Skier black flips while there’s an ongoing avalanche 🤯 pic.twitter.com/h4AQaM1lND
— Dudes Posting Their W’s (@DudespostingWs) December 23, 2024
How the Government Built the American Dream House The New Atlantis
What Counts as Work? Plough
Webb Telescope Spots Oldest Black Hole, Shattering Cosmic Records SciTech Daily
Making Backpacks for Tiny Fish Nautilus
COVID-19/Pandemics
COVID Pandemic Linked to Faster Brain Aging Tovima.com
US sees decline in women’s workforce participation after pandemic highs Newson6
Climate/Environment
Why Biodigesters Fall Short as a Climate Fix Sentient
In cramped, sweaty Hong Kong, climate change is making things worse for the poorest CNN
Can Humanity Stem the Plastic Tide? Nautilus
Global EV Sales Up 27% In 2025 Despite Anti-Electrification Policies In The US Clean Technica
China?
Chongqing in Southwest China has a monorail system with automated track-changing capabilities
Watch it change here
— Science girl (@gunsnrosesgirl3) August 16, 2025
China kicks off 1st global humanoid games in Beijing Andolu AgencyTrump says Xi told him China will not invade Taiwan while he is in office The Guardian
Groundhog steals tourist’s car keys in China, villagers rally to retrieve them SCMP
South of the Border
Can Congress Stop Trump From Starting a War in Mexico? The Intercept
CODEPINK Condemns Trump’s Dangerous Military Escalation in Latin America CODEPINK
Brazil’s Lula, China’s Xi discuss BRICS, bilateral opportunities Reuters
Africa
What It Will Really Take to Electrify All of Africa IEEE Spectrum
Africa’s richest country on track to extend GDP growth streak for third quarter Business Insider Africa
Africa Travel Boom: How to Explore the Continent the Right Way Travel and Tour World
European Disunion
Growth fades in Europe: Is the recovery already running out of steam? euro news
The coming days will show whether major EU players will support the peace process – Fico UNN
A Vassal’s Bargain: How Europe Signed Away Its Autonomy The European Conservative
Old Blighty
Why the UK public sector still creaks along on COBOL The Register
Could a wealth tax work in the UK? A visual guide The Guardian
Israel v. Gaza, Yemen, Lebanon, Syria, Iran
تعاني الطفلة رتال، مثل أكثر من مليوني فلسطيني في غزة، من سوء التغذية نتيجة المجاعة القاسية الناجمة عن الحصار الإسرائيلي والعربي المفروض على القطاع منذ 167 يومًا. pic.twitter.com/NnODj8jJ5Z
— حسام شبات (@HossamShabat) August 16, 2025
What is ‘Greater Israel’? Middle East Eye
Israeli minister announces plans for new West Bank settlement to ‘bury’ idea of Palestinian state sky news
No. 2 House Democrat Katherine Clark calls Gaza war a “genocide” Axios
New Not-So-Cold War
How Decades of Folly Led to War in Ukraine Compact
Summing up the Summit East’s substack
Trump says he and Putin ‘largely agreed’ on land swaps, security guarantees for Ukraine Kyiv Independent
Russian Forces Advance in Pokrovsk, Vuhledar, Kostiantynivka Military Affairs
Big Brother Is Watching You Watch
Your Smart Mirror Might Be Watching—Here’s What It Could Know About You Lifewire
Brain implants that decode a person’s inner voice may threaten privacy NPR
Imperial Collapse Watch
Trump’s plan to hide, not help, the homeless is a national disgrace The Hill
Scary new Narcan-resistant ‘purple fentanyl’ discovered in Nebraska NY Post
Trump 2.0
‘Feeding a narcissist:’ Ukraine reflects on Trump-Putin summit Al Jazeera
Trump’s aggressive push to take over DC policing may be a template for an approach in other cities AP
Farmers in US midwest squeezed by Trump tariffs and climate crisis The Guardian
Trump’s Orwellian revisionist history rewrites America’s reality The Hill
Musk Matters
Elon Musk and Sam Altman’s AI Feud Gets Nasty Time
Elon Musk says Tesla will be worth $30 trillion one day — but investors think otherwise The Cool Down
Democrat Death Watch
Grousing Democrats fail to find direction at top Times Observer
Democrats torn between voters and donors on Palestine Mondoweiss
Immigration
Judge denies Trump administration request to end a policy protecting immigrant children in custody CNN
Trump’s DHS touts massive number of illegal immigrants deported as Dems lash out at ICE Fox News
Our No Longer Free Press
‘Unprecedented’: FCC Official Slams Trump’s Media Impact Raleigh News and Observer
Google Caught in Censorship, Election Interference That NLPC Slammed in 2022 and 2023 National Legal and Policy Center
Mr. Market Is Moody
Dollar struggles as Fed rate-cut bets build; bitcoin soars to record high Reuters
Job market gloom hasn’t been this bad since the Great Recession Axios
Treasuries See Further Downside Following Mixed Economic Data RTT News
AI
Nvidia says H20 export controls didn’t stop China’s AI progress — claims ‘they only stifled U.S. economic and technology leadership’ Tom’s Hardware
AI helps assemble ‘brain’ of future quantum computer Nature
China unveils newest AI technology at World Robot Conference Al Jazeera
Why a classical education may be the key to humanity’s future in the AI era Fox News
The Bezzle
Everett man indicted in $200 million water machine Ponzi scheme My Northwest
Guillotine Watch
Here’s why this wine costs $16,000 per bottle pic.twitter.com/BpsYR7OxB1
— Business Insider (@BusinessInsider) October 8, 2017
The most expensive whisky sold at auction in the first half of 2025 is the Yamazaki 55yo (2nd Release). It fetched €215k, its lowest result ever.
For more top trades of the past six months, see our 2025 H1 report: https://t.co/LdZLaqif8o pic.twitter.com/xkgKVXV45h
— Whiskystats (@whiskystats) August 13, 2025
Antidote du jour (via)
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here
“It is a sign that while they believe the Trump MAGA crowd is too far right, the party from the left has to get closer to the middle when it comes to policies and ideals to gain traction.”
Mr. D’Agostino writes to my satisfaction. Please dear Democrats, double down. Continue to slap and insult the poor. Continue to abide by the millionaire donors. Don’t worry, you will surely win in the next round.
The Dems would need to make a hard left turn just to get to the middle. Liberal right wing and Conservative right wing is still, right wing.
When the big kid is on the right side of the seesaw, no amount of pushing on the middle is ever going to lift him.
“Democrats torn between voters and donors on Palestine”
No, they’re not. At the end of the day they will always go with what their donors want. That is how you ended up with the Biden/Harris ticket back in 2020 – because that is what the donors wanted. Senility and incompetence.
One would think there must be some donors that oppose genocides. Finding those would perhaps untorn the Democrats. And be good for the world, too.
What’s not to like.
I would say people with enough money to make a sizeable donation are probably higher in the sociopath scale, so the chance of finding someone that rich with compassion for the Palestinians is probably zero.
Donors that oppose genocide are probably also savvy or informed enough to had known about the sub-2% effectiveness rate of the Democratic spam fundraising machine before that article had been published.
Ergo, many (like myself) would rather give money to Doctors without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières) or other charities who will do more to help Palestinians with that money than any effete milquetoast politician mewling about the sanctity of Democracy while diverting my tax dollars to subsidize an authoritarian apartheid genocidal regime.
Today’s Democrats are the Whigs of the 1850s. The sooner those within the party who want change, and the outsiders who want better governance recognize this and the relevant history, the better chance we have to overcome the challenges of this century.
WWGSD. What will George Soros ( okay now his son as well, who recently married I think ) or a Reid Hoffman think of us ? \sarc
when it gets to foreign policy entanglements galore, I can’t help wonder if our world would really be different if say a Mark Cuban ever ran for national office …Hope in one hand and wish in the other, no wait those aren’t wishes!
