun/
Haven’t watched it myself but here is a video of Russian tests of factory-made 5.45 mm caliber anti-drone buckshot cartridges in case you are interested-
https://www.bitchute.com/video/xHWlpybfJCjI (22:27 mins)
I am going to have to resume practicing my skeet shooting.
Hmmmmm… #4 steel shot good enough?
Oh my, this is the perfect target for an old fashioned 10 gauge goose gun.
I just thought of the scene from the Modern American Financial Thriller program, “Breaking Bad” where our anti-heroes use a giant industrial magnet to wipe the files of a laptop hidden away in the cop shop evidence room, from outside. The Russians have been experimenting with electronic pulse weapons to scramble the electronics of the drones. Not much solid evidence concerning outcomes yet.
A small calibre chain gun might do the trick. But ammo use would be expensive. Even a thousand or so .22 calibre rounds adds up quickly.
Stay safe. Watch the sky!
How about small calibre Gatling gun?
https://x.com/RWApodcast/status/1958488512661000673
https://www.bitchute.com/video/bTZyMX27dxLt
Look no further than the American 180. Every 5th round a tracer, keep it short bursts (you can empty the 275 round mag in less than 5 seconds!) and you have your own “dome”.
It looks a lot like an old WW-1 era Lewis gun.
See: https://military-history.fandom.com/wiki/Lewis_gun
Don’t forget to lead the target.
It’s more of a birdshot. Not because it’s for shooting “ptichki”, but because it’s 4.50 mm.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shotgun_cartridge#Buckshot
I would expect police surveillance drones to generally keep a distance of 100-yards or more, and likely the same minimum altitude for delivery drones. A shotgun can be effective or do the job to 50-yards, maybe a little further if you’re lucky.
But here’s an American-Israeli anti-drone drone that’s highly likely to see immediate deployment by western military units, law enforcement, etc.– meet the Iron Drone.
Oh, this “Iron Drone” is actually super-cheap when it comes to military-grade equipment.
That Iron Drone thing is really neat, thanks for that.
I almost bought a drone a few years ago so I did a lot of research. A local college even had an event at the park with a bunch of them to show. The local police put on a demo with theirs. It was probably close to 3 ft x 3ft square. I would think it would be all about the buckshot and distance with the goal of taking out the propellers. We need some tests. :-)
What I found interesting was how far away the cop drone could be and still read a license plate. I wish I could remember, but it was quite a distance. You would probably not have a clue they were there.
I worry about the armed varieties of drone available to the domestic police forces. As Obama self-described as the “Droner Warrior-in-Chief” from his overseeing of drone assassination campaigns overseas, expect exactly this ‘tactic’ to be implemented officially here in the Homeland soon.
Well, the legend says that US satellites have been reading license plate since forever. :) It should be expected that a modern drone could do it without coming in the rock-throwing range.
Trump’s Acquisition of Stake in Intel Highlights Similiarities Between Right-Wing Nationalist and Left-Wing Socialist Economic Policies – The Volokh Conspiracy
“F.A. Hayek warned about the same tendency in his 1960 essay “Why I am Not a Conservative”:
[T]his nationalistic bias… frequently provides the bridge from conservatism to
collectivism: to think in terms of “our” industry or resource is only a short step away
from demanding that these national assets be directed in the national interest.”
Economists in the serivice of various types of empirialists over the centuries can’t have countries thinking their resources ahould be used to help the people of the country.
Much better for them that it’s all pillage for a global elite.
Yes. All I took from the article is that all political tendencies other than crackpot “libertarianism” itself, have in common the fact that they deviate from crackpot “libertarianism”.
The reason I scare quote libertarianism is that for all the blathering about some sort of liberty, it always turns out that any form of political democracy gets tossed overboard as the only way to safeguard the economic agenda. So we end up with the coup in Chile or Yeltsin shelling the parliament and suspending the constitution to continue with shock therapy.
A peculiar form of liberty that can only be secured via dictatorship.
Murray Bookchin always insisted on calling them Propertarians because they’re about private property rights rather than human liberty. Libertarianism is properly anarchism as in the Spanish CNT’s cry of “viva el communismo libertario!” when they would pull off a temporary revolution in some little town.
The Trillion-Dollar AI Bubble Nobody Sees Coming – technobezz
Ed Zitron: (clears throat loudly)
It really stands out that this does not reference Ed Z. Same with others catching on in 2025.
“A US Teenager Has Been Locked in an Israeli Prison, With No Trial, for 6 Months. Where’s the Outrage?”
Same place as the outrage for Gonzalo Lira is to be found. Biden let him be killed because he would not haul the Ukraine over the coals and embarrass them, even though all it would have taken was a simple phone call. And this kid could also be killed by the Israelis but Trump would fob his death off by saying ‘I haven’t heard that’ if asked.
The ‘totally braindead’ administration.
Several years ago my neighbor spent two years in the LA County jail waiting for trial. When the judge reviewed the arrest record he threw out all but one minor offence and lectured the arresting deputies for a host of violations. Two years with no trial and no compensation. At least he didn’t die in there.
“Where’s the outrage?” If you want to be outraged by a legal system you don’t have to look abroad for that. And LA County is far from the worst.
