Breathing Through Our Butts Declared Safe After First Human Trial 404 Media
Climate/Environment
Increasing likelihood that Melissa will produce catastrophic impacts in parts of the Caribbean Balanced Weather
Record Autumn Rains Swamp Harvest in China’s Grain-Belt Provinces Caixin Global
Causal mechanisms of subpolar gyre variability in CMIP6 models European Geosciences Union. Summary: “The subpolar gyre is a wind-driven circulation in the North Atlantic Ocean that enables the mixing of water between the surface and deeper layers. We investigate the interactions between the strength of the gyre circulation, salinity, temperature, and mixing in climate models. We find that most models capture an increase in salinity or a decrease in temperature, leading to mixing. However, the feedback from the density in the gyre centre to the strength of its circulation is poorly represented.”
Why Are Electricity Prices Rising? Distilled
Trump Plan Would Open Almost All Coast to Offshore Drilling Bloomberg
What’s “essential” to Trump’s EPA? More mercury pollution. HEATED
Pandemics
Children with multiple long-term conditions face nearly threefold higher COVID-19 mortality Royal Society of Medicine
Measles spreading beyond the center of the Utah-Arizona outbreak NBC News
Free vaccines cheaper than consequences of low vaccination rate: Alberta Medical Association CTV News
Africa
The end of ‘aid’ The Continent
The Koreas
Why North Korea Has Scaled Back Its Missile Tests This Year WSJ
South Korea says ‘considerable’ chance Kim, Trump will meet next week Channel News Asia
Japan
Japan PM Sanae Takaichi Says She’ll Get Japan’s Security Spending up to 2％ of GDP in FY25 Yomiuri Shimbun
Japan Will Play A Much Greater Role In Advancing The American Agenda In Asia Andrew Korybko
India
PM Modi’s latest post pours cold water on possible meeting with Trump India Today
U.S. Sanctions Seen Pushing India to Curb Russian Crude Purchases Reuters. IIRC there is usually a slowdown immediately following sanctions before workaround is ironed out.
China?
Chinese State Buyers Step Back From Russian Oil on Sanctions Bloomberg
White House: Trump to attend one-to-one meeting with Xi next Thursday DPA
China names new Central Military Commission vice chair amid ruling elite’s biggest shake-up in 8 years Channel News Asia
Asean Summit: Trump’s KL visit puts South-east Asia’s neutrality to the test Business Times
Old Blighty
UK removes Syria’s HTS from ‘terrorist’ organisations list New Arab
Palestine action prisoners announce hunger-strike in letter to British Government Cage International
O Canada
Trump says trade negotiations with Canada are ‘terminated’ after Ontario’s anti-tariff ads CTV News
Syraqistan
Weapons, warlords, and wasteland: Israel’s strategy for post-war Gaza New Arab
Updates: Gaza humanitarian crisis worsening despite Israel, Hamas ceasefire Al Jazeera
Oops.
“A master plan Jared’s been working on for 2 years”
Watch Jared Kushner’s face when this goofball blurts out the fact they were planning on rebuilding Gaza into prime beachfront property BEFORE the October 7th attacks.
Secrets out.🤐 pic.twitter.com/NS7ulUJH0w
— Genghis Khan (@GenghisMFKhan) October 23, 2025
JD Vance said there would be a “constructive role” for Turkey to play in Gaza but that Washington wouldn’t force anything on Israel when it came to foreign troops “on their soil”. What? So Gaza isn’t Palestinian but Israeli territory? https://t.co/rkqxaDHPPR
— Kenneth Roth (@KenRoth) October 22, 2025
Inside Israel’s prisons, Ben-Gvir drives campaign to kill Palestinian detainees New Arab
***
Israeli Knesset advances bills imposing ‘sovereignty’ over West Bank Al Mayadeen
Trump is always sincere and will therefore of course fire Huckabee immediately. https://t.co/yYDK1iji5y pic.twitter.com/O6CxWRXsAs
— Sam Husseini (@samhusseini) October 23, 2025
European Disunion
‘I’m not a bad boy’: Belgium’s De Wever defends Ukraine loan veto Euractiv
Inside Belgium’s budget standoff: What happens if talks fail? Brussels Times
France’s Socialists threaten to oust government by Monday amid fraught budget talks Straits Times
Spain to buy US weapons for Ukraine, says it is ‘a reliable partner’ El Pais
Poland’s Janus face on Ukraine is untenable Ian Proud
The Curtain Falls on Aleksandar Vučić’s Foreign Policy “Balancing Act” Lily Lynch
Costa pumps the brakes on Merz’s victory lap on Mercosur Politico
Export-grade poison: sale of EU-banned pesticides soars as Brazil becomes the world’s top consumer Brasil de Fato
New Not-So-Cold War
Zelenskyy thanks EU for ‘signal’ that it will financially support Ukraine for next 2 years Anadolu Agency
Answers to media questions President of Russia, The Kremlin. Putin on new sanctions and other matters.
