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New tool in fight against Great Lakes invasive species: muskrats Bridge Michigan
Plant that mimics odour of half-eaten ants to attract pollinators discovered The Guardian
‘Very mean squirrel’ seeking food sends at least 2 people to the ER in California NBC Bay Area
Why Warm Countries Are Poorer Unchartered Territories
HOW TO MEASURE NOTHING BETTER IEEE Spectrum
Climate/Environment
Pacific ‘blob’ heat wave now spans an area the size of the US SFGate
Pandemics
What COVID-19 Does to the Body (9th Edition, September 2025) Pandemic Accountability Index
The Koreas
Why U.S.’s Trade Pact With South Korea Has Gotten Messier WSJ
China?
Unpacking China’s New Headline Climate Targets Asia Society
India
‘Bloodiest day’: How Gen-Z protest wave hit India’s Ladakh, killing four Al Jazeera
Syraqistan
Israel Bombs Yemen as IDF Rolls Through Gaza City, Displacing Hundreds of Thousands Common Dreams
Dockworkers from across Europe gather to plan trade squeeze on Israel Lord’s Press
Microsoft revokes cloud services from Israel’s Unit 8200, following +972 exposé +972 Magazine
***
Iranian Air Force Receives First New Russian Fighters in Over 30 Years: How Capable Are Its MiG-29s? Military Watch
Douglas Macgregor: “War is Inevitable” Glenn Diesen
***
Visions of Mustaqbālna Edward Ongweso Jr.
European Disunion
Fingerprints and a €20 fee – the new rules for visiting Europe explained The Telegraph
Marching to the right, Trump-style German Foreign Policy
Polish opposition calls for Antifa to be designated terrorist organisation Notes from Poland
Germany’s new deregulation chief vows to be more subtle than Elon Musk FT
European banks to launch euro stablecoin in bid to counter US dominance Reuters
Three in four European companies are hooked on US tech The Register
Sarkozy says he will ‘sleep in jail but with head held high’ after conviction The Guardian
New Not-So-Cold War
Kyiv called in to help Brussels build ‘drone wall’ along eastern flank Euractiv
Poland Envisages Indirectly Expanding The EU’s “Drone Wall” Into Ukraine Andrew Korybko
Europeans Privately Tell Russia They’re Ready to Shoot Down Jets Bloomberg
Crisis Escalation Becomes Euro-Cabal’s Final Meal Ticket Simplicius
European officials fear Trump’s new stance on Ukraine war is ‘start of a blame game’ FT
Zelensky ready to step down when war ends Baltic News Network
Despite Trump’s rhetoric on Ukraine, Russia believes he’s still committed to diplomatic solution Anadolu Agency
Russia awaiting US response to Putin’s initiative on New START treaty — Kremlin TASS
Turkiye
Trump signals to Erdoğan that US could lift ban on F-35 sales to NATO ally Turkey Euronews
Trump lavishes praise on Erdogan in White House meeting and suggests Turkey stop buying Russian oil and gas Intellinews
US welcomes deal to reopen Iraq-Türkiye pipeline Anadolu Agency
Our Famously Free Press
Trump approves TikTok deal through executive order, Vance says business valued at $14 billion CNBC
Larry Ellison Is a ‘Shadow President’ in Donald Trump’s America Wired
“Liberation Day”
Trump announces tariffs on pharmaceuticals, furniture and heavy trucks beginning Oct. 1 The Hill
Trump 2.0
James Comey indicted on federal obstruction, perjury charges The Hill
LISA COOK V. DONALD TRUMP IS AT THE SUPREME COURT. WHAT NOW? Notes on the Crises
Cook warns Supreme Court that siding with Trump on Fed firing risks ‘chaos and disruption’ for markets Yahoo! Finance
***
TEXAS DOMESTIC WORKERS FACE TRUMP ATTACK ON MINIMUM WAGE Texas Observer
***
Stephen Miller Claims Simply Calling Trump Authoritarian ‘Incites Violence and Terrorism’ Common Dreams
DOJ Appears to Have Violated Luigi Mangione’s Right to a Fair Trial, Judge Says Truthout
Permitted Trump-Epstein statue smashed and removed without notice Boing Boing
DOGE
DOGE put your Social Security Number on a cloud server with up to a 65% risk of getting hacked: Senate report Fast Company
Police State Watch
Shoplifters could soon be chased down by drones MIT Technology Review
As immigration raids step up, US citizens predicted at risk for detainment Ohio Capital Journal
How Surveillance Firms Use ‘Democracy’ As a Cover for Serving ICE and Trump 404 Media
Imperial Collapse Watch
Secretary of War Hegseth Summons All US Military Brass to Quantico Larry Johnson
New Pentagon strategy to focus on homeland, Western Hemisphere Defense News
What is Liberalism, What is Post-Liberalism, and Why Has the World Lost its Mind? Landmarks: A Journal of International Dialogue
Wounded Knee Medal of Honor Soldiers Will Keep Them Says Defense Secretary Hegseth Last Real Indians
Accelerationists
Silicon Valley’s latest argument against regulating AI: that would literally be the Antichrist The Verge
AI
And probably the worst is the waste of human resources. You’re really going to get some of the smartest people in the world (like this guy 👇) to do stuff like that?https://t.co/xQYu4nHVkC
— Arnaud Bertrand (@RnaudBertrand) September 26, 2025
Pissed-off Fans Flooded the Twin Peaks Reddit With AI Slop To Protest Its AI Policies 404 Media
How AI and Wikipedia have sent vulnerable languages into a doom spiral MIT Technology Review
Groves of Academe
Felony charges after South Carolina high school filled with “fart spray”… for weeks Ars Technica
Supply Chain
800,000 tons of mud probably just made electronics more expensive The Register
Economy
The Bezzle
Amazon Will Pay $2.5 Billion to Settle FTC Suit That Alleged ‘Dark Patterns’ in Prime Sign-Ups Wired
Mr. Market
‘ChatGPT, What Stocks Should I Buy?’ AI Fuels Boom in Robo-Advisory Market Reuters
Class Warfare
Amid strike, Boeing taking rare step of hiring permanent replacements for union workers Breaking Defense
OSHA Proposes Revisions to Workplace Safety Regulations National Law Review
Antidote du jour (via):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
” ‘Very mean squirrel’ seeking food sends at least 2 people to the ER in California”
It could have been worse. It could have been a bunny rabbit-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCI18qAoKq4 (1:46 mins)
The picture is of a red squirrel, which is probably right. Red squirrels are much more aggressive than the larger, cuddlier grey squirrels.
Red squirrels are timid and far more arboreal than greys, which spend a lot of time on the ground. At least in the UK they are.
The American red squirrel can be mean and aggressive. I have seen it and this link confirms it. ” The American Red Squirrel Is Small, Territorial and Aggressive ”
https://animals.howstuffworks.com/mammals/red-squirrel.htm
The Eurasian red squirrel is a different species of red squirrel.
“Eurasian Red Squirrel (Sciurus vulgaris)”
https://www.knowyourmammals.com/mammal-identification/eurasian-red-squirrel-sciurus-vulgaris/
Maybe the UK should import and introduce some American red squirrels to help you get your introduced American gray squirrels under control.
Different species (not even same genus, apparently): Sciurus vulgaris (Eurasian) vs Tamiasciurus hudsonicus (North American).
There are always countermeasures. Squirrel prevention videos are aone of the more entertaining rabbit holes to go down.
In the Sierra we call them Chickarees, while everybody else calls ’em Douglas Squirrels.
They’re mad climbers who can go 50 feet up or down a tree in 10 seconds and have a voice that’s more from an animal you’d think was 5x its size.
Not so mean, in my neck of the woods.