One needs to be careful about stereotypes but perhaps part of it is the way the retro colonialism of Israel pulls traditionally diehard Democrat Jewish voters to the riight and the party along with them. Meanwhile the traditional Repub big donors–industrialists out to suppress labor–have become less of a factor in modern finance heavy USA.
And of course the country itself changed after WW2 and became much wealthier for all the reasons Michael Hudson talks about.
We now have a system that gives much but certainly not all of the power to Big Money. Both parties are down with this and fighting over support from the plutocrats. Rhetorically the Dems cling to their liberal talking points even as they work to undermine them. Floyd Abrams promoted Citizens United as a blow for free speech and the Constitution. Dershowitz uses the same rhetoric as he defends wealthy clients with process arguments.
This is not to single one group out since worship of success is so very much part of American attitudes. But it may help explain the Dems.
“Torn”=’do I really have to do something right,even for once,mummy?, yes you do!’
“Trump says he and Putin ‘largely agreed’ on land swaps, security guarantees for Ukraine”
It has come out that when Trump and Putin met, that Tump hand delivered a letter to Putin from US First Lady Melania asking him to please think of the children-
https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/what-melania-trump-said-in-peace-letter-to-russias-vladimir-putin-you-can-singlehandedly-restore-their-laughter-putin-trump-meeting-alaska-summit-9100824
Personally I doubt that she actually wrote this letter as it has too much of a Simpson’s vibe to it-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phSxxVJCZsc
But if she did, then I wait with baited breath for her to write a similar letter to Netanyahu about the hundreds of thousands of children being killed, maimed and starved in Gaza. Yep, any day now.
I wait with baited breath for her to write a similar letter to Netanyahu about the hundreds of thousands of children being killed, maimed and starved in Gaza
Quite.
Whenever I see the phrase baited breath, I imagine someone has been chewing worms or maggots.
The phrase is actually “bated breath” using the verb “to bate”. Similar in sense to the modern word “abate”.
Per google, it should be “bated breath” derived from “abated breath”.
This makes the phrase more sensible to me.
Moving words from I Really Don’t Care Barbie.
Melania Trump would do much better to write a letter to her dear husband if she’s so worried about children. After all he’s right in there with the slaughter occurring every day in Gaza.
In his first term, Ivanka Trump was so worried about children, that she complained to daddy. He made everything right by sending Tomahawks towards Syria.
Breakneck — why China’s engineers beat America’s lawyers
From the FT, archived here: https://archive.ph/ckcrU
original here: https://www.ft.com/content/261a0eaa-7fb9-4052-ac78-f4d8d9969e72
It a review of Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future by Dan Wang
‘…Wang’s central contention is that China is run as an engineering state that excels at construction while the US has become a lawyerly society that favours obstruction. By 2020 all nine members of the Chinese Politburo’s standing committee had trained as engineers.
‘By contrast, the US has turned into a “government of the lawyers, by the lawyers and for the lawyers.” The result is that the country’s legal aristocracy prioritises process over outcomes and systematically favours the well-off, Wang argues. From 1984 to 2020, every single Democratic presidential and vice-presidential nominee had attended law school.
‘The consequences of these differing approaches can be seen in how the two countries have built high-speed railways. In 2008 Californian voters approved funding for an 800-mile rail link between San Francisco and Los Angeles, while China began construction on a similar length railway between Beijing and Shanghai. Three years later the Chinese line opened at a cost of $36bn and carried 1.4bn passengers in its first decade of operation. The first segment of California’s train line may open some time between 2030 and 2033 at an estimated cost of $128bn….’
‘By 2020 all nine members of the Chinese Politburo’s standing committee had trained as engineers.’
Pretty sure I read a few short years ago that a large chunk of the National People’s Congress are also engineers by training. As for your observation about the importance of lawyers in politics, it may be a reflection of American society. There are over 1.3 million lawyers in the US so about 4 for every 1,000 people. In fact-
‘In terms of absolute numbers, the American legal profession was the largest in the world as of 2015, and it is thought to be the largest in the world in proportion to domestic population.’
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attorneys_in_the_United_States
A common law system requires legions of lawyers while a civil law systems require legions of clerks as the first argues about every facet of the process, while the latter just checks if laws where broken and if so, assigns a predefined penalty.
China uses civil law, so they probably don’t even have enough lawyers to run any level of government. Besides, civil law lawyers are trained to see that the process is fair and legal, not to argue what the process should be, so they don’t really make good politicians.
We see that at work seeing how Putin and American foreign polucy types talk, in fact.
I can’t tell what the deal is with the French and Germans, though. (I did wonder if the Western European civil law systems suffered from unhealthy cross hybridization with the common law system post WW2…)
so they don’t really make good politicians.
“good” is carrying a lot of freight there…. Good in a society more interested in “I got mine” and stabbing the other guy in the back, maybe.
But maybe the causation arrow points in the other direction? Perhaps you end up with an unfair process when it gets ‘massaged’ by antagonistic lawyers? (and nurture a society of backstabbing, to boot)
One other US vs. China comment: some of the dominant donors on the right are engineers–the raise-by-a-Nazi Kochs. Yes, the Koch’s nanny was a member of Hitler’s party.
But Charles and David Koch are engineers of extraction (actually chemistry, but predominantly petroleum). Petroleum engineering remains one of the areas in which the US maintains international dominance. Herbert Hoover was another engineer of extraction (mining), so perhaps that’s a common thread in US politics too.
Largest lawyers population proportionally, and largest prisoners population absolutely.
Indeed. And correlation is absolutely causation in this case.
Why there’s no case Perry Mason can’t solve!
Actual number of cases solved (2022 in California): 13.2%
We’re Hollywood’s dupes. (Also see Copaganda)
Isn’t he a defense attorney? It’s not his job to “solve” crimes. (Although the plot requires that “true” criminals are brought to justice, not just the accused getting off…)
Some additional color. California’s first high speed rail service looks to be the Brightline High Speed Rail Project, Nevada DOT, a “public-private partnership” that is scheduled for completion in 2028. It should come as no surprise that it connects LA and Vegas.
Brightline? I wonder if they are connected with the Brightline in Florida-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brightline
Indeed. The lede from Brightline West’s “Leadership” page, Our leadership team has a proven track record for high-speed rail implementation and is supported by a highly experienced team of professionals consisting of veterans from our Brightline Florida system, international high-speed rail experts, and other seasoned transportation design and construction professionals.
Then it’s a good thing there’s no pedestrians between LA and LV /s
Interesting. We used to hear a lot more of the “too many lawyers” argument. Now that we hear less it probably means the lawyers have truly taken over.
We all knew that person sometime in our lives that would yell out ‘I’ll sue you!’ and they were usually all bark and no action and you did your best to distance them from your life, but now we are being led the king of the settlements.
I’m old enough to remember “lawyer” jokes.
Haven’t been there since 2011, but it used to be fairly common to have motels in NZ including swimming pools with diving boards & slides and/or in ground trampolines.
Lawyers are lonely there…
Over the course of time here in the comments section, there have been occasional references to the musician and lyric writer Warren Zevon. Of all things on the radio this past week I finally caught much but not all of his wondrous track “Lawyers Guns and Money”….so awesome to hear it that I searched again to play it properly as we’re now inclined to do so, on the YT.
Second verse just had me cracking up….
Back in the day, the subject provided the title song for Tom Paxton’s album, One Million Lawyers and Other Disasters. 2 other keepers on that one were Yuppies in the Sky and the Day We Lost the America’s Cup.
America may have lots of lawyers, but it’s certainly not a nation of laws. This is a nation bought buy and run for the oligarchs.
The NYTimes proves once again that you don’t want to be in a foxhole with a liberal:
Top News e-blast of 17 August 2025:
Trump Bows to Putin’s Approach on Ukraine: No Cease-Fire, Deadlines or Sanctions
The net effect of the Alaska summit was to give President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia a free pass to continue his war against his neighbor indefinitely without further penalty, pending talks on a broader peace deal.