Like with much of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, the Sixth Amendment’s right to a speedy trial seems more suggestive than reality with the courts themselves finding ways to make them suggestions.
Blue Origin selling space flight like Miller selling cheap beer.
I need to get one of those jumpsuits for my wife.
Something along these lines?
https://www.amazon.com.au/Hengzhifeng-Astronaut-Costume-Coverall-Jumpsuit/dp/B09BDCW4S6/ref=asc_df_B09BDCW4S6
Set phasers for fun.
Lol, nope. The flaring “boot cut” ankle cuffs are a must.
Cue up the Ohio Players.
Or get one for Halloween.
IDK, will it make me look fat?
But if your wife ever asks that, the answer is always and forever more a definite ‘No! Of course not.’
(signed) a married man.
Now that’s diplomacy.
No, that’s survival. :)
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Cavendish
Slipping on banana peels where the grapes of wrath are stored
We have let loose the fateful sweet white 9 inch white sword
Neo-Anchuria is marching on
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Business as unusual is marching on
I have seen Banana Republics in the 3rd world-not here
They have built Edifice Wrecks empty of all cheer
One financial bubble after another, the reasoning not clear
Business as unusual is marching on
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Business as unusual is marching on
In the beauty of his thinking tariffs were borne across the sea
With a resultant inflation that effects you and me
As he tried to make us understand it’s a non-negotiable fee
Business as unusual is marching on
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
My Gawd, what is going on?
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
My Gawd, what is going on?
Battle Hymn of the Republic
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jy6AOGRsR80&list=RDJy6AOGRsR80
er…. Macrohard vs Microsoft…. that’s a sex joke, right? / ;)
I added that to my file of jokes to keep. Good one!
Re: “Israel v. Gaza, Yemen, Lebanon, Syria, Iran”
Which has me wondering: how are surprise attacks to date topped?
Could the next be some kind of attempted Greater Israel Blitzkrieg, where it, along with proxies and assorted global enablers, does moves on all five at the same time?
Torah, Torah, Torah!
“We’ll run wild in the Levant for a year, but then….”
Lewinsraum?
Channeling your inner Yamamato?
…more whats inner yarmulke
I have also wondered if the Gaza mobilization underway is cover for another preemptive round against Iran. Currently some Israeli colleagues who are on active reserve are away from work for a few weeks during the mobilization. I believe the Knesset is still on recess but since everything is a state of exception now in Israel it probably doesn’t make a difference to go back on ‘war’ footing against official state rivals.
Still no alternative to Netanyahu on the horizon. The general strike a week-ish ago is widely seen as a dud, it didn’t stop the Gaza mobilization. I don’t know if Smotrich/Ben Gvir’s settler faction really have the numbers to win an election if Netanyahu’s government really does collapse but there is an intense sense of fatalism among my Israeli colleagues about the future. It’s vacation season currently though; lots of absences for the next two weeks. If they do issue another flight stoppage into Ben Gurion any time soon there will be a lot of stranded Israelis outside the country for a while again.
Elon Musk Says Success Comes Down To ‘Simple Math.’ Putting In 100 Hours A Week Means You’ll Achieve Twice As Much As Those Working – 50 Benzinga
Simple math sans simple brain chemistry.
The Ketamine is to help him get through the second 50 hours.
It’s not an amphetamine.
He’s not talking about doing 100 hrs yourself! He’s talking about getting all your minions to put in 100 hrs. That’s what the Dear Leader personality cult is for. Well that, and getting the rubes to inflate your stock valuations.
You have to allow for Elon-Dad time with his mini-me.
2-1 = 200 Proof
I’ll think to that~
I’ve never seen this work in practice. I guess there are people who could maintain focus and productivity over that period of time. In theory that gives you about 10 non-working hours each day. Assume you take minimal breaks for food and waking non-work. Assume you sleep 7 hours each night. You probably have 1-2 hours a day to relax. But sooner or later, your productivity will start to crater and your ability to complete tasks will expand to the amount of time you have to do them. Or you will crash out in terror fueled haze of sleep deprivation and anguish.
The only people I’ve heard of surviving for extended periods with that kind of demand on them were individuals under siege. Literally those survivors of siege warfare. I can’t imagine what it takes to recover from that experience.
I can’t imagine what it takes to recover from that experience.
Years. I did it for 7-months at that pace, and lost approximately 70lbs. It took a lot of booze after that to “sleep” more than 6-hours a night, for several years following. You can become seriously addicted to the adrenaline rush that danger and threats bring, and when you don’t have war you might be inclined to get your fix via other means in order to feel “normal” again.
100-hour work-weeks guarantee a crash, sooner or later— could take years, but something WILL give.
Worst I have ever survived was 6 months of 72 hour work weeks. 6 days a week, 12 hours a day. Adding another 28 hours each week to that feels absurd. And even then it took me a year to get myself back to right with friends, family, and my health. Musk’s flippant comment is too insane to ne taken seriously unless you’re already crazy.