The chickaree ( Douglas squirrel) is another other different species of squirrel.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_squirrel
I must have been here too long Rev, as I knew what your bunny link was without clicking :)
A unfortunately rather amusing look at the state of the Hong Kong separatists
https://xcancel.com/chungchingkwong/status/1970388645061501048
https://xcancel.com/chungchingkwong/status/1970388650077888848
After being used and disposed of, the collaborator arrives in the UK where they are SHOCKED that their white masters have no respect for them and do not give them full rights and benefits. Their cries for this are met with derision expectedly from both Chinese people and especially British mocking with racial stereotypes in the replies, perhaps rather deservedly.
They served their purpose at the time – to make the Chinese look bad – but now their usefulness is long at an end, they can be disposed of. I would not be surprised to hear one day that the British have made an agreement with China to ship those Hong Kong separatists back home. There is form here in how the UK made an agreement with Qaddafi to ship Libyan dissidents from the UK back to Libyan torture chambers for some sort of political gain.
It’s very ironic they spend all their time preaching that they are Hong Kongers and not Chinese only to arrive in the West to discover that the Westerners have thought they were Chinese all along. Hard to say with these people though, the least delusional have already left the UK quietly and returned to Hong Kong while the most hard core, finding that their credentials and degrees are not recognized to take on the jobs they used to do, are taking on jobs like warehouse workers and delivery drivers. The super hard core guys will probably either attempt to persist in their delusion, claim asylum, probably run over to Canada or do something like join Falun Gong. Why would China want these people back when they can do wonderful things like Gordon Chang has done in America? I guess they did jail Joshua Wong though but the way he would fly back to US for instructions and then go back to Hong Kong was just too insane to not do something about
Didn’t help Joshua Wong’s case when he would have his photo being taken with Washington politicians and letting them be published.
leaf: Their cries for this are met with derision …. from both Chinese people and especially British mocking with racial stereotypes in the replies, perhaps rather deservedly
Deservedly. Not really a perhaps about it.
After 5 years of residence in the UK on the BN(O) visa, this person can apply for ILR (indefinite leave to remain aka settlement) —
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/indefinite-leave-to-remain-in-the-uk
–and after 1 year of ILR they can apply for UK citizenship.
So their complaint is essentially that they don’t get the full bennies and freebies of citizenship immediately upon rolling up at the UK’s door. If they feel so strongly that they’re entitled to that, they should take that sense of entitlement elsewhere where they think they’ll get it and not let the door hit them on the way out.
Nigel is proposing to abolish ILR. They may have moved for nothing….
Thumbs up for the Discworld antidote.
Young A’Tuin relaxing in a pond.
Thumbs up for the literary reference, it didn’t occur to me at the time I first looked but it is certainly apropos. But where are the elephants? :-)
To mix up myths: it’s turtles all the way down. ;-)
Turtle Island
Looks like somethihg US amphibious forces could invade with minimal casualties, if they could locate it on the map.
I just listened to the new episode of my favorite millennial derangement podcast, an interview with Jasper Craven, author of “Battle of the Sexes – Pete Hegseth’s war on women” in the September The Baffler. Wow! What a man Peter Brian Hegseth truly is not. Monumental loser, messed up abuser, and Platonic ideal of the Trump cabinet.
Here’s Craven’s article https://thebaffler.com/salvos/battle-of-the-sexes-craven
And the Trueanon interview of Jasper Craven https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7nA-9wWAi8 or in your podcast app.
I heard in a podcast earlier this evening with Douglas Macgregor that women make up about 20% of the US armed forces and Hegseth wants to reduce that down to about 5%. Good thing that so many young men are rushing into recruitment centers to make up that difference. Seems to be a case here where Hegseth is thinking with the wrong head.
Is MacGregor also hawking gold in that one?
Hegseth’s literally Douglas C. Niedermeyer.
>DOJ Appears to Have Violated Luigi Mangione’s Right to a Fair Trial, Judge Says – Truthout
And then there is the person charged in the Charlie Who case. It seems to me the same thing in spades.
You and I are on the same page. Has Robinson even gotten a lawyer yet?
And what’s up with the “reconstructed” texts? Are we looking at jury pool poisoning?
I fear this is going to be like the Vegas shooter, memory-holed.
After the terrorist act in Pavlovegas that killed 60 and wounded 600, ‘Vegas Strong’ bumper stickers and signs sprung up all over the place in Sin City… yeah that’s the ticket, we’ll address out of control gun policies with a slogan!
Might ‘St. George Strong’ work?
St George played a role in another era of out of control paranoia since the above ground nuclear testing range was upwind.
https://www.stgeorgeutah.com/life/health-wellness/the-government-lied-to-everyone-in-southern-utah-new-documentary-on-downwinders-to-air-on/article_b2344b76-2a7a-5935-8eee-14ea81d83f99.html
Something still in the water?
Meanwhile gun control seems the obvious answer to things like the Kirk incident but the right and even professors like Turley love them some gun rights even while Trump is threatening our talking and posting rights. All of these issues seem to have been going on forever with no resolution. They did, though, stop blowing up A-bombs in the atmosphere.
I’ll give you my nouns & verbs when you pry (or take) them from my cold, dead hands
ChrisFromGA: Agnofilo, Agnofilo, and Kaplan are quite sharp. But then Luigi Mangione’s family has a lot of money, and I doubt from what I read that Tyler Robinson’s family can afford lawyers with offices on the 77th floor of 445 Park Avenue in NYC. (See their original letter.)
At this rate, though, now that Agnofilo got rid of the terrorism charges, and now that the government is eagerly bumbling toward trying his case in public, Mangione will eventually end up with a manslaughter charge. Agnofilo will have gotten him out of a capital case, and that’s what matters for now.
I wonder, though, if Tyler Robinson knows enough about the Mangione case that he is not cooperating, according to rumor. Which is why the government is trying to strong-arm the roommate / lover, a tactic that has a habit of not working out.
The issue for Tyler Robinson is that his family has pretty much disowned him. They aren’t going to pay for a lawyer.
He is going to get a public defender, I am afraid. Unless he has a rich uncle who isn’t a Trump-tard.
Surely his dad is due the mega reward for dobbing him in and can pony up for a decent defence lawyer?
It’s a lot of money compared to just one son.
The little I know about mormons, they seem to celebrate the fecund,perhaps favour quantity over quality.
Maybe the can knock out a better, morekirkian one.
On such a bed of money, name it hegseth trump robinson.
Maybe it’s not all about the larger family for them,something far greater than one flaky son.
Why did China agree to sell tik tok?
CNBC yesterday was skeptical about a deal being in place when they heard the $14B price. I actually wonder if this is one of those agreements occurred only in the administration’s imagination.
Wonder if the stalling will reach the point of requiring yet another executive order to extend the timeline as every single legality and fine point is debated.
As was it was so nicely said in Dune, “You made the peace gesture. The forms have been obeyed.”
As is usually the case, the situation is much more nuanced than that.
Tik-Tok is owned by ByteDance, a privately held Chinese technology company. ByteDance agreed to give up majority control of its US operations, but not the entire company.
According to information I found online, “Oracle will manage U.S. user data storage, cloud services, and oversight of the app’s recommendation algorithm (which will be licensed from ByteDance and retrained on U.S. data only).”
THe spooks will certainly put backdoors in as well
So we now have a situation where the US version of Tik-Tok will be controlled by a US entity, and the rest of the world will get a completely different Tik-Tok, or at least one that is not controlled by the US government.
(This would be sort of analogous to Microsoft divesting its’ Israeli cloud operations to an Israeli-controlled entity that would run Azure cloud locally according to the Israeli government’s wishes. )
The real losers here are US citizens who now face a government-controlled and presumably censored version of Tik-Tok. I bet anyone posting videos to the “American” Tik-Tok that questions the narrative gets de-platformed or censored.
