Kite Boarding
📹xin_kitesurfer
— Science girl (@gunsnrosesgirl3) August 30, 2025
What’s the point of the University? Modern society needs mandarins UnHerd
The Unexpected Reason Baboons March in Order SciTech Daily
Spouses tend to share psychiatric disorders, massive study finds Nature
‘Where’s Waldo?’ Meets Sarcastic, Dystopian Visions in Ben Tolman’s Elaborate Ink Drawings Colossal
COVID-19/Pandemics
COVID is spiking again, especially in these states The Hill
Abandoning mRNA: Why HHS’ Vaccine Retreat Puts Public Health Security at Risk Global Biodefense
DNA study reveals origin of world’s first pandemic The Independent
Climate/Environment
How flash droughts driven by climate change sparked record wildfires in Spain Euronews
Huge impacts of UK pig and poultry farming revealed for first time The Wildlife Trusts
China?
this dude in China 3D printed an entire cat sized city so his cats could see what it’s like to be human pic.twitter.com/h5eS42LrsR
— Whole Mars Catalog (@WholeMarsBlog) August 30, 2025
China’s Xi calls for ‘restoring’ UN’s authority, vitality on 80th anniversary of world body Andolu AgencyAlibaba Creates AI Chip to Help China Fill Nvidia Void WSJ
China’s Hualong One leads in global nuclear power deployment CGTN
What a Parade May Reveal About China’s Military Modernization RealClear Defense
South of the Border
‘Gringos out!’: Mexicans protest against tourists and gentrification BBC
Argentina’s President Milei pelted with rocks at Buenos Aires district rally Euronews
United Nations says children make up 50 percent of gang members in Haiti Al Jazeera
India
Modi says close China-India ties crucial for a multipolar Asia and world SCMP
India Has “Walked Away” From US Trade Talks Due To Tariffs: Ex-Top Official NDTV
India’s economy grows at faster-than-expected 7.8% in the June quarter CNBC
Africa
Poverty-conflict nexus in Sub-Saharan Africa: a scoping literature review Nature
As forest elephants plummet, ebony trees decline in Central Africa’s rainforests Mongabay
Year of Africa 1960: How far have francophone African nations come? DW
European Disunion
Europe in the Balance? Realclear Politics
‘Most of this is symbolic’: the new wave of anti-migrant vigilantes in Europe The Guardian
Old Blighty
UK appeals court worries ban on asylum seekers hotels can spark further protests Jurist News
UK anti-slavery commissioner launches investigation into ‘pimping websites’ The Guardian
Israel v. Gaza, Yemen, Lebanon, Syria, Iran
Half of the inhabitants of Gaza are at risk of dying of hunger, warns the UN, 90% of the #Palestinian population goes several days without eating food due to the Zionist blockade.#gazahunger #SaveGAZA #UNRWA pic.twitter.com/eGYf877BGh
— inaya bisma (@inaya_bisma) January 30, 2024
How the UN Could Act Today To Stop the Genocide in Palestine ScheerPostThe Prime Minister of Yemen and a number of government ministers were martyred by the genocidal Zionist regime. They were killed for fighting to stop the Gaza Holocaust. Like Iran, the government of Yemen will remain steadfast in defending the children of Gaza. pic.twitter.com/h77dldtCsa
— Seyed Mohammad Marandi (@s_m_marandi) August 30, 2025
Israel wants to halt aid in northern Gaza as it escalates its offensive in Gaza City Euronews
Turkiye to sever economic and trade ties with Israel over Gaza Al Jazeera. Not the first time Erdogan said he’d take this step.
New Not-So-Cold War
Ukraine’s ex-security council head Andriy Parubiy shot dead in Lviv: Zelenskyy Andolu Agency
Mapping the Russia-Ukraine War Endgame The National Interest
US greenlights nearly $330M military package for Ukraine The Hill
Zelensky rejects proposals for buffer zone to end Ukraine war BBC
Big Brother Is Watching You Watch
License plate readers: Crime-fighting tool vs privacy concerns WFLX.com
Supreme Court Ruling Puts Financial Privacy on the Chopping Block Onesafe
Imperial Collapse Watch
Trump Threatens to Cut Money for Baltimore Bridge Collapse Allocated Under President Biden Milwaukee Courier
Does this small city have the Bay Area’s worst homelessness problem? Santa Cruz Sentinel
Trump 2.0
Bonfire of expertise: Trump drives scientists, spies and soldiers out of government Axios
Step back and take it in: the US is entering full authoritarian mode The Guardian
Trump’s Immigrant Gulags: A Bonanza For Private Prison Corporations Informed Comment
Musk Matters
Tesla asks court to toss wrongful death verdict that cost it $243 million The Verge
Rocket Report: SpaceX achieved daily launch this week Ars Technica
Tesla sales in Europe slump 40% as BYD new car registrations more than triple The Guardian
Democrat Death Watch
Trump is sinking, but Democrats aren’t rising — here’s why The Hill
The Democratic Party is disintegrating before our very eyes Washington Times
Immigration
Life inside notorious ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ in its final days BBC
Trump admin plans immigration enforcement surge in Boston Politico
Our No Longer Free Press
Trump administration seeks to tighten foreign media access Financial Review
Five journalism groups launch network to protect reporters’ rights Editor & Publisher
Mr. Market Is Moody
Dollar Trades Lower With Fed Cut In View, On Course For Monthly Drop Reuters
The housing market is no longer a wealth-building engine as home prices continue to slump Fortune
AI
AI has passed the aesthetic Turing Test − and it’s changing our relationship with art The Conversation
Genie 3: An infinite world model, with Shlomi Fruchter and Jack Parker-Holder 3 Quarks Daily
AI web crawlers are destroying websites in their never-ending hunger for any and all content The Register
Meta is re-training its AI so it won’t discuss self-harm or have romantic conversations with teens Engadget
AI-powered stethoscopes can detect 3 types of heart conditions within seconds, say researchers Andolu Agency
The Bezzle
Scammers are using DocuSign emails to push Apple Pay fraud Fox News
Guillotine Watch
Balenciaga oversized rimless wrap-around acetate sunglasses, about at $960.pic.twitter.com/QCuG0Kvvn9
— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) July 22, 2025
Rihanna modeling her new Dior glasses collection. Prices start at $850-$2,000. pic.twitter.com/bjVHTU3c3b
— WORLDSTARHIPHOP (@WORLDSTAR) May 26, 2016
Antidote du jour (via)
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here
“Meta is re-training its AI so it won’t discuss self-harm or have romantic conversations with teens”
When asked for a Comment, Meta replied ‘Should we have not done that? Telling kids to off themselves? Or to have sexy conversations with impressionable, young teenagers? Well we at Meta are always ready to learn something new. Nobody told us not to do that sort of stuff so we just went ahead and did it as it is always easier to ask forgiveness rather than permission. But we are always trying to help our customers and you will love the next feature where our AI will give financial advice to young teens on how to invest in bitcoin and the like.’
A last line there for completion. ‘We now call those “stablecoins”.’
“Stablecoins” you say? I believe that this is a oxymoron – a figure of speech in which apparently contradictory terms appear in conjunction. Like ‘Dark Victory’, ‘Thunderous Silence’ or ‘Military Intelligence.’ There is nothing stable about those coins as in at all.
“stable genius” comes to mind ;)
“Successful whistleblower” is another IMO.
I’ve whistleblown twice. Got nowhere and destroyed both times. But I can live with myself.
It destroyed me and bit lost now :(
Yeah. When you really come to heads with management doing something you ethically, morally, professionally, or legally can’t abide, you just need to leave. Speaking out in formal or informal ways doesn’t help anyone. Which is tragic. It’s not what the stories tell us. It’s not heroic. It doesn’t make you feel good. It doesn’t make the world a better place.
But each time I’ve been in a situation like that I’ve had my family to think about. So I ran away like a quiet little mouse.
I admire those who speak up. I have far too much to lose to do the same.
The dire state of “whistleblowing” in Germany can be assessed when looking at the “Federation of German Scientists”:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federation_of_German_Scientists
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vereinigung_Deutscher_Wissenschaftler
While in political battles that matter scientists´ influence was usually limited, there were such instances as Werner Heisenberg who out of careerism but also sincerity (post WWII) did work closely with Adenauer on nuclear questions.
Famously the same physicists who failed when trying to build a nuke under 3rd Reich, by 1957 had turned into peace activists argueing against putting missiles/nukes into West Germany.
Now above mentioned Federation has become a shadow of its once prominence.
Since 1999 they have been awarding the WHISTLEBLOWER PRIZE. (I believe the Award has been suspended after 20 years.)
Its recipients were, biannually:
Alexander Nikitin (1999)
Margrit Herbst (2001)
Daniel Ellsberg (2003)
Theodore A. Postol and Árpád Pusztai (2005)
Liv Bode and Brigitte Heinisch (2007)
Rudolf Schmenger and Frank Wehrheim (2009)
Rainer Moormann and Chelsea Manning (2011)
Edward J. Snowden (2013)
Brandon Bryant, Gilles-Eric Séralini und Léon Gruenbaum (2015)
Martin Porwoll and Maria-Elisabeth Klein sowie Can Dündar (2017)
The most recent public discussion 2 years ago which I could follow via stream was very very benign. It was mainly characterized by fear, dodging possibly “controversial” topics (RussiaRussiaRussia) and incompetence.