Russia is calling up its reservists.
Why now? Guessing it’s connected to the October 21 bombings conducted by the AFU.
What is special about these bombings? Well the AFU were utilizing targeting data from and authorized by U.S. European Command (EUCOM), and carried out a… pic.twitter.com/5Bk1RFeaLj
— Mats Nilsson (@mazzenilsson) October 23, 2025
Russia Launches Large Scale Nuclear Forces Drills: ICBMs and Cruise Missiles Launched to Test Land, Sea and Air Components Military Watch
Why did the Armed Forces of Ukraine decide to combine brigades into corps? Marat Khairullin Substack
NOW THE NEW PHASE OF THE ELECTRIC WAR John Helmer
South of the Border
Trump plans land strikes against alleged drug traffickers from Venezuela The Guardian
US Flies B-1 Bombers Near Caribbean in Latest Provocation Aimed at Venezuela Antiwar
Maduro warns that he has 5,000 anti-aircraft missiles to ‘guarantee peace’ El Pais
Trump 2.0
Disgraced Binance Founder Gets a Pardon From Trump Gizmodo
Officials Plot to Have Trump Declare National Emergency in 2026, Raising Fears He May ‘Hijack’ the Next Election Common Dreams
Trump Says Tech Leaders Convinced Him to Call Off San Francisco ‘Surge’ NOTUS
Democrats en déshabillé
Voters Weigh In: From Waterville to Ogunquit, Mainers Are Standing By Graham Platner Drop Site
Healthcare?
‘It’s only gotten worse’: As ACA premiums are set to climb, some Americans opt to go uninsured NBC News
Police State Watch
VIDEO: FBI Agents Visit Anti-ICE Protester Ken Klippenstein
Accelerationists
Anti-Union, Pro-Israel Billionaires Are Behind Tim Walberg and His Show Trials Truthout
The Rise of the Thielverse and the Construction of the Surveillance State (w/ Whitney Webb) The Chris Hedges Report
Imperial Collapse Watch
This is the most damning graph I’ve seen in awhile. What in the actual hell? They are installing nuclear at $2.50/W? https://t.co/Vyfneh71VP
— Craig Lawrence (@clawrence) October 23, 2025
Brave New World
Shield AI shows off not-at-all-terrifying autonomous VTOL combat drone The Register
Quadruped State of The Market – Unitree, Boston Dynamics, ANYbotics, DEEP Robotics, and The Rising Application Ecosystem Semi-Analysis
MAHA
Is Your Medication Made in a Contaminated Factory? The FDA Won’t Tell You. ProPublica
RFK Jr. May Encourage Eating More Saturated Fats. Experts Say He’s Missing the Point. MedPage Today
Sports Desk
How Hacked Card Shufflers Allegedly Enabled a Mob-Fueled Poker Scam That Rocked the NBA Wired
Antitrust
Warner Brothers Is For Sale (Again): Prepare For More Pointless, Disastrous Media Mergers TechDirt
AI
GenAI makes cyber fraud look more credible Economic Times
With new acquisition, OpenAI signals plans to integrate deeper into the OS Ars Technica
Google and Anthropic announce cloud deal worth tens of billions of dollars CNBC
Zeitgeist Watch
The Goon Squad Harper’s. “Loneliness, porn’s next frontier, and the dream of endless masturbation.”