Did that for too many years, as a lawyer on Wall Street doing complex financial transactions such as securitizations and structured derivatives. Get up at 6:05 to catch the train to NYC, work till, say, 10 pm, get home around 11 pm and bless my sleeping kids in their beds, crash. Have a nightmare in which I’ve made some terrible mistake or forgotten some key deadline, wake up at 3 am or thereabouts, needing some time to realize it’s just a nightmare; when I’ve realized that, I’m truly awake and don’t get back to sleep until almost 6:00. Then have to get up at 6:05 again.
Mistakes happen on that schedule because your brain begins to fail, with the higher functions such as analysis, reason, and logic going first (it prioritizes basic survival functions0. Also you can get walking pneumonia (I did). It really doesn’t make sense. It’s just some kind of neverending hazing ritual. If Musk is doing that himself, his decisions are probably not grounded in waking reality. If he’s forcing it on subordinates, the same, leading to systemic problems.
As an autist, I can tell you that it’s very hard to slow the brain down. When it gets its hooks in something it’ll just keep going and going. The deeper down the rabbit hole it is, the more things like sleep and sustenance fall by the wayside. Analyzing, information and data gathering, extrapolating, hypothesizing, evaluating, gaming, predicting, inferring, just non-stop hyperactive cogitating about anything and everything. Frankly it’s a burden when you’re three steps ahead of everyone else and no one understands how you got there.
That being said, the more complex the topic it gets its hooks into, the better, because the more interesting the results will be. It’s why folks like Mr. Musk are able to achieve such interesting results. Heinlein wrote of landing and reusing rockets long ago, but everyone was too afraid to try until Musk came along. Many folks laid a lot of groundwork along the way (I got to see the Armadillo Aerospace NG Lunar Lander Challenge attempt in Cado Mills years ago), but Musk put it all together. Same with electric cars; they were around over 100 years ago, but Musk made them current (so to speak) and perhaps the future.
Thing is, he doesn’t seem to get that not everyone has the autistic gifts he has that allow such things. An easy bind spot for the intelligent. I certainly have no desire to go to Mars, but the company I work for is smart enough to use me to open new stores in new markets and make them successful very quickly (and some weeks I’ll work 70+ hours). I’ve been learning about management and project management, but if I had my druthers and the U.S. was smart enough I’d rather be administering a Moonbase, or at least Lunar efforts to tap the resources and energy found on the Moon for the benefit of humanity so that we can slow down the tearing up of the ecosphere here on my beloved home planet Earth.
And yes, I do have a Masters degree in Space Studies from ISU to back it up (cum laude, which pissed off a lot of engineers and scientists given I went there from my position as Wall Street credit analyst for a major foreign bank that had just merged with an investment bank and I knew the aftermath wasn’t going to be pretty. MSS6, class of 2001 if anyone wants to check).
I guess my TL/DR takeaway is autists can be obnoxious and have poor social graces, but if you can find a way to tap their gifts you can achieve amazing and unexpected results. Autism is not an illness, but rather a subtle gift to humanity IF it can be properly tapped.
As Temple Grandin said, if there had been no autistic people we would all be sitting outside a cave at night, socialising round a fire.
Sounds like being on a warship at sea. You have your 6 day 0800-1600 work day + watchstanding 4 on 8 off + special evolutions (training, GQ, refueling, etc). I hated 4-8 watches as they typically insisted on dogging the watch so you never stood the watch the same time day after day. If I had the “mids” (0000-0400) I would rather have that every day so I could get a sleep pattern.
Of course on Sunday you look for down time, but typically have to UNREP or VERTREP to bring the “holy helo” aboard with the Chaplain.
The real question to people like Elon Musk or Bill Gates is what is work? (Bill was another guy that wanted his underlings to give it their all.)
Is it the kind of grueling factory labor in a protective suit and breathing gear in an enclosed space using nasty chemicals, hard physical, but detailed work that leaves bodies pretty much spent by age 50? Cause I’ve seen that – and I’ve seen what happens when those people are asked to work overtime as much as legally possible. Is it being deployed on a ship or a far location, and being in danger while on patrol or on the flight deck during air ops and coming back after a tour physically and mentally dulled to a thousand yard stare? Cause there isn’t even really overtime there – just do what you gotta do to get thru it – I’ve seen that too.
Or is it office work in a nice building with a full bathroom a short walk away and a support staff ready to cater to your every need? Cause I’ve seen that too, and I’d take it every chance I get. Heck, if I’m designing something or writing code, I think about it while in the shower, or riding the bike into work, and it’s actually pretty fun and productive, but it’s not how more than 90% of working America gets the job done.
Democrats are alarmed that “you can only have one increment at a time” while they lard up the excrements to the grifting class is leaving a mark
The penultimate quote meant to inspire hope…oops not that…lets say a path forward…
“We need to make sure that while we fix it, we don’t only fight the last war and not be attuned to things possibly changing again,” Vale said. “Because we have already seen in a lot of polling that younger people, Latino and African American men are souring on Trump, and that can be something that can be the leading edge of winning them back registration-wise.”
So “…but trump” may actually start working at some nebulous point in the future.
Whew. O.K.,
adding on the header democrat deathwatch, greg sargent needs therapy but really should have minded the axiom that the guiler shall himself beguiled be and so should adam schiff and letitia james. Not to mention that the people who paraded dick cheney for that wine bar/brunch lady are shredding their fingernails due to injustice being borne by John Bolton?
i got an increment for you right here…wait…let me dig it out of the trash bin…it’s a kleenex drenched with crocodile tears.
