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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
‘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.
$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.
“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.
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
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.
“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.
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.
– ‘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.
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.
“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?