That may sound harsh or even unfair but considering the level of discussion e.g. here or just facing the stakes it has to be addressed.
But the worst thing was its complete insignificance. Almost no media cared and that includes alternative decent ones too.
So if you wish to understand the demise of “the intellectual” in the FRG today look at the Federation and how they handle their Award for Whistleblowing.
Their German-language book on 20 years of the award is here, it describes the cases and the whistleblowers behind.
https://www.steiner-verlag.de/20-Jahre-Whistleblower-Preis/9783830555506
On the occasion of the publication of this book almost nobody was invited among the recipients. Especially not such a controversial figure as Ted Postol who could have easily joined via Zoom
.
The event took place in a small room mainly retirees present. None of them with the energy however surrounding those who are still fighting in public may they be in their 80s or 90s.
The older I get the more I respect the old guard…
Bankruptcy futures?
But, ‘stable’ as in ‘Augean stable.’ Full of horse manure.
Makes sense. Meta is all about harming others.
It’s short for Metastasize.
In my city there are billboards informing us that social media can cause serious harm to children and teens and my first thought was then why in the hell is Mark Zuckerberg a billionaire?
I guess crime does pay
What happens when your therapy ap is trained by reddit users. Who’da thunk it.
You can rest assured that you will receive the best therapy approved by Only Friends.
What’s so problematic? It’s just like the time you thought that Grindr was a stoneworker’s app.
Smiling Friends?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EiWL_ilmfmo
Wish Yves would create a fake wise AI based on the collective knowledge of everyone here at NC.
Where do I organize?
How do I win electoral office among the people in BFE?
Labor Unions?
General Strikes?
How are Revolutions born?
What law should I create to rid my local town of the VAMPIRE SQUID RENTIERS?
Do the whole project outside the surveillance system until it’s ready to be released to the Public.
It would be a super used
Jonathan, the late Staughton Lynd once told me to follow the same path as Archbishop Romero, who taught accompaniment. Live where the people you’re trying organize live, and find a way to make yourself useful to them.
Lynd on accompaniment
Henry, thanks for the link!
“Re-trainig”🙄…the language of the hype.
Reprogramming. Jeez…
How flash droughts driven by climate change sparked record wildfires in Spain Euronews
Even if the article makes a good description of events conducting to the most severe fires seen in the West of the Iberian Peninsula, it gets lost finding fashionable wording like “flash droughts” or “hydroclimatic whiplash”. It fails to analyse what might be done to prevent or reduce the impact of such fires. The connection is indeed made between an unusually rainy spring followed but a not unusual dry summer which usually ends in a fire season in August every year. One of the factors that made things worse was precisely the very favourable spring which led to a remarkable growth of herbs which were not cleared or diminished enough by herbivores or rural management before the summer converted those into straws that fuelled the fires. It is as if nothing can be done with climate change, no management can avoid the worst and we should just need to get accustomed with the new realities that climate change brings. We cannot have industrial policies, rural management policies… we have to endure what inevitably comes with a stoic mind. Part of the neoliberal approach to climate change?
the very favourable spring which led to a remarkable growth of herbs which were not cleared or diminished enough by herbivores or rural management before the summer converted those into straws that fuelled the fires.
Once upon a time, flocks of sheep or herds of cows would have munched away all that fodder, resulting in a bountiful year with plenty of lambs (great for Easter) and calves.
Once upon a time, people would have cleared up forests, taking away brushes for animal litter, and collected dead wood for burning in the hearth.
Industrial agriculture prefers feeding soy to animals imprisoned on concrete hard-ground within CAFOs, and industrial forestry prefers large, easily accessible pine or eucalyptus plantations that are clear-cut from time to time. And when people heat with wood, these are actually pellets coming from special-purpose plantations.
Industrial operations also reduce the number, and hence the cost, of human beings performing those activities (such as shepherds).
The result is that everything not automated or profitable enough is left to become a giant pyre. Externalities…
Thank you for completing the (depressing) picture so nicely vao.
Getting into the groove on climate change, yesterday I watched Val Guest’s The Day the Earth Caught Fire from 1961, with Edward Judd as a snarky and cynical Fleet street journo trying to make sense of all the crazy weather patterns that may or may not be connected with atmospheric tests of nuclear weapons.
I was expecting “B” science fiction but in fact there’s quite a bit of character development, snappy dialogue, and a lot of period detail concerning the inside of a newspaper. The optical SFX are not bad, and there are eerie views of London alternately immersed in an unholy heat mist and the River Thames run dry.
Without going into the plot and how the extreme climate change proves to be man-made, what stuck me is that Downing Street — indeed all state govts — take the position that nothing really anomalous is happening and they make concerted efforts to placate the public, while in fact the journalists discover that the top level knows that things have really gone off the rails and plans are quietly being drawn up for the most drastic measures.
Instead of giving the POV to scientists as is usual in such films, here it is given to a bitter journalist and his colleagues, who are quite accustomed to playing cat and mouse with state bureaucrats who are for their part convinced that their duty is to withhold information from the public.
As Susan Sontag noted in “The Imagination of Disaster”, the deeper subject of many classic SF films is in fact disaster. What The Day the Earth Caught Fire manages to achieve that a number of other canonical SF films do not, is to convey a sense of how things would likely go down in a planetary disaster as information is deliberately not shared with the public.
“Life inside notorious immigration centre ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ as it enters final days”
The whole thing was just a Republican fiasco from start to finish. And it looks like Florida is on the hook for $218 million-
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/alligator-alcatraz-shutdown-cost-florida-218-million-rcna227980
Even if it had stayed open, the place would have cost $450 million a year to run with each bed casting $245 a day which is ridiculous. The original Alcataz was shut down because it was too expensive to house prisoners there and the same fate would have eventually overtaken Alligator Alcatraz. I don’t know. The place was formed around a small airport. Maybe they can re-open it for people to visit and have overnight stays or something. They can sell t-shirts or something saying ‘I survived Alligator Alcatraz.’
Everglades has mosquitoes the size of small birds (slight exaggeration). Could kill the tourist appeal.
And in our new Trumpworld Noem’s operation may be the doofiest. Rubio and Bessent however are competing for the prize.
All of them pale of course next to Genocide Don, successor to Genocide Joe.
‘Everglades has mosquitoes the size of small birds’
There is a place not far from here that has a bad mosquito problem. There, they fly in formations.
OUR skeeters appear to have their own ATC (Aedes/Anopheles Traffic Control).
You gotta try Canadian blackflies ;^) Skeeters in the Everglades are nothing…
Itty bitty sandflies in NZ pack quite a punch, you’ll scratch yourself silly a day after so bitten.
A mosquito landed at the airport in Thompson, Manitoba and took on a hundred gallons of jet fuel before anyone noticed it wasn’t a plane.
How about horseflies in the Rocky Mountains? Unlike with mosquitoes, you will know when you are bitten.
re: Ukraine – on the assassination of Andriy Parubiy
useful by b
Prominent Ukrainian Fascist Shot Dead In Lviv
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2025/08/prominent-ukrainian-fascist-shot-dead-in-lviv.html#more
I was watching the media very carefully today to see what they had to say about this guy. Bland does not even begin to describe their coverage and nobody was going to mention how the guy was just a Nazi who wanted to kill anything that looked Russian. It was all about how he served in this role and had that job.
Going to reference “Provoked” by Scott Horton again.
This tome has a phenomenally well detailed set of references – many thousand – and has a lot of detail on Parubiy.
As a historical document of how we got to where we are in UA, it appears to be unrivaled. Worth getting for the references alone, even without the detailed, but somewhat clunky narrative.
Thanks.
I assumed as much (pros and cons) having listened to Horton many times now.
Will read since you confirm my assumption.
I think for those who would consider our likes as insane, Horton or Abelow e.g. are not a bad thing. So the discussion can start somewhere on common ground.
For that I am thankful.
Does Tory Nuland have an alibi?
“In 1991, together with Oleg Tyagnibok, he founded the Social-National Party of Ukraine”
Subtle
Literally not a Nazi. :)
As for universities as mandarins, maybe the cracks in the model go to the foundations.
We evolved our thought process as a survival mechanism, like some species are adapted to run and others to be toxic. Consequently the effect is patches over the tears in the previous patches, basically going back to the dawn of civilization.
For example, democracy and republicanism originated in pantheistic cultures. At this stage of intellectual evolution, monotheism equated with monoculture. One people, one rule, one god. Basically a metaphor for the tribal societies in which humanity originated.
Ancient Israel was also a monarchy. The Big Guy Rules.
The origins of the Christian Trinity go to fertility rites. The young god born in the spring to the old sky god and earth mother. Oestre was the Anglo Saxon fertility goddess.
Though for the Jews, it was about looking beyond the tribal strictures and hierarchies. The Golden Rule.
Then when Constantine co-opted Christianity as the state religion of Rome, it was for the monotheism, as he was bringing the Empire together and burying any reminders of the Republic. The Big Guy Rules.
So the Catholic Church became the eschatological basis for European monarchy. Divine right of kings, as opposed to consent of the governed.
When the West went back to popular forms of government, it required separation of church and state, culture and civics, morality and law.
The logical fallacy of modern monotheism, the Catholic “all-knowing absolute,” is that ideals are not absolutes.