Because we have already seen in a lot of polling…, lol, have these people forgotten how to think for themselves?
Thomas Frank’s 2018 Harpers essay is worth a read. The first part of the essay is about T’s manifold failings as pres. The second part of the essay is about the Dem party’s manifold failings as the party of scolds (it’s become) to attract new voters.
Four More Years
The Trump reelection nightmare and how we can stop it
by Thomas Frank
https://harpers.org/archive/2018/04/four-more-years-2/
Listening to Carville browbeat Dem voters is a real morale booster …not.
Can anyone name for me something long sought after that the Democrat Party _has_ delivered?
I can’t. Like, seriously, I cannot.
Card-check? No.
Universal healthcare? No.
Public option? No.
Expanding safety “nets”? No. (Rescinded as soon as possible because deficits.)
Antitrust? Yes, partially, with the bulwark of the party ferociously against it.
Inflation? No.
I’m forgotten dozens of things here no doubt.
Oh, a codified right to abortion? lol, no.
The Democrat Party lost its way, such as it was, in the 1940s and 1950s with the purging of the radical Left, and the later adoption of PMC class consciousness.
The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994? The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996?
There are some things long sought after that only Democrats can deliver.
Trump theory of reality: If you can’t measure it, then it isn’t there.
Trump wants NASA to burn a crucial satellite to cinders, killing research into climate change
If a tree falls in a forest and Trump is not around to hear it, does it make a sound?
The only way this makes sense is that the Trump regime, in order to Make America Great Again, will let American industries pollute all they want with no restrictions whatsoever. It will be like the early 20th century before the Clean water and Clean Air Acts came in. But sure as hell he does not want it to happen that you have a US satellite picking up the changes to the climate caused by those polluting industries and it being published. It’s like getting rid of a potential future witness.
My wife vividly recalls going to Niagara Falls NY in the 60’s to see relatives and everybody knew it as ‘Stink City’ and the air would change hues on you every visit. none of it naturally.
Can’t imagine bringing that back, we foisted it on China.
I grew up not far from those plants and took bike rides along the river by those plants.
60 years later you STILL cannot regularly eat fish from Lake Ontario, thanks to dumping from Niagara Falls, Rochester, Syracuse and Hamilton Ontario.
Micron promises it’s 45 million gallons of waste water from its chip fab will be treated. Some of the effluent is proprietary and trade secret. What you don’t know won’t hurt you, right?
On the bright side, if it gets really smoky again, those aerosols would help block some sun rays and the consequent warming. It would be a lot cheaper than spraying sulfur in the stratosphere every two years. And think what a boon it would be for the medical industry with all the childhood asthma, geriatric COPD and middle-aged lung cancer in non-smokers. GDP to the moon! Golden Age!
We have this 400 pound black bear who is the terror of Tiny Town, ‘Ursus Geller’ is the name i’ve bestowed, due to his or her ability to bend 1/2 inch wide metal rods locking down a in theory bear-proof trash bin like it was a teaspoon.
Ursus Geller laughs at our preventive measures, although plans to build trash bins out of 100% Kryptonite are under way.
Pirro Orders Office to Maximize Criminal Charges on Street Arrests, NY Times (archived), August 19. The lede,
The instruction amounts to a declaration that the understaffed U.S. attorney’s office will seek to ramp up criminal charges arising from the president’s takeover of law enforcement in the capital.
Ka-Ching goes the private prison industry. It seems as if they seek to institutionalize/imprison the lot of us. Will DA’s comply? Will they have the manpower?
They’ll hire half of us to imprison the other half.
13 Years Without Rain. How Drought May Have Toppled the Maya SciTech Daily
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Our 5 year drought from 2012 to 2016 was on the verge of getting pretty scary kids, if only another year went on, and this with us having gigantic reservoirs designed to tide us over in such times drawing from our watery savings and loan plan, dams.
13 years of drought (of what turned out to be a 50 year long drought) is about how long the Anasazi lasted before getting the hell outta dodge in the 12th century.
Things were uneven climatically around the world in which truly nobody knew nothing about almost all the rest of the inhabitants of this good orb, and while the Anasazi were chased out of Chaco Canyon and elsewhere, Europeans were in the midst of their 3rd Crusade of many, and when you can equip and send an army to war for centuries, societal collapse due to climate change isn’t an issue in your world.
Can you imagine the American SW without rain for 13 years? They would have to abandon whole chunks of it and evacuate maybe millions of people. And where would they even put them? The Mayans have shown us that it does not matter what sort of society that you have, what buildings you can create or what kind of infrastructure you can establish. You have to have the farms to support it all and provide the surplus for that society to invest. And that only happens if you have the water for those farms to thrive. No water, no food, no civilization.
I doubt the Mayans had over allocated their sources of water as we did the lifeblood of the SW, the Colorado River.
It almost doesn’t matter at this point whether its a good snow year or mediocre or bad-as it’s all over allocated.
I’ve watched Lake Mead shrink to the point where the boat launch ramps are hundreds of yards from actual water.
St George Utah would make a perfect old west ghost town in 2050.
