The Vanishing Art Of Building Sacred Spaces Noema
Spider uses trapped fireflies as glowing bait to attract more prey British Ecological Survey
The Fascist History of Yoga Lit Hub
Compassionate Kayakers Push a Stranded 3,500 Pound Beluga Whale Safely Back Into the Ocean Laughing Squid
Climate/Environment
The risk that really matters isn’t on Wall Street Moving Day
Collapse of critical Atlantic current is no longer low-likelihood, study finds The Guardian
IT’S GOING TO BE HARDER TO AFFORD HOT SUMMERS Atmos
Extreme Heat Will Change You Nautilus
When bison have room to roam, they reawaken the Yellowstone ecosystem Phys.org
Pandemics
White House Picks RFK Jr. Deputy and Thiel Ally to Lead CDC: Reports NOTUS
Beyond Broken: What The CDC Crisis Tells Us About Public Health Jessica Wildfire
REVIEW: Everyone Else is Lying to You by Dr. Jonathan Howard, MD Pandemic Accountability Index
Water
Undersound: The Secret Lives of Ponds and the Mysterious Musicality of the World The Marginalian
South of the Border
From zero to a diverse arsenal: A look at Venezuela’s military drones Miami Herald
End of Bolivia’s leftist era leaves Chinese and Russian lithium deals in limbo Intellinews
GREEN CAPITALISM IN THE AMERICAS: FALSE SOLUTIONS, REAL THREATS Nacla
Brawl erupts in Mexico’s senate after debate over US military intervention to fight drug cartels The Guardian
Mystery surrounds $1.2 billion Army contract to build huge detention tent camp in Texas desert AP
Thailand- Cambodia
Thailand’s Constitutional Court sacks PM Paetongtarn for ethics violation Bangkok Post
India
Exclusive: India’s Russian oil imports set to rise in September in defiance of US Reuters
Syraqistan
All UN Security Council Members, Except US, Say Famine In Gaza Is ‘Man-Made Crisis’ DD News
New video reveals third strike in deadly ‘double-tap’ attack on Gaza hospital CNN
Israel is not isolated: A global web of oil and complicity The Cradle
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Riyadh’s De Facto Boycott Drains Lebanon’s Economy, the State Bows Al Akhbar
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Iran to Respond Appropriately to EU3’s ‘Illegal, Unjustified’ Move to Trigger Snapback Mechanism Tasnim
Why Europe’s ‘snapback’ miscalculation risks war, not diplomacy Amwaj
Dancing to Zionist tune: Australia’s diplomatic fallout with Iran on bogus anti-Semitic claims Press TV
Dr. Ebrahim Motaghi – associate of Ali Larijani:
Confirms the Shahid Rajaee Port incident in Bandar Abbas was the result of an Israeli attack.
Motaghi pointed to the strike as timed sabotage, 38 missiles fired at containers in Bandar Abbas just hours before the third round of… pic.twitter.com/d53T6orEMs
— Thomas Keith (@iwasnevrhere_) August 28, 2025
O Canada
Canada Considers Anti-Immigrant Bills as Haitian Immigrants in the US Flee North Truthout
European Disunion
EU moves closer to using Russian assets to rebuild Ukraine Politico
Hungary sues E.U. over decision to use frozen Russian assets to aid Ukraine Meduza
Hungary Bans Ukrainian Commander over Druzhba Pipeline Attack Hungarian Conservative
Fascinating to watch someone else attempt to engage in diplomacy and reasonable dialogue with those people and become increasingly frustrated https://t.co/wpRq22J4lb
— Russians With Attitude (@RWApodcast) August 28, 2025
New Not-So-Cold War
Peace deal dead, new war drums beating for Ukraine Asia Times
It’s astonishing to me the number of Western manufacturers who’ve just waltzed into Ukraine in the last couple years to set up shop and expected their operations to be sacrosanct.
The Russians waited until this plant was done, with all investment complete, and then destroyed it. https://t.co/GvPtYU19np
— Armchair Warlord (@ArmchairW) August 28, 2025
Rheinmetall to invest over €1.5bn in Balkan munitions factories Intellinews
Kosovo, Albania and Croatia boost defense through purchases from the US Gazeta Express
‼️🇵🇱🇺🇦 Exit queues: Checkpoints are jammed after the border opened for men aged 18–22
▪️Eyewitnesses report that kilometer-long queues have already formed at all crossing points into Poland.