Truth, beauty, platonic forms are ideals. The core codes, creeds, heroes, narratives at the center of every culture are ideals.
The universal, on the other hand, is the elemental, so a spiritual absolute would be the essence of sentience, from which we rise, not an ideal of wisdom and judgement, from which we fell. The light shining through the film than the stories playing out on it.
So having outsourced social evolution to this idealized father figure, as respect for it faded, it left a void, since filled by the will to power, rampant greed, or just ethnocentric tribalism.
These are the sorts of issues our next mandarins will have to deal with, if we are going to keep reaching for the light and not just crawling back into our various rabbit holes.
I am slowly making my way through Diarmid MacCulloch‘s History of Christianity. Some of what you say resonates with my thoughts as I read that book. Do you have any suggestions for further reading?
Check out the writings of David Bentley Hart if you are looking for some interesting insights into the history of Christianity.
Thanks. I am actually interested in the nexus of religion and power. I was raised Catholic, so that is my point of departure in thinking about this. Hart does seem interesting.
One book I’ve always liked is Gilbert Murray’s, Five Stages of Greek Religion.
Sort of old fashioned, but gives an interesting feel for the issues and situation of the Ancient World;
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/30250/30250-h/30250-h.htm
Thanks, I took that. Good ole Gilbert Murray, eh.
He does give an interesting perspective on the twists and turns The Narrative has taken.
MacCulloch’s book on the Reformation is excellent, too.
Appreciate your points. A polytheistic system like the one at urban Ugarit with gods who represent elemental forces like sea and wind contrasts with gods like Moloch and YHWH whose model is the Ancient Near Eastern tyrant. But that’s henotheism, not monotheism: one nation/one god but many nations and many gods. The move to monotheism doesn’t show up in the Hebrew bible until Second Isaiah, written from the perspective of an exile in Babylon after the Fall of Jerusalem. The usual explanation in the henotheistic world for Nebuchadnezzar laying waste to Jerusalem, even demolishing YHWH’s house, was that Marduk had kicked YHWH’s ass in the heavenly realms. Second Isaiah, with a big assist from Ezra, attempts a resuscitation of YHWH that creates the monotheism that serves as the basis for three religions. Second Isaiah blames Israel’s and Judah’s unfaithfulness, and Ezra blames Eve. Rarely has the blame-the-victims approach worked so well.
re: 4x Glenn Diesen
Benoît Paré: OSCE Observer Exposes Lies About the Ukraine War
93 min.
https://glenndiesen.substack.com/p/benoit-pare-osce-observer-exposes
Sahra Wagenknecht: Europe Subjugated & Propagandised for War
30 min.
https://glenndiesen.substack.com/p/sahra-wagenknecht-europe-subjugated
Jacques Baud: Why the West Does Not Understand Russia
57 min.
https://glenndiesen.substack.com/p/jacques-baud-why-the-west-does-not
Alastair Crooke: Russia’s Patience Is Over, Escalation Begins
56 min.
https://glenndiesen.substack.com/p/alastair-crooke-russias-patience
Wagenknecht is really sharp and concise, with a critique of EU policy since the Cold War in the context of the current insanely destructive will to war.
Just started “The Russian Art of War: How the West Led Ukraine to Defeat” by Jacques Baud. Twenty pages in, I’m impressed.
re: RU and CHINA aviation deal
Andrei Martyanov on RU selling China jet engines under certain conditions. And thus replacing US.
short text only
https://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/2025/08/clearing-air.html
re:Abandoning mRNA: Why HHS’ Vaccine Retreat Puts Public Health Security at Risk – Global Biodefense
“global biodefense” sounds kinda military. oh wait, it is military / ;)
From Sasha Latypova. Check out the clips from the court case transcript.
Utah: Ground Zero for the Health Freedom Movement
https://sashalatypova.substack.com/cp/172229283
adding: From Unlimited Hangout, January 2025.
The CDC, Palantir and the AI-Healthcare Revolution
The CDC’s Center for Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics (CFA) has partnered with the CIA-linked Palantir to cement the public-private model of invasive surveillance in “public health,” all while pushing the U.S. national security state and Silicon Valley even closer together.
https://unlimitedhangout.com/2025/01/investigative-reports/the-cdc-palantir-and-the-ai-healthcare-revolution/
First para:
The Pentagon and Silicon Valley are in the midst of cultivating an even closer relationship as the Department of Defense (DoD) and Big Tech companies seek to jointly transform the American healthcare system into one that is “artificial intelligence (AI)-driven.” The alleged advantages of such a system, espoused by the Army itself, Big Tech and Pharma executives as well as intelligence officers, would be unleashed by the rapidly developing power of so-called “predictive medicine,” or “a branch of medicine that aims to identify patients at risk of developing a disease, thereby enabling either prevention or early treatment of that disease.”
Thanks for sharing that. Interesting reading, especially in seeing how the author takes the common usage phrases as evidence that everything we did was part of a military operation. Also good to learn more about the “health freedom” movement. I had heard rumblings of it earlier this year but I didn’t realize how fully developed this was in Utah.
Seems like we can see why people like RFK Jr. think they’re doing God’s work. Also seems like the basic concept of public health will be destroyed during this generation. John Snow really did know nothing…
“..aims to identify patients at risk of developing a disease, thereby enabling either prevention or early treatment of that disease.”
This is nothing less than “Pre-sick” as in the first cousin to “Pre-crime.”
This will be a tool for the wholesale manipulation of the population by “The Authorities.”
Imagine being pre-diagnosed with a very dangerous and easily transmissible illness. Then the Authorities will legally quarantine you in one of the many FEMA Malls until the Medical AI certifies you as being well again. Unfortunately, if you do not show any of the symptoms of the expected disease, you may be kept quarantined indefinitely until you do show symptoms and then recovery.
This will follow the well known Computing Mantra: GIGO, Government In Government Out.
Stay safe. Go Grey.
I commented on the Indonesia riots yesterday, hoping that somebody might chime in with some alt-media coverage. Today, it looks like Brian Berletic has stepped up to the plate:
There’s more, also involving parallels with recent events in Thailand, though making a judgment on Berletic’s reading is above my pay grade.
Can’t comment on veracity of his Indonesia take but I’d push back strongly on the Thailand bit
e.g. “US-sponsored riots in Hong Kong and Thailand in recent years.”
Have heard this often since 2010 from some alt-media types and I think it’s BS. The evidence is always weak. Am very far from convinced the US has had any impact on Thai domestic politics. Not everything is due to US mendacity.
The badness of his Thailand takes, make me uninterested in his Indonesia takes.
This is one of my pet peeves with some of the prominent anti-globalists. They see US interference under every bed.
No way did the US have bupkis to do with Hong Kong. We don’t even have enough speakers of Hong Kong Cantonese, FFS.
Re Thailand, Thai politics are close to impenetrable. Yes, the last democracy candidate, Pita, was a US product. But we don’t have depth of influence here, not even close.
An Indonesian friend was caught up in the demonstrations yesterday and messaged me complaining about the police (and the traffic). I don’t fully understand the background, but it’s related to ongoing dismay about corruption with the government, and was exacerbated by a delivery driver being killed by police. Most of the rioters are young unemployed and the many in the work-per-hour economy – the trigger seems to have been a tax change that, as usual, made life harder for those with less influence.
Berletic is a terrible source for anything in Asia, he just regurgitates the whole ‘it just be the US behind it’ line without an iota of evidence beyond an assumption that brown people are incapable of having their own domestic politics.
Thailand has its own very intense domestic politics, there is little to no evidence that I’ve seen that outsiders, whether US, China, or anyone else, has much direct or indirect influence.
According to NPR,
Five days of protests began in Jakarta on Monday, sparked by reports that all 580 lawmakers receive a monthly housing allowance of 50 million rupiah ($3,075) in addition to their salaries. The allowance, introduced last year, is almost 10 times the Jakarta minimum wage.
The riots are widespread,
in Makassar the Parliament building was torched with three dead. Also, in other areas,
Protesters in West Java’s Bandung city also set a regional parliament ablaze on Friday, but no casualties were reported. In Surabaya, Indonesia’s second-largest city, protesters stormed the regional police headquarters after destroying fences and torching vehicles. Security forces fired tear gas and used water cannons, but demonstrators fought back with fireworks and wooden clubs.
Sounds organic, but never let a crisis go to waste.
The only case I have seen was the kidnapping from Thailand of a Chinese actor to a Myanmar scam farm. Thailand got him back in 2 days…..and it’s obvious what that means. And Thailand could have dropped the hammer on many of those operations. They rely on Thai power and commns.
Then a delegation from China to Thailand, and it’s not hard to infer they read Thai officials the riot act. Thailand also saw a huge number of Chinese tourism cancellations…and this was right before Chinese New Year. Last year, we had a ton of fireworks at that holiday. This year, almost none. So Thailand finally started going after the scammers in a more serious way.
Tourism is Thailand’s Achilles Heel, so it wouldn’t surprise me that China uses it as leverage. The complication of course is Thailand’s difficult relationship with Cambodia and Myanmar, both of which they see as Chinese proxies.
And regarding Indonesia as a Ukraine-style proxy, the scale is wrong: Indonesia has a population of 280,000,000, making it the largest Muslim nation, 17,000 islands stretching from one end to the other further than from New York to Paris…
The US does not know how to organize poor people. NGOs target the intelligensia.