As any number of commentators in Italy, including the anarchist / satirist Pubble (yes, even Pubble) have been pointing out: NATO and the US of A just lost a war. They cannot claim that they are going to lay on the penalties. They cannot issue “free passes,” whatever that means.
So you have much of the mainstream Republicans and most of liberal / BlueMAGA singing, “All we are saying is give war a chance.” That’s what cheap wine and easy propaganda will do to a social class.
These were the same people who skipped history class and math class in high school and whose parents told them they were going to rule the world.
An entire elite made of avarice and tinsel. Who’da thunkit?
Somehow this weird individuals thought that when things stopped fulfilling their interests but running all the way around, they would be able to impose an “unconditional” pause as if they were playing a basketball game. How unfair it is, they may feel, that they cannot pause their declining pathway to hell. Yet I thing it is absolutely fair that these people who always believed that god and history are on their side start feeling that reality bites.
‘these people who always believed that god and history are on their side’
Yep. Even the German Wehrmacht of WW2 had the words Gott mit uns (God is with us) stamped on their belt buckles.
…from Mein Kampf
Iran needs to take note…when they ask for a ceasefire…it’s time to press your advantage.
Their parents were right. How did they know?
“NATO and the US of A just lost a war.”
I just said this very phrase 2 hours ago to an old friend.
She didn´t really understand argueing Russia didn´t call it war but SMO. Which is quite progressive for a German.
But she disagreed heartily with my notion of the military sea change taking shape.
The scale of this has never reached Europe´s elites and it never will.
My bottom-line was: This will be the first time the population of a block waging war will never learn the true reason (military technology) for them losing this very war. It´s quite amazing actually. 300mn Europeans are living in a fantasy world.
And when I am trying to reach common ground argueing that McGovern and Postol are saying the same thing as me all of a sudden comes the doubt “well they are old, aren´t they,” or “even they cannot know everything.”
February 2022 I wrote a letter to my MP. Assuming naively that something could be done, stating that the situation reminded of a nightmare one believes to wake up from soon…
The intellectual inconsistencies of the intellectual class are mindboggling.
Ray McGovern after he returned from his Berlin tour in July said about the same thing: How is it possible that the best educated people he had met since the 1960s – West Germans – now are among the most uninformed and most indocrinated.
Germans in 1918, maybe? Admittedly, most people don’t seem to think the Entente powers won via “technology” back then, but I think a fair claim can be made…
All those confederate flags on the backs of pickups are another example.
Come to think of it, in all three cases, industrial capacity and population size mattered more than ‘technology’ too.
Getting back to 1918 for a moment, one big factor in the German defeat was the generally successful Allied blockade of the sea lanes into Germany. Germany was suffering from shortages of all sorts of items, the most “effective” being imported food by 1918. That blockade was a double edged sword composed of sea freighters and military ships to stop those freighters.
It wasn’t until hunger began to be common enough to be noticeable that the domestic support for the regime began to crumble.
See: https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/z8vt9qt/revision/1
There was an even better article about this subject, but the site it was on displayed an ad for an “escort service.” Hmmm….
“It wasn’t until hunger began to be common enough to be noticeable that the domestic support for the regime began to crumble.”
Which may be the feat that the Allies of today hoped to replicate with sanctions (if they hoped for anything at all besides preserving domestic credibility).
Technology is not the only important factor here.
The Russians are operating on their border, which helps with logistics; Russian forces do not suffer the confusions and interoperability issues common to coalition military operations; the Russian public and military support the effort fairly strongly; Russia has 3:1 superiority or greater in population and economics over Ukraine; etc.
Seems like Putin got his revenge for Minsk.
…he made Minsk-meat out of Benedict Donald
I can imagine how their talk went-
Trump: ‘OK, Vladimir. It’s time to end the war. You’re making me look bad.’
Putin: ‘No.’
Trump: ‘How about a total ceasefire.’
Putin: ‘No.’
Trump. ‘How about a freeze in place then.’
Putin: ‘Same thing. No.’
Trump: ‘What about the Kellogg plan?’
Putin: ‘Still the same thing. No.’
Trump: ‘Can we agree on the Zelensky 10-point peace plan then?’
Putin: ‘That requires us surrendering. No.’
Trump: ‘What do you want then?’
Putin: ‘Do-nald. You have two choices. Walk away and blame Biden or continue the war and lose everything.’
Trump: ‘But if I walk away, the Neocons and the media will criticize me.’
Putin: ‘Do-nald. When you lose this war, the Neocos and the media will pin the blame solely on you and not them, da? Walk away.’
It may even have been just like that.
I’ve read that dialogue in the voice of sock puppets. :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzk6SoZxgPQ
It’s amazing how high these people are; Putin can continue as long as Russia chooses to commit the resources; There’s nothing as we all here know that the collective west or the United States singly can do about it. None of this should surprise, I guess, given how coke’d up these people are on Russiagate as well. Liberal Democrats must have invented a reality distortion device and they’re addicted to using it on themselves.
A large number of ‘these people’ truly are convinced that the US/NATO have been holding back and if these entities seriously committed a fraction of their overwhelming puissance it would immediately be over for that pipsqueak Hitler and his gas station with nukes and an economy smaller than Italy, which is anyway about to collapse from sanctions.
What can you tell people like that? Well, seek professional help might actually be a start. But ….
“Why a classical education may be the key to humanity’s future in the AI era”
On the face of it this sounds very astute if not wise. But – and you know that there was going to be a but – but this is Silicon Valley tech-heads that we are talking about here. What exactly is their idea of a “classical education”? What if it turns that in an effort to sway AI uses to their beliefs, that they scan in the Collected Works of Ayn Rand as their idea of a classical education and give weight to those values in AI’s answers?
One might use the library or buy books or sit at the feet of a classicist or attend classes. Take notes using pensil or pen in a notebook. Maybe … maybe … transcribe said notes using a computer as a typewriter and a filing cabinet. Stand aside from the use of so-called AI.
Rev Kev: Holy Moly. The door of the crypt squeaks open and out pops arch-grump William J. Bennett and some assistant, the Mohrman. I didn’t know that Bennett was still around as proof that American lives have not only second acts but also reruns.
Yes, the piece gives no sense of what they mean by classical education. The quadrivium was arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music. Interestingly, all of these can be considered branches of mathematics.
I have a feeling, though, that their idea of classical education is the usual U.S. jumble of John Locke with some utilitarian philosophers, exhortations to “pick oneself up by one’s bootstraps,” a toxic dose of Calvinism, a misreading of Babbitt, and football practice to build character.
Heck, that gets one the likes of Scott Bessent, Pete Hegseth, Carly Fiorina, and Joe Biden.
I will await Bennett’s paean to Herakleitos, Epikouros, and Diogenes the Cynic.
‘Out of Ignorance’: William Bennett, Stanford, and the Debate Over History Education, Cafe, June 17, 2021.
An excellent primer for those interested in Bennett. From within,
Where Reagan was private in his criticism, Secretary Bennett was fiercely public. Bennett had been an outspoken force in the administration since 1981, when Reagan had appointed him, at only 34 years old, as chairman of the National Endowment of the Humanities. Bennett, with both a law degree and a doctorate in Political Philosophy, had been a darling of the fledgling neoconservative movement; Irving Kristol, the arguable intellectual leader of the neocons, had pushed Reagan to give Bennett a shot.
I clicked that link with some enthusiasm myself, until I saw Bill Bennett’s name on the byline, who I was surprised to find was still fogging a mirror.
The only thing worse than being “educated” via AI slop would be edification by Socrates as filtered through the tender virtues of Bill Bennett.
Taking Diogenes as an example and learning to give power the middle finger is the type of moral rectitude we need a lot more of.