The AWS Outage Bricked People’s $2,700 Smartbeds 404 Media
Blinded by the light: Tesla fixes glaringly bright Cybertruck headlights The Register
EVs are depreciating much faster than gas-powered cars Rest of World
Class Warfare
Rents for poorest tenants increased more than twice as much as rents for rich tenants since 2021 Private Equity Stakeholder Project
Antidote du jour (via):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
‘Kenneth Roth
@KenRoth
JD Vance said there would be a “constructive role” for Turkey to play in Gaza but that Washington wouldn’t force anything on Israel when it came to foreign troops “on their soil”. What? So Gaza isn’t Palestinian but Israeli territory?’
There will be no role for Turkiye in Gaza. The Israelis have been demanding from Hamas the dead bodies of their hostages in the next 5 minutes or they will bomb again. Hamas has pointed out that some of them are buried under many tons of rubble when the Israelis themselves bombed those buildings. Turkiye sent down experienced rescue teams and heavy equipment a coupla days ago to go in and retrieve those bodies for their families. The Israelis absolutely forbid the Turkish teams from entering Gaza and said that they were not welcome.
re: Warner Brothers Is For Sale (Again): Prepare For More Pointless, Disastrous Media Mergers
Good short piece, thanks.
Hollyood has been owned by right wing moguls ever since just like news media naturally.
Matt Belloni on his podcast about WB, yesterday:
WARNER BROS Is Officially for Sale. It’s Paramount vs. …Whom?
37 min.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/warner-bros-is-officially-for-sale-its-paramount-vs-whom/id1612131897?i=1000733040993
info:
Matt is joined by Peter Supino, a managing director and senior analyst at Wolfe Research, to unpack the deal market for Warner Bros. Discovery, running through each potential bidder, who makes the most sense, and what a merger would look like in each scenario (03:13). Matt finishes the show with an opening weekend box office prediction for ‘Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere’ (30:45).
I’m becoming genuinely quite worried about the direction AI is taking. Of course, KLG’s last article was abundantly clear about the disastrous uses of the technology, but one could, in theory, chalk in it up to the usual corporate bad faith so well-known in medicine: just the newest shape of an old problem. But I’ve been hearing from friends (by no means uncritical or ignorant people!) that they are bedazzled by the technology and would not know what do to if it somehow went away. I have used it in the past, but I realized that it induced some very bad habits and decided to do away with it for good, and have done so. But will this even be possible in the future? With this sort of acquisition, aren’t we getting more and more boxed in by this stuff? Will there be any escape, or will it get inevitably shoved down our throats?
Sometimes I feel like an alien when I point these things out. Living in these times sure is strange.
My friend you can always become an Arch Linux person and retain full control over every single thing installed on your computer. The learning curve is much steeper than with things like Mint but you really will never have to worry about something you don’t want installed ending up on your computer. Granted this will also make you 1) an advanced Linux sysadmin and 2) completely rethink your relationship with technology, possibly up to and including reducing the role software plays in your life, both outcomes which will also reduce your worry on this issue.
(Linux people do not come after me with pitchforks over recommending the silver bullet over the easy option, it’s Friday)
If you really want to control everything that’s on your computer you need to go for something like Gentoo, or Linux From Scratch. But that’s too much work for it to make sense for most people.
Any Linux system is going to be more in your control than any Apple or Microsoft derived platform. Even if it comes with things which I would argue are problematic.
typical Arch Linux install basically is LFS as the install guide ends before you get to the desktop environment
I suggest it because Arch has the best-documented package wikis out there and that is what you want if you’re really concerned about hidden/spurious/concerning AI packages sneaking in. Also once you’re proficient in the ‘standard’ install you can graduate to the easy stuff, like Manjaro, and keep the Arch-style installation/upgrade process without having to do the gruelling desktop environment setup stuff manually.