The poors make for great sympathy in the Potemkin money-laundering village.
Downsides include no screen credits, no residuals, no material life changes since money stops upline. Domestic or foreign, no matter as the game is international. :(
The Philippines is being groomed for that role. We in Australia are hoping to get away with a UK type role in the saga of South Ukraine even if it means the ruin of our economy ( read housing market )
Thanks for the takes on Berletic. Indeed, it doesn’t seem that he has much in the way of evidence to support these claims.
A friend with knowledge of Indonesia who speaks the language and has lived in Java offered the following.
At the outset, the protests were fueled by public outage over a 50 million rupiah “housing allowance” given to all 580 parliamentarians in addition to their salaries. This is over USD 3000 per month, and almost 10x the minimum wage even in Jakarta. Videos began to circulate on social media showing some of these residences as luxury penthouse condos. One politician was reported to have 19 different properties.
Further, it looks like some agent provocateurs have been deliberately trying to provoke further violence because working class people do not torch their own motorcycles. Many Indonesians don’t own cars and a motorcycle is an important possession. It would be like burning down your own apartment as an act of protest against the undeserved wealth of others. And if people torch a bus platform or metro station — how do they get home?
As for who is behind the agent provocateurs … paramilitaries, perhaps, and that’s where things go grey.
I asked my Indonesian friend this morning for more information, and what she said is almost exactly what your contact says.
She said there were attacks on Chinese businesses by agent provocateurs, but when I asked who they were, she just replied ‘the usual troublemakers’. When I asked for clarification, she implied that they were government supporters trying to discredit protestors.
My friend teaches in an art college – she says a lot of her students have been missing from class as they’ve been taking part in the protests. It seems that quite a few have been roughed up by the police.
Where things go grey, is where the usual suspects appear.
‘Where’s Waldo?’ Meets Sarcastic, Dystopian Visions in Ben Tolman’s Elaborate Ink Drawings
“Connected” reminds me of the “line go up” meme of the sacrifice to Moloch …
Frankly, it reminded me of the Escalator to Nowhere –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7I95rdKhWD0 (13 secs)
>>>mayor defies Trump’s immigration crackdown plan for the city: ‘He is reckless and out of control’ Le Monde
If one does not like a law, repeal the law(s). Selective enforcement corrodes govt. legitmacy.
One may like it when XYZ gets a pass during a Dem/GOP term, just hope that your side wins every election ad infinitum
Re Guillotine watch. Was it not NC links the other day that linked to an article saying one company had a near monopoly on frames including all the designer frames? I guess these ridiculous priced sunglasses will be the next target of the so-called Rolex thieves who snatch designer watches off people in big cities.
As for those worn by Rihanna, I very much expect she was given them as a freebee. The more millions all these celebs amass, the less if anything they pay plenty for stuff as big brands rightly suppose mugs will pay to look like her or the Beckhams etc., who actually get them free.
For a brief horror-stricken moment, I thought that these sunglass pics were an addition to the ‘antidote du jour!’
I hate the way that those two images of Rihanna have been ‘enhanced’ to the point of looking like something generated by AI. maybe they were.
A lot of that look is due to the advances in digital medium format cameras, extremely sharp/detailed lenses, and they way this images are processed. Same for the commonly “fake” look of modern blockbuster movies (even scenes without CGI look very CGI.
Recently rented a Fujifilm GFX100 II which shoots 102-megapixel images and has crazy latitude in its raw images. Even with basic “glamour” lighting and basic photoshop color grading all the images I took looked hyper-realistic. I actually ended up degrading the image sharpness and adding grain and halation to the image to bring them back down to a more filmic look. While the camera tech is impressive it’s too much detail in my opinion (or tastes at least). Also, the image files were so large that opening more than a few at a time on my computer crashed it – and I commonly edit 6K video projects and do SFX and digital animations on this system!
Anyway, long way of saying that new digital imaging tech is a big part of why imaging has taken on a fake look lately. And don’t get me started on Hollywood’s obsession with Cooke S8 & Anamorphic Full Frame lenses which give every movie that extremely shallow depth of field and hazy light glow that makes everything from Marvel movies to Wicked to so many others looks like AI renderings (probably the films AI steals from to achieve this look).
Fortunately there’s a lot of movement back toward traditional film and use of vintage lenses even on digital cameras to swing the pendulum of visual style back toward the more impressionistic ideals than this hyper detailed and overly produced looking stuff we’ve been inundated with for so long.
One of the pleasures of running the Movie posts is that I get to watch films from before the “hyper-realistic, hyper-crisp” era of filmmaking. It really ruins the experience. Another thing is watching older movies on super HD televisions. They all look as if they were shot on a video camera. I like the softer edges and colors of film.
On the HD TV, you need to go into the video settings and turn off the smoothing and image enhancement to see be able to watch movies properly without the “soap opera” look. This is a huge nightmare for a lot of people who will actually give up watching older films on their TV because of this nonsense image “improvement”. The actual names of the settings vary by TV brand. Usually you can find tips on how to set up your TV properly for cinema viewing in a reddit forum for the brand and model. Don’t count on the general settings to improve it. You need to really get down into what seems like an obscure setting and suddenly it looks normal again. Argh.
There’s a new Hasselblad out that has “native” HDR on top of the already incredibly sensitive medium format sensor. I can’t imagine what people would even want with such complicated deep images. It’s almost like having some kind of scientific instrument instead of a camera. Boggles the mind. Give me an old M6, a prime and some Agfachrome.
$950.00 for glasses is expensive, but not worthy of the guillotine, at least not for the purchaser. Last couple times I went to the optometrist for new glasses, I wound up being charged over $900.00. I think it’s mostly due to the frame monopoly. At first I thought it might be the doctor overcharging me because I had decent insurance (I did get a hard sell and strong recommendation not to go elsewhere for frames), but when I checked out a discount frame shop, there were still frames costing hundreds of dollars.
The guillotine in this case is for the monopolist, not the wearer.
I know an optometrist and he gets the frames for a very low price, like under $20. Not for designer names, but the regular ones. The optometrist makes a big markup. At least that’s what he tells his sister, a friend of mine.
There are a few discount eye glass sellers on the Internet, and I’ve used Eye Buy Direct with success. You do need the full prescription values, including the distance between your eyes, which has never been on my prescription, and you need to get it separately.
Granted, I only need simple distance vision lenses, single prescription. But they do more complex prescriptions. And the frames cost very little. I think mine were $40; titanium.
Just a thought.
I have a complicated script, and both Zenni Optica and Costco have handled mine without problems. I also tend to go for rimless frames where the arms and bridge connect through holes in the lens. The frame elements can be reused very easily.
I got my last pair of glasses at Kaiser and they had some 20$ frames as well as frames for over $250.
I saw a metal frame for $20 and got that one.
I’m hard on glasses as I take them off for close work and sometimes forget where I left them.
With that in mind, I bought 5 more of the same $20 frames, without lenses, as spares.
When I went to pay for them, the clerk mentioned that is something they would like to see more customers do, as they have unhappy customers coming in for replacement side pieces that are no longer available.
It wasn’t long after this that I was working on a car and set my glasses on a patch of grass. I forgot about them and stepped on them.
It was good to have a spare $20.00 frame ready.
I live near the billion dollar Wharf development in DC. The shop selling very fancy glasses has been robbed at least 3 times in the past 18 months. And, contrary to what the Administration would have you believe, that’s a pretty unusual record around here.
As for guillotines, my husband predicts they will be set up outside the shop selling $20 toast.
*Avocados extra. /s
I inherited a clutch of gold-filled frames from the 30s and 40s from my grandmother and have worn them for years with occasional replacements from thrifting or estate sales. My local optical shop can still drill for the rimless style and I have enough spare parts for temples and nose pads to keep em flying.
Highly recommended and back in style every ten years or so.
“Turkiye to sever economic and trade ties with Israel over Gaza”
Wake me up when Erdogan cuts the oil going through Turkiye to Israel and grinding that place to a halt. Otherwise this is just Erdogan trying to big note himself.
Lol, the cacophony of exploding heads should suffice.
While I agree that such news needs to be treated as possibly vaporware, Reuters is taking it seriously.
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/turkey-bars-israeli-ships-its-ports-restricts-airspace-2025-08-29/
I dont have an account at statista, so I can only see the graph for a second before it askes me to sign in, but it does look like Turkiye-Israel trade is way down.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1483181/israel-total-value-imports-exports-turkey/
Sorry if this has been noted elsewhere, I’ve been under the weather all week.
NYT (not archive, sorry again):
Medicare Will Require Prior Approval for Certain Procedures
Thanks for the link. Here’s a link from Kiplinger magazine covering the same story. no paywall.
Prior Authorization Coming to Traditional Medicare Starting in 2026
https://www.kiplinger.com/retirement/medicare/prior-authorization-coming-to-traditional-medicare
Daily refrain:
What fresh hell is this?
Article on archive.ph
Yep.
And naturally its the private sector that does this, and is rewarded for denying, and denying, and denying claims. So what’s the outcome gonna be? And indirectly, this’ll boost Medicare “Advantage” enrollments as more people are disgusted with traditional Medicare. Everyone wins!
And all we had to do is add dental and vision and people would never even consider “Advantage” plans, sigh. Thanks Democrats!