Re classical education see the “too many lawyers” comment above. If you are an English major what graduate degree path are you going to take other than the law or the dubious prospects of a university professorship?
Oh sure there are others but anecdotally this is exactly how some lawyers become lawyers.
And failed (= poor) lawyers become politicians. (John Edwards exception. But for his zipper, the Presidency was lost …)
To go full circle, one would think engineering, lol.
Gooooooood Mooooooorning Fiatnam!
None of the young grunts in the platoon would ever go into battle with coins that were jingling & jangling in your BDU, which could give away your position in small-time non-interest bearing money.
Since they all went to lugging Bitcoin into conflict instead, really no possibility of an ambush in the bush when out in the financial jungle on a LRRP, with the bigger danger being that now that it’s up to $118k… we’re losing men left and right, as military pay can no way compete with invisibility-utilizing an ersatz cloaking device with a modem.
Haig Hovaness goes all click-baity: I Was Tricked into Licking Drug-Laced Breasts of a Swarthy Brazilian.
Notice the Brazil angle. Invasion? I’m sure that the U S of A would be glad to help out the English in invading Brazil to put down this international menace. Get the HMS Margaret Thatcher ready to teach them a lesson.
Dating etiquette from the article: “In a chat with Daily Mail, he said: ‘We began flirting at the club and she complimented my watch. She told me she would like to come home with me, and we went back to my hotel.” Complimented his watch — that’s romantic!
My advice: If licking women’s breasts has become an occupational hazard, it is likely better to stick with men.
I’ll hesitate to read too much into that last sentence but certainly drugs have made it easier for these scam artists. In the past they might get them drunk, steal everything of value and then take their pants so that they were kinds stuck in that room. This supposedly happened to an Aussie ex-Prime Minister on a visit to the US many years ago.
Daily Mail knows no bounds to get those clicks. The old knock-out drops in the whiskey updated for the horny.
I could not resist including this link because the article is superb evidence of the the Daily Mail’s unrelenting quest for excellence in tabloid journalism. Please forgive my self-indulgence.
HH: Compliments. In a way, I am reminded of the good ole days in the US of A when such a moral dustup would have been Fannie Foxe, a k a The Argentine Firecracker, and the 1974 scandal with Wilbur Mills.
From her NYTimes obit, and those were the days! “But under withering publicity detailing his alcoholism and peccadilloes with Ms. Foxe, including an impromptu appearance at a Boston burlesque stage where she was performing, Mr. Mills checked into an alcoholic-treatment center, resigned as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee and did not run for re-election in 1976, ending a 38-year congressional career.”
And not a moment too soon as South Carolina was about to sink under the weight of all the “defense related” projects Wilbur sent its way.
Although I didn’t have access to full article, I liked the title and understand your reasoning!
The comment about sticking to men by DJG: unfortunately there are equally “on the face of it” mind-boggling tricks played there too….These days I’m a monk by necessity and lack of desire (thank you Long COVID – not).
Unfortunately after such a wonderful headline the article itself was a bit meh.
Actually there’s something almost endearing about the Daily Mail’s commitment to the cause. It sometimes seems also a bit more honest than BBC or Guardian headlines.
I’m fond of their USE of capitals.
There’s much to dislike about Daily Mail as an organisation, but the newspaper’s whole style is, I think, intrinsically more honest than that of BBC or the Guardian. It doesn’t pretend to not be a rag. From what I’ve seen, it also throws in more information that is carefully pruned elsewhere in reports of the same events, which I appreciate. It is manipulative, of course, but in a much more blunt and obvious way than the more respectable rags.
Comment section on that article is worth checking out.
Yes, they are funny. “I’m not reading the article. The headline is too good i don’t want to ruin it” Thanks for mentioning it.
Drink-spiking has been around forever, but it’s either become more common or awareness of it has risen… probably some of each. Anyone who consumes any beverage in the company of others can become a victim, although this means of dosing someone does seem a new twist on that old game, but I have some doubts about the story because absorbing drugs through the skin is a thing too.
The young lady spent the last few years building up a tolerance to iocane powder.
Inconceivable!
Speaking of click bait.
https://scheerpost.com/2025/08/16/gooning-for-apartheid-how-israel-uses-sex-to-whitewash-genocide/
IDF “babes” in bikinis.
I can see how an online conversation would go with these Genocide Barbies-
‘What is your name?’
‘Sabra’
‘And what do you do for fun?’
‘I like to jump into my Merkava and run over Palestinians. Sometimes I bring along my flamethrower when I’m bored.’
The Israelis have taken to saying stuff that you would have to be an idiot to believe as well-
‘Drop Site
@DropSiteNews
Aug 7
Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu now says the shocking images of Gaza’s completely flattened landscape aren’t the result of months of Israeli airstrikes, artillery, and systematic bulldozer operations—but because “Hamas booby traps every single building.”
In his words: “The reason you see the flattened buildings is because Hamas booby traps every single building… After we move in…we put in an APC with a lot of explosives. Detonate it. It sets off all the booby traps and the buildings begin to collapse.”
This is the leader of a military campaign that has systematically and deliberately razed entire cities and towns in Gaza block by block.’
https://xcancel.com/DropSiteNews/status/1953518909300388205
I sometimes wonder if the apologists for the genocide are being psychotic or psychopathic being as propaganda is more bonkers than the Nazis’ ever was or at least more easily refutable.
Children…tricks are for kids.
This is a nightly occurence in just about any major city in the world.
In cramped, sweaty Hong Kong, climate change is making things worse for the poorest CNN
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Used to go to a coin show every year in Hong Kong in September in the 1980’s, so I can’t tell you about the other 11 months, but it was humid as all get up when I was there, and although HK was heralded as a place to buy stuff on the cheap, it really wasn’t that big of a deal, the same retail stores would repeat themselves over and over again, and truth be said I had no interest in buying anything, but they they always had the best a/c going on for a break from Hades Kong.
p.s.
Round pictures at an exhibition
When Mao took over in the late 40’s it was a particularly bad time to have any visible wealth-and China was always a silver-oriented economy with only a handful of gold coins ever issued for circulation and all in the 20th century. so into the ground it went to sleep for about 30 years, and then enterprising Hong Kongers loaded up boats with the 6 items the Chinese wanted: refrigerator, washer-drier, tv, in-window a/c unit, and some other appliances, to clandestinely meetup with the argent provocateurs somewhere on the South China coast, who had unearthed mainly silver coins and when I say everything you could imagine went into the ground, it was just like that-junk to gems… and the item that the coin dealers from the USA were after in particular was Trade Dollars, which was the American way of getting rid of some of the incredible excess of silver from the Comstock Lode in Virginia City, Nv. They were minted from the 1870’s to the 1880’s, and actually contained more silver than a domestic Morgan Silver Dollar, and as an added bonus weren’t legal tender in the USA-as we didn’t want them back.
In the depths of the Great Depression you could buy these for less than face value. I remember seeing adverts in 1930’s coin magazine selling ’em for 85¢.
A lot of these that came out of China had what was termed as ‘chop marks’ punched into the coin, which was verification that it was of good silver. Sometimes you’d see numerous chop marks on a coin, buncha doubting Thomases!
https://www.greysheet.com/news/story/chop-marks-on-trade-dollars-should-we-avoid-this-damage-or-embrace-it-as-part-of-the-coin-s-journey/0
The coin dealers in HK that were the middlemen for the buried treasure the first year of the coin show in 1982 were easy prey, they didn’t know how to grade coins and were lacking in old lucre ability I felt, by the next year they all got a lot smarter and were sporting Greysheets (wholesale US coin values weekly) in their back pockets, just like the coin dealers back home, ha.
– ‘How Decades of Folly Led to War in Ukraine’ – Compact
For the most part this is an excellent overview of the post-Soviet history of US/NATO provocations that finally led to the “unprovoked” Russian invasion of Ukraine. I collect articles that I think provide especially informative background that I can send to less informed friends or family members on this history. This article is long, but it’s good, especially considering it is written by an Ivy League academic. Well worth the time.