I feel the eye of Sauron moving North, locking on Canada.
At about the same time that things were getting really hard for the Anasazi, much further South, the Tiwanaku culture was collapsing — because of a mega-drought.
And in 1020, yet another Andean civilization, the Sicán, was hit by a 30-years long mega-drought that led to the rejection of the main religion and the elites, the wilful destruction of temples and palaces, and the abandonment of cities. A flood period around 1100 completed the collapse. The survivors moved on and the culture lingered on for a couple of centuries.
While the Anasazi, Tiwanaku, and Sicán were collapsing, another Andean culture, the Chiribaya, was blooming. It collapsed in the 14th century for the converse reason: a period of mega-floods that destroyed their agriculture.
Earlier, the Moche endured both a continuous period of mega-drought from 563 to 594, followed by a period of mega-floods from 602 to 635, leading to the abandonment of cities with the attendant destruction of temples and palaces, continuing with the retrenchment of survivors in heavily fortified villages, followed by about a hundred years of internecine warfare for resources before the remnants of the civilization disappeared completely.
I have a paper examining the Maya and Moche collapses:
Hugo C. Ikehara Tsukayama: Comparación de los procesos de colapso de las sociedades Mochica y Maya, Arkeos – Revista Electrónica de Arqueología, Vol. 1, Nro. 2, Mayo 2006
but I downloaded it a long time ago and it now appears to be solidly behind paywall/registration protections (SciHub is your best bet).
Doesn’t it seem that American civilizations have repeatedly incurred the wrath of Gaia? And isn’t it remarkable how long they resisted supremely adverse climatic conditions before getting dislocated and then collapsing altogether?
Not here though, most of the Yokuts sub-tribes such as the Wukchumni were here for thousands of years, and they were renowned for their woven basketry, and as with all Native Americans in the area-not very warlike.
Make baskets-not war
https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2023/art-of-africa-oceania-and-the-americas/wukchumni-yokuts-large-friendship-basket
Re:Farage mass deportation of Asylum seekers.
The plan is to leave the ECHR, however I think he would also have to leave the UNHCR (which even the USA has signed up for) to make this process legal in our courts. Anyone know if the UK may have the right to backtrack on the 1967 protocol and abide by the 1951 version, which means the rules only apply to Europeans?
Previous racist regimes here have never seriously attempted the deportation, despite promising to do so, they put on a show and then just blame the courts for not letting them. So could this just be another example of using a policy to get elected and then not acting on it?
“Trump: I may let Russia and Ukraine fight it out’
That’s what he is saying but you have to watch what he is doing-
‘The US has approved the sale of 3,350 air-launched ERAM cruise missiles to Ukraine, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday, citing two unnamed US officials.
The munitions, which have a range of up to 280 miles, will reportedly arrive in Ukraine within six weeks. Several US officials told the WSJ that Ukraine would have to seek the Pentagon’s approval when using them.’
https://www.rt.com/news/623463-us-cruise-missiles-ukraine/
No doubt to try and give himself a card to play against Putin. He will say ‘Unconditional ceasefire or I will let the Ukrainians use those missiles.’
Wouldn’t want to be the Ukrainian pilot trying to launch them into Russia though.
ERAM, and the rest of the extended range air to ground stuff are as strategic as Hitler’s V1 and V2’s.
They make headlines and makes useless shock and awe pix.
Russia may respond!
To use them requires kits for the carrier aircraft as well as US targeting support.
Makes USEUCOM and U.S. intel assets part of war, since Feb 2022.
Security of Kiev is Minsk III
More info on ERAM here:
US approves delivery of 3,350 ERAMs to Ukraine https://www.defencetoday.com/air/air-weapons/us-approves-delivery-of-3350-erams-to-ukraine/
AIM/RIM-174 https://www.designation-systems.net/dusrm/m-174.html
And I agree that I don’t see how ERAM is going to do anything to change the outcome in Ukraine.
…with a speed of what, .7Mach?😂
And then 3k? Who came up with that number…
In Germany they call nonsense news in the summer “summer hole news”, because government is not in session during summer they have nothing serious to report.
Today of course everything is summer hole level but not out of lack but for cowardice.
That’s a different ERAM.
USN has generally wanted an anti-surface capability as a secondary role for their surface-to-air missiles. Don’t know anything about the Army’s Typhon, but obviously they have some sort of guidance on it for land attack.
The ERAM discussed by rt.com linking to WSJ is a U.S. knock off of the Russian FAB 3000 with longer range. It was first conceived in Jan 2024.
The 3300 units may include Storm Shadows as substitutes.
It would be a surprise for US to deliver a new system built around 500 poind bombs and integrated with winged body, guidance and the aircraft. Although using JDAM electronic may speed the job.
Does UKR has the planes to launch those missiles? And for how long?
🤡
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/zelensky-signs-decrees-imposing-sanctions-on-putin-s-relatives-kremlin-allies/ar-AA1L5qDy
Zelensky signs decrees imposing sanctions on Putin’s relatives, Kremlin allies
President Volodymyr Zelensky has signed two decrees enacting new sanctions against individuals and entities linked to Russia’s war against Ukraine. The measures, based on decisions by Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, extend restrictions to key figures in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle as well as companies tied to the Kremlin’s war machine.