In theory, it should be possible for US citizens to bypass the censored TikTok using a VPN, and possibly a jailbroken iPhone, although I am not sure about that. Certainly, the US government will try to prevent Americans from downloading the “rest of the world” version of the app. I don’t use Tik-Tok so I can’t really say, but if there is a simple web-based version of Tik-Tok that loads in a browser, there is no practical way to stop Americans from using a VPN to circumvent the restrictions.
A major impetus for all this was so many people posting pro-Palestinian or anti-Israel Tik Toks. Under the new management, all this will go away of course. I have heard that the Chinese will still retain the secret algorithms responsible for Tik-Tok’s success so maybe the US will be getting an ‘export’ version of it.
There was also the problem of so any Israeli soldiers posting videos of themselves in plundered ladies underwear gleefully mocking and murdering Palestinians, with a particular focus on babies and children, leaving a long evidentiary trail of genocide while laughing and bragging.
Arch pro Israeli supporters will now control the content. Israel has solved its tik-tok problem.
Oracle is owned by Larry Ellison. Ellison will control the algorithm for recommendations, which means no more pro-Palestine videos, as they’ll simply be downvoted by the algorithm.
Not really. If the rest of the world gets the Chinese version, nothing changes outside the US. And since the US for all intents and purposes has already been captured by Israel via the US government, the US was never really an issue.
This actually makes Israel look worse.
The US is where the Israelis saw the problem, it is the primary source of their support, even without the rest of the world.
Which won’t prevent them from celebrating it as a victory over the Chinese.
“China” doesn’t really care. For the current shareholders/management of ByteDance, USA Tiktok is not as profitable as the rest of the world.
The monetization model for social media in Asia is different than the USA.
The only national security threat of Tiktok is the latent brain rot that it produces like any other American social media outlet…..pearl clutching from the NYT aside
As far as I understand it hasn’t been agreed to yet. It was signed by US folks but waiting approval on the other side.
I think ByteDance has a ton of leverage here considering how many people use TikTok. If they say no, will US administration actually go through with shutting it down there?
Goooooooood Mooooooorning Fiatnam!
Once again the Tariffist attacked on multiple fronts, just say no to drugs that used to be 50% less was the feeling-sending the country reeling because everybody and their mother is on safe & sane Rx ireworks.
“Pissed-off Fans Flooded the Twin Peaks Reddit With AI Slop To Protest Its AI Policies”
That’s the way to do it. Reddit said that since AI slop is unstoppable, they they are going to use it. So those Reddit fans flooded the Twin Peaks Reddit with all sorts of AI slop and now the editors have discovered that they can stop all AI slop after all. Seriously, who is asking for the use of AI slop anyway? Who wants or even needs it?
“…who is asking for the use of AI slop anyway? Who wants or even needs it?”
See the post on Meta’s Vibes. It offers another means by which Facebook users can “express themselves.”
Hopefully they will mostly remain contained in their digital bubbles where they can wank to their heart’s content and we need not deal with them in real life.
Those that invested big bucks in AI.
It’s Pyrrhic poetry in motion
They turned their tender eyes to he
A conviction deep as any ocean
Including trans harmony
But they blinded me with Zions
(They blinded me with Zions!)
And failed me in triggernometry, hey (huh, huh, huh)
Huh, huh
When I’m looking at the evidence
(Blinding me with Zions, Zions)
(Zions!)
I can smell something awfully fishy
(Blinding me with Zions, Zions)
(Zions!)
Now, but it’s Pyrrhic poetry in motion
When they turned their eyes to he
A conviction as deep as any ocean
Including trans harmony
They blinded me with Zions
(They blinded me with Zions)
Failed me in skulduggery
When I’m looking at the evidence
(Blinding me with Zions, Zions)
(Zions)
I can hear conspiracy theory machinery
(Blinding me with Zions, Zions)
(Zions!)
Ha, it’s Pyrrhic poetry in motion
Now they’re quiet as church mice
The usual spheres are in commotion
The red elements in harmony
They blinded me with Zions
(They blinded me with Zions)
And hit me with AI technology
Hey, I don’t believe it
There they go again
Everything is tidied up and I can’t find anything
All my usual curiosity
And careful notes
And antiquated notions
But it’s Pyrrhic poetry in motion
When they turned their eyes to he
A conviction as deep as any ocean
Including trans harmony
Oh, they blinded me with Zions
(They blinded me with Zions)
They blinded me with
She Blinded Me With Science, by Thomas Dolby
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdSUnV2fJGk&list=RDwdSUnV2fJGk
note at the bottom: When in Utah, you’ll encounter Zions Bank, Zions Bakery, Zions Science Department, etc. you get the gist.
– ‘Visions of Mustaqbālna’ – Edward Ongweso Jr.
Here’s a question for NC commentators. When you think of “the most prominent instance of Silicon Valley’s widespread—and growing—vulnerability to espionage” by a foreign power, what country first comes to mind? How about your reaction to sentences like this:
“Some tech billionaires appear to consider the infiltration of their companies by foreign dictatorships simply a cost of doing business. And some seem to share their authoritarian instincts.”
I assume everyone immediately thought “Saudi Arabia,” right?
Ok, this article is actually not bad on the fads and foilbles of MBS and the KSA. But if I’m going to worry about the “infiltration” of Silicon Valley by a “foreign power,” it’s not going to be *this* foreign power. I quickly scanned several of the other articles at this site. Time and paywalls limited my inquiry, so I could be wrong. But I did not see any reference to The Country that Shall Not Be Named.
Yeah, MBS brutally murdered a JOURNALIST!
Who would do a thing like that?
(at scale)
Saudi Arabia would not be my first concern either. That being said, here’s a little anecdotal food for thought. Several years ago I attended a graduation ceremony at a small quasi-military New England university. The main degrees they awarded were in criminal justice, nursing, and computer science/cybersecurity. In that latter category, the majority of degrees handed out that day were to Saudi nationals. This was a small school and probably not teaching the bleeding edge technology, and we’re talking dozens of students here, not hundreds, but it did make me raise an eyebrow as they called off the names.
> What is Liberalism, What is Post-Liberalism, and Why Has the World Lost its Mind? Landmarks: A Journal of International Dialogue
I asked some Buddhist scholars to riff on this sequence:
> agape, compassion, nonattachment, dissociation
My understanding of the response: agape is love, which wants the other to be happy; but this notion of love reflects to the self, while compassion removes the self and focuses on the other. Nonattachment and dissociation might seem similar, but are nearly opposite, as nonattachment allows complete focus on the other, while dissociation removes the external.
Grenier briefly capitalizes good into the Good, making it The definite article. I’ll assert this introduces a Type I error, implicitly asserting there is no good but The Good. The word ‘better’ does not appear, and the rejection of melioration becomes Ideational, without regard to the Sensate real world. The Buddhists seem to be agreeing with a suppression of the Self, but only so that the subject may engage with the object without illusion.
Beware the definite article, and its extension, ‘they’.
Should we beware of “good” itself?
Tao te Ching #2 (Le Guin rendition)
As for love, the Greeks had several words for the various manifestations of love. We’re probably most famliar with eros, phila (like in Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love and the 3-peat spoilers), and agape, a mainstay in the Greek bible. Paul does his riff on agape in 1 Corinthians 13.
“Viral call-recording app Neon goes dark after exposing users’ phone numbers, call recordings, and transcripts”
‘A viral app called Neon, which offers to record your phone calls and pay you for the audio so it can sell that data to AI companies, has rapidly risen to the ranks of the top-five free iPhone apps since its launch last week.’