Still, there is a level of analysis that is missing here, as is almost always the case. After showing how nearly the entire Cold War National Security Establishment warned against NATO expansion – from George Kennan to Richard Pipes (!) – and how most of our European allies opposed it as well, including the leaders of Germany and France, the author explains this monumental “folly” as basically a mystery, concluding: “America’s current predicament, where it finds itself one step away from becoming a direct combatant against a rival nuclear power in war that involves neither territory nor principles that are vital, is puzzling.” So… WHY was this “folly” possible? By WHOM was it carried out (there are a few key names named here, like Brzezinski, Cheney, and Nuland)? And HOW were all of these relatively sane voices in the US National Security Establishment and European leadership just swept away and replaced by neocon ideologues and “internationalists”? That is a crucial part of this history that we damn well better figure out.
You may find the WHO and the WHY from this article: Eastbound and down: The United States, NATO enlargement, and suppressing the Soviet and Western European alternatives, 1990–1992 (Journal of Strategic Studies, tandfonline.com).
Full article.
https://cissm.umd.edu/sites/default/files/2022-09/Eastbound%20and%20down%20The%20United%20States%20NATO%20enlargement%20and%20suppressing%20the%20Soviet%20and%20Western%20European%20alternatives%201990%201992%20copy%20.pdf
cool!
(would have been my next question ;-)
thanks!
NYT
U.S. STRATEGY PLAN CALLS FOR INSURING NO RIVALS DEVELOP
Patrick E. Tyler
March 8, 1992
https://archive.is/CyLfQ
“(…)
In a broad new policy statement that is in its final drafting stage, the Defense Department asserts that America’s political and military mission in the post-cold-war era will be to insure that no rival superpower is allowed to emerge in Western Europe, Asia or the territory of the former Soviet Union.
A 46-page document that has been circulating at the highest levels of the Pentagon for weeks, and which Defense Secretary Dick Cheney expects to release later this month, states that part of the American mission will be “convincing potential competitors that they need not aspire to a greater role or pursue a more aggressive posture to protect their legitimate interests.”
(…)”
And so on.
It´s what actually happened minus the insight that the attempt could as well fail (except for the Europe part – eclipsing EU worked magically.)
Also “Why NATO Enlargement Does Not Spread Democracy” by Dan Reiter from 2001 provides some background and arguments (full article, a pdf from Reiter’s dropbox).
…and just for the fun of it, the view from Russian side: “Nothing but humiliation for Russia”: Moscow and NATO’s Eastern Enlargement, 1993-1996 by Sergey Radchenko, full article as pdf (cardiff.ac.uk).
I’ll stop now.
Excellent sources. Thanks to you, and to AG, for the references. They show clearly how this strategy was being debated from the beginning during the GHW Bush administration, what the motives were, and a number of the key players behind the scenes – including the ubiquitous Cheney, who would eventually be able to implement the “defense” policies that were put on hold in 1992.
Thanks!!
And why stop now?!
😉
I run out of articles currently stored on my computer and had to run some errands.
Polar Socialist, thank you for posting this link. You’re adding to my knowledge base about what happened within the Soviet Union as it disintegrated in the ’90s.
In that regard I recall finding these books interesting/revealing/though provoking while not completely agreeing with them (and a caveat: I have not read all them fully yet):
Collapse – The Fall of the Soviet Union by Vladislav Zubok.
Russian Economy – A Very Short Introduction by Richard Connolly.
The Conundrum of Russian Capitalism by Ruslan Dzarasov.
Yes, agree completely. I was ready to copy it to pass on to the uninformed people in my life. Then it went into a complete fail with the little green men in Crimea. Not the Black Sea Fleet present in Crimea under a 50 year contract with Ukraine, with less than the number of soldiers the contract allowed for. Nothing about the military protecting civilians from assault by the ultra nationalists. Nothing about the vulnerability of the critical Russian naval base. Nothing about multiple referenda since the nineties by the people of Crimea to rejoin Russia.
OK, I confess I just scanned the article from that point, looking for the defensive nature of the civil war or the dominance of ultra nationalism. Maybe it was there, but I didn’t see it.
I think you should go back and read it more closely. It did mention the Black Sea Fleet and the Crimean referendum, and also the role of ultra nationalists in the civil war after 2014. And in fairness, the “little green men” were there in Crimea. But to your point, as I noted it was written by a Princeton academic, so there is going to be a bit more cautious “objectivity” than some of us might prefer. And it is limited in the sense I emphasized. But that said, I think it is a pretty useful historical overview, especially when compared to most of the mainstream dreck that is prominent these days.
It was a good article but you’re right. Also not mentioned was the crucial reason for NATO enlargement, which was MIC enrichment. All those new NATO countries needed to be kitted out with US weapons
“How? Why? Whom?” you ask.
The most recent attempt at searching for these answers that I’ve seen was by a recent guest (July 2025)on Neutrality Studies. Some may be familiar with these findings or some variation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niCwKpHBi7A/
Her post on substack for those that prefer to read:
https://themindness.substack.com/p/elite-capture-and-european-self-destruction/
Well spotted. Commented further there.
My goodness!
One of the many reasons NC should be part of a new alexandrian library, or even a true internet archive.
Re Guillotine watch why this wine costs $16,000 a bottle.
That is actually the restaurant price, and restaurants put bigger mark ups on wine than food. If you are serious about wanting to drink a very rare wine, better to look elsewhere to buy. Restaurants with fancy priced wines are for willy wavers showing off how much they can afford to spend (or put on expenses). And I am not suggesting such types are not ideal candidates for carting off to La place de la Concorde forthwith, but anyone who spends that kind of money on wine in a restaurant is an idiot.
Exactly. Sort of said the same in a comment in moderation. It’s something for expense account types and fools.
I think this article I’ll include below includes some of the owners and leadership as the target audience for a rare whiskey, tequila, and so on. Just for a comparative analogy, NFL team ownership benefits greatly from the US tax code and a willing public to fund a new arena or new stadium every 35 to 40 years ago, among other explanations for the commensurate rise in team valuations in most professional sports.
Take one team for example, the Indianapolis Colts. The owners are now into the 3rd generation of the Irsay family owning the team. Gone are those days when the team fled from Baltimore in the dark of night ( which I mention only in passing as the 1983 NFL draft was getting a rerun treatment yesterday on ESPN; that draft year arguably changed the future for quite a few of the drafted QBs ). Jim Kelly didn’t want to go to Buffalo but once the USFL folded their tent he duly reported to the Bills.
https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/cowboys-top-list-of-most-valuable-nfl-franchises-with-valuation-over-12-billion-as-all-teams-see-major-rise/
I’d almost forgotten about ‘wide right’…
For what it’s worth, the $12 Billion in worth LA Rams sold for $19 million in 1972, what a bubble pro sports teams are, that’s around a 666x increase in value.
Quite bubbly indeed. Consider baseball teams too (Forbes magazine cover story from 1977, ‘The World’s Worst Investment?’, and ‘Should You Buy a Baseball Club?’):
https://picclick.com.au/Forbes-Magazine-April-1-1977-The-Worlds-Worst-306166580014.html
But note the date! Maybe Forbes meant this as a joke and actually realized that sports franchises were about to go parabolic in market value.
The old Number of the Beast playbook.
Gives new meaning to “sudden death round” and “end zone.”
Like American football as played by the Aztecs.
I won’t put a hex on the Buffalo team. But instead I swear aloud this is the year that Jerrah Jones has so long waited to arrive. Cowboys go to the…NFC championship round at long last. Only to be foiled by their host, as Philly makes ’em weep. Who does not repeat as a Super Bowl winner.