Among those named are members of Putin’s family and close associates, including his former wife Lyudmila Ocheretnaya, her current husband Artur Ocheretny, Putin’s cousin Mikhail Putin, his nephew Mikhail Shelomov, and Russian ballet master Igor Zelensky, the former husband of Putin’s daughter.
USAF send the “request for information” to the industry in last January, so this thing is still just a glint in the generals’ eyes. The expected production rate, once it gets to production, is supposed to be 500 / year.
It’s quite unlikely the Ukraine these are ordered for won’t exist by the time first batch is ready. And if it does, it won’t have the fighters (or airfields) left to use these.
National Guard mobilizing up to 1,700 troops in 19 states amid immigration, crime crackdown NY Post
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Is the idea of having so many armed troops, almost trying to incite a Kent State incident?
Old saying: “Join the Army; travel to exotic, distant lands; meet exciting, unusual people and kill them”
New: “Join the Army; stay home; visit your neighbors and kill them”
Private Joker.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHVi7bjUGXM&t=38s
Love that movie. One of the best endings in any war film.
To be any more than a photo op, that should be 1700 National Guard troops per city. Then the forces of Law and Order would get ‘er done.
To maximize “efficiency” the Feds will have to move National Guard units off to the other side of the country so that there would not be much attachment to the population being “policed.” That has been the strategy of Imperial Police forces from time immemorial.
Hill folks from the Appalachians might positively enjoy shooting down some of those “uppity” Left Coast protestors.
Re: ‘Japan’s wartime denial.’
It truly amazes me how Japan came up with the manpower to fight this war. And yet, for a period of time, Japan sold more ‘adult diapers’ to survivors than baby diapers. You wouldn’t think that many had survived, but they did.
It wasn’t just China, but Southeast Asia. Ho Chi Minh fought on the side of the allies to defeat them, with the promise of independence from FDR if they would. Unfortunately, FDR died, and Truman reneged on the promise. He wanted a strong France, so turned Vietnam back over to the French. They had no troops present in country, so the Japanese soldiers were returned their weapons to subdue the population until the French arrived. One of the greatest betrayals in history.
58000 American dead later, they got their independence.
Ugh. Chagos Island, Vietnam betrayal. This empire can’t stop appalling me. Supporting a genocide is just business as usual.
FDR died and Churchill got his Cold War on Russia.
Imagine had FDR lived to contain the little Brit with the giant ego.
A totally ignored fact from history. The fiercest underground resistance fighters in Vietnam were the communists. Ditto Spain in the Franco war. Ditto France in WW2, along with Italy, Greece, Yugoslavia, China, etc.
“They had no troops present in country, so the Japanese soldiers were returned their weapons to subdue the population until the French arrived.”
More precisely: “they” meaning the Brits.
In 1945, British troops were sent to occupy Indochina and prepare it for a return to French control, as the French colonial troops had been basically slaughtered by the Japanese from March 1945 onwards in one of the last successful Japanese offensive operations during WWII. Some French survivors made it to China, and indeed the Chinese temporarily occupied a part of Northern Vietnam; they did not like the Japanese and so did disarm them.
Japanese troops were armed and employed by the British in Indonesia the former Dutch East Indies, after the local nationalists declared independence. Apparently, some Japanese soldiers were recommended for medals by the British, which must have made some heads spin. Meantime, hundreds of Japanese soldiers, who reallt did believe in Greater East Asua Co-prosperity and independence of Asian peoples (something that we insist on forgetting) deserted and joined Indonesian independence fighters, fir which they are still remembered fondly there.
In short, the aftermath of WW2 was a mess.
Despite the many flaws that emerged, the Japanese defeat of the European colonial regimes was a turning point in Asian history. The Japanese proved that Asians can defeat Europeans. The myth of the Exceptional White Man was shattered for good.
America is just beginning to learn the same lesson that Europe did after WW-2.
An interesting datapoint in the arms race between Newspapers trying to protect their online content behind paywalls, and the crawlers/scrapers.
I use archive.ph to get around the paywalls on the local fishwrappers. It appears that the AJC has come up with a better mousetrap. Archive.ph still produces a text version of the story, but it is now garbled:
https://archive.ph/2FyWe
(Article is on the Atlanta Falcons last pre-season game.)
The text-garbling looks pretty trivial to figure out, but just annoying enough to make you skip the effort.
Archive.ph still works for other sites. I wonder if the AJC paid some 3rd-party to inject some middleware that detects when archive.ph is scraping, and garbles the text. It could be a nice business model for some small startup.
That’s funny; meanwhile I noticed that disabling JavaScript works again for reading the NY Times free after 5 years of them using some kind of JavaScript lazy loading of the page. I wonder why that change.
I tried disabling JavaScript in Firefox and it doesn’t remove the paywall from AJC.com. And it tends to freeze up other things, like archive.ph itself.
Oh well, thanks for the tip for NY Times.
Afterthought – this is why all these digital entities are cajoling, begging, threatening, etc. to get their users to move off of browsers to “apps.” It’s because an app has more control over the end user and prevents ad-blockers, paywall evasion, and other things.