For the love of god, who thinks that this is a great idea and who needs privacy anyway. Sorry, but if their information got compromised then it is all on them. Zero sympathy.
performative, yes.
but still…
https://x.com/MyLordBebo/status/1971569405323792709
in anthropology/sociology, this is called “shunning”, and can be very effective(says the former folk devil).
it legitimises ignoring or otherwise challenging the object.
makes it normal to cast the ostraka.
People are really getting tired of his s***, no matter how many cartoon boards he brings to the UN. Same with Zelensky. He gave his speech and there were very few people there to listen to him. Al Qaeda President Jolani get more respect at the UN these days.
But but but….this time he had a QR code!
china/renewables
Maybe they are being super conservative in their estimates?
As of early this year they have reached the 1000GW solar and roughly 550GW wind.
By the end of the year, roughly 1300GW solar, 650GW wind for a total of 1950 of 3600, so only 1650 gw to go.
At the pace they are currently on, 10 yrs of solar would be an additional 3000 GW, and wind 1000GW or 4000GW of new plus the 1950GW for a total of almost 6000GW vs the 3600 goal.
Curious why they started the math at 2020 vs today, why such a low goal.? Almost makes me think it was a poor translation, because if it was 3600GW of new solar and wind that I would believe more than just 3600GW total.
And while yes every country should do more, they are doing more percentage wise vs any other county especially the US. It’s usually not stated that one major reason the US has had a reduction in emissions is the outsourcing of manufacturing mostly to china. If the US keeps up its so-called manufacturing revolution, then its emissions will go up.
The Quantico convocation of military leaders: “Let’s get together and talk about a coup.”
Junta del Este?
Bay of piglets II, the all brass ring?
‘Coup On’
Bibi wants to talk with you.
Weird
re: Taibbi on Kimmel /First Amendment
No, Things Aren’t Worse Now on Speech. It’s Not Even Close
As Google becomes the latest company to admit to mass censorship, the mania over Jimmy Kimmel has morphed into a grotesque propaganda campaign
preview only
https://www.racket.news/p/no-things-arent-worse-now-on-speech
I’ll be reading that one shortly. I was listening to the Monday podcast and at one point Taibbi says pretty definitively that what the FCC did RE: Kimmel was wrong, which is encouraging.
I’d urge people who are not happy with Taibbi to listen closely to what he says vs. what his counterpart Walter Kirn says. I do believe that Taibbi has been consistent in his views, and he walks a fine line with his friend Walter Kirn, disagreeing with him pretty subtly, but he does disagree a few times in the most recent podcast on the Kimmel issue. I don’t think the Twitter files story that Taibbi worked hard on got nearly the recognition it deserved, which is probably one reason why Taibbi keeps hammering about that past censorship and doesn’t concentrate on what’s going on right now as much as some would like. Personally, since I do trust his journalism, I would like to see him discuss censorship of Palestinian issues more, but he is under no obligation to report how I’d like him to.
Kirn on the other hand seems more about “owning the libs” these days and twists himself into knots defending his seemingly shoot from the hip positions. He came out in defense of the recent FCC actions right off the bat, and it was only after talking about it for a while with Taibbi that he came up with a position that was somewhat defensible – the FCC does have jurisdiction over the public airwaves that carry Kimmel’s show whereas it does not over the interwebs and platforms like Twitter. You could almost see the light bulb go off in his head with this after the fact justification of his position. What he failed to discuss was that while the FCC does have jurisdiction, what Kimmel said hardly rises to something the FCC might normally handle – pornography, obscenity and other violations of “public decency”. If the FCC were tasked with policing those who merely say something stupid over the airwaves (and I would agree that Kimmel trying to blame MAGA for Kirk’s death was stupid) there’d be a heck of a lot more dead air.
That’s not at all what Kimmel said. He said the killer was one of your own. The manufactured outrage at Kimmel was a spin. The killer was raised in a Pre-MAGA socially conservative environment where reactionary ideology was the norm. That killing the enemy to protect your narrative is SOP. To think that Kimmel was blaming MAGA is to buy the punish the radical libs that MAGA folks are selling
“Europeans Privately Tell Russia They’re Ready to Shoot Down Jets”
A lot depends on the platform they use to try this. I don’t think that any of the Baltic States have fighters so that would probably mean Poland, Sweden or Denmark. Or perhaps they will use land-based missiles or maybe even ship-based missiles. Thing is, if they try this, Russia gets the right to shoot back and right there you are talking about a shooting war between Russia and NATO – minus the US of course. Is this a wise idea this? To go to war against Russia in order to protect Zelensky of all people?
They’re not going to war to protect Zelensky, or Ukraine, but to protect their power, their careers, and the gravy train of cash sloshing around their ankles. The morning after the likely staged drone invasion of Poland, the article 4 invocation turned on yet another spigot for these corrupt warmongers to drain their countries’ coffers.
They’ll whine about “unprovoked” Russian resposes to their overt acts of war. How stupid and blind do they think the peoples of their own countries are? Then again, we are talking about the guys who gave us Gleiwitz.
The European strategy on Trump disappointment with Putin hasn’t worked. Now they go with the hysteric MSM provocation attempts. Let us get Russia fall into our provocation trap and bring back the US. Will they go as far as to try downing Russian fighter jets somewhere? Boondoonblerg says that Tusk has made “robust calls” for shooting down Russian jets while Pistorius (Germany) said NATO countries “risks sleepwalking into Putin’s escalation trap” while talking about a supposed new provocation involving a Russian jet and a German frigate but then asking for more money for defence spending. All these robust declarations look nonsensical bluff to me frankly but there is now way to feel comfortable with all this stupidity. This is obviously a PR campaign so far.
If WW3 were to start in Poland, it does have precedent.
I’m putting my money on “some damn fool thing in the Baltics.” History doesn’t repeat, but it sure does rhyme.
1700? 1733? 1812? 1939?
On DOGE leaking SSN numbers, to some extent, what else is new? Yours is already on the dark web probably.
Huge data breach involving social security numbers could impact millions of Americans
This is 2025, and I still have financial institutions asking me for my SSN to “verify” my identity.
I do too. Just the other day my bank made me use it to prove it was me. I’m also old enough that my SS card says right on the front “not for identification” or something similar.
Funny how times change.
Before Team DOGE fiddled with the works, one had to have a phone interview with a Social Security employee, in order to get at your previously gotten gains, and when I had my interview a couple years ago, she asked what high school I went to and a few other pertinent details a scamster might not be hep to. I was frankly surprised she didn’t ask who the catcher was on my 1973 little league team.
One of the Dartful Codgers waited until he was 66 to get SS money, and was informed that he’d been getting it since he turned 62. You get the feeling scams are all over the place, hence the tough questions I was hit with.
When they started access via the web, I finally tried to sign up in 2014. I was locked out.
I never wanted to deal with the hassle of going into an office to prove my identity.
Boy was that a bad call; I had no idea a decade later Trump would devastate SS and I’d be more likely to win the lottery than get my access issue sorted out without it being an even bigger time suck.
Thankfully I have quite a few more years to go until I really need access to that account which to this day I’ve never logged into, but someone claiming to be me must have tried. If I wait long enough, maybe Democrats and Republicans will finally have come together in bipartisan love and privately fully Social Security. And then I won’t have any benefits to collect upon anyway.
Couldn’t get online at the time because I have freeze on my credit bureau data. Now I won’t use id.me nor login.gov even if they let me have an account.
my SSN has been floating around the internet since i was 13 and an ambulance company that had mine got hacked. was really annoying. thankfully i was a minor so during the era where people tried to open accounts in my name i just said all of them weren’t me.
I think that there are a couple of defects in Grenier’s attack on liberalism.