▪️After Kyiv’s decision to allow the “young generation” to go abroad, there were more… pic.twitter.com/HeHkDF2pqr— Zlatti71 (@Zlatti_71) August 28, 2025
Mass return of Ukrainians expected no earlier than 2027 — NBU Humanitarian Media Hub. From a few weeks ago, still germane?
Medvedev on Austrian Neutrality: “NATO’s Anschluss” Karl Sanchez
Russian Su-35 Intercepts U.S. Navy P-8 Recon Plane with Secretive New Radar System Military Watch
“Liberation Day”
US ends tariff exemption for small packages shipped from abroad, citing narcotics France24
Trump 2.0
A fresh executive order aims to ban unions at more federal agencies Government Executive
The Markets Won’t Save the Fed From Trump The Atlantic
Lisa Cook hints ‘clerical error’ to blame for any mortgage application discrepancy CNBC
Technocrats as handmaidens to authoritarianism – Pt 1 Ann Pettifor
Trump Is Running the Standard Purge and Control Playbook To Install Decline Ian Welsh
The best way to understand the Trump Administration’s foreign policy is to assume that there are different factions taking turns advancing their incompatible visions (or even doing so simultaneously) rather than to look for some hidden coherent master plan.
Here for Venezuela: https://t.co/lFXYJvnF4J
— Michael Hasin (@novussubsole) August 28, 2025
GOP Funhouse
GOP Investigation Pressures Wikipedia to Reveal Identities of Editors Accused of ‘Bias’ Against Israel Common Dreams
Democrats en déshabillé
A Dark Money Group Is Secretly Funding High-Profile Democratic Influencers Wired
Gates Foundation Quietly Cuts Ties With Firm Linked to Democrats New York Times
Police State Watch
ICE will ‘ramp up’ immigration raids in Los Angeles, other ‘sanctuary cities,’ border advisor says Los Angeles Times
ICE Continues to Detain Award-Winning Journalist Who Filmed Immigration Raids Truthout
Obama Legacy
Obama highlights ‘dangerous trends’ in police federalization, militarization The Hill
Always worth a reminder that Obama inherited ICE as a fledgling agency, increased its budget 300%, established a nationwide network of detention centres and expanded the ‘secure communities’ enforcement program from 14 counties under Bush Jr to all 3,181 jurisdictions in America https://t.co/eHEJy7UlH0
— Nate Bear (@NateB_Panic) March 16, 2025
Detailed Report Exposes Serious Threat of the Neoliberal, Trump-Lite ‘Abundance’ Agenda Common Dreams
Thanks, Obama! pic.twitter.com/cHxDEVIr4q
— Ezra Klein (@ezraklein) August 27, 2025
Mamdani
Zohran Mamdani Is Winning the Battle. Here’s How He Can Win the War. The Nation
Antitrust
Biden’s Antitrust Agenda Has Catalyzed the Rise of a New Legal Vanguard Law and Power
Imperial Collapse Watch
The multi-front war of the West against the Rest (of the World) GeoPolitiQ
Exclusive: Electromagnetic weapon zaps drone swarm in seconds Axios
Accelerationists
The Big Tech and Crypto War on State Law and Taxpayer Dollars Boondoggle
Sports Desk
Field of Dreams game is a good deal for Major League Baseball, even as MLB mistreats Iowa baseball fans Along the Mississippi
Class Warfare
UAW claims narrow win in BlueOval SK union vote ― but historic outcome is contested Louisville Courier Journal
Small Things, Big Waves Working Class Storytelling
Antidote du jour (via):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
“Mystery surrounds $1.2 billion Army contract to build huge detention tent camp in Texas desert’
Can’t they just reactivate the Internment camps that they held Japanese civilians in back during WW2? Surely there must still be a few still standing-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_Americans#List_of_camps
Might be hard now to find cheap labour to refurbish those camps now as a lot of them would be internees.
Just get the detainees to build them instead of sitting there getting a suntan at the taxpayers’ expense .
You can pay them in food and phone calls.
Then in 40 years we pass a pathetic reparations bill and build some memorials.
Manzanar in California is now a National Historic Site.
https://www.nps.gov/manz/index.htm
You can see it from the highway with the Sierras in the background. Ansel took pictures.
No alligators.