The original Web was architected in a way that encouraged open exchange of info, and all these paywalls are bolt-ons that can be defeated given enough time and resources.
re: WMDs
The latest newsletter by Dmitry Stefanovich is out!
STRATDELA #37
Summer’s End
https://1dkv.substack.com/p/stratdela-37
some bits on:
Strategic offensive weapons
hypersonics
Post-INF (and other long-range precision weapons)
Early Warning and Missile Defense and Military Space
Military Industry
Arms control, diplomacy and signalling
And another load of very interesting misc hyperlinks which often are the real treasure trove in STRATDELA:
Some stuff on Russia-US arms control priorities should Putin and Trump decide to go that way.
Broader thoughts on Post-INF Post-Moratorium by yours truly.
Some thoughts by me about the latest BRICS declaration [In Russian]
Some comments by a colleague on the future Iranian nuclear challenges [In Russian]
Nice report on NC3 and AI
Facts and figures on Chinese RPOs
Good overview of current state of B-52H maintenance
Updated French Strategic Review
Video from a public event on private actors and space militarization:
Overview of the latest France-UK arrangements
French Nuclear Weapons 2025 notebook
A report on the current and future missile proliferation challenges
A story about day-to-day operations of the US missileers in silos
A piece on the latest British Strategic Defence Review [In Russian]
A story on the Russia-US nuclear degradation
US scholars thoughts on strategic stability
Russian thoughts on Golden Dome
More details on Golden Dome
Overview of Chinese missile we might see during the Parade in early September.
Trump’s Acquisition of Stake in Intel Highlights Similiarities Between Right-Wing Nationalist and Left-Wing Socialist Economic Policies
Both
. . . dangerous similarities between right-wing nationalist and left-wing socialist economic policies. Both favor extensive government control, direction, and – as in this case – even ownership of industry.
I might have thought that socialists more bent on tackling monopolies and not owning “industry.” Owning industries is a task for workers, not government.
The Chinese have done fairly well keeping banking as a public utility. (Water and electric utilities are still in public hands in many places in the US.) Universal health care is needed to free us from the disaster of privatization. Vouchering private education at the expense of our longstanding public versions and putting higher education at the mercy of predatory lending would end with socializing them. We would be spared much environmental depredation perpetrated by an US auto industry, now reduced and largely focused on gas-guzzling trucks, were anything approximating adequate local and continental public transportation put in place. Natural disasters are fast outstripping private insurances coverage capabilities to such an extent as to beg for a supportive public hand. (Dumping FEMA on the States will likely serve to compound disasters’ consequences.) Socialist clearly have a much clearer and just vision of immigration, minority, and gender rights than the brands of western nationalism cropping up. Oh, was it not so that western capitalist democracies railed against threats of international socialism? The late and unlamented national socialism a la the Germans and Italians was monstrously fascist, not socialist.
Those who wish to condemn nationalism are hard-pressed to do so at the expense of socialism–and its targeting of predatory monopolies.
So, no Socialism and Nationalism do not overlap. They are headed in very different directions.
The reason FEMA was created was to handle disasters too big to be handled by an individual state. So dumping it back on the states makes no sense whatsoever.
It really does make sense if your goal is to degrade and diminish the living standards of the general public. (You know them. They make under a million a year.)
Frankly, I’m surprised that Netanyahoo and the IDF haven’t presented these as ‘mercy killings’ to avoid starvation.
There are a lot in the US that would pretend to believe that.
>Trump’s Acquisition of Stake in Intel Highlights Similiarities Between Right-Wing Nationalist and Left-Wing Socialist Economic Policies
If Hayek were alive today, how would he evaluate the development of modern China?
Like any good economist, he’d assume the answer he wanted
Hayek assumes everything is subject to market exchange, which reduces life to a ridiculous poverty only an economist (or oligarch, and then only for the commoners) could find attractive.
Government isn’t a business and businesses aren’t government, and confusing the two distinct forms and functions guarantees neither can work for any meaningful timeframe. The Chinese have built a world beating mixed economy in almost exactly the same timeframe it’s taken Hayekian economics to destroy the previous mixed system.
Since Samuelson and Hayek, economics has been an essentially antisocial ideology oligarchs have funded in their own interests.
Hayek’s “knowledge” problem was running into issues even in 1960s. When he was still alive, Ken Arrow used to joke that if the assumptions behind the General Equilibrium Model were true, markets would apart under the weight of their contradiction because every possible transaction would have been made at the beginning of time. Markets or not, information problem always exists–we don’t know the future and we can’t even figure out what “might” even happen enough to make deals over them.
From Climate Change Is Bringing Legionnaire’s Disease to a Town Near You
(bold mine)
Holy sh1t, it’s almost like COVID, isn’t it? Imagine that, individual public health doesn’t work, surprise.
You mean like say COVID immune dis-regulation? Oops.
How a Ritzy L.A. Enclave Learned a Bitter Lesson About the Limits of Its Wealth (NY Times via archive.ph)
Oops.
(emphasis in original)
Liberal Democrat governance, ladies and gentlemen!
Just imagine when they learn about what COVID does?
It’s truly breathtaking how effectively Biden and liberal Democrats disappeared a Pandemic.