A very good explainer on the boat we’re in, from three months ago, but well worth reviewing:
The Dark Money Game (w/ Alex Gibney) | The Chris Hedges Report
Craig Mokhiber gave the Genocide alert on October 28, 2023 when he resigned from his UN post. His letter from that time is here.
Thanks. I particularly enjoyed points eight and nine of his excellent action plan.
8. Disarmament: We must advocate for the removal and destruction of Israel’s massive stockpiles of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, lest the conflict lead to the total destruction of the region and, possibly, beyond.
9. Mediation: We must recognize that the US and other western powers are in fact not credible mediators, but rather actual parties to the conflict who are complicit with Israel in the violation of Palestinian rights, and we must engage them as such.
“Trump is sinking, but Democrats aren’t rising — here’s why”
‘A new Democratic blueprint for abundant growth and opportunity would be both pro-worker and pro-business and play to America’s strengths in innovation and entrepreneurship. It would give priority to driving down housing, health care and energy costs, promoting competition in consolidated markets, creating more “earn and learn” opportunities for workers without college degrees to hone their job skills, radically improving public schools, restoring fiscal responsibility in Washington and making government nimbler and more user-friendly.’
This is like a bad joke. Their donors would shred those aims to ribbons leaving only the pro-business part left. I’m guessing that the Democrat strategy is to do nothing so that they can’t be criticized for it and letting the Republicans blow themselves up and then picking up the pieces. And since they reckon that they do not have to try to do anything, then they can easily nominate Liz Cheney to be the 2028 Democrat Presidential candidate as she would attract Republican voters – or so they would tell themsleves.
Kind of a Nihilist response to what happened in 2024, no?
As usual, someone beats me to the punch on something I found on NC. You touched on what I was thinking Rev Kev. I’ve added some elaborations in another comment.
Dems would reframe their do-nothing instincts and run on as the Prime Directive Party. It could also reframe their out-of-touch character by claiming they are just “prohibiting interference with the natural development of alien civilizations”.
That would support the idea that the Democrat Party Elders really are from Zeta Reticuli.
I find it interesting that both articles featured on Democrat Death Watch basically prescribe “Adopt more Republican policies!” as the cure for the Democrats becoming more unpopular than Trump.
Joseph Curl, regular Washington Times (Right-biased) writer and former Drudge Report writer, says Democrats are unpopular because they failed to become anti-woke like Republicans, especially after failing to adopt Third-Ways suggested language strategies. However, when someone writes this:
And can’t bring up, or doesn’t want to bring up, John Fetterman, as a moderating force, who has shifted hard towards tacit support for Trump, including massive support for Israel, and a dedicated anti-woke/tough-on-crime stance making Fetterman more popular with Republicans than with Democrats, then Joseph Curl’s dribble can be dismissed.
Meanwhile, The Hill features Will Marshall, who helped found the Progressive Policy Institute, whose only progressive feature is appropriating it in its name. As he’s wedded to the Democratic party, he wants the party to succeed insofar as it would prevent shrinkage of donations and influence to and from his think tank. However, the PPI was responsible for Clinton’s triangulation in the 90s, and is pushing the Abundance agenda today. When Marshall writes:
He is admitting that he wants the Democrats to adopt more business friendly policies like Republicans, and what the Abundance agenda champions. However, he doesn’t want to admit that it was his faction, its leadership, and its policies, that contributed to the mess that American society finds itself in today. When he writes this:
It’s not his faction that needs to admit their mistakes, even if they were strongly proposing maintaining immigration numbers during the pandemic, and even before then during the Obama years. Once again, it’s not being anti-woke and pro-business enough that’s the problem.
At no point will media critics of the Democratic party reconcile this simple fact: The Democrat party cannot be both pro-business and pro-worker anymore. In order to get the votes to win elections, the party would need to adopt pro-worker policies, such as taking on monopolies. These policies stand in direct opposition with pro-business donors and party officials, who need funding and organization support of corporate and squillionaire donors to hire the staff they want, and have the sinecures available for themselves after leaving office and “going into the private sector.”
But the moment a media affiliated Democrat admits that is the moment when the countdown starts on their removal. The media, as sellers of advertisement slots, and frequent employer of former politicians, is very much on the pro-business donor side of the equation.
The Upton Sinclair quote applies: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!”
Thanks for insightful review and analysis. This nails it: “At no point will media critics of the Democratic party reconcile this simple fact: The Democrat party cannot be both pro-business and pro-worker anymore.”
I think this requires that we think a little bit about unidimensional thinking in politics.
Why do we associate pacifism, socialism, and multiculturalism as all being associated with the “left,” say? I don’t think there’s anything that necessarily ties them together logically, although there are various attempts at post hoc self-justification that claims that the bundles of beliefs associated with “the left” and/or “the right” are somehow conceptually congruent. Ultimately, these are historical artifacts, products of various coincidences of historical personalities and attempts at coalition building. There is nothing that holds them together, other than the habits and preconceptions of the “political insiders.”
The idea that somehow, you need to gravitate towards the “middle” to gain more public support compounds this fallacy: you may not be so willing, for all manner of coalitional (and other) reasons, to gravitate towards the “middle” on all dimensions simultaneously. So you achieve “middle,” say, by sticking to the extreme on “wokism” while going full warmonger (extreme “left” on something plus extreme “right” on somethine else add up to “middle” right?)–again, this is not a comment on current politics (despite a degree of verisimilitude, but just an illustration. But is this the “middle” that would attract the masses?
I’ve been claiming off and on in the comments that the unidimensional thinking left observers of politics blind to the fact that there is no “middle” among the masses. The masses were not part of the historical path dependence that created the left and right bundles: there’s no reason that they should not be extreme left on some issues while extreme right on others. In fact, better surveys (say, ANES) show pretty clearly that the masses have all sorts of “extreme” views on many issues. They appear to be “middle” because of their “inconsistencies,” i.e. all their views average out to the middle because they do not have neatly bundled views of the political elites.
I think the secret behind “populists'” success lies on their recognition that the real public opinion is not neatly unidimensional. They can pick and choose what “works” from the programs of the left and right and sell themselves as alternative to the conventional politics. This is, however, not a “practical” course towards successful policymaking because, even if the left-right continuum might not be “real” as basis of what the public really thinks, it is very much the basis of how coalitions have been constructed in politics and policymaking (who knows if the chicken or the egg came first, though). And without successful coalition management, you can’t make policy. So, I think this is where the association between “populists” and authoritarianism in various forms–and I’m including the heavy handed policymaking that even people like LIncoln, FDR, or even Francois Mitterand adopted, not what people so casually call “fascism” these days, although, to be fair, I imagine the same people would throw the term at Lincoln or FDR, too, not totally without justification. If you break the unidimensional bundling, the bargains you have struck on the premise that these bundles are somehow binding become unraveled. To make up for it, you need to play fast and loose, at least, with politicking and policymaking. If you are very good at “democratic politicking,” as FDR, say, was, then you can get by without breaking things too much. If you are not, you approach the genuine “fascism” territory or beyond.
Of course, this illustrates exactly why the idea of “centerinng” that political insiders seem to be coming up with is stupid. If people wound up in the “middle” by rejecting both leftist wokism and rightist warmongering, being given the “middle” that blends wokism and warmongering is even worse than either unblemished left or the right. This confuses only those who think that the unidimensional politics is true and any middle like any other,
This has, I suppose, a genuinely disturbing implication. “Populism,” even “populist fascism,” is fundamentally “democratic” in its basis. It “works” because the deals struck at the elite level of politics that perpetuates the undimensional politics has become unmoored from the broad public’s sentiments. But if policymaking is done largely on the basis of elite bargains (or, at least, if elite bargains facilitate policymaking greatly), that means that the populists who come to power necessarily have to run roughshod over these dealmaking if they want to do anything at all–and even if they do, they will fail to accomplish much (unless they have somehow come up with an entirely different policymkaing machinery indepednent of the existing elites, which, I think is functionally impossible: would be policymaking experts, after all, train themselves on the assumption that they will have a career in the existing policymaking machinery.
The “Centeringing” you touch upon is a good point, and I think reflects the approach that was taken in the 00s and 10s, particularly under Obama, to try and reconcile the two poles of the tent that can’t really be reconciled.
When the Democrats say they are pro-worker, and manifest that downstream as being “pro-union”, that has generally manifested itself as support for public-sector unions and unions for service industries/non-profits, like teachers, public safety, mass transit, and nurses.
This allows them to also adopt pro-business stances, because they are less particular about supporting unions more prevalent in the private sector, except for a few symbolic ones like UAW, SAG-AFTRA, or SEIU. Instead, they adopt neoliberal policies that generally hurt those in the trades and manufacturing sectors to the benefit of wealthy owners and investors in those sectors.
What you discuss is what led to the Nolan chart. I can’t find it at the moment, but someone did a breakdown of where individuals affiliated with the Republicans and Democrats lied on the Nolan chart, with Democrats generally on the Authoritarian and Left Liberal quadrants, and Republicans on the Authoritarian and Right Conservative quadrants, and that right now a strong coalition could be made appealing to individuals in that quadrant. In that same breakdown however, it showed Republican politicians mostly centered in the Right conservative quadrant, and Democrats somewhere on the border of the libertarian and left-liberal quadrants, close to the center.