“See that Jimmy Johnson I can build a winner too!”. \sarc
Long Suffering Bills Fans know the drill and are hex best friends with the agony of defeat, if we were to actually win the Superbowl it would be the ruin of us.
Posting this for information, plus general amusement:
Israeli economy contracts
To quote Lambert, that’s a damn shame.
Double dose of crocodile tears coming from me.
Go Ansar Allah, go!
I’ll play the world’s smallest shofar for them.
Not amusing. What additional austerity will the Congress Critters put people in the USA through to save their pet project?
Crap, I hadn’t thought of that.
AIPAC will scream “Israeli economy bailout, you’re wanted in aisle eleven.”
Instagram new feature requests your attention and consent dear user….er dearest friends and family I regret that my known location, as a responsible adult , at all hours is not your business and it certainly isn’t for you too, effing head honcho Mark Zuckerberg! These tech bro at Meta and IG keep proving they are horrid people.
Assholes. This new feature is called Maps. Gee do you think it’s a problem, Meta ? Not sarcasm.
What’s Maps spelled backward?
Profit.
“Scary new Narcan-resistant ‘purple fentanyl’ discovered in Nebraska”
I call bs on this. I’m not a pharmaceutical chemist but I think it’s obvious that a bit of lidocaine – usually a cut for coke, strange to use it in fent – is not going to make an opiate suddenly resistant to Narcan, which reverses opiate effects long enough to get a person conscious during an OD. I don’t understand how the heck fentanyl has become a drug of choice in America. I guess people really need something to nod off.
On the other drugs today, the Romanée-Conti, that’s just a rare bottle. You can get the Corton for maybe a couple grand if you go there and know a decent wine merchant. It is a very, very good wine. I like a Marsannay, the former vin de soif that is a perfectly fine Burgundy that goes with with almost any dish you can imagine. Excellent in every season.
I ply fairly strictly to the Mendoza line when it comes to plonk, not sure that i’ve ever laid down a Jackson for a bottle of Malbec.
How about those expensive whiskies below the wine tweet? As with the wine, no mention of how they taste. And it appears two of the three are Japanese, at least in name. I have never looked at Japan as a whiskey bastion.
This may not be the same thing, but it has popped up on the radar:
https://today.usc.edu/what-is-tranq-fentanyl-xylazine-addiction/
What is ‘tranq’? Deadly fentanyl-xylazine combo worsens the addiction epidemic
“USC experts discuss the new drug cocktail that doesn’t respond to naloxone, the opioid-reversal drug that has averted many deaths from fentanyl.”
a quick google search says that xylazine (also known as tranq) is not an opiod so naxalone wouldn’t work. unknown whether the addition of xylazine disables the anti-opiod properties of naxalone in re fentanyl. the resulting od’s may just be of xylazine while fentanyl’s effects are moderated by the naxalone.
Well, it all depends on what is going on.
The problem is these combos are not being mixed in controlled circumstances. You can get way more of one than the other and it will seriously mess with the ratio and the desired activity.
Purple fentanyl is a combo of fentanyl and lidocaine. Lidocaine is a drug that is used to have effects of nerve and muscle tissue throughout the body. In general, it turns off various channels. It is used as a local anesthetic and it is used as a stabilizer for hearth rhythms. Narcan has zero effect on this drug. The problem is that the ratio of these drugs is often very wrong – and there is way more lidocaine than there is supposed to be. The patient will have cardiorespiratory suppressive effects from the fentanyl and the level of lidocaine being injected is way too much – and will cause the heart to stop. This cannot be fixed by Narcan. The reason this is so scary is that the effects of any amount of fentanyl can be countermanded by intubating the patient and letting it work its way through the system. The same cannot in any way be said of lidocaine.
Tranq is another combo of fentanyl and another anesthetic agent used in big animals – xylazine. It produces an amazing high – but after a few doses the patients turn into zombie like creatures. The combo rots multiple very fragile parts of the brain. I have been in the brain autopsy proceedings for 2 different patients ( the brain has to pickle in various agents for a few weeks before it can be cut open and examined and is often done separately in medical rounds called neuropath.). The brain damage in these two patients was like nothing I have ever seen before. I could not believe my eyes.
It also must be noted that narcotics are imported in large amounts in just a few areas in the country. I was in the inner city hospital for years in one such location. The narcotics are repeatedly cut with other agents as they make their way across the country. So, in effect, the street opiates and their concentration is profoundly higher in these areas that get the narcotics before they are cut. This let to me being in the ER all alone on a New Years Eve – when an entire rock band from another part of the country got narcotics that were about 5 times more concentrated than they were used to. All 5 ODd – and I had to intubate them all. This is another very common issue in the USA – the concentration is wildly different throughout the nation.
In US you get purple fentanyl, and in EU white heroin. :)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Amsterdam_drug_deaths
“Russian Forces Advance in Pokrovsk, Vuhledar, Kostiantynivka’
Zelensky and those EU leaders had better make up their minds about accepting Russia’s terms. At the rate that the Russians are advancing, they will end up taking the whole Donbass themselves and then they will have nothing to negotiate over. So far as I know, Zelensky is still not only demanding the Donbass but Crimea as well. Not going to happen.
Of course they will have something to negotiate over (Kharkov, Dnepropetrovsk, Nikolaev, etc).
Unless of course the Ukraine and the EU get all stubborn and refuse to compromise leading to the Russians taking those places as well. I have seen nothing in that way and they are determined to still fight Russia whether the US remains involved or not. And the EU nations are still planning on flooding the Ukraine with their troops if there is ever a ceasefire.
Flooding, more like sprinkling.
The ‘tell’ to watch for when Zelensky comes to Washington is if he returns to the Ukraine at all, or does so and suddenly, “disappears.”
Apparel odds:
Black shirt: 1-1
Green shirt: 3-1
Armani suit: 10-1
Hugo Boss military business casual fall 2025 collection.
Trump is all about the dark blue suit, put Volodymyr in a softer blue suit and ~poof~
he looks like the junior partner.
It would all go according to Hoyle, if the past weekend’s version of Munich 1938 didn’t happen, that is.
‘Piece in our time!’
Skier back flips to narrowly avoid being swept away in a self-caused avalanche…
You almost never see skiers leaving the frozen terra firma @ ski resorts, its more the bailiwick for boarders plying their traits.
One time i’m riding a chair up and small talk ensues and I ask the fellow next to me where he’s from, and he says ‘oh right here in Mammoth’ and I ask what he does, and he says ‘i’m a surgeon’ and I inquired what he specialized in, and he smiled at me at said ‘terrain parks’, ha ha
Terrain parks are kind of the equivalent of the monkey bars in the playground growing up, a great way to ferret out the weak by riding your snowboard (its almost all boarders) on metal rails and other tomfoolery that forces you to get air and hopefully stick the landing.
When I saw that video clip of that skier being chased by that avalanche, I swear I could see a brown line behind him.
I’m looking for an end game to the pyramid scheme that is crypto, and you go where it leads you and in this case, next stop: Tiranë!
https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2000/03/jarvis.htm
Well, your Trade Dollar tale was truly enlightening, and so is this.
Since all rational and cautious investing on my part has led to disaster while the Mag 7 went on to rule the world, I now am questioning what’s a crazy senseless bubble and what’s not.
What if the bitty coins are what survives after the dollar implodes or hyperinflates to uselessness? Is this really an impossible scenario?
Since the USSR-USA Bizarro World collapse is coming along nicely, this circa 1993 video of Russians grousing about how little their money is worth thanks to hyperinflation, might be opportune.
A 63 year old lady’s pension of 400 Rubles a month is worth half a buck American…
USSR: free market reforms
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxTGtX8ixgQ
“AI experts warn that China is miles ahead of the US in electricity generation — lack of supply and infrastructure threatens the US’s long-term AI plans”
Lots of muttering about what those damn Chinese are doing but there is an obvious answer here. All those Corporations developing AI could band together and invest in the energy infrastructure of America by making it bigger and more resilient. It would ensure their future for decades to come. No word about that though which might imply two things. Either those corporations are waiting to do all this for them so that they don’t have to spend their own money OR they do not expect the AI fad to last more than a few years and so do not want to be stuck with those energy investments.