But by that point maybe you want to do Hyprland or get into the fun side of Linux (desktop customization) which you will have the means to do if you start with the hard/standard Arch stuff out of the gate
One can also settle for debian, and be permanently behind the curve, so to speak. No fear of being the first adopter without knowing it. Or often even a late adopter. It seems that all the “cool stuff” you have to install manually or even compile.
I did switch from ubuntu to debian (I got too annoyed with snap!) on my office machine. I also run a server farm using Rocky linux, but would not recommended Red Hat based distros for anyone for home use – the version updates are a pain in the [family blog].
I use Fedora and I do not know what you mean.
The version updates are not too bad and run about twice a year.
It has a good balance between being up to date and rolling like Arch.
I mean that there’s no officailly supported update path between major versions. There are scripts and gimmicks, but they come with warnings and no warranty.
And basically every three years there’s a new major version. At work we are now starting to plan how upgrade over a hundred Rocky 9.x to Rocky 10.x next spring. We’ll likely turn all configs and settings into ansible playbooks so we can roll them easily on the new server farm we have to build…
Meanwhile I just dist a couple of dist-upgrades to get my home ubuntu from 20.04 to 24.04 in less than 30 minutes.
I don’t think we’re quite talking about the same thing.
Arch has a great wiki, there’s no denying it. But having good documentation and not enforcing a Desktop Environment do not make it equivalent to LFS.
For example, I’d argue that SystemD is a piece of software that is better avoided. Arch does let you forego SystemD, but not easily – you’d be much better switching to Artix and having them do that work for you.
So while a base install may be slim, it’s still making choices for you that you should be aware of and be OK with.
I haven’t used LFS, but I’ve been running Gentoo for over a decade. They still make some choices for you, but because you compile (most) of the software you can change many of those defaults to better fit what you want.
So I can use OpenRC over SystemD, or I could say I don’t want PulseAudio/Pipewire at all. Some things (probably a lot sadly) will break, but many things will go to bare ALSA and be fine.
That’s the difference I’m getting at. To get actual, full control over your system you need to be much more engaged with it, with all the effort that entails. But for most people, pretty much any Linux distribution would be a huge improvement in terms of control versus Apple or Microsoft.
Put another way: Arch isn’t a panacea, nor is Linux more broadly necessarily, though by default it’s much better – either way the user still needs to put effort in and pay attention if they want to be in control of their system.
We may disagree about SystemD (let’s not spook the normies by discussing it here though :) but I think we’re actually in agreement on the fundamental point, which is the degree of assurance requested means far more direct involvement and understanding of the computer than most people are interested in and willing to do. Even for someone to understand the nuances of what we’re disagreeing about here would require an immense amount of deep focus, time, effort and understanding on the internals of Linux – and this is just one facet! – it’s so much worse when you look at closed/commercial OS like Windows and OSX.
I 100% agree that pretty much any Linux distro is better than Apple or Microsoft in terms of control.
As a normie, I definitely want to see more of this conv, personally.
It’s one of the big splits among Linux people that kind of identifies what kind of sysadmin one is. At scale, and for those who began their sysadmin journey before say a decade ago, there are Problems with SystemD. No SystemD covers a lot of the issues.
I am not someone who administers a lot of computers at scale, however I do have to regularly get into others’ systems and fix problems for them. And sure, some of the time that means SystemD/unit file problems. But these days the vast majority of people I work with use SystemD because they’re using pre-baked deploy images from a registry, so I use it too. I have made my peace with it because at the end of the day I’m not a sysadmin who deals with stuff at scale. I understand the position, it’s just not one of the things that I’m a Linux partisan about. Snap, Debian and Ubuntu all turn me into a shooter for different reasons though!
Thanks! As someone who frequently has thought about going Linux, but never really did/could, it’s always informative to hear people talk about what’s out there–even if I only get 30-50% at the time, I’d learn what to, well, learn more about.