First, he makes no mention of the principle of toleration, which is fundamental to modern liberalism. The autonomy of the individual depends not only on empowerment, but on tolerance (which virtue is social.)
Since the European wars of religion formed the historical background for modern liberalism, the omission of the principle of toleration from Grenier’s analysis is quite serious.
Living in a liberal society is less about the few things you can do, and more about the innumerable things you have to put up with. That’s one big reason why free societies seldom last: it invariably comes to pass that people get so fed up with all the things they hate, that they’ll give up their liberty, in order to be relieved of their vexations. Without toleration, liberty has no chance.
The second defect in Grenier’s essay is that he fails to mention one of the fatal problems in modern liberalism: the economic question! Liberty and autonomy cannot be more than empty conceits, without the means to exercise them. Physical dependence stifles moral independence.
However, such discussion will lead towards Marx and Engels. Grenier probably doesn’t want to go there.
Grenier’s critique would be more valuable if he acknowledged that the “post-liberalism” he’s talking about would be better described as “modern Toryism.”
As a leftist proletarian, for my part, I am quite willing to acknowledge the value, even the cogency, of some of the old critiques of modern bourgeois liberalism made by the aristocratic and clerical classes. The fact that their classes got beaten, and often liquidated, by the bourgeoisie does not invalidate their criticisms of the amorality and nihilism that lurk deep in liberalism. Indeed warnings from the old ghosts of past ruling classes can apply as much to a prole as to a bourgeois. As proletarians, we can learn from Tory critiques of the bourgeoisie, bourgeois critiques of the Tory, and both their respective critiques of our own class.
I think the above was well said and thought
>Stephen Miller Claims Simply Calling Trump Authoritarian ‘Incites Violence and Terrorism’
To criticize a democratically elected leader is to attack democracy itself. /s
Stephen Miller Claims Simply Calling Trump Authoritarian ‘Incites Violence and Terrorism’ Common Dreams
~~~~~~~~~
I think of Teetotalitarian Leader as more of a Ghost Author-itarian, as if he could string enough gibberish along for a whole book by his lonesome?
“Wounded Knee Medal of Honor Soldiers Will Keep Them Says Defense Secretary Hesgeth”
The way that I heard it, this was the US 7th Cavalry getting their final revenge for the Battle of the Little Big Horn-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wounded_Knee_Massacre
The very first Ghost Dance was held here about 25 miles away from my QWERTY in Eshom Valley in 1872, some 5,000 to 6,000 various Yokuts tribal members who weren’t among the 85% to 90% of them that died of Measles in 1868-69.
It came full circle @ Wounded Knee in 1890, the final Ghost Dance.
Wowzers, do people think it actually reads SEC filings?!
From ‘ChatGPT, What Stocks Should I Buy?’ AI Fuels Boom in Robo-Advisory Market
You’ve got to be kidding me; It’s gonna pick up on only the popular themes, because that’s what’s gonna be in the training set. You could just open the newspaper and pick the stocks that are talked about.
That said, Grok supposedly does read SEC filings, but you can’t trust whatever you get back from any of these LLM-based systems. If you’re doing investment based on financials, and you can’t read and interpret financial statements, and have your own thesis on what metrics in an industry and sub-sector drive stock appreciation, Deity help you in your quest for wealth…
In a Bull, everyone making money. Throw darts.
The fact that we don’t see a bunch of newly minted squillionaires who cashed in with “AI” stock picks is a huge tell that this crap really doesn’t work anywhere near as well as the hype surrounding it claims it does.
The AI boom is unsustainable unless tech spending goes ‘parabolic,’ Deutsche Bank warns: ‘This is highly unlikely’ – Fortune
The article’s focus is on business sector adaptations.
The current data center dance will run out of steam and watch for consequences from that situation, but I think the eyes are on government capture all around the globe and military spending. It would mean keeping current wars going and more. Global government capture, weapons, surveillance…
“Iranian Air Force Receives First New Russian Fighters in Over 30 Years: How Capable Are Its MiG-29s?”
It’s a capable fighter when upgraded. Certainly better than the F-14 Tomcats that the Iranians still use. The problem with a new fighter is that it can take several years or more to integrate it into the armed forces. But the US and Israel are already gearing up to have a second war against Iran. So the question arises whether these fighters will be used in the coming war. If so, I would expect those pilots to have names like Ivan and Viktor.
It’s hard to know how true these years to learn a new airplane are. Usually fighter pilots are top of the class, really smart.
Good pilots adapt and learn quickly.
I would expect they will bring multiple Flight simulators for training. Pilots can spend hours and hours per day learning with zero consequences and cost. Months yes, years I don’t agree.
Actual airline pilots often transition to a new type rating with zero time in the plane, all sim work, it’s that realistic.
And the days of actually dog fighting are over. It’s all about radar and missile tech, basically over the horizon kind of stuff.
Integration of ground radar and plane radar might take time, but the pilots don’t have to learn that.
Top gun isn’t real.
Iran started receiving Yak-130 trainers three years ago. What makes them very good trainers is that the plane can mimic the flight behavior of Mig-29/35 or Su-27/30/35. This shortens the transition to a full blown fighter significantly.
That said, I think Rev Kev was referring more to integrating the new capability (as in, much better than they have ever had) into the tactical, operational and strategic understanding of the Iranian Air Force command.
Latest generations of Mig-29s can give the Israeli F-15s a run for their money over Iraq or Syria, or hunt down the Israeli drones before they even enter the Iranian airspace. So, it is a game changer of sorts, and it’ll take some time for the Iranians to learn how to implement them for the best effect.
Which, lest it be forgotten, for the Mig-29 has always been a quick scramble, fast climb, +2 mach blast towards the enemy and releasing a mixed salvo of radar- and IR guided missiles as soon as possible, then get out of the troubles way (still at +2 mach) and do it again and again until enemy is no more.
Iran has been operating Mig 29s for about 20 years so they will have a good cadre of pilots and ground crew which should enable them to integrate the new ones quite rapidly .
I wonder how older fighters compare to the new ones in terms of “trainability,” though. The broad flight chatacteristics may be similar, but I don’t think they are even close with all the gizmos yhat must have gotten added.
2x older LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS videos + Germany 1934
re: state power
2021
interview
Hilary Mantel, David Runciman and Helen Thompson: ‘Exercising Power’
91 min.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbRz6y4BBko
2024
lecture
Where does culture come from?
Terry Eagleton
67 min.
https://www.lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and-videos/videos/lectures-events/where-does-culture-come-from
more lectures/interviews
https://www.lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and-videos/videos/lectures-events
p.s. Eagleton also speaks about state power attempting to appear benign and humane to not reveal its true terrifying nature and possibly upset its citizens in order to maintain smooth control, which explains also the entire “pomp and circumstances” (my wording, not his).
On this note: I ran across a German text about “state reason” (“Staatsräson”) from 1934.
It was intended as a comment on the Night of the Long Knives shortly before, in which 200 SA leaders, among them Ernst Röhm, were killed and SA disempowered to be replaced by SS.
Author was “liberal” journalist and publicist Paul Scheffer editor-in-chief of the BERLINER TAGBLATT.
After mentioning Macciavelli´s liking of the term “self-defence” or “emergency” and the advice to the “prince” to practise “silence, occlusion, secrecy” the text goes on:
“(…)
But the state has always wished to conceal its particular principles where this gap is openly yawning. And the public investigates such cases with a sensitivity unparalleled in other matters. If the state is so cautious, it is not only because it shies away from criticism, from discussing the increasingly problematic cases in which it resorts to self-defense and suspends its own laws. It is precisely the blow it is compelled to strike at its authority that causes it to proceed cautiously. The authority of the state is founded on the law, on the strict and in no case flexible line it sets for the citizen’s behavior and for their treatment. In cases of self-defense, it suspends the laws. It thereby undermines the law it has established. It thus endangers the foundations upon which it is built.