Republicans are succeeding, because they can create a coalition of donors and voters that are aligned with their leaders, even if some of those pools are dwindling, because Democrats, despite centering themselves, can’t grab the pro-business donors who will just get a better deal from the Republicans and mainly want the Democrats to adopt pro-business policies as a hedge or guarantee of their own interests. Meanwhile, they continue to alienate the left-liberals and authoritarians who want definitive action taken to improve their material well being.
They lied EVERYWHERE on the chart. Where they lay or lie now, well…
I think even the Nolan Chart is too much of an oversimplification: looking at serious surveys (like ANES), the actual survey results, not what people who interpret the results say they mean, would reveal that the alleged “middle” is a lot more complicated than what even the Nolan chart would imply. Compounding it further is that many of the masses really don’t care (because they don’t know–and they don’t have a good reason to know–about politicking beyond their immediate lives. This makes “convenient” coalition building, say, between the proverbial wokesters and warmongers, more attactive to the politicians than try to appeal to the masses (so, we cna put rainbow insignia on tanks and drop bombs for trans rights to appeal to both wokesters and warmongers…what exactly do the masses want again?) Not so bad, in a way, as far as coalition building goes, until they come across the point that the masses are really against warmongeriing, woke or anotherwise, for example. In which case the politicians will try to come up with different colors to pain their bombs with (no more woke bombing–we’ll just paint bombs gray again!)
>>>They appear to be “middle” because of their “inconsistencies,” i.e. all their views average out to the middle because they do not have neatly bundled views of the political elites.
Every detailed survey or study that I have seen over the past four decades shows that the majority of the American nation tends towards social conservatism and lite economic socialism, and is anti war ; no DEI or trans rights, but death to the oligarchy and to the corruption that pervades everything especially in the upper levels of society; yes to national healthcare, free education, social security and no to completely free trade and mass immigration. Then there is the reality that even many racists, which is a shrinking population, would not want Jim Crow back; they don’t like blacks, but hanging people from trees is not good. This pattern also applies to the bigoted against gays and women including conservatives.
Restated: A belief in live and let live, preferably conservatively, but not enforced by the government, with strong civil rights, is anti war, with an economy that is pro worker and pro family, that prioritizes being able to live a good life, all under honest government?
I do not see the political parties would be able to support, forget about carrying out, policies that would create this. The Democrats still have their bonkers DEI with whites being innately stained with badness, the Republicans are looking to hate anyone not white. Really, the social policies are the only real difference between them. Both parties are pro oligarchy, pro corruption, and pro war who carry out policies that increase the wealth inequality and poverty, and are anti lower class, and thrive in the all encompassing corruption. American corruption is really the water all the actors swim in, which is why people can’t see it.
If there was a political party or movement that adopted the ideas that I think are core to the general American public, assuming that the security state didn’t pull a JFK, MLK, Malcom X, or Fred Hampton, it would very likely take off and replace one of the political parties. And while it looks as if the Democrats will be the first party to go Whig, do not underestimate the Republicans because they are following the same path as the Democrats. Overpromise, lie like crazy, and make things worse for the people. Also, much of the “liberal,” less insane Republicans have moved to the Democrats because of President Trump. They have tied themselves to the Democrats’ future. As for the Republicans, what happens when something happens to the strongman who is the central, uniting figure of a party or movement?
“I think the secret behind “populists’” success lies on their recognition that the real public opinion is not neatly unidimensional. They can pick and choose what “works” from the programs of the left and right and sell themselves as alternative to the conventional politics.”
We don’t have politics in this country. The important decisions are made by a rather small community, and then the assignments are made to sell those decisions to the public in a way that obtains the plebes’ compliance if not their support. Obama and his award winning Plouffe were slick salesmen peddling hope. With the bitter taste of that cynical (“guns and God”) betrayal (Obama won INDIANA!) in their mouths, that portion of the American people who weren’t soothing their palates with quiche washed down by some chardonnay, were ready for pitchforks and torches. That’s hardly the first time that has happened, but along came a man who could sell what floats in his gold toilets. Trump not only intuits what works; he also understands why it works when it comes to public opinion, especially of MAGA supporters.
Something lies behind “what works.” The worldview that helped people make sense of the world has been dissolving for a long time. Now there’s not a whole lot more than survival of the fittest, and that makes for a very angry and fearful society, especially in times of high stress. It is stunning, is it not, the treatment of two words in our political discourse: hope and peace. The former died with the Obama Administration. The latter died way back with McGovern until Trump, feeling the pulse of a nation sick of war, resurrected it. Will he handle what should be considered a solemn promise with Obama’s nonchalance, and throw his followers into the abyss, sullying the precious word he brought back into use?
On the last point – if US military operations will be of lesser size in the future that will be almost entirely due to the rise of non-Western military supremacy. Something unheard of since the Renaissance and the rise of “white man´s Europe”.
US thus will have to give in unless they wish to get us all killed.
Which means to say: Whatever will happen it won´t be from genuine insight that times are changing and peace might be the more decent and constructive choice. But enforced upon them. Which is never a good thing. But preferable to the alternative of the past decades.
It´s almost like putting the breaks onto a still running engine.
On the other hand, what we all are experiencing now will be resonating too with a coming generation which decides to enter US military and intelligence services on the rank&file level in the future. Which means not the millionaires. And they might change the structure of the beast over a long time.
As a commenter on Moon of Alabama wrote last week, apparently voices are rising in numbers that are discussing if the “capitalists” are pondering to shift everything to Asia and decide over how things will look the coming 100+years simply by depriving the West of its financial means.
Maybe for once the flexibility of capital could be of help in a very limited sense.
The real problem for the Democrats is that no workers are going to believe anything they say at this point. They have made enough proclamations over the last four or five decades that they have not lifted a finger to actually implement that no one even listens to them.
Their only hope is to go through four or five election cycles where they actually carry out (i.e, start and then complete) important and valuable policies that improve the lives of working Americans (I’m thinking of the new deal and FDR here). At this point, it may start to sink in to the average American that the party has something to offer them. The Dems also need to build a deep bench of candidates who can come online over the years and carry these policies forward, and who are passionately pro worker when they go out on the campaign trail.
I would dearly love to be wrong, but I just don’t see this happening anytime soon. The Democratic party is so deeply supported by wealthy interests that it’s an impossibility for them to serve anyone else.
“no workers are going to believe anything they say at this point”
To be fair though, there’s a sizable portion of the working class that seems to believe Trump and the GOP are pro-worker so clearly there’s enough gullible rubes to fall for it.
Had a six hour car ride with a good friend who is a diehard Trump supporter and she genuinely believes he’s a compassionate guy with no self interest (he donates his presidential paycheck to charity!) that is looking out for the little guy. I didn’t push back much. Instead just offered questions as I wanted to better understand. (Same reason I have a Truth Social account and visit that cesspool every once in a while.) All I’ve come away with though is we live in a different reality. Oh, I also learned that being OK with trans people makes me a bad person. I just stopped talking at that point and let her spend the next hour or so telling me how evil they are.
The heartbreaking one though is my sweet elderly neighbor who is also a diehard Trump lover. She’s a truly sweet person, teaches kindergarten in Compton, and in many ways is a caring person. But the other day we were talking and she brought up that “The homeless population in Los Angeles is going down because they’re dying” and started laughing then asked “Isn’t that funny?”. I was caught off guard. Later I tried to find this in the news and couldn’t. Maybe she learned this from the rightwing radio she listens to on her commutes or from Jessie Waters or something but still just shocked that she finds mass die-offs of the homeless to be both good and funny.
Anyway yeah, the Democratic Party is awful and in the pocket of the wealthy, etc, etc, etc. But, I mainly wish we had a counter to the darkness that has taken over the right in this country.
Covid damages the brain, including the regions that help us to be empathetic. I wonder how many times your elderly neighbor has caught covid.
I’m given to understand that watching Fox News has the same effect. It is the TV channel of choice of prison guards from what I have heard.
MSNBC was no better when I was in the US. I was staying on a farm with two parts of a family on it. One house had Fox 24/7, the other MSNBC. They seemed similarly insane to me. Before thati hadn’t realised Fox had an equal.
Related to the above is that the Democratic Party does not really lose anything by not winning from an electoral standpoint. The hopes of “punishing” the Democratic Party by making them fail electorally does not take into account that winning elections is not really the main goal of the party, but fundraising. The Democratic Party is more than happy to commit political suicide as they have been doing with their adherence to neoliberalism as long as the corporate donor money keeps rolling in as this enriches the DNC’s individual members.
The Democratic Party also relies on Republican horribleness when they are the “minority” party to push empty promises about combating Republican malfeasance should the Democrats take office again. Plus, when Democrats are in power, they have to keep coming up with flimsy excuses as to why they will not actually do any of what they promised as they actually push or expand upon Republican policies 90% of the time.
It is much more expedient for Democrats to sit back and do nothing while raking in big donor money while trying to maintain the illusion of being a nominally left-leaning party despite being diehard neoliberals.
The Democrats might be doomed politically, but they are still making money hand-over-fist from wealthy donors, so they really do not care about the political viability of their party, anymore.
I opened the “Democrats aren’t rising” article and did a quick text search for the following terms: Palestine, Israel, Gaza. Nothing came up. Not that those are the only important problems for Dems, but what an omission.
Yup. just a callout to abundance. No need to do anything that might piss off he donors.