I am the type of person who simply has to get into the weeds to understand anything, so for me “going Linux” meant doing Linux From Scratch which is not a casual undertaking and as JM and I discuss above it can scare off those who just want a Windows/OSX alternative. It helps to have a specific goal/entry point to stay committed to the Linux fundamentals because you will get frustrated, you will run up against the wall of more experienced users’ Very Strong Opinions, you will hit issues where the problem is you don’t know what you don’t know. And if you “just” want something other than Windows that isn’t a strong enough motivation to stick through it. That’s why when this topic comes up here you see big threads where people recommend distro/desktop environment combos because they’re easy – if you just want the alternative, go with something like Mint or get a Raspberry Pi and follow some standard guides. But to actually understand what is going on to the degree where you can conclusively say there is no AI crap on my computer, like what ocypode asked for, you have to be willing to commit to understanding the fundamentals and all that entails, like JM and I are advocating for.
Anyway my entry into this was twofold: one, my background is in embedded hardware development (microcontrollers/small devices) which is mostly a Windows thing due to how other OS handle the device bus and that microcontrollers in the dev arena operate over USB, but with the advent of Android I decided to switch to Linux as my primary development environment (“How hard could it be?” – classic last words) and spent years dealing with the monster that is Yocto, a tool chain for building Linux distributions, a requirement for embedded Linux. This is not an entry point I recommend for anyone!
My second, and much gentler path to Linux was another seemingly simple thing (“I just want a really cool unique desktop environment and maybe to make a custom one of my own that looks like something from a 90s French sci fi”). This is actually the route I recommend to normal people who don’t already have a background in development/computer work because it’s something tangible with clear, obvious results, and really getting into it also requires mastering some things normies have strange fears around (like using the command line and dotfiles). A book that does a really good job explaining all the fundamentals of building up a desktop environment from a basic Arch Linux install and removing all the fear/confusion from all the various parts of Linux is the Mouseless Dev book. Going through this and then LFS will give you a solid base for going deep with Linux.
luddite, here, who has decided to take the linux plunge on wifes old school computer(they let us keep it bc she paid bills with it, but now the OS has apparently wiped itself(!)).
so i dont know what “compiling” means,lol.
and only know like 3 command prompts.
and only use the damned machines for streaming and reading and playing music.
whats the simplest install option for a non-techie?
Compiling means converting source code into something else, usually into executable form. Every program that you run was compiled by someone. Basically, compiling means brewing your own beer.
The simplest install option for a non-techie is to not install but play around with something like Live Linux Mint USB.
https://itsfoss.com/linux-mint-live-usb/
For real oldschool, burn Live DVD.
I appreciate all of the Linux distributions and your excellent advice about Arch is pretty much how I started out with Linux back in 2011 when I was at home with my newborn daughter. In a bout of new mommy-postpartum euphoria I got the inexplicable urge to try something new so I installed Linux Mint on the computer which I had felt compelled to to build just a few months earlier when I was seven months pregnant. Within a few weeks I decided to try Arch Linux when it had the ncurses installer. Arch made me confident that I could use other distributions so I distro-hopped until I cobbled together enough hardware to build another desktop and had the courage to try to install Gentoo on the new (old) rig.
I love Gentoo most of all. Here is my homage to Gentoo, which has served my computing needs unfailingly since 2013. Arch Linux uses Systemd, but with Gentoo I can choose my init system and then of course, as with Arch, pretty much everything else beyond the core stage3 is my choice. I am not opposed to Systemd, but wowy, some people really think Lennart Poettering’s creation is some kind of sinister black box. What I prefer about Gentoo is the sensible decisions that the Gentoo maintainers make regarding when to release the latest ebuilds so that I can compile up to date packages on my systems. I continue to maintain Gentoo with minimal effort on several used laptops and desktops. Though I run the unstable branch of Gentoo and should expect it to break occasionally, my systems have always booted up except for instances which turned out to be hardware failure or a few occasions that I can count on one hand over the course of the decade that were easily dealt with by reverting to an older kernel and waiting a couple of days to boot into the latest release once again. No intervention has ever been required and I have always proceeded merrily on my way with minimal downtime. In fact I have been able to reliably host my own Nextcloud server with appropriate backups and do all of the graphic design for my artisan candle business on my various systems. The Gentoo handbook provides a very comprehensive guide to installation which even my limited female brain can follow. One should not assume that just because one does not have a background in technology that they cannot use Linux distributions, especially a meta distribution like Gentoo. I have a degree in Russian literature but am otherwise not very bright at all, indeed, I am certainly even stupider than young nurses these days that can’t calculate medication dosages, but it is not impossible to even for me to figure out how to configure a few laptops and servers with mostly open source software to my own personal preferences and have them run consistently without unwanted corporate limitations or too many ads. Also, I have noticed over the years that the Gentoo forums are filled with the nicest people. Though I don’t often need help beyond the Gentoo handbook and the official wiki, when I have had a question or wanted to try something new, like when I set up my used Dell 7920 workstation to run multiple Docker containers with Tailscale networking for self-hosting, the Gentoo forum participants have always been so kind and patient compared to the forums of any other distributions I have encountered, especially and most notoriously the Arch forums which I have in the past found to have been filled with replies far too abrasive in tone for someone of my delicate disposition.