(…)”
In order to then come to the core of the matter:
“(…)
The path Hitler took in his Friday speech throws all these concerns back.
(…)”…
to then describe how Hitler did not obscure but openly admitted to the facts, at least in a fashion that would of course justify his actions, describing, as we know, the events as an attempted coup.
So Scheffer naturally does not criticize. Instead a form of tacit affirmation whithout going all in.
German Wiki on Scheffer´s interesting life.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Scheffer_(Journalist)
Scheffer had taken over the position with BERLINER TAGBLATT just April 1934.
He would try to make it a high-profile paper with correspondents in the Balkans, even India and Hollywood (well known critic Herbert Ihering).
1936 he gave up his attempt to cooperate with the Nazis without selling out and went to the US. But working for German papers from there as a US correspndent e.g. warning that the US, would it take part in a global war would end up a global superpower (1940).
Interesting guy. I wonder if there’s anything interestibg by him in English that we can still find.
re: Glenn Diesen “War is inevitable”
It’s Friday, let’s add a little levity to these bleak times. I personally am unable to hear the words “war” and “inevitable” without thinking of the hilarious 2009 film In the Loop, which satirized the run up to the Iraq invasion, and included as a major plot point a hapless MP stumbling over his words about the possibility of war in private with his handlers and, unfortunately, to the media when ambushed on the street, with disastrous consequences.
As to Diesen/Wilkerson’s thesis, I’ve been wondering if the US proposal for GITA (Gaza transitional authority) that was presented to the Arab leaders at the UN the other day is part of buying them off for the next round against Israel.
Thanks for the recommendation.
While I am distanced towards Wilkerson´s incessant doomsday big picture scenarios on the general geopolitical sit. his insight on details especially with the US military (e.g. Stratcom, or his time under Powell) or Israel´s domestic situation is invaluable.
(But here again: While stressing the huge overestimation of IDF he also predicted, I think, the soon to come economic collapse of Israel which still hasn´t really happened. Or has it?)
I genuinely think Wilkerson does some of the more radical assessment deliberately to call attention by way of scaring the public, with good intentions.
Albeit I do not share this “black” pedagogical method, Ted Postol too in person told me the same thing: He believes it is necessary to scare the hell out of the audience to finally make a point clear. And, admittedly to a certain exten that did work out. ;-)
Interestingly a Jacques Baud as much expert in his own area is less bleak than Wilkerson and more factual in that sense.
He usually tries to end with a positive more weighed verdict on the global situation. I do not agree with every one of his points but I am not averse to that attitude. And if one compares e.g. EU leaders how they speak in public and how they operate behind the scenes or when normative decisions are made, such as dispatching troops to Ukraine or Taurus in open opposition to RU, Baud´s scepticism over their real willingness to launch WWIII has been repeatedly confirmed by realt events so far.
I have watched Wilkerson for some time. You are incorrect in depicting him as having a “‘black’ pedagogical method”. He has become far more disgusted with Israel as the genocide has persisted (as by the way has Chas Freeman) and his views on the Israel economy are based on reading the Israel press and having contacts in Israel. I ran a recent post on the fact that the economy is zombified. Too many key people have left and want to leave for it to be anything other than a US welfare state. That is not an economy.
Yves, I have some thoughts on this but some of the details are too sensitive for the comments. I will send you an email this evening.
Anecdata:
I’ve been in a place known as mini-Israel the last month.
I’ve spoken to quite a few Israelis who are either planning to leave or wrestling with the decision to leave. These are secular Israelis, and cute not just the war, but the changes in society that pre-date it.
Common refrains “We are lost” “We’ve lost our soul” “the orthodox have more kids so it’ll get worse”.
I’ve spoken to more that are staying though including lots who’ve been active in the war/genocide. These type are mostly (to me) living in a dream world in which: More genocide leads (somehow) to “the gazans choosing a more responsible government”. These same people often say they’ve no compassion for Palestinians (even the kids) and cite discredited stories of rapes and beheadings. Again, these are secular Israelis.
All types are traumatized by the hostage thing and focus on that as the war aim. When I ask about Greater Israel etc, cognitive dissonance kicks in and they dismiss the concept. I’ve yet to meet someone who accepts that this is what their government is doing.
I’ve also met plenty who say (and very much look like) they have heavy PTSD from being in the war. Genocide is a hard psychic stain to wash off.
None of the above should be read as condoning the genocide; I have just been trying to learn more.
Thanks for this, Ben. It aligns with my discussions with Israelis as well.
Interestingly the only ones I’ve heard willingness to entertain the Greater Israel stuff are American Kahanists, they’re quite open about it. The Israelis have an odd response to it, simultaneously dismissive as well as a little embarrassed, I have concluded it is very similar to a lot of American political threads such as hard core US right wingers who watch too much OAN/Newsmax blaming everything on ‘cultural marxism’ and more respectable GOP types kind of waving that stuff off as a meme, but then you see it reappear in the real world in the form of Trump’s EO’s on antifa being a terrorist organization (exact same audience who howls about cultural Marxism also has opinions about antifa supersoldiers).
The trauma response is real. One of my colleagues at work did two tours in Gaza and is currently on reduced hours for PTSD. His personality has completely changed from before the second tour.
The Pappe thesis is that Israel has split into ‘Nation of Judea’ (settler/Kahanist/greater Israel) and ‘Nation of Israel’ (secular, social democratic-leaning) types and given that mass immigration is encouraged and financed by the former and they have kids at like 1.5-2x the rate of the secular it seems likely even if Israel holds together for more decades the electoral math has permanently shifted away from the seculars.
>Israel has split into ‘Nation of Judea’ (settler/Kahanist/greater Israel) and ‘Nation of Israel’ (secular, social democratic-leaning) types and given that mass immigration is encouraged and financed by the former and they have kids at like 1.5-2x the rate of the secular it seems likely even if Israel holds together for more decades the electoral math has permanently shifted away from the seculars
This is exactly what multiple secular Israelis have said to me.
Facts of life – although “the orthodox have more kids so it’ll get worse” I assume would be acknowledged in most private conversations if you stated this in public anywhere in Europe you might even end up in court.
But who knows how things will look like in general when those are grown-ups 30 years from now.
Correct
As to the economy I believe to remember that Wilkerson early on warned Israel couldn´t last that long but the IDF and the country are still conducting their genocide. So despite the economy being zombified for whatever reasons that has not stopped the killing so far.
In this narrow respect Wilkerson sometimes unusually emotional comments (which I appreciate) reminded me of those who were predicting the collapse of Ukraine 2 years ago.
(Crooke might have a more realistic verdict?).
The horror in Gaza and Ukraine cannot be overlooked but the willingness to inflict harm or absorb it with humans is often larger then we may think as outsiders.
That doesn´t diminuish the value of any of his delivered items of knowledge.
I am highly grateful for Wilkerson as he is among the few I can recommend to others for instructive purpose.
Accepted as an authoritative source.
I had a revelation the other day as to why Starmer et al. recognised Palestine. Real Estate!
Israel is universally accepted as the occupier of Palestine, not the owner. Without recognition internationally of a Palestinian State, there is counterparty to any treaty with Palestine.
Israel is now intent on bulldozing Gaza. Blair and other ghouls will provide a transitional figleaf “de-occupying” power but the West is going to recognise Palestine so that lomg-term a Palestinian State of Israeli-approved “house Arabs” can sell it out to the West *with good title*.
Otherwise, nobody will be able to realise the gains because they will be sullied by the occupation and UN resolutions!