– ‘Bonfire of expertise: Trump drives scientists, spies and soldiers out of government’ – Axios
I assume the title is a reference to Tom Wolfe’s book. But if so, the author seems completely oblivious to the main message of that work. He writes as if there were no problems whatsoever with the “experts” at the CDC or other government agencies before Trump came along. Hilariously, this includes the “spies and soldiers” at the Pentagon and throughout the apparently mythical “Deep State” whom the delusional Trump thought were out to get him (what a paranoid!). They were all just practicing their “expertise” for the public good before Trump came along to “purge” the government of all these well-meaning bureaucrats for no reason. It follows that any of Trump’s followers who support these moves must be deplorables who simply oppose Science and Expertise out of their own ignorance and resentment. What other reasons could there possibly be for questioning the legitimacy of such “experts”?
Let me provide the usual qualifier that I totally oppose what the Trump administration is doing and do not believe its actions are based on any principles other than Trump’s own self-interest and payoffs to his own cronies. I also believe that many, if not most of these government workers were indeed dedicated public servants. I had this very argument last night with my daughter, an RN who works for a mental health agency in NY state that is very much dependent on government funding and expertise. But this complete white-washing of pre-Trumpian history leads to a complete misunderstanding of the Trump phenomenon itself. And failure to recognize the biases and hubris of the pre-Trumpian elites who were previously in charge misses the main point of Wolfe’s book as well.
AI stethoscope, I read it but did not see how long a doctor would take to do the same thing but nothing but gibberish numbers, i.e.
Researchers found that patients who benefited from the new technology were 2.3 times more likely to have heart failure detected within the next 12 months compared to those who did not benefit from the technology.
The use of the stethoscopes increased the detection of abnormal heartbeat patterns — which are symptomless but can elevate stroke risk — by 3.5 times and increased the detection of heart valve disease by 1.9 times.
I’m not mathy but how does one know that beneficiaries were 2.3 times more likely?
More diagnosis means more procedures has a kaching sound to it, and how accurate really are these things?
At the end…
“The AI stethoscope gives local clinicians the ability to spot problems earlier, diagnose patients in the community, and address some of the big killers in society,” stated Professor Mike Lewis, scientific director for innovation at the National Institute for Health and Care Research, which supported the study.
A.I. eats brains for breakfast.
A lot of the managers have the Microsoft AI installed in their Project and Outlook modules and a robot is telling them what to do M-F 9-5.
If you recall the early days of ubiquitous IT people followed mapquest driving instructions off of cliffs. This is like deja vu all over again.
They would need to have a longitudinal study with thousands of patients who would be in the at-risk category for strokes and heart failure separated into two cohorts: AI stethoscope diagnosed cohort, and human doctor diagnosed cohort. Both cohorts over time, without any medical intervention, should have statistically insignificant differences in the prevalence of stroke and heart failure. If the incidence rate for both diseases is expected to be 10% over the time of the study for high-risk individuals, each cohort is 1000 at-risk people, and no diagnoses is going on, you’d expect to see about 100 incidents of stroke/heart-disease in the two groups.
Now comes the diagnostics angle. If doctors can successfully identify high at-risk conditions that merit treatment, say, about 30% of the time, and the treatment plan is 100% successful (not realistic, but assume this for the sake of illustration) that cohort should only see 70 incidents of stroke/heart-disease, where those 70 were at-risk individuals who were not able to be identified by doctors and receive the treatment. This also means that doctors, knowing and trying to save 100 out of the cohort, try to issue 100 diagnoses, they will probably have a 70% false positive rate, and issue therapies that are unnecessary to their patients (Think the over-prescription of statins)
With the AI stethoscope, if it’s 2.3 times more likely to detect critical conditions in an at-risk patient, that would suggest it could find about 70% of those individuals from the 100 out of 1000 that would need a therapy to prevent stroke. It would also reduce the false positive rate to 30%. At least this is my assumption of how the article wanted to communicate the results.
However, without the actual study and methodology documented that support these claims, it’s difficult to determine if those claims are true or not, and how they came about it. Did they do it purely based on false positive rates, or did they do the actual longitudinal study? What risk groups did they actually use, or did they do the general population? Did the AI tool also have access to medical history or did it blind, and vice versa for the doctors? There are a lot of opportunities where if cohorts weren’t pre-registered, and data collectors and study organizers were operating independently and blind of eachother, to easily fudge the numbers and the groups to show a therapeutic result when one might not have been there.
Graham Allison, dean of Harvard Kennedy school.
Adores Lenin/Stalin’s expediency called the Ukraine SSR. An expedient Soviet division of the Russian empire. Insisting Kiev’s sacred right to Stalin’s fiction is propaganda for neocon strategy.
Plucky Zelenski, whose office ended 16 months ago could not hit a Russian football field in Donetz with his country’s indigenous capabilities. US is the reason Kiev kills Russians today.
Harvard class propaganda.
Propaganda, delusion or just intellectual vacuum? Mapping the Russia-Ukraine War Endgame at The National Interest is in my opinion an exercise of intellectual vacuum. Allison writes:
Sharper focus? Russia prepared for an exchange of land? What is this guy talking about? What, Zelensky to be convinced for an exchange of land? In which world does Allison live? This war is not about control of pieces of land the size of Cape Cod or Delaware with little strategic value for any of the parties. Pushing for ideas that solve nothing and nobody likes is something in which we should focus?
The best thing about the Allison article is what his maps show — the restricted geographic base of the US policy elites.
His maps try to give the target readers an intuitive sense of the extent of Russian expansion into Ukraine by charting onto a region they can be expected to know.
He doesn’t use the Midwest or California and Oregon (two states a little bigger than Ukraine) — no, he uses the US Northeast and Delaware. As the Situationists would have put it, that’s the real world of the decision-maker class (perhaps a circuit defined by where they grew up, where they went to college, where they work, and where they have vacation homes), the location of their thinking and cultural cues.
“US greenlights nearly $330M military package for Ukraine”
‘The news came a day after the Trump administration approved the sale of 3,350 Extended Range Attack Munition (ERAM) missiles and 3,350 GPS units, part of a $825 million arms deal’
But of course Trump is not a party to this war and is merely offering his services as a ‘moderator’ between Russia and the Ukraine.
“AI web crawlers are destroying websites in their never-ending hunger for any and all content”
This probably explains why many of the websites I visit have put in place more hoops to jump through such as Captchas before you can log on. AI is wrecking the internet and treating it like ‘commons’ to be exploited as much as can be without putting anything back. But if AI died tomorrow, would anybody really care? Would most people even miss it?
I’m confident we are going to get the answer to this question, just as we got the answer to the same question about web3, cryptocurrency, NFTs, blockchain, self-driving cars, and so on. Seems pretty clear that the whole AI scam is going to blow up within the next two years or perhaps less. We are starting to see the vague outline of this even now in the darker corners of the business press.
This would be unmitigated good news except for the fact that the half dozen companies grifting on AI are the ones holding up the entire stock market.
Maybe superscalar data centers can be turned into heavily air conditioned low-cost housing after the crash.
“But if AI died tomorrow, would anybody really care?”
I’d care. I’d party like it’s 1999.
Was at dinner with a filmmaker and film teacher last night and she is big proponent of AI filmmaking now. Convinced it’s the future of filmmaking. This is someone who has made traditional films a lot in the past. too so not just some youngster who doesn’t know better. Also have some clients in the advertising world that use tons of AI in their photo ad campaigns (mainly for retouching like (we shot this photo in the fall but it’s for a spring campaign so: “AI make the plants look like springtime” type stuff).
And then there’s all the people in my circles constantly going on about using AI “agents” as their personal assistants, researchers, collaborators, and therapists.
“we got the answer to the same question about web3, cryptocurrency, NFTs, blockchain, self-driving cars, and so on”
The big difference in my opinion with web3 mania and AI is during the web3 era there was a ton of hype but whenever I’d get into discussions with advocates of it and hear their explanations about how it was the future of whatever they could never articulate how. Just drop vacant platitudes about the metaverse and blockchain and bottom-up growth and I’d start to feel like I was at a multi-level marketing pitch or a cult meeting. Whereas, everyone I know now who is an advocate of AI is using it daily and has real examples of how it’s supposedly useful in their day-to-day lives.
Crypto currencies sorta reside between the two. No one yet has offered a good explanation of it’s usefulness (many of the early ideas about “decentralized” and whatnot have been defeated by reality) but many of those advocates have made small fortunes off it so it does have a tangible benefit for them.
All that said, I’m with you and hope we see the demise of these scams soon. I feel so much of the great sci-fi that cautioned about these potential tech dangers missed the mark on the main danger was that this tech was going to create mass cults of idiocy and selfishness. Seems the ones that got it most accurate were Idiocracy, Verhoeven films (RoboCop, Total Recall, Starship Troopers), Kubrick (Dr. Strangelove, Clockwork Orange), 1984, and all the other ones who leaned into both the corporatization and how delusion and dumbness would be elevated by these supposed advancements.
I was seeing tons about this in my social media timeline, complete with breathless statements about how “this changes everything” illustrated by short videos produced using some new app that “just dropped”. Even the tone of these “announcements” is uniquely annoying. Fortunately, the hype has abated somewhat, tho I did make a point of blocking any X users spouting this kind of discourse.