Gentoo Lady, thank you for taking the time to write up your homage, I loved reading this! I agree the Arch forums are full of mean people but I guess after so many years of this I just sort of shrug it off. But you are correct that the disposition of the distro forum (and the various handbooks and troubleshooting resources) are a big factor in how one remains committed to a distro over time. I am happy to hear how your own sysadmin journey has grown – you sound self-deprecating but the casual self-hosting of stuff like Tailscale or deploying to leftover old hardware is really something a lot of people scare themselves away from, you should be proud and I like hearing about people who casually got into it on a whim and became lifers.
rj is right. There’s no simple way to be sure of what’s going on. sorry
I don’t think I said anything was going to be simple? I feel like I said that it was going to be rather difficult actually, and not for most people.
There are some simple ways to be sure of what’s going on, you’re just going to have something so barebones that most people wouldn’t accept it – and rightfully so.
> Causal mechanisms of subpolar gyre variability in CMIP6 models European Geosciences Union.
Good analysis for three reasons. First is model comparison, while understanding strengths and weaknesses of each. Like the NHC’s Forecast Discussion on hurricanes, where multiple models and variables are balanced by the analyst. Second is the clear understanding of a major weakness inherent in them:
>> This suggests that the effect itself likely occurs on shorter timescales and is sustained by the memory of the water column.
>> Another partial explanation is that the barotropic streamfunction, which is used as a measure of the strength of the subpolar gyre, is not the most suitable variable to use for the interaction. The streamfunction is computed by vertical integration, which removes baroclinic effects, whereas it is exactly these baroclinic effects that are relevant for the positive feedback loop
So the math is smoothing out the stratifications which drive the motion, and that fuzzes the understanding, the way optometrist’s eye drops fuzz vision. In freshwater bodies, stratifications can drive turnover, sudden sediment uprisings which help mix nutrients accumulated at depth.
The third positive is the way the paper opens the imagination. We may not be able to adequately model the vertical differences, but seeing different strata causing variation while in the pipeline for up to seven years, can keep us humble in the sense of not ignoring outlier information. We can imagine two neighboring strata with different flow effects, how they compress or lengthen nearby strata, and change characteristics themselves as they go deeper. Helps us to know what we need to stay sensitive to in our probings.
It’s amazing what we’re being forced to learn about climate and weather in the Anthropocene. The problem is that the Earth is changing faster than our rate of learning can match. The finite nature of the human brain, even augmented by silicon, is about to be demonstrated convincingly.
Canada’s replaying of RR’s free trade speech was brilliant. I salute the person or persons that came up with that gem. Worth watching IMO.
First item read this morning was ‘Trump Cuts Off Trade Talks with Canada’.
A few days ago I told my wife something like this was going to happen when the Toronto Blue Jays won the AL pennant and moved on to the World Series. Tonight they’ll play game one tonight against the LA Dodgers in LA.
What a slap in the face to our MAGA leader having to acknowledge that we’ve exported (offshored?) America’s favorite pastime to our loony neighbors to the north.
If I were a Canadian fisherman plying the coastal waters off the Maritimes, I’d consider staying off the water and spend my time mending nets and scraping barnacles.