And kind of comical that the dump was a few miles away from all these people and apparently no one bothered to check before buying.
Can anyone name another public health crisis that is currently effecting the entire world? I’ll wait.
Kill. Me.
a post card from the Wilderness Bar:
8-24-2025 bread bidness launches
so late wife’s Prima owns the little coffee shop in town…very Bougie,lol.
One of their main food items is, I kid you not, Avacado Toast.
Well, my Youngest, who works there when he’s home, brought me one, gratis, when I parked the truck to sell veggies and fruit in her furthest, most out of the way, parking space.
That’s one of the things that jumpstarted this sourdough thing….it was part of the Plan…but I had no idea before Ben brought me that half sammich, where I would sell such bread….except on the side of the frelling road,lol.
So…i know how to capture wild yeast and lactobacillii, and encourage them to form an alliance against all the other wild microbes we are surrounded and penetrated by literally all of our time on this fair Earth.
So I did so…..whole wheat flour and water.
With a cloth lid.
Stuck in a warm but not sunny place with plenty of airflow.
First attempts at bread were, as expected, poor…very dense, and very strongly flavored.
Very sour…almost bordering on some rotten thing….like a gorgonzola or stilton.
I liked it, but you could only really eat it grilled in either butter or olive oil.
It got better with each batch, of course.
Airier and more mellow in it’s sourness.
As expected…the Starter needed time to mature.
There’s still a war going on in, now, two jars(expanded production a couple of days ago)
well, ive been bringing Prima a loaf of every batch, including her in the learning curve…both of myself, and this Starter.
Every batch is better…even when I was all but forced to make 2 whole wheat sourdough loaves…i ran out of white flour,lol.
(that batch took about 18 hours to fully rise, for both risings…sponge and then loaves)
and I cannot find my derned Bread Bible…dont even remember the author or title,(it was a woman)…but it was scientific and also practical…crushed up vitamin C did something,lol…but I must have lent it to someone, likely 25 years ago.
My library remains in chaos, from cousin invading to escape the first panic phase of covid, almost 6 years ago.
Anyhoo…now Prima is texting me(why is it always texts with these people?…its almost a class marker)
wants to know prices, etc…
she didnt balk, at all, at $7/loaf for her, and $12 for the genpop, when I make extra from her needs, and pile it up on the little coffee bar , over towards the wall.
(wish I had paint,lol…i’d make a lil sign)
so I am in business…as a black market breadman.
So, you have transitioned from an unregulated gray market veggie vendor to even more unregulated black market bread dealer? What’s next? An unregulated, unlicensed, evil, underground purveyor of raw milk from your goats?
sheeps.
we ate all the goats once they’d got done with their appointed tasks.
and im already tied to this place aplenty,lol…\i aint gonna tie myself further by getting in to milk production.=> cheese production.
need a couple of nubile farmhands for all that.
and not evil, by any measure.
and unlike google, i mean it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADYUUaOWoWc
What a great object d’art that music box from a bygone era, thanks for the video~
Newsflash:
The controversial Irony Dome* has been installed on the grounds of the White House. It promises to intercept and destroy any incoming short or long range brickbats, yeah-buts, or damn near anything damning to the President.
* proven in the Knesset testing range
The White House definitely “Jumped the Snark” with that proposal.
Author: Getting employees back to the office is at an ‘inflection point’
The quiet part out loud
Big Don
Big Don
Ev’ry mornin’ at the White House you could see him arrive
He claimed to be six foot three and weigh 225
Kinda broad at the shoulder and loose at the lip
And everybody knew, ya didn’t give no shit to Big Don
Big Bad Don
(Big Don)
Nobody seemed to know where Don called home
He just drifted into town from Mar-a-Lago and drank diet Coke all alone
He’d often say too much, hardly quiet and shy
And if you spoke crypto-you just said buy to Big Don
Somebody said he came from the New York City scene
Where he was born in Queens
And a crashin’ blow from the Freedom Caucus team
Sent a Louisiana fellow to the Speakership, Big Don
Big Bad Don
(Big Don)
Then came the day on January 6th, no lyin’
When a mob attacked the Capitol and policemen started dyin’
Democrats were prayin’ and hearts beat fast
And everybody thought that he’d reached his last, ‘cept Don
Through the tear gas & melee of this man-made hell
Watched a church mouse of a man that the electorate knew well
Grabbed a hold of the GOP, gave out a groan
And like a giant Oak tree, he just stood there alone, Big Don
Big Bad Don
(Big Don)
And with all of his strength he gave justice a mighty shove
Then the GOP yelled out, “There’s a man above the law-show him love”
And a disgrace was sheltered from a would-be political grave
Now there’s only one left down in Mar-a-Lago to save, Big Don
With bluster and patriotism he wouldn’t back down
Then came that rumble on November 5th on the ground
And then because of inept Kamala & the Democrat con
Nobody thought it was the end of the line for Big Don
Big Bad Don
(Big Don)
Now they never went through with a verdict
They just more or less decided to acquit
These few words are written of his stand
“At the bottom of all this skulduggery lies a big, big man, Big Don”
Big Bad Don
(Big Don)
(Big Don)
Big Bad Don
Big Bad John, by Jimmy Dean
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnnHprUGKF0