Gymnast Katelyn Ohashi scores a perfect 10 with a jaw dropping, Michael Jackson inspired dance
— Science girl (@gunsnrosesgirl3) October 11, 2025
The puzzle of the ‘idiot savant’ Aeon
How the government shutdown is making the air traffic controller shortage worse and leading to flight delays The Conversation
Property crime and violent crime have different solutions — here’s why Knowable
Lifetime of Friendships Slows Aging Nautilus
What Americans die from and the causes of death the media reports on Ritholtz.com
COVID-19/Pandemics
Covid virus changes sperm in mice, may raise anxiety in offspring: study France 24
Study finds workers still calling in sick more often than before COVID-19 pandemic Washington Times
YOUR ATTENTION:
Terrible😡, LC in children!
Omicron era in preprint:
"The increased microclot burden in pediatric LC supports the role of microvascular dysfunction and persistent viral antigens in pathogenesis.”
Our children are marked for years to come, as the majority… https://t.co/KjV7A7RBzI
— Harry Spoelstra (@HarrySpoelstra) October 11, 2025
Climate/Environment
Climate goals go up in smoke as US datacenters turn to coal The Register
South of the Border
Russia, China denounce US military presence in Caribbean as Venezuela warns of threat to regional peace, stability Andolu Agency
US ends diplomatic outreach to Venezuela amid fears of military escalation Latin America Reports
Bessent’s big gamble on Argentina has a narrow road to pay off Bloomberg
China?
A new level of drone show.😲 pic.twitter.com/igMA14cSei
— Sharing Travel (@TripInChina) October 8, 2025
Can anything knock China off its mountain? Noahpinion blogInvestors react to Trump’s massive increase in China tariffs Reuters
China Deploys World’s First Unmanned Fighter Squadron: GJ-11 Stealth Jets Activated in Tibet Military Watch
Trump wanted a trade deal. Xi opened a new front instead. Politico
India
India is forcibly deporting Muslims, including its own citizens, after Kashmir violence NPR
Africa
Around four million people displaced across Africa’s Sahel, UN warns Al Jazeera
Africa Will Be Free When the IMF Stops Colluding to Steal Its Wealth ScheerPost
European Disunion
Chat Control on hold, Europe’s Eastern flank remains passive Euronews
Europe Travel Set To Be Hit By Monumental Airport Strikes As Greece And Belgium Join Italy, Spain, Lithuania, And More In Mid-October Travel and Tour World
Czech populist’s comeback a win for politics of pragmatism in shifting Europe RFI
Old Blighty
Digital IDs are being introduced in the UK — and they’re controversial. Straight Arrow News
Why are millions fleeing the UK? Here’s why the country is seeing ‘mass migration’ Times of India
Israel v. Gaza, Yemen, Lebanon, Syria, Iran
Israel has dropped about 200,000 tons of explosives on Gaza since Oct 7, equivalent to nearly 13 Hiroshima bombs. pic.twitter.com/XrtDoLUBWu
— TIMES OF GAZA (@Timesofgaza) October 8, 2025
“We may have survived physically, but we haven’t survived mentally.” Drop SiteGaza Ceasefire: Breakthrough or Another False Dawn? The National Interest
Lebanon slams deadly overnight Israeli strike AFP
Boycotting Israel has gone mainstream: ‘We’ve never seen such traction before’ The Guardian
New Not-So-Cold War
Major Russian strikes cut power in Kyiv and across Ukraine BBC
Ukraine Braces For Winter As Russia Escalates Energy Attacks Radio Free Europe
EU pressures G7 countries to loan frozen Russian assets to Ukraine Politico
Big Brother Is Watching You Watch
AI-powered wearables will force our privacy norms to change Cointelegraph
LinkedIn can’t dodge claims it tracked users’ medical data Courthouse News Service
Imperial Collapse Watch
California Braces for ‘Devastating’ Expected Cuts to Federal Homeless Housing funds Sonoma Sun
Military families often live by the paycheck. They are about to miss one. Christian Science Monitor
An American Hunger Crisis Is Coming Washington Monthly
Trump 2.0
What is Trump’s approval rating? What polls say 10 days into the government shutdown USA Today
Market sell-off: Trump post lops off $2 trillion from stocks in a single day CNBC
The shutdown is delaying Trump’s farm bailout. Farmers say it won’t be enough even when it happens. Yahoo Finance
An Immense Solar Project Just Got Canceled Under Trump NY Times
Musk Matters
Tesla Hit With Probe After Crashes Involving Self-Driving Feature Musk Boasted About Broadband Breakfast
Elon Musk sets his sights on struggling MSNBC MSN
The wheels have come off Musk’s monstertruck The Observer
Democrat Death Watch
Susan Shelley: Katie Porter’s debacle opens up the gubernatorial race Los Angeles Daily News
Commentary: Congress’ Democrats are wildly unprepared to face down Trump Yakim Herald-Republic
Immigration
The quiet toll of Trump’s legal immigration crackdown: ‘I’m trying to stay afloat’ The Guardian
‘They treated us like animals’ – Inside the epicentre of deportations in New York City BBC
Our No Longer Free Press
Mr. Market Is Moody
Dollar Dips as Trump’s China Tariff Threat Rattles Markets Modern Diplomacy
AI
MrBeast Concerned That AI Slop Will Put Him Out of Business Futurism
Four AI Policy Choices Policymakers Can’t Afford to Get Wrong War on the Rock
Why You Don’t Get Any Credit Anymore for 30% of Your Code Being Written By AI SaaStr
AI’s Sweet Talk: How Artificial Companions Steal Our Humanity Mind Matters
The Bezzle
North Korean Scammers Are Doing Architectural Design Now Wired
U.S. Doctors Accuse Insurers of Algorithmic Downcoding to Cut Payouts WebPro News
Luxury lifestyle ends in prison for couple who defrauded Medicare Fox 10 Phoenix
Guillotine Watch
Elvish honey is the most expensive honey in the world and is harvested deep inside Turkish caves and at high altitudes
pic.twitter.com/ZmXaGOfKQL— Science girl (@gunsnrosesgirl3) July 14, 2025
This is the most expensive dessert in the world! pic.twitter.com/RrSuo47TPF
— Agriculture Insider (@Agriculfuture) July 17, 2025
Antidote du jour (via)
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here
122 comments
Comments are closed.
“China Deploys World’s First Unmanned Fighter Squadron: GJ-11 Stealth Jets Activated in Tibet”
Sigh. It’s a changing world-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcDtsfHFlTo&list=RDvcDtsfHFlTo&start_radio=1 (4:04 mins)
Unlocked link for AI drones are America’s newest cops
Thanks. Look, that’s my right to privacy in the rear-view. California using drones to search for “code violations” and “too many hemp plants”, that second part likely after lobbying from the states heavily over invested legal weed industry. China probably doing the same thing, but at lest the citizenry there get some nice light shows for their troubles.
Hard to see rural US law enforcement getting away with low altitude drone fly-overs. Too many bird guns out here.
Wait. What happens if that drone manages to send a message off to police HQ first?
‘Officer drone down. Officer drone down. Send backup.’
The sheriff doesn’t want a shooting war with the well armed denizens of fly-over America. The Feds, in the other hand…
The Feds are kinda like the Israelis. They only do well beating up on defenseless people or can bring in tanks. See ICE as an example.
The terror is the point. As long as most of the “others” are scared off by the examples set by the Organs of State Security in vigourously crushing dissent, the strategy works.
A real world example from some forty years ago. The drug police used to, perhaps still do, fly a small airplane out of the Hammond Louisiana Airport to do aerial searches for cannabis growing operations “in the wilderness” of Northshore Louisiana.
One fine afternoon, the aircraft returned to the airport and there the ground crew discovered several fresh bullet holes in the fuselage of the airplane. Someone evidently disapproved of the aerial surveillance and let their displeasure be known kinetically. The next day, the rural area where the airplane had been searching was flooded with local and State police. The full court press included the rounding up of “the usual suspects.” The lesson here is that “the Authorities” will tolerate no ‘resistance’ to their perceived “dominance.”
The counter to the new drone watching system will have to be extensive and co-ordinated. Just as the “Forces of Law and Order” went all out to crush that challenge to their authority years ago, so too today will the Public have to “flood the zone” to achieve any effective counter to the nascent Official Panopticon.
Stay safe, go Gray.
From the article: “Case in point: In Albuquerque, police are using drones to catch car thieves.”
OTOH, having had three of my vehicles stolen from in front of my home over the years, and on the other being no fan of the surveillance state, I have mixed feelings about this.
“Trump wanted a trade deal. Xi opened a new front instead.”
Well that’s a lie. Then again, this is a Politico article. Trump tried to pretend that what China did came out of the blue and had no idea that China was going to do this to the US and the world. But to put this into context, the Trump regime last month dropped new measures to stop high tech stuff going to China so this was actually payback-
‘But U.S. negotiators under Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick tried to play hardball. In late September, during the talks, they imposed further restrictions on China:
On September 29, 2025, the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) released a long-anticipated interim final rule (IFR) that will result in the most dramatic expansion of U.S. export control regulations in years. The IFR, “Expansion of End-User Controls To Cover Affiliates of Certain Listed Entities,” extends export restrictions to any company owned 50% or more, directly or indirectly, by any of the thousands of entities already designated on several Commerce and Treasury Department lists.
The IFR would also impose a new duty on exporters to investigate the ownership of an end user where there is reason to believe a designated entity holds a minority stake, or is affiliated with, the end user, subject to a strict liability standard for violations.
The new measures would severely restrict any export of high tech goods to China.’
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2025/10/u-s-china-trade-war-reaches-new-level.html
FAFO
Not to mention the (so far) empty threats to sanction China over Russian crude oil purchases. Shame on Politico for framing this as China suddenly escalating out of nowhere.
That’s the thing, isn’t it? The corporate media continues to frame things in a way that lends legitimacy to what Trump is doing, even while ostensibly disagreeing with his policies. Trump’s handlers let him get into the bully pulpit to bluster and troll, and the reporting takes the position that Trump’s demands are outrageous, but surely China is a problem and something must be done.
They did the same thing with the incessant “reporting” on Trump’s desire for a Nobel Peace prize. This was clearly a ridiculous notion on its face, with a US-sponsored genocide raging. But we kept seeing it framed as something serious people might recommend and that the Nobel committee might seriously consider. Trump’s claims to have ended however many global conflicts weren’t seriously criticized though, often just presented as a given.
Then the whole story line culminates with the announcement of the prize awarded to a US-financed Venezuelan opposition leader who seeks the violent overthrow of her own government. I dipped a toe into the comments on some of the corporate press articles and saw one comment after another talking about how Trump didn’t deserve the prize due to his warmongering actions, some specifically citing the attacks on Venezuelan boats, but this freedom loving lady most definitely did deserve the win without making the connection that the prize winner clearly supports the actions of the Trump administration against Venezuela. I suspect that many if not most of those posts were bot-generated. Regardless, the propaganda wurlitzer was running on full steam. So we have a generally well regarded international institution (although not deservedly so) basically giving a wink toward and tacit approval of any freedom promoting attack on Venezuela that Trump’s handlers like Rubio (and Rubio’s own handlers) might want to launch. Quite the propaganda operation there – Trump is made to look vaguely ridiculous but everybody knows the war must still go on!
Today I had CNN on the radio while driving, and I was mildly surprised to hear them praise Trump for the Gaza ceasefire deal. Conveniently ignoring the fact that he enabled a genocide to go on for almost a full 9 months after assuming orifice. All the bombs sent to Bibi that turned Gazans into ground chuck … not worth mentioning.
I almost wanted to throw up, but then I remembered that CNN is corporate media and they don’t represent critical journalism any more than I resemble a soap dish.
Notwithstanding the “What did we do?!” BS, I rather enjoy the effeminate role that the headline assigns to Trump and the US. Makes Baerbock, VdL and Kallas look very butch by comparison.
Hmm, looks like the DOW has been told to expand it’s stockpile:
Pentagon moves to build $1 billion critical minerals stockpile to counter China — report
https://www.mining.com/pentagon-moves-to-build-1-billion-critical-minerals-stockpile-to-counter-china-report/
And here’s a GAO report on this from last year:
GAO-24-107176, Critical Materials: Action Needed to Implement Requirements That Reduce Supply Chain Risks
https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-24-107176.pdf
So it seems like there should be enough people that can report on “reality” to those in charge, but maybe they’re just reluctant to tell those above them the truth. I certainly saw this where I worked – senior engineers (even tech fellows) that told upper management what was actually happening on the factory floor as opposed to what upper management WANTED to hear were kicked out of meetings.
New mines are being opened, but it takes a long time to develop new mines and refining capacity. It could easily be a decade before China can be replaced as the primary source for many of these materials.
Imagine, Maverick in an air conditioned trailed flying a work station……
Sentencing of Scottsdale pair for Medicare fraud recalls the case of Florida ophthalmologist Solomon Melgen convicted of 67 counts in 2017 of false diagnoses and treatments of macular degeneration. Treatment involves the direct injection into the eyeball. He was sentenced to 17 years, but Trump commuted his sentence. Melgen was a fund raiser for now convicted Sen. Menendez.
This is not the only Trump pardon/commutation for serious white-collar criminals. I think putting a needle into one’s eyeball for money constitutes a violent assault. To protect Medicare/Medicaid, in the infrequent cases where serious fraud is proven, serious jail time is also indicated.
Indeed, and meanwhile Rick Scott is a former two term Florida governor and now senator; should be in jail.
Here’s Trump’s pardons/clemencies costing victims (and court costs) $2 billion
That’s pretty horrible. Just a reminder, though: According to its own audit, the Fed bailed out the financial sector’s frauds to the tune of $16 – $29 trillion.
A trillion is still 1,000 times a billion. So who is the bigger crook?
Personally, I’d like to hear a little repentance from the D’s for the feckless war criminal (Libya) Obama. Not holding my breath, tho’.
“Can anything knock China off its mountain?”
‘A few years ago, it looked as if the U.S. and China might battle over global hegemony and preeminence.’
I don’t think that China was ever interested in hegemony. George Bush actually made an offer to China some twenty years ago where the US and China would rule the world together. China would supply the money and the troops while the US would supply the leadership – George Bush’s leadership here I guess. But the Chinese said they had no interest in that sort of power but only wanted to continue to grow their economy and infrastructure. And here we are.
“I don’t think that China was ever interested in hegemony.”
Prior to 1433 it appears that they were for a time. See: Ming treasure voyages Wikipedia
Centuries ahead of Europe in maritime technology and power projection, they just stopped. There are various reasons for this discussed in the linked article. That it was the result of internal institutional conflicts of interest over material benefits and state power I find most convincing.
There are many moves going on that are almost never reported upon, hinting at a larger economic war being fought in the darkness.
I found this article to be intriguing — and I hope that further details will come to light.
Basically, the Dutch are doing to Wingtech Technology / Nexperia what the Germans did to Gazprom / Gazprom Germania : taking away the control of the company from its rightful foreign owners, and placing it under a trusteeship. And in the case of China, not only is there not even the justification that China started a war: the whole affair was done through expedited proceedings. The official statement by the Dutch government sounds a bit odd.
I suspect that this habit of expropriating disliked foreign owners — also given all the grumblings about taking away Russian funds blocked in the EU — will eventually entail serious consequences for Europe. After all, who would invest in European subsidiaries or taken-over European firms, then integrate them in larger supply chains and markets if EU governments simply dispossess the foreign investors every time the idea of an expropriation for “national security” reasons catches their fancy?
What Americans die from and the causes of death the media reports on Ritholtz.com
The original source for the graph linked is a study published in Our World in Data. Does the news reflect what we die from? which i found well worth reading. The article mentions a “disconnect between what we often hear and what actually happens.”
Does this disconnect reflect a spontaneous mismatch between our fears and the realities of the world? Otherwise, Is it somehow intentional? The news show us what we “need to know” according to criteria which may be more or less apparent but frequently divorced from the real informational needs of the people. When the most important causes of death are under-reported the case can be made that the populaces do not need to know that health care policies might be failing. IMO, there are lots of data suggesting that HC, which showed sharp improvement during the last century, might be now going backwards in overall results.
Thanks for the link. I’m unsurprised at the lack of symmetry. “Homicide” and “Terrorism” surely garner more clicks than “Lower Respiratory Infections”.
And isn’t it interesting the the three news sources have nearly the same proportion of “reports”. Of course with former NSA on their staff it’s easy to coordinate the “news”. NYT director of external communications Charlie Stadtlander is from NSA.
This is also more Pandemic denialism garbage, from OWID.
While it might be true per their analysis that COVID deaths are “over reported” relative to their proportion of deaths, it’s lunacy to suggest that all deaths are created equal. You can say the same about violent gun deaths, which I think everyone would agree are deaths that should be 100% preventable.
And SARS-CoV-2 is a brand new human Pandemic, that is ongoing, and serious.
The media is vastly underreporting on this, and not just in terms of deaths. In six years, there’s been no “oh yeah it’s just a cold no big deal” studies that have come out. Every study of merit that comes out shows that getting COVID is worse than either a “cold” or the Flu. Full stop.
It’s funny how quickly these deaths are completely normalized, and between Biden and Trump, over a million Americans are dead now that might possibly still be alive today, and millions more are disabled, some permanently.
And OWID thinks relative to their proportion, these deaths are 2.5x times over-reported, in 2023.
LOL, ok.
Thanks, I was hoping you would comment on this. I was wondering how many “LRI” and pneumonia deaths were brought on by Covid and were mis-attributed.
OWID used CDC data, so, if there is garbage, you know the what the origin is.
The garbage comes from concluding that, relative to incidence, the media covered COVID deaths in the study period too much, and other causes not enough. It’s an issue of magnitude. And I say not all deaths are created equally.
It’s also likely COVID deaths are under-reported in the CDC data.
I disagree. The data does not compare media coverage with disease incidence but with actual deaths. An interesting job would be to test whether the coverage given to Covid, somehow in relative excess compared to its importance as a direct cause of death in 2023, is due to causes other than deaths. Long Covid, days off work, and other societal effects like polemics with masking or ventilation.
Another great link from Ritholtz this morning about the fake news mill in Macedonia also discusses the gullibility of Americans for said same.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/ps-political-science-and-politics/article/macedonian-fake-news-industry-and-the-2016-us-election/79F67A4F23148D230F120A3BD7E3384F
The bands would be quite different in thickness if the Potential Years of Life Lost would be use instead of actual counts.
Hideous and impractical for the average consumer, and a myriad of other explanations on why the Cybertruck is a loser. Maybe they can be stacked into a big spaceship for future travel endeavors to Mars. Or sold as temporary housing units during a catastrophic weather event…ok maybe not as that seems overly harsh if your home and life were just wrecked.
About long covid in children: I wonder how many of them were vaccinated. According to a study of 48 000 Cleveland Clinic employees from 2023 being vaccinated actually increased your chances of infection. Here a quote: “In a multivariable Cox proportional hazards regression model, adjusted for propensity to get tested for COVID-19, age, sex, and phase of most recent SARS-CoV-2 infection, not being “up-to-date” on COVID-19 vaccination was associated with a lower risk of COVID-19 ”
And here the study: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.06.09.23290893v1.full
Even considering the fact that maybe this was just a one off with the then current vaccine (geared for the ABB variant). Why is Spoelstra advocating on Twitter to get a Covid shot every six month? And why does he quote a Chinese study in that regard if he knows perfectly well that the Chinese use a different vaccine than the one available in the West? https://x.com/HarrySpoelstra/status/1977312042882138200
Kinda weird…
From the Medrxvi study cited:
As to the second reason, given the relative risks, I guess one must decide whether its better to acquire resistance to infection through prior infection or from the jab.
Acquiring resistance through getting Covid is a terrible idea.
Avoidance, as in masking and other layered protection strategies, is better. Or an old tech vaccine, like Novavax or an whole virus vaccine.
I wholeheartedly agree. I should have made that point clear. I just assumed that it was crystal clear to those at this site that getting the virus was about a zillion times more dangerous than getting the vaccine. Given the timeline in which we live, I should have known better.
No, it’s not kinda weird, it’s kinda planned. Notice how so many articles are about children and young adults (under 45 years) having “long Covid”. No mention of vaccine injury. Of course they are safe and effective.
Huh. Many parents did not get their children the COVID shots.
Using this population to engage in “but the vax!” argumentation is not the flex that you think it is.
There are legitimate questions about the safety and efficacy of the modified RNA COVID shots, but this is all swept up in the general anti-vaccine sentiment and frequently comes off as shrill.
Child and adolescent COVID-19 vaccination status and reasons for non-vaccination by parental vaccination status (2022)
And to deny that a novel, level 3 biohazard might actually cause harm to children, particularly when the evidence is overwhelming over the past 5 years that is unequivocally does, is done so in bad faith.
Yeah, this study you cite does not appear to be peer reviewed.
Interesting this “study” appears to line up with more current recommendations by US government agencies that “COVID-19 vaccine bad” mentality. Even though Trump recently got his shots.
Also this is one study against at least half a dozen I could point to (on a now horrible google search) which indicate the opposite.
As always, it is important to keep one’s eyes open. But this is thin gruel indeed.
Here is link to peer review acceptance letter,
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/peerReview?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0293449
The study linked to was a pre-print. The study was published in a peer reviewed journal.
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0293449
Regarding Musk’s stainless steel monster truck, The DePlorean
When I was a boy, my Cub Scout Pinewood Derby car looked just like it. It was even painted silver.
Sounds like a case for No-shit Sherlock.
Modern day alchemy turns coal into virtual gold (not to be confused with Fort Knox gold, which is also virtual but in a different way).
re: German industry crumbles further
GERMAN-FOREIGN-POLICY-BLOG
use google translate
Economic power in decline
The chemical industry, another key pillar of the German economy, is increasingly falling into crisis. The main causes are the abandonment of inexpensive Russian natural gas and the tariff exemption imposed by Trump on imports from the US.
https://www.german-foreign-policy.com/news/detail/10150
Outside the National Building Museum thats still open. Had arrived the evening prior in DC as a goodbye tour of sorts to America.
And now all the museums are closed.
Any suggestions?
Its grey, cloudy, quiet, and a little depressing. As it should be!
The Capitol grounds are designed by Olmsted and are quite a lovely walk. Phillips Collection gallery should not be affected by the shutdown. Also nice walk around Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool.
Walk the tidal basin which includes both the Jefferson and Roosevelt memorials – lovely walk – two of my favorite americans.
My first visit to DC was during the blizzard shutdown ´96. Never was the city more white. We were stuck in the house of an employee of the, I believe, IRS 😆.
Have fun!
p.s. don´t they have a film location tour re: HOUSE OF CARDS?
DC is a good town for Bloody Mary’s and oysters served raw on the half-shell. It is Sunday.
If you have a car, Mount Vernon, Geo. Washington’s house, is definitely worth the visit. ($28)
The Phillips Collection, near Dupont Circle, is quite good ($10). A walk in that neighborhood is also interesting.
Have a sip at Old Ebbit Grill. The founding fathers/mothers have sipped there since the mid 19th century. Just a block or two from the capitol.
Go on a road trip to a Civil War battlefield or 2~
Antietam is the craziest, you stand amazed that carnage asada happened there…
The Vietnam War memorial (Maya Lin) is deeply moving and beautiful.
Hah! You guys came through. I be walking the rest of the national mall today.
The National Building Museum is amazing by the way.
Washington Zoo was really good when I went c. 15 years ago….
It’s late in the open thread so I hope our hosts indulge me in somewhat of a rant.
What, in practical terms, is this shutdown accomplishing, for either party?
For the Dems at least there is a tangible goal – restoring the Obamacare subsidies, along with getting some of the Medicaid cuts reversed. I have stated that I believe the Dems are in better shape to win this poltical battle, because there is no constituency for fiscal tough medicine.
Even there, I question the long-term strategy. If the GOP caves, which seems likely, the Dems can claim a short term tactical win, but by the mid-terms, it will be long forgotten. Strategically, it would have made more sense to let the subsidies expire, and the GOP would own that.
The Republican position is even more incoherent. They are fighting for a CR to restore Biden-era funding. They had 9 months to pass individual appropriations bills and failed to pass a single one. That put them in a weak position. Beyond dereliction of duty, it shows utter incompetence of leaders like Mike Johnson and Thune.
At this point, the writing is on the wall, and we all know the Elephants are going to cave. So why not at least negotiate? How about demanding a 5% across-the-board spending cut in all agencies’ funding, in a new CR, in exchange for extending the subsidies? Or a “pay-for” amount that would offset the health care subsidies? That would at least achieve a policy win – lower short-term spending. Instead, the idiot Mike Johnson has shut down the House indefinitely. At least that prevents them from passing another harmful bill, like more spending on Project Ukraine or forcing an AI legislative moratorium down our throats. Maybe they should just go home for the rest of 2025.
And the simple fact is that a CR extends the Biden era budget for another six weeks, erasing the DOGE cuts. Why in the world nobody is pointing that out besides Thomas Massie is beyond my ability to understand.
My only conclusion is that this is all Kabuki Theater, with the federal civil servants as pawns being sacrificed in an idiots’ game.
IIRC, Speaker Mike Johnson closed down the House originally to block any bills or inquiries into Israel and Gaza with the current shutdown being fortuitous for him. Considering the limited intellectual bandwidth of the Republican Party, I suspect that planning ahead of blocking anymore debate on the Gazan genocide was too much. And I say that with sincerity.
Really, both parties are suicidal in their politics right now as they are enraging everyone not of the thirty percent or less of true believers. That leaves a supermajority for none-of-the-above.
Thanks for the reply. Neither party is interested in governing. I wish “none of the above” were on the ballot.
It would be interesting to see why the government “re-opened” after shutdowns (especially since these are becoming more common.). Given that the government is increasingly there just for the oligarchs, I would not be surprised to see that shutdowns can last longer and can deeply impact the 99%. It’s probably only when the 1% get worried about their investments that the government will feel pressure to re-open.
Elvis honey is what the King would eat.
“North Korean Scammers Are Doing Architectural Design Now”
Unanswered is the question. Were they any good? Were they better than the Indians? Did they do good work?
re: The puzzle of the ‘idiot savant’ Aeon
To take this in a different direction, am I right in thinking RFJ Jr, in not connecting the dots re: autism and the phenomenon of the savant throughout history, is demonstrating he may not have this common knowledge – e.g. may not know about savants? Otherwise he wouldn’t have gone and decided vaccines are the modern cause of autism?
This has me thinking, no, he knows about savants, therefore this points to him being antivax before he chose autism as a convenient scapegoat to push the antivax agenda.
Kennedy was involved with legal actions trying to remove toxic mercury from the environment. Then the anti-vax ladies found him due to his legal battles against polluters, and convinced him that mercury in vaccines was also a problem and caused autism. I’ve seen Kennedy describe this himself.
What Kennedy is doing here is talking his book.
Anyone exposed to thimerosal before the age of 6 is now 22-24 years old
I’m 60, and if I’ve gone mad I haven’t noticed. Thimerosal appears to be impossible to get nowadays. I rock climb, mostly trad. Bat and bird guano is common on many routes, and approaches are often scrambles through thick undergrowth. I don’t think I’ve ever climbed without bleeding. Nothing beats thimerosal―it is cheap and effective, and my first-aid kit basically consists of one small bottle of it; anything besides climbing gear being superfluous. The cheap and effective part for me being a dead give-away that its banning is a conspiracy. I still have a little which by now is around 20 years old, though if anyone knows of a suitable alternative, I would be most grateful.
“EU pressures G7 countries to loan frozen Russian assets to Ukraine”
The leaders of the EU really want to get their hands on all that Russian money. They can almost taste it and it just sits there waiting to be taken. Brussels may be keen but certainly Belgium is not as that would destroy the Euroclear bank and with it international trust in the safety of money held in the EU. And here is the dodgy part-
‘The contract would take the form of an IOU to Euroclear, collectively guaranteed by European countries, which Euroclear would receive in exchange for releasing 185 billion euros in cash to the EU. Of this sum, the EU would lend up to 140 billion euros to Ukraine with zero percent interest, which would only be repaid should it receive reparations from Russia.’
An IOU? Guaranteed by countries who are going bankrupt? And which could only ever work if Russia paid reparations – which they won’t – so those EU countries would be off the hook? Here is the article explaining it-
https://kyivindependent.com/the-eus-ambitious-plan-for-frozen-russian-assets-explained/
Most of those EU countries must be really down the hole for this to look like a workable scheme. Note, not a plan but a scheme.
An “IOU”, heh heh heh. Like on a cocktail napkin or the back of a beer cozy.
Reminds me of one of my guilty pleasures. The classic of cinema, Dumb and Dumber https://youtu.be/n73DD0kv2l4?si=uSV3Y5TzZ6N0PgR4
A IOU would be the way to make it “informal” because EU regulations impose limits to the debt that EU countries can assume every year. Not being an expert on this, even if “informal” such IOU’s would require acceptance by every individual country and quite probably approval by each Parliament/Congress of the 27 because they create a real obligation to each of the treasuries. I think this is BS politics by the EU Commission and wont get very far.
…an imbrogliou?
Grateful Dead interlude
Ship of Fools
If I were Euroclear, I’d demand some real collaterals: maybe Wales, Alsace, Lorraine, BC, and Lower Saxony, complete with the parliaments of the countries ratifying thr agreements to cede sovereignty of these territories if the monies fail to materialize by date X. (Wasn’t that what was done routinely by British East India company? If that was legal back then?) (/s?)
re: Germany vote recount BSW
BSW regularly updates its site on the issue (offers all press releases/expert views, video commentaries since Febr. 2025)
use google-translate
https://bsw-vg.de/neuauszahlungjetzt/
MrBeast Concerned That AI Slop Will Put Him Out of Business – Futurism
???
I thought the main appeal of his videos was actual people having the chance to win life-changing sums of money? And people watching the very human emotional behavior during challenges?
Does he really believe it was the stunts with objects or stunts alone that got him to this point rather than his interactions with people?
His real deal is algorithm manipulation. Stands to reason he’d be threatened by AI slop that can do more better and faster.
That is something to consider.
But if, by now, millions of those subscribers aren’t real and don’t know how to find the channel…I don’t have any words for that.
Mr. Market had been up until Friday morning, otherwise like a calm sea where stock indices had frequently been setting a new high, and within a week there was yet another new record high. The Nasdaq and the SP 500 catching the brunt of another ” tariffs tape tantrum” makes reasonable sense, I mean Nvidia and AMD had been on a tear; AMD especially had set a new high earlier in the week. Plenty of headlines during the week by influential investment guru talking heads about market levels and reasoning for when the market gods finally get angry.
Short run, well Trump will be Trump. Bond yields were trending down by the end of Friday, and just realizing that tomorrow is a lighter US market day with the Columbus day holiday.
Lebanon slams deadly overnight Israeli strike – AFP
And the pattern continues. “Ceasefire” on one front means increased attacks on another.
This is what I meant by the mistake of letting the officials treat the fronts like individual issues instead of connected. The overall expansion also has to be addressed as a driver of conflict.
Israel has been attacking Lebanon pretty much nonstop since the ‘ceasefire’ last year and has killed at least over a hundred people and keeps destroying buildings and construction equipment and such.
And other places…that’s why I’m thinking increased attacks are now coming.
They are alao still boming Syria and Yemen.
Israel chooses when it needs a break.
Anyone who is going to buy “Elvish” honey based on an AI generated video complete with genuine native underpaid food gatherer and that oxymoronically describes a “distinct taste which can vary” deserves to be parted with their $6,800 for a kilo of what I would not be surprised to find out is high fructose corn syrup with just a soupçon of artificial and vaguely carcinogenic food additives to give just the right color and flavor. But the bottle looks nice.
Within two seconds of pressing play I knew it was AI generated and pressed stop. Then looked at real trees and watched some lovely birds. A resplendent cardinal trying to enjoy a quiet(er) Sunday didn’t like the noise a woodpecker was making, chased it away. A squirrel agreed. AI will never substitute or replace the real.
Gooooooooood Moooooooooorning Fiatnam!
Dominos Theory was the idea that if you didn’t get your pizza delivery in 30 minutes, you’d get crazy bread as in do re mi.
The platoon would order pies and then make themselves scarce, practically guaranteeing a flow of manna~
I am one of the Californians whose housing subsidy will disappear, due to my age and health issues that is a death sentence.
And I am far from alone in that.
I suppose that this is simply part of living in a Christian Nation…
The vileness of those “Christian” impostors is boundless. I hope you and the others will find a way 🙏
All the housing programs in Northern California including the various low income and senior apartments seem to have closed for new tenants in the past few months. I was counting on moving into one when I became older, but not anymore. I am having to sell my car to pay for my back rent in my current apartment after I hurt my back, which sucks, but at least my disability payments are still good. So far.
I wonder if Governor Goodhair will kick in some extra replacement funding.
Best wishes, fellow commenter. Thanks for your thoughts over the years.
His name is Tom Stone.
🫡
Not to be confuse with Sharon Stone. :-)
Your guv has some surprises to spring on the populace when he finally departs.
The link references legislation that he wants to sign on the way out the door.
Maybe inspired by Biden with those gold bars tossed off the Titanic.
Legislation is sausage being made, so Golden Pudding from Gav?
Does the “world’s most expensive dessert” actually exist? I can’t imagine simply coating egg yolks in flour would dehydrate them.
I imagine dessert to taste sweet, not “rich and savoury”.
Also there’s no way $299 qualifies as the world’s most expensive. There’d be no need for guillotine watch if it did.
Indeed. Sir is clearly of refined taste. Could I interest Sir in any of the following:
$7000/scoop Japanese Gelato
$14,500 Sri Lankan Fortress Stilt Fisherman Indulgence
$25,000 New York Frrrozen Haute Chocolate ice cream sundae
I find it fascinating how poorly made is Sri Lankan chocolate fisherman figure. The chocolate artist must be in his “infant & Play-Doh” phase.
So it’s “the most expensive dessert in the world” that:
– is not a dessert
– is not most expensive
– maybe does not exist
Taibbi and KIrn, America This Week, 30 minute public excerpt. Taibbi calls Katie Porter the gift that keeps on giving. The video clips are hilarious.
https://www.racket.news/p/america-this-week-oct-10-2025-american
Enduring our 4th wildfire in 5 years in Mineral King, a massive 1.5 acre blaze lightning strike beauty in the vicinity of Homers Nose, a good 15 miles from anything of note building-wise.
It’s at around 8,000 feet and will be smothered by 4 feet of snow by Wednesday.
The lay of the land:
https://www.summitpost.org/homers-nose/154602
That HUD cut article reveals the pathetic level of ‘real social housing’ built/ funded by the feds. $3 billion? my god. For the entire USA? Keep in mind CA alone sends $80 billion net taxes to the fed gov’t. I’m old enough to remember too, when Clinton ‘reformed’ welfare, he also cut HUD funding more than Reagan. And if you look at the CA ‘homeless’ budget..it is mostly made of subsidy checks to landlords, and temporary warehouse shelters. Not housing workers..not dense housing permanent within our cities..but you all know this.
Well, yeah. I love to complain about the twenty-four billion dollars funding for housing the homeless by California. Since there are roughly 200,000 homeless in California, this would have been enough to either build enough housing or just pay directly for the rent for five years. The cheapest way would probably be just to give the money to the homeless especially if they have a place already lined up. Roughly forty percent of the homeless do work. It is the cost of housing that is the real problem. But billions spent for not much or at least too much seems to go to administration, not housing.
If you give a human a
fish, teach him how to build a bullet train to nowhere, etc.If you teach a bureaucrat how to graft, he can feed his families
for weeksforever.That is how American politics and their insider dynasties work.
Yanis Varoufakis – The working class takes revenge on the Center Left (machine translation).
Historically “Divide and Rule” has involved sticks for opponents ( With a promise of carrots if they change their tune) and carrots for supporters.
With the Trump administration we are seeing carrots for Zionists, the MIC, and the organs of State Security and sticks for everyone else.
Including what has been the Republican base, retirees, the rank and file Military, Big Ag, small businesses and the Hispanic communities.
They have been told that they do not matter in an unmistakeable way.
Just like poor people and the working class have been told by the Democrats.
This leaves an enormous political vacuum.
.
Maybe Team Trump’s vision of the future doesn’t include the odious task of courting voters. They are acting that way.
Well the stupid Dems sure aren’t doing it either.
Yes, that nagging feeling of being used. Team Blue, “We take your support for granted, obviously”, lol, it was an easy path to becoming deplorable.
China ‘not afraid of trade war,’ accuses U.S. of ‘double standard’ for rare earths retaliation (CNBC)
Taco gonna have to taco. China holds all the cards.
TACO confirmed
Stock futures rebound from Friday’s rout after Trump says China situation ‘will all be fine’: Live updates (CNBC)
That didn’t take long at all.
and charging a docking fee on any ship manufactured in China.
I don’t understand the issue here. Trump has troops invading Democratic cities. So he could make the military self-funding by just having those troops loot the cities that they invade.
There certainly is precedent: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2024/08/18/civil-asset-forfeiture-explained/74802279007/
missed an @sarc
reality bites
I think the problem is that the troops in the 800 or so foreign bases will have a problem getting back home in time to get in on the best pillage. Besides with enough loot on the market anything the can loot is probably going to be sold in a depressed market.
Hedges most clear analytical exposition, from ca January 2025, but timeless. 36:25.
Democracy doesn’t exist in the United States: Chris Hedges | UpFront
With Marc Lamont Will. I’m disappointed with Hill but he is reading from a script and isn’t up to (or programmed to not) correcting it on view of Hedges’ powerful statements. From my rough head notes:
I’m sorry I can’t fill this out for now. There is so much more.
UK – Novara Media
François is brilliant, but she doesn’t envision a liberation from religious identification. Still…
They’re stirring up the same ole shit all over the Empire.
Loot foreign economies, cause unnecessary immigration, and then blame the immigrants when the bill comes do.
Like none of this is new in American 🇺🇸 History and it seems like they’re just following the same ole playbook.
We must keep our countrymen from killing each other long enough to teach them political economics.
No fucking escalation of WWIII and no more fucking civil wars.
Until the Social Media Oligarch freaks take away this tool, we might as well use it to our advantage!
Out in the open. Let them see and let them be persuaded too.
We are all in this together.*
Trump on his way to the Middle East
Axios:
What’s next: Trump sounded enthusiastic about the international conference that will be held later on Monday in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt in support of the peace deal.
He said the range of countries that will be in attendance signals the world is united around his plan.
Trump said he didn’t know why Netanyahu wasn’t expected to attend, noting that the Egyptian hosts handled the guest list.
But he said he thinks it’s good that Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas will attend.
BP: Bibi in a bunker, scrawling “made in Iran, honestly guv” on some missiles?
/sarc(ish)
re: labour movement history
JACOBIN
Why the Deck Is Stacked Against Workers Under Capitalism
By Paul Heideman
Workers must organize for power, while capitalists wield it individually through property rights. This fundamental asymmetry, as German sociologist Claus Offe explained, creates a chain of obstacles that make working-class collective action uniquely difficult.
https://jacobin.com/2025/10/claus-offe-power-labor-capital
study:
Unlawful U.S. employers are charged with violating federal law in 41.5% of all union election campaigns
https://www.epi.org/publication/unlawful-employer-opposition-to-union-election-campaigns/
re: France oligarchy
JACOBIN
In France, Too, Billionaire Tycoons Are Silencing Their Critics
An interview with Marc Endeweld
In France, right-wingers love to pose as defenders of free speech. Yet the takeover of media by a cast of billionaire pro-Trump tycoons means that just a handful of individuals have a veto over huge swaths of the press.
https://jacobin.com/2025/10/france-media-macron-billionaires-bollore-sterin-kretinsky
“(…)
In France, there’s been much hubbub over a series of acquisitions of historic media properties by Vincent Bolloré, a billionaire who promotes a reactionary political agenda. Yet, less in the spotlight is the preexisting dominance of France’s media by a coterie of billionaires, all with varying interests and a desire to avoid scrutiny.
This billionaire control of French media has left it vulnerable to the same sort of pressures Trump is currently subjecting the US’s servile media to. And with a growing class of pro-Trump tycoons in France, its media isn’t far behind America’s own in the race to the right.
Marc Endeweld is one of France’s best investigative journalists. He has spent the last decade producing deep investigations into who holds power in France and what they do with it, often through the lens of Emmanuel Macron’s government.
Endeweld left the center-left magazine Marianne in March, citing the unfavorable winds coming from the publication’s billionaire ownership.
In this interview with Jacobin’s Marlon Ettinger, Endeweld discusses the pro-Trump billionaire class dominating French business, their media interests and ulterior motives, and how foreign correspondents in the country sway in the wind at the slight push from their ownership.
(…)”
re: Black Panthers, Marxism, California 60s
book review of
Gerald Horne, Armed Struggle?: Panthers and Communists, Black Nationalists and Liberals in Southern California Through the Sixties and Seventies (New York: International Publishers, 2024), 692 pages, paperback, $36.99
Black Scare in California: Blacks, Reds, and Revolution in the 1960s and ’70s
by Joel Wendland-Liu
https://monthlyreview.org/articles/black-scare-in-california-blacks-reds-and-revolution-in-the-1960s-and-70s/
excerpt from Assessment
“(…)
Horne’s history of mid-twentieth-century Southern California underscores two critical points. First, he elevates those who affirmed Black people’s right to self-defense against racist state and vigilante violence. Yet, the Davis case, student movements, and the Communist Party’s survival amid repression proved that fascism had not taken root. This condition revealed the flaws in the Black Panther Party’s estimate of the balance of forces, leading to its grave tactical errors.
This misstep stemmed from a flawed political analysis: an overestimation of the lumpenproletariat as the revolutionary vanguard, a failure to build alliances with Cuba and the USSR, and Cleaver’s sabotage of existing leftist ties or domestic solidarity with other antifascist forces. Worse, the Black Panther Party’s racialist lens led them to align with China—which, ironically, was a U.S. foreign policy ally at the time. Even further, China, which had cultivated a positive relationship with Washington, was not positioned to make demands for redress of the U.S. domestic scene.
Horne’s key insight, however, is that the Panthers’ strongest appeal lay in their stark diagnosis of a deeper problem: the white U.S. working class’s divided loyalties. He adds that the Black Communist and California native Porter made a critical observation requiring careful analysis. The Panthers were driven by a palpable “lack of confidence in the mettle of broad sectors of the Euro-American working class”; a factor that also attracted many Black community members to the movement. By contrast, a generalized adherence to white supremacy among most white people—and their refusal critically to consider their relation to settler colonialism—enabled and fostered “the nettle of class collaboration” among white citizens.
(…)
Ultimately, Armed Struggle? serves as a cautionary tale, emphasizing the necessity of multiracial working-class solidarity, strategic international alliances, and a clear-eyed analysis of political conditions. Horne’s work reaffirms that while militant resistance to oppression is justified, lasting liberation requires disciplined organization, principled coalitions, and a steadfast commitment to combating racism and capitalism, which are integrally linked. The lessons of this era remain urgently relevant in today’s struggles for racial and economic justice confronting Donald Trump’s drive for authoritarianism.
(…)”.