From the FT, February 12 2025, no paywall. You see the West’s political dilemma. The US electrical grid is already at the creaking point.
China’s construction of coal-fired power plants reaches highest in a decade
Report of 94.5GW of capacity being added last year undermines vow to start reducing carbon emissions by 2030
https://www.ft.com/content/4658e336-930f-49db-abc9-0036ee0ea777
Well, yeah, they wouldn’t do it the first time around either. That’s not where that kind of “future for decades to come” comes from.
Having a bit of difficulty making sense of an article titled, “ What Counts as Work?” that opens with, “Modern society struggles to answer the question of how women in the twenty-first century can (or should) manage earning a living and having a family at the same time.…” written as if we’re still in the twentieth century and Feminism was invented by Ms. Magazine, then quoting Merkel and referencing Sheryl Sandburg’s “Lean In,” but somehow failing to mention Silvia Federici or the germinal Wages For Housework” organization that she and others started (Federici being just one of many, many, many sources adding complexity to an ongoing discourse that, in this article, feels locked in 1990 or so. I dunno, maybe reference the 1977 Combahee River Collective statement’s “because if Black women are free than all people are free” (paraphrase)?). Birgit Kelle writes as if flirting with Marxist feminism but writes from a perspective now frequently dismissed as ‘white feminism’ which is frustrating because, to what end?
Why reference the 1920 communist position that “Hundreds of thousands, millions of mothers will thereby be freed for productive work and for self-culture. They will be freed from the soul-destroying routine of housework, and from the endless round of petty duties which are involved in the education of children in their own homes,” without contrasting it to the Nazi (and other fascist) commitment to women as the literal reproducers of soldiers and workers for the perpetuation of the State? Or a more contemporary mention of how neoliberal austerity pushes women beyond any choice of ‘motherhood or career’?
Writing about feminism from a liberal / equality perspective erases the history of Women’s Liberation movements which were of course connected to Black Liberation, Gay Liberation (pre-LGBTQ+ Gay), Youth Liberation, and every other liberation movement that became ‘equality movements’ as they mainstreamed.
I will admit, however, almost laughing out loud when I made it to the end and there was this somewhat pathetic and leading attempt at reader engagement: “Now it’s your turn: What are possible solutions to the problems Kelle describes? Spend billions to compensate parents? Create a culture that welcomes children and supports parents? Share your thoughts in the comments.”
Maybe the whole piece is satire. I’m honestly having more and more difficulty telling the difference these days.
You made me read it. There were times when it seemed focused on a battle between the 50s ‘burbs and the 90s Manhattan or White House. Two basic points seemed valid to me: women’s entry into the work force was more about exploitation than their liberation; and we seemed to have abandoned the idea that a household is an important social unit despite politicians constantly yapping about family values.
The author didn’t delve too far into the results of this devaluation of the household, a unit that served as the primary means of human production in the not so distant past. Occasionally, there are some squawks from Republicans about the importance of the “family,” by which they mean the nuclear family, but I swear I can hear the drive for more soldier boys beneath their concerns about the birth rate. Combine drones with AI, a task for which AI might be suited as long as you’re not too concerned about friendly fire, and the need for draftees may subside and need to support the “family’ along with it.
The author’s limited perspective was a problem. It’s really not a battle between “Leave It to Beaver” and “Sex in the City.” My spouse’s parents were farmers, and they worked together in the field. At a tribal level, work may have been differentiated by sex, but both sexes worked. Daniel Schmactenberger talks about the oldest generation taking care of the youngest while the middle worked. Sounds like a good arrangement to me. ;)
I don’t think anyone, other than those who can afford elite nursery care for their kids, is happy about sending their children to day care. Neoliberalism has made it a necessity, and anyone who wants to claim that it nurtures and teaches children better than families do would have a hard case to make in my court. Yes, there are bad households that neglect and even abuse the children entrusted to them, but when we think about what most day care workers are paid, do we believe they’re equipped to provide the care and love children need for half their waking hours? In our “money talks” society, that worker pay rate tells you just how much value our society puts on the care of young children in their most formative years. The only escape is to pay your way out of that patchwork system into the toney or specialty nursery schools.
I was intrigued by that 1920s Communist statement. It made me wonder again why Ursula le Guin had such a stark socialized system of child care on Anarres in Dispossessed. It made me think of babies in bottles in Brave New World.
haha yes, that’s prob what I found so frustrating — the idea that she mentions those two basic “valid points” you mention, which created expectations for me that the article might be worth reading and add insight. Insteadidea she skimmed the surface of important topics where there were historical roots or attempts at real change, then returned to focus on the hand-wringing of someone who never had to choose between going to work with their child or calling in sick that day. Of course Feminism has developed in different strains across the US and Europe (and South America, South Asia, Asia, Africa, etc.) perhaps simply reflecting embedded cultural assumptions about family and gender.
But even so I was flummoxed by an apparently German author going back as far as the 1920s but not mentioning extended family support — especially in working class and agrarian areas — as neither a pre-existing reality or as the model for community based child-care, etc.
Of course there’s also no other articles for this author on that site, so she could be AI for all we know, or simply did her research on wikipedia before making deadline.
re: Moscow architecture
German NACHDENKSEITEN
interview by Ulrich Heyden in Moscow
East German photographer Andreas Franke is preparing a photo book about new Moscow architecture and infrastructure
https://archive.is/CUY3Z
re: Germany/EU rearmament
BERLINER ZEITUNG
EU rearmament continues even without the Ukraine war: “There is no turning back”
The EU is pushing ahead with its rearmament plans. But as arms companies grow, the question arises: Why does Europe play only a minor role on the geopolitical stage?
https://archive.is/z2b94
Just announced that iconic actor Terence Stamp has died.
Watched him as General Zod in Superman 2 in cinema and he scared the bejeezus out of me. Best supervillain in comic book screen adaptation ever. Seeing him in Priscilla was a real eye opener as to his versatility too. RIP
indeed
golden generation
a propos “versatility” his Wiki entry gives a decent impression:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terence_Stamp
Image a union in the US doing this, lol
Air Canada Flight Attendants Say They Will Defy Back-to-Work Order (NY Times via archive.ph)
As I recall, the railway union folded, Teamsters folded on UPS, and they still don’t have their air conditioned trucks, Boeing union folded, after Boeing got a huge assist from Wall Street to avoid going bankrupt.
And we find that in every case, the deal reached was trash. The railway workers couldn’t even get their days off, the ask, and what Biden and the Democrats refused to help them achieve. Can’t interfere with precision scheduling scam, after all.
Hopefully the AC flight attendants stick together. Railroaders don’t seem to. Teamsters Rail Canada folded and accepted arbitration:
Arbitrator’s decision in CPKC-Teamsters Canada dispute awards 3% raises Trains magazine
It amazed me 50 years ago as a unionized rail worker how union officialdom refused to use the incredible economic power at our fingertips, granting decades of concessions. And how membership acquiesed. Both the union and company made life miserable for radicals. The head of my Conrail union was convicted in the 80s of embezzling funds to renovate union HQ. Company officials testified for leniency at his sentencing. Nothing has changed…
>>>It amazed me 50 years ago as a unionized rail worker how union officialdom refused to use the incredible economic power at our fingertips, granting decades of concessions.
I think that many union leaders are bribed and/or blackmailed just as our politicians are.
From the Cureus Journal of Medical Science. Published Jan. 2025. Worth a read.