There may be cut-out steps involved. For example, the new Palestinian State may receive generous *debt* financing from the IMF and World Bank and a consortium of GCC states. Then, after a few years, its lands and utilities etc will be privatised and/or the loans called in.
Palestine has been recognised only on its death warrant!
Yes, I think this is also why we’re seeing the flood of recognitions this week coinciding with the GITA plan, thanks for articulating it
Always grateful for a reminder of
Malcolm Tucker! Here’s a tasty 3minute portion.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=K_FrQnQv0Vw&pp=ygUObWFsY29sbSB0dWNrZXI%3D
The very good film In The Loop is a spin-off
from the very excellent TV series The Thick Of It. Its the sharpest, rudest, smartest political satire, which cannot be replicated.
Lambert, you here? You’d love it, my friend.
It was famous for managing to mimic specific political scenarios as they were happening, somehow without intending to.
Creator Armando Ianucci said he knew it was time to call it a day when the phrase ‘Omnishambles’ coined by character Malcolm Tucker, was uttered by a minister in parliament.
Here in Australia, last year, a highly publicised defamation matter was finalised in the Federal Court. The judgement was hundreds of pages long. And considered so important and relevant for establishing legal precedents that the ruling was published and can be found alongside mainstream bestsellers, in High Street book shops.
The defamation trial was based on the scandalous event of a political staffer breaking in to Parliament House whilst drunk, early in the morning, and allegedly raping his political staffer colleague.
Rev Kev may like to chime in; It was absolutely Australias version of OJ Simpson trial
The Judge made all manner of smart and witty remarks and ripostes in his judgement.
All summarised here:
https://www.theguardian.com/law/2024/apr/15/bruce-lehrmann-defamation-verdict-judgment-judge-justice-michael-lee-best-lines-brittany-higgins-ntwnfb
To my great delight he actually said omnishambles
(referenced in above article. Sadly without the journalist picking up on the Thick Of It context)
Armando Ianucci & “The Death of Stalin”
YT has the entire audio commentary track with Ianucci and writers David Schneider, Ian Martin and Peter Fellows.
The Death of Stalin DVD Audio Commentary 2017
106 min.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbYUzLHyCjk
Common Dreams:
I’ll be waiting for the list of those who didn’t walk out.
Yes, I was curious about that as well.
It will be interesting if mayor mandamni will have netanyahu arrested if he sets foot in nyc. It may be even more interesting if netanyahu ever decides to park his ass in nyc if mandamni is the mayor. Perhaps god almighty promised rikers island to zionist genociders long, long ago. In that case, rikers is absolutely one place where netanyahu belongs.
Come to think of it, it will be interesting if mandamni lives long enough to become mayor. I hope to god (not the malignant god of netanyahu) that he does.
This is a story I’m very happy to see. As I may have commented before, dock workers occupy one of the key nodes in the global transportation network, and as they are commonly unionized in the industrial world, have the ability to act collectively with much greater ease than most workforces.
As we have also seen in Ukraine, wars require substantial logistical capabilities in order to keep running. Hopefully we will see these kinds of actions continue to spread.
re: What if the post office had its own AI model
This piece was not as stupid as I thought it would be when I clicked the link. I think ultimately this will be the direction of travel but there is going to be a lot of heartbreak to get there. Several things have to happen first: a significant crash in the bubblicious valuations of everything AI as well as a proven-beyond-a-trace-of-a-doubt-to-normies set of use cases around the value of using AI to handle large amounts of data AS WELL AS a concerted program to develop the open source models and infrastructure for public use. I imagine when there is a ton of unused GPU and data center capacity there will be organizations set up by the providers to work with .gov/.edu/.mil to have these all created to extract some value out of the massive capex investment underway.
Then again we still don’t have a post office bank, so…
I talked yesterday to a VC I know about this very subject — what they’ll run on all those Nvidia chips in all data centers when the LLM bubble ends– and he said, “we’ve just spent our last three board meetings, or 18 hours, discussing that very subject of what to do with all that compute when that happens.”
So anyone on NC that thinks that when this bubble ends will be like the end of the tulip bubble — rather than the railway or dotcom bubbles– is probably being naive.
Yes, I know it is not a popular position here, and I am open about my biases as I work in the field, but I think that surveillance, massive data handling, and integrating the LLMs into certain backends as a runtime – these use cases alone are enough to kick off a decade+ super cycle. The consumer-facing free chatbots from the frontier models are kind of a distraction IMHO. The current valuations of most of the products and frontier models are far too high, of course, they need to come down before we see the real network effects. But I see this more akin to the dotcom bubble than the tulip bubble.
Be careful with that Uncharted Territories link today. This –
“5. Race
This theory is extremely contested, and I haven’t independently assessed it, so I won’t go into any detail, but for sake of completeness we must add the hypothesis that race also has influence in economic development. I might eventually make an independent assessment of the claim.”
– really could have been left out. No, there is no need to include it for “completeness”. One could turn this on its head and say that the reason warm countries are “poorer” is because those people in colder climes suffer from some genetic mental defect. Doesn’t everybody know that only mad dogs and Englishmen work in the midday sun?
Good point. Not to mention that he tries to answer the question ‘why are some countries poor?’ by claiming that the only viable debate is between those who blame colonialism and those who do not (see at the end of the entry). In doing so, he completely ignores the elephant in the room—namely, that recent historical developments and the contemporary international division of labor may be huge! factors. Instead, he compiles a bunch of random, deterministic explanations, including: ‘I would say something about race but I won’t,’ which is the lowest blow among many low blows in this post.
Thank you and I agree – it was a very sloppy essay.
I thought that but I read on and the piece turned put to be a listing of the alleged reasons merely to dismiss them and then the addition of a new one. If this rhetorical had been telegraphed up front, some of the reasons listed, e.g. race, would have been less disquieting. It appeared to be a sincere analysis of the factors when I got to race and goggled!
Thank you. The argument was not framed well and I couldn’t figure out the author’s point, and I admit to not reading much after seeing #5. I’ve gone back and read the whole thing and see that he’s listing common arguments, but not necessarily his own. I still don’t see the need to mention #5 the way he did, and I still don’t really get the point of it all. All that to make the claim that people don’t like to live in the middle of the desert, so they take to higher ground? Well thank you Captain Obvious!
A more thorough analysis might have considered older and very large global south civilizations that are just now being rediscovered thanks to lidar technologies, and compared those to more well known northern civilizations from a similar time period.
A better analysis might have discussed what we mean by “wealth” in the first place and what different ways there might be to define it other than Western measures of trade and GDP. Change the metrics and a whole different narrative may emerge.
On that other Youtube channel, Judging Freedom, they are saying war is inevitable unless Trump says no. He didn’t the first time but was no doubt told that regime change plus welcoming flowers would end it all.
This time, goes the argument, the Israelis would expect the US to engage in a real war to help them out. Max Blumenthal even goes so far as to suggest the Lobby wanted Kirk to persuade young Christian men to fight for the Holy Land.
Of course that sort of engagement is exactly what Americans don’t want which is why Dubya had to set up the Colin Powell weapons of mass destruction charade in our Iraq war for Israel. To the MIC cynics one profitable war may be as good as another, but for the prospective cannon fodder not so much. The Israel as Sparta madness needs to stop, but how? They can’t even get a segment of their own citizens to serve as cannon fodder. Presumably they are shooting for robo Sparta.
I Think VDL and the rest of yerp’s leadership should totally rely on Trump having their back when they start shooting down Russian jets.
Just look at Trump’s history, integrity is, like, his middle name!
If things go a little sideways and a Nuclear exchange happens we won’t have to worry about global warming and it will also solve the housing shortage.
Self-certification is back for Boeing. What could possibly go wrong?