What strikes me is that all of this “A.I.” generated imagery is very derivative and frankly sort of boring. If it’s all as “effortless” as its proponents make it out to be, then it’s never going to be very interesting. Craft is not effortless. It’s work. There are no shortcuts. This is why there is a world of difference between someone like Miyazaki Hayao who worked hard for many years to craft a specific style versus some app that consumes everything produced by Ghibli and churns out Miyazaki-esque slop.
Tbh, I feel bad for the students of your acquaintance, being told this is the future. If they are not developing their own creative impulses, then what are they going to produce in “the future” that isn’t just cookie cutter imagery? If this is how they are being taught to make images, they will never develop their own craft, they will never be more than hack wannabe artists, and their future employment opportunities may be rather limited. After all, why hire a human if that person is just putting prompts into an AI app?
My sense now is that the people who say A.I. is going to help fuel human creativity are only admitting their own lack of it. They are just telling you indirectly that they lack imagination and are spiritually bankrupt. It’s kind of sad, really.
They’re vacuuming up content? Hey, AI, suck on this:
So what puzzles me is we actually have what ought to be a caus belli in school absences; You’d think keeping kids in school and parents at work, would be an outcome that everyone from kids to parents to capitalists could support. So the willful ignorance on the cause of ongoing chronic absenteeism is mind bending. If you don’t look for COVID, you won’t find it.
Re “aesthetic Turing test”–this is silly. Of course animators long ago learned how to give 2d representations of humans or non humans conviincing human expressions. And surely any competent and trained illustrator could provide an idealized “perfect” fashion model. They used to do it all the time. If AI learned these art school tricks then so what?
And unless you are maybe an adherent of late 19th cent aestheticism the purpose of art is not to depict the “perfect” anyway. It’s our imperfections that are interesting.
People are really bending over backwards to make AI seem like a thing. Perhaps it is, in technical scientific fields like medicine.
>>>People are really bending over backwards to make AI seem like a thing. Perhaps it is, in technical scientific fields like medicine.
I do believe that the goal is to make AI appear just good enough, even if it is not, to replace the human in the creation loop, just as in other work, which means not paying for the product or having to wrangle over the IP rights.
That’s my sense of where this is going as well, though the “creation loop” is not going to be very creative, and for the moment the jury is out on the question of IP rights.
We’ll see what happens with the current lawsuits against the AI companies, but I would not want to be on the legal teams facing off against Disney, Universal, Sony, et alia.
How This A.I. Company Collapsed Amid Silicon Valley’s Biggest Boom (NY Times via archive.ph)
We can only hope.
From BBB alerts consumers to rising text scams.
I get these endlessly on my ignored mobile number; I use Google Voice for everything and this gets attacked far less often. But my Verizon number is hit 1-3 times every weekday. I guess weekends these garbage people take off too.
What a joke; this is not a serious country. This kind of thing can absolutely be dealt with. At a minimum, you can introduce filtering, like with email. There’s zero reason we can’t, except this country is trash and our elite are trash.
And on that note:
LOL so Fox News is running a product placement for Cyberguy.
Of course that’s all nonsense. You cannot pay anyone any amount of money to get your data off the Internet; If you’re an American, by this point, your SSN and other details are already all over the Internet, either thanks to Equifax where no one went to jail, or any one of hundreds of other breaches.
Once that data is out there, it’s forever in one data cache or another held by scammers and spammers. You’ll never erase it. Impossible.
It’s great that here we have people being scammed out of money, lots of money, and this arse clown is trying to scam people out of more money to “help” them. Even Fox News probably collected some bucks here. LOL.
America is going great!
I got a scam letter this week wanting me to send a check for $119 to register my company under the BOI law. It was from a D.C. address but it’s not from a government agency. After all of the BOI stuff last year, the law actually applies to FOREIGN companies, so US citizens are not expected to comply. But the scammers assume that not everyone understands that.
And there’s always the text message from some company happy to help you register for an EIN, which is free, for a fee, of course! This is sent to any new company that shows up registered as a domestic in NC, and probably other states as well if that data is easily public.
>‘Gringos out!’: Mexicans protest against tourists and gentrification
Sheinbaum may not be as progressive as she seems. She may just be an average Mexican president and a neoliberal puppet of Washington.
Or not. It’s not like their is a gentrification toggle.
What an extraordinary evil
In Trump’s Federal Work Force Cuts, Black Women Are Among the Hardest Hit (NY Times via archive.ph)
We can throw in Obama’s hand in the largest destruction of black wealth in history, thanks to the HAMP debacle. Where’s the truth and reconciliation committee on that monstrosity? It’s almost like liberals don’t want government to work, either. And we can’t forget Biden and the Democrats doubling childhood poverty. Now, this.
If you don’t measure, it didn’t happen
whomever linked these two NLR things, thanks. Ive been buried in them all day as i take my smoke breaks
https://archive.is/FjSUA
https://newleftreview.org/issues/ii154/articles/the-laws-that-rule-us
the latter, especially, had Wendy Brown whispering in my ear the entire time.
Re: The National Interest article.
This is the first I have ever heard that Putin seized parts of the Donbass in 2014: “In 2014, Putin seized Crimea, along with parts of two other provinces, Donetsk and Luhansk—some 17,000 square miles of territory. ” Doesn’t anyone proofread their articles? T
That said, the article was not as insane as many other articles about Ukraine.
It’s not bug, but a feature. Just following the official narrative from Kiyyyv. They count 2014 Donbass militias as a part of not-full-scale Putin’s invasion, and SMO as full-scale invasion of Putin’s armies. Those are the rules form the official guidline that the proofreaders consulted and found the article to be a OK.
yeah, theres apparently a style guide, produced by cia, no doubt(“full scale invasion” figures prominently…they must get cookies for that usage)
meanwhile, here in the Real….i just cooked beef and pork ribs in the frelling rain…because i can build a fire in a frelling Lake!
and am just that Badass.
I see your ability to build a fire in a frelling Lake and raise you with my ability to burn water when cooking! :)
Has anyone else had the feeling that this Abundance political theatre is eerily similar to Prosperity Theology?
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_(Klein_and_Thompson_book)
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosperity_theology
“Has anyone else had the feeling that this Abundance political theatre is eerily similar to Prosperity Theology?”
Most emphatically yes, and it gives me the creeps (gross understatement).
“Post-COVID” is always a red flag: “Number of sick days taken by public servants [Canadian fed. gov’t] growing post-COVID”.
Seems roughly similar though?
Which isn’t to say increased absenteeism isn’t a thing, it certainly is. But if I’m reading this correctly, it isn’t evident here. Rather, this shows that when you have people congregating in the office less or not at all, you get less sick days.
re: democracy as lie
via BERLINER ZEITUNG
Short philosophical essay discussing the idea of democracy since Solon referencing Rainer Mausfeld´s seminal study „Entzivilisierung von Macht“ “De-civilizing of political power”.
machine-translation
Philosophical column
Michael Andrick: Why is this book rarely talked about?
Rainer Mausfeld’s work on the “decivilization of power” is rarely discussed, even though it sheds light on the appearance and reality of Western politics. Or is that why?
https://archive.is/zrjm7
The Trump administration is playing the “show them how much we support genocide” game:
U.S. Suspends Visas for Palestinian Passport Holders, Officials Say
Looks like somebody had an attack of common sense-
“Beverly Hills superintendent overrules plan to display Israeli flag on campuses”
https://archive.is/XgNDg#selection-2434.0-2434.1
Putting students and staff potentially at risk just to backhandedly show support for Israel was not the brightest of ideas. Do they raise American flags in Israeli schools to show their support for the US? No, I thought not.
Very tangential – I’m currently sat surrounded by Israeli flags in mini-Israel (North Dharamshala, India). It’s a spiritual place, and the Israelis I’ve met have been different to those I’ve met over the years in Thailand – much less hostile!
Before I came, I was uncomfortable thinking about spending time around Israelis. Now that I’m here, I’m softening. These guys (mostly young hippie types) seem like they’ve been long out of Israel.
I guess at some point I’ll ask them about home and Gaza, but I’m not rushing into that. I am genuinely interested to here their POV though.
The hippie attire reminds me of a revealing post from an Israeli traveler, as recounted by a friend with lots of experience backpacking across the world:
Personally, if I found myself surrounded a bunch of Israeli flags in another country, I would look for an exit pronto. YMMV.
India Was the Economic Alternative to China. Trump Ended That. (NYT via archive.ph)
President Trump’s 50 percent tariffs landed like a declaration of economic war on India, undercutting enormous investments made by American companies to hedge their dependency on China.
India’s hard work to present itself to the world as the best alternative to Chinese factories — what business executives and big money financiers have embraced as part of the China Plus One strategy — has been left in tatters.
I feel like this is a serious misstep by Trump, in that it will pee off people who’s support is important – big money guys & preparing for war with China guys. Might give the Spooks/Thielites (who are strongly in both categories) ideas. They are (both Spooks and NRx VCs) obsessed with China, and basically want society reordered to be a China-defeating machine.
It’s a calculation: Trump is useful as the wrecking ball, and as someone with significant prole support. He enables the Palantir infestation of institutions, and places the way for true autocracy. He is also enabling the completion of the War-On-Terror guys taking over from Boomer Spooks. He is not indispensable though, and if he seriously jeopardizes their plans it’s wetwork time.
India was also going to be the battering ram to be used against China but I think that they had second thoughts when they saw what was happening with the Ukraine and all those promises of support.