Amid Growing Evidence of Conflicts of Interest and Obdurate Groupthink in Medical Journals, Researchers Must Entertain Contrarian Ideas
https://www.cureus.com/articles/336128-amid-growing-evidence-of-conflicts-of-interest-and-obdurate-groupthink-in-medical-journals-researchers-must-entertain-contrarian-ideas#!/
Because Trump’s Orwellian revisionist history rewrites America’s reality calls upon NY Time’s 1619 Project, it’s worth re-linking to a thorough debunking of it by World Socialist Website:
The New York Times’ 1619 Project
(bold mine)
Leavitt to Believer
Believer is excited to be cast as the canary in the coal mine, the carnival barker in his power play, until Trump’s “pep” talk gives her stage fright-and she can’t lie anymore, but everybody is so used to her fibbing that nobody notices.
Sorry to be pedantic, but this always bothers me. I’ll say it once. It’s “bated” breath (think of abated). I’m not sure what breath would be baited with for this occasion, but unpleasant odors come to mind.
Cheers.
So masks work or they don’t? So confusing.
Wildfire Fighters, Unmasked in Toxic Smoke, Are Getting Sick and Dying (NY Times via archive.ph)
It’s mind bending to me that we don’t provide protection for workers from airborne hazards, be it toxins from fires, or viruses. Biden actually killed a proposal for real workspace safety in regards to airborne disease during his regency. That’s our Democrats!
If you’re unlucky enough to be fighting a fire below 5,000 feet around these parts, there are vast oodles of poison oak-that when it burns can be very hazardous to inhale.
It’s an incredibly tough job being a firefighter. We pay baseball players hundreds of millions to get a hit 3 times out of 10, and along with health issues in firefighting, they’re paid peanuts-many of them.
Some grim reading on the escalating level of fraud and quack publication in science: The entities enabling scientific fraud at scale are large, resilient, and growing rapidly. (open access)
Abstract:
Science is characterized by collaboration and cooperation, but also by uncertainty, competition, and inequality. While there has always been some concern that these pressures may compel some to defect from the scientific research ethos—i.e., fail to make genuine contributions to the production of knowledge or to the training of an expert workforce—the focus has largely been on the actions of lone individuals. Recently, however, reports of coordinated scientific fraud activities have increased. Some suggest that the ease of communication provided by the internet and open-access publishing have created the conditions for the emergence of entities—paper mills (i.e., sellers of mass-produced low quality and fabricated research), brokers (i.e., conduits between producers and publishers of fraudulent research), predatory journals, who do not conduct any quality controls on submissions—that facilitate systematic scientific fraud. Here, we demonstrate through case studies that i) individuals have cooperated to publish papers that were eventually retracted in a number of journals, ii) brokers have enabled publication in targeted journals at scale, and iii), within a field of science, not all subfields are equally targeted for scientific fraud. Our results reveal some of the strategies that enable the entities promoting scientific fraud to evade interventions. Our final analysis suggests that this ability to evade interventions is enabling the number of fraudulent publications to grow at a rate far outpacing that of legitimate science.
Summary and commentary by lead author: A do-or-die moment for the scientific enterprise.
Sorry, the problem in my field goes back to the 1990s. Allegedly certain senior Health Economists (who were only on campus Mon-Wed) “setting the rules on what the cost-per-quality-adjusted-lifeyear (QALY) gained should be under for a new drug to be funded by the NHS” spent Thursday and Friday doing consultancy work for drug companies advising them on how to price their new drug so it came in at <£30K/QALY (the never acknowledged but widely known cutoff to us in health economics). An inconvenient researcher (Manchester?) plotted all the cost-QALY results for the past 20 years at one point…..the numberSorry, the problem in my field goes back to the 1990s. Allegedly certain senior Health Economists (who were only on campus Mon-Wed) "setting the rules on what the cost-per-quality-adjusted-lifeyear (QALY) gained should be under for a new drug to be funded by the NHS" spent Thursday and Friday doing consultancy work for drug companies advising them on how to price their new drug so it came in at <£30K/QALY (the never acknowledged but widely known cutoff to us in health economics). An inconvenient researcher (Manchester?) plotted all the cost-QALY results for the past 20 years at one point…..the number that came in at just under the threshold COULD NOT have been by chance, I worked in the private sector for a year in health economics. It made me sick to my stomach.
For those who laud the EU and UK for their drug reimbursement systems etc compared to the system, I have news for you. I saw how the sausages were made. It is NOT pretty. Nor remotely fair IMNSHO. I've worked on both sides, lectured to NICE in 2009 and think medicine regulation across Europe is wrong. Just wrong in a different way than it is in USA. Evidence? Look at my first 3 or 4 publications. I leave them off my CV because I'm utterly ashamed of them. They were done in good faith at the time but I now recognise how awful they are. That they came in at just under the threshold COULD NOT have been by chance, I worked in the private sector for a year in health economics. It made me sick to my stomach.
For those who laud the EU and UK for their drug reimbursement systems etc compared to the systems elsewhere, I have news for you. I saw how the sausages were made. It is NOT pretty. Nor remotely fair IMNSHO. I've worked on both sides, lectured to NICE in 2009 and think medicine regulation across Europe is wrong. Just wrong in a different way than it is in USA. Evidence? Look at my first 3 or 4 publications. I leave them off my CV because I'm utterly ashamed of them. They were done in good faith at the time but I now recognise how awful they are. (One of them is Fentanyl).
Not going to Burning Man this year on account of my ailing knee, and money isn’t of any use once you’re through the entrance gate-but you need a little scratch for a $550 ticket.
A funny thing has happened the past 3 years in that tickets are available in the aftermarket for a lot less leading up to the event, prices for a ducat now going for $300.
…anybody on NC attending?
Twenty teams from all over the world are competing in the Little League World Series this month in Williamsport, Pennsylvania.
Among those teams is one from Nevada, Summerlin South. In the 77-year history of the event, no Nevada team has ever won the tournament.
Does Summerlin South face long odds to win it all? Definitely. In fact, they face 15/2 odds. We know this because BetOnline.ag is taking bets on the outcome of the series.
https://www.rgj.com/story/sports/2025/08/16/online-betting-market-taking-bets-on-little-league-world-series/85679778007/
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Bad news bears repeating~
A return of one of the great canards of British political spin: The British PM as wise and influential President whisperer.
Keir Starmer hopes to exploit curious relationship with Trump in Ukraine talks
Starmer has very deliberately sought to position himself as a leader who can get along with Trump while consistently stressing to him Europe’s red lines over any peace plan, and trying to sweet-talk the president into offering US security guarantees.
Such efforts have yielded results, with Trump repeatedly saying how much he likes Starmer, despite their very obvious political differences.” [BP: This is not a result]
Starmer has shown his willingness to throw the diplomatic kitchen sink at efforts to keep Trump on side, including in February handing the president a written invitation from the king for an unusual second state visit. [BP: 1450 wants it’s ass-kissing techniques back]
Starmer’s delicate handling of Trump at the G7 – which in its most visible form saw the PM bend down to collect papers spilled by the president – did not prevent Trump leaving the summit early and then reneging on a plan to call for restraint in tensions between Israel and Iran.
[BP: make your own jokes for this bit]
I am about to turn 50 and I remember versions of this since I was a small child: Reagan entranced by Maggie; Blair praying with Dubya then igniting the Middle East with him; Boris as Trump-buddy due to his being a fellow narcissist but of a higher social class; Now sensible bureaucrat Kezza wiping Donald’s botty for him.
It’s pathetic. Yes the spooks of both countries are close like brothers, but on the open political side the UK gets more and more irrelevant. The pronouncements stay pompous, but who is listening? Nobody except the knob-polishers at the Guardian, Times etc.
Imperial decline is embarrassing to watch.
These stories always come just after the US publicly pulls the rug in the UK: “Yes, but in private it’s a different story”
Imperial crash and burn is going to be positively embarrassing to live through; those of us who do survive.
Considering Trump and Starmer; which one is Blackadder and which one is Baldrick?