FAA Easing Restrictions, Will Let Boeing Decide If 737 MAXs & 787s Are Safe OMAAT
What AI is doing to language: The MIT Technology Review article “How AI and Wikipedia have sent vulnerable languages into a doom spiral” in today’s links is both impressive and and heartbreaking. The social ways in which humans learn language, the way we use it to think our own thoughts, and the standards we apply to its use, by ourselves and by others, make us what we are as literate human beings. Intellectuals and writers are formed by writing, and being edited, by having their work assessed as worthy of publication, and being reviewed and criticized. (Well, in the old model of publishing, anyway) We need an honest intellectual life to guide us toward the truth.
LLMs seem designed as a way to denigrate the human use of language, and denigrate the standards we apply to it to make it a tool of humanity. You might think of the way that AI is described in the article as destroying the smaller languages as a model for how it destroys anything that is unique (and therefore fragile) in ANY intellectual or cultural realm even in the English language.
LLMs seem part of the “Endarkenment” in which our collapsed standards of truth and decency are leading us into wars, economic collapse, illiteracy and indecency. (Just how obscene is what is happening in Gaza? And yet we are led by people who have no words for it.)
A few older people may remember the invocation of a “language crisis” in German culture in the early years of the 20th century, by Hugo von Hofmansthal and others. This discussion of an inchoate sense of inability to say important things ended definitively in 1933, when a new, and inhumane language, the so-called “Lingua Tertii Imperii” took over.
The loss of languages described in the MIT article is model for the loss of humanity that we are all experiencing. And by the way, Hurrah! for Colonel Wilkerson.
“Intellectuals and writers are formed by writing, and being edited, by having their work assessed as worthy of publication, and being reviewed and criticized.”
Intellectuals and writers are also, and perhaps most importantly, formed by reading. All of them, without exception, have read extensively and the ideas and opinions they express have been shaped by the writings of their forebears. They stand, so to speak, on the shoulders of giants.
LLM’s aren’t the only problem with language today. We live in an age when scarcely anyone reads books, a post-literate world if you will. And so, what kind of writers and thinkers can we reasonably expect from those who eschew books, who only read the knee-jerk musings of commenters on websites and social media. I shudder to think.
All that matters now is to be read TODAY, say something TODAY even if one has nothing to say, and get those all-important views, hits, and likes. Why care about tomorrow when, come the morrow in Internetland, one’s words, brilliant or banal, wise or foolish, will be forgotten?
I enjoyed your comment. A relatively long one—with no jarring, distracting typos. Easy to read. Thank you. So many people online these days are in such a rush to share their precious words with the world they can’t even been bothered to edit a one-sentence comment. Did I say “post-literate”?
Re Charlie Kirk, just watched this video on a question I’ve been wondering about
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMOHKyye9I4. 12 minutes
I’ve worked in many commercial buildings and what he says here is true. Why haven’t they shown video of Robinson getting on roof or even taken the shot as apparently the camera showing him escaping off the roof also had a view of his supposed shooting location. To access any commercial roof requires access key, potentially an electronic key which would provide data on when and who accessed the roof. Most access doors in buildings I worked in had alarms on them and I would need to inform the monitors of my id and which door I was accessing.
Someone either left the roof access open or let him in.
Apparently I am wrong here and for some reason this roof does have public access with short fence to cross. Still wonder why they won’t show him going to shooting position or him firing as a 30.06 has significant recoil and should be visible
Robinson had counsel appointed a few days ago.
See:
https://www.sltrib.com/news/2025/09/24/charlie-kirk-shooting-public/
And:
https://abcnews.go.com/US/attorney-appointed-tyler-robinson-man-charged-fatally-shooting/story?id=125911686
Never heard of her, but based on her resume as summarized in the articles, she’s a real heavy weight. (Although some losers in the comments to the linked articles did, I’m not talking about her body shape.) IOW, she knows how to try a case and she is afraid of no one.
I’m not familiar with how Utah funds indigent defense, but it appears that the contracted amount for this case totally busted the county budget. Check out the whining of the county officials quoted in the articles.
The other interesting thing is that a completely unrelated lawyer to the case was brought in to negotiate the contract.
See:
https://www.deseret.com/utah/2025/09/17/charlie-kirk-murder-suspect-tyler-robinson-lawyer-court-death-penalty-greg-skordas/
This lawyer apparently is a heavyweight in his own right and was brought in to prevent the county from low balling whoever they were negotiating with and to minimize any leaks to the prosecution about how the defense counsel wanted to spend the money allocated for investigators and experts.
This probably explains the delay in appointing counsel in the first place.
Finally a commenter back in the very beginning asked why he hadn’t been charged in Federal court. He probably will be, but it will occur only when it suits Main Justice aka Bondi/Patel/Trump.
When it happens, the Criminal Justice Act will provide the funding for who ever is appointed. So this contract is only for the state court defense. Also the lawyer who was appointed in state court is very qualified to handle any defense to a federal prosecution.
Thanks for this update. Good to hear that he has counsel. She sounds like she’ll do a fine job providing him a strong defense.
I’ll just note that Daddy and Mommy dearest apparently did not want to dip into their savings (possibly bolstered by the $1M reward) to give their son a hand with legal help, as he qualified as indigent.
Politics are thicker than blood in that crew, apparently.
Robert Reich (https://bsky.app/profile/rbreich.bsky.social/post/3lzma2ajfwx23):
The richest man on earth owns X.
The second richest man on earth is about to be a major owner of TikTok.
The third richest man owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.
The fourth richest man owns The Washington Post.
See the problem here?
RE: the big meeting Pete Hegseth called for
https://xcancel.com/PeteHegseth/status/1971532130712002775
Is it my imagination or did Sarkozy just get sent to Le Gow de Hoos for receiving exactly the same kind of assistance that Trump just announced he would do for Milei?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/sep/25/nicolas-sarkozy-found-guilty-of-criminal-conspiracy-in-libya-trial
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/26/us/des-moines-schools-ice-immigration.html
ICE has detained the superintendent of Des Moines Public Schools.
welp.
Elijah Mountain Pinter asked Estralita Longoria to marry him, on his knees, bellyfull of insects, on a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean, somewhere near the naval base in san diego.
so i’ll be a father in law.
then likely a grandpa.
i just wish Tamster were here to see it.
Congratulations, Amf! And Tam is there, looking out the eyes of your son.
In other good news, Kneecap are not terrorists and Mo Chara is a Free Man!
Free Palestine! Tiocfaidh ár lá!
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2025/sep/26/terrorism-case-against-kneecap-rapper-liam-og-o-hannaidh-thrown-out
(Mo Chara was asked if he had a message for Kier Starker. He said “Better luck next time!”. Man’s a gent, LOL).
Congratulations Amfortas!
Congratulations, Amf. Looks like before long you will have to choose a new title. Let’s see there is pappy, pops, grandpaw, pa…
they call me “Pops”, mostly/
ive gotten used to it.
I vote for Pawwwwww in a slow deep Texas drawl ….
Commiserations and ain’t life funny mate, one thing ends and a new thingy begins.
As they say in Costa Rica – Olympia = encompassing all …
This is a good thing, Brother. All love.
Congratulations, amfortas! And all the best to the new couple.
Congrats!!!
US marketing companies are helping to rebrand the genocide in Gaza (Arwa Mahdawi in Guardian)
“The ‘flooding the zone’ strategy works because it doesn’t need to convince people genocide is good, it just needs to make them uncertain about what they’re seeing or tired of thinking about,” Scaman told me. “Look how successfully opposition to child killing has been made to seem like extremism. The propaganda isn’t just changing minds – it’s breaking the mechanisms people use to process moral information. When reality itself becomes contested territory, systematic killing becomes just another political disagreement.”