Lisa Cook hints ‘clerical error’ to blame for any mortgage application discrepancy CNBC
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I been trying to get a mortgage recently. They ask *a lot* of questions, some of them over and over again, and do a lot of redundant verification. Absolutely everything needs to be done exactly right in a specific way, and there are lots of questions. And it becomes exhausting if one applies for a few different mortgages to compare rates.
It is also the case that some of the boutique bankers that work in this area are not the sharpest tools in the shed, and they too make mistakes.
So I can see mistakes happening.
Advice: the best way to get a mortgage is if you have no debts, a high credit rating, $30,000+ for down payment, closing costs, and prepaids, and you have a single job that pays the same salary every single year with no bonus structure, and you have been at the same job for a long time.
Follow-up: it seems she referred to both her Atlanta home and her Michigan home as primary properties rather than investment properties. They can’t both be primary residences, and that would come with better mortgage terms, so big no no. An investment property typically requires a higher down payment, and lower debt to income ratio.
But, I can’t find if she signed those mortgages at different times. It may be that they were both primary residences when she got them, if she moved. The articles I’m seeing lack information.
What if she claims that her Michigan home is her summer home while her Atlanta home is her winter home. That way, they would be both primary residences.
“White House Picks RFK Jr. Deputy and Thiel Ally to Lead CDC: Reports”
The guy is older than he looks in that photo as he was a speech writer in the George Bush era. He is also a biotech investor with no scientific training or medical degrees. Yessiree, sounds like he will fit in perfectly under RFK Jr.-
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/aug/28/jim-oneill-cdc-profile
And when RFK Jr. wants his opinion, he will be sure to tell O’Neill what it is.
Re: the Common Dreams piece about Klein and Thompson’s ‘Abundance’:
Those quoted, from the Revolving Door Project and elsewhere refuting the ‘Abundance agenda’ took, I think, too long a route in their criticism. They might have simply taken some quotes from 80’s ‘conservatives’ and compared them to Klein’s scribblings. For example: Who wore it best? “Extreme taxation, excessive controls, oppressive government competition with business, frustrated minorities and forgotten Americans are not the products of free enterprise. They are the residue of centralized bureaucracy, of government by a self-anointed elite.” That’s Klein & Thompson, right? Nope, Ronald Reagan. Ok, how about: “Only [an Abundance] government will cut out the red tape, the bureaucratic interference, the lethal taxes which have so poisoned the business atmosphere of this country.” Our friends, right? Well, no, that was Margaret Thatcher.
Last night, I was reading a book called “The Yes Men: The True Story of the End of the World Trade Organization”. It is the story of a couple of guys who, on the basis of having created some convincing satiric websites, were invited as speakers representing the WTO; hilarity ensued. One aspect of their tale which is relevant here, although I’d recommend the book to all, is that despite the obvious satire, their audiences never seemed to grasp what they were doing and took them for serious WTO spokesmen, even as they complained that the American civil war disrupted efficient markets in the “industrial machinery” of the South and delivered presentations on how world hunger is essential to rationally functioning capitalism. I have often wondered how far one could get with such a project, if one were to deadpan it the whole way. I wrote a short story about it last year, but, again, reality puts the satirist to shame. No one could make up Klein and Thompson’s shameless, stupid act. Difficult to deal with the fact that we have such low-effort propaganda to parse.
Hmmm. Fancy-shmancy antidote. I am getting “Venezuelan poodle moth,” or more Linnaean, Artace cribarius:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artace#“Venezuelan_poodle_moth”
Which ties in very neatly with Nick Corbishley’s post on the “coalition of the willing” for Venezuela.
Lepidopterous Easter egg?
Or: The U S of A is looking for poodles for big adventures in the Gulf of America, which I call the Gulf of Shrimp, because they are the original inhabitants. It’s a culinary land acknowledgment.
‘Zlatti71
@Zlatti_71
‼️🇵🇱🇺🇦 Exit queues: Checkpoints are jammed after the border opened for men aged 18–22
▪️Eyewitnesses report that kilometer-long queues have already formed at all crossing points into Poland.
▪️After Kyiv’s decision to allow the “young generation” to go abroad, there were more than enough people wanting to check if the Cabinet’s resolution is working.
– RVvoenkor’
There will be people in the US and the EU tearing their hair out at this sight. They have been demanding for months now that Zelensky lower the conscription age so that those very same kids could be sent to the front as cannon fodder. And now they are getting away! Somebody stop them!
Interesting Construction Physics this week on Ford and the Model T.
https://www.construction-physics.com/p/ford-and-the-birth-of-the-model-t