Lower Algonquin?
Want one of those oh so trendy Stanley Cups and you happen to reside in the Gulag Hockeypelago?
Forget about the hockey version, banned since well before the turn of the century-but the drinking vessel kind is available now @ a pre trade-talk discount.
Good luck to the Dodgers tonight in Toronto~
Oops.
As a suffering Padres fan since 1965 anything to do with the Dodgers causes tunnel vision and unrealistic expectations.
Go Jays!
As a long time Halo fan, this WS really makes me feel uncomfortable…
Hard being a Padres fan, 60 years later and really only Tony Gwynn stands out in terms of memorable players.
The first two games are in Toronto
Game 1 is in Toronto, due to the Blue Jays holding home field advantage (throughout the playoffs, including the World Series) because they have the best 2025 win-loss record in baseball.
Can’t hurt.
The guys on The Duran were saying that for the Global Majority, that dealing with Trump is just exhausting. But I would suggest that this applies to countries like Canada as we. He flip-flops, decides one thing, changes his mind, gets offended by a TV ad, etc. Maybe here it is because Ronnie is a much more real representation of a Republican than Trump is and he knows it. Maybe in his mind he wants to be the greatest Republican evah but the ghost of Ronnie gets in the way. That is why that ad showing RR flicked him on the raw so hard.
Here’s the ad, and the whole speech that it was taken from brought to us by The Canadian Press (so you can judge for yourself if the ad takes anything out of context):
Watch ad and Reagan address at centre of Trump ending Canada trade talks
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCKmMEFiLrI
I am not a Reagan fan, but the guy is a good communicator, and can pretty clearly explain the upside and downside of tariffs in a couple of sentences. Tariffs are a good policy tool for the government when aligned and applied to industrial policy. I’m not sure what we have now even fits into the previous uses of tariffs given that there was no role for Congress to do it’s job and have a public debate to decide what these tariffs should be.
So yeah, it was a pretty good poke by Canada because it reeks of “the truth as Ronald Reagan spoke it.”
In case I develop “respiratory failure” I think I’ll pass on “enternal ventilation” and cheerfully move on to the next life, whatever and wherever that may be.
Thanks for the summary of what was in the article. Sounds really cool actually. I would have no problem letting this technique save my life.
Watch out for Orcas!
You life may depend upon an enema!
Nurse mom kept family hydrated with seawater enemas. (The non-family member aboard also lived, despite, he claims, not taking advantage of the life hack.)
Gutless, incompetent GOP stooges update:
https://www.axios.com/2025/10/22/aca-tax-credits-shutdown-deadline-open-enrollment
This is what happens when you have no strategy, no plan, and no brains.
It is now literally too late for any compromise on extending the Obamacare subsidies. We either go cliff diving, or we get a total cave and sellout by the GOP. The Swamp Stooge dithered, and ran from Adelita Grijalva and the 218th vote on releasing the Epstein files like a scared bunny rabbit when it sees a fox.
We’re only debating when the cave happens. It is pointless to continue the shutdown. Every day it goes on it only hurts federal workers with nothing to be gained by either side. We know what the deal will be – full extension of the subsidies for another year.
I’m not sure that this wasn’t the plan all along – wait until it was too late to do anything.
In fact, I would not be surprised if the government stays ‘shut down’ for the rest of Trump’s term, especially if the Dems take back the House. Even more reason to leave it closed for good.
And really, what does Congress even do anymore???!!
Fund raise, call each other names, lie, grift, steal, performative theater, lie some more, steal some more, and blame the other side because they all suck and aren’t worth a bent one.
I’m pretty sure that won’t happen, but I have to admit that even mentioning the possibility shows that the Overton window has been shifted.
Congress does nothing except “must pass” legislation, like renewing the Patriot Act, or the NDAA. It is not clear to me how anything is getting funded since, technically, all new spending should have stopped on October 1st. Shifting money around, slush funds, raiding the SS trust fund … all of this appears to be in play, and there is no reason I can think of that Trump couldn’t just keep playing accounting games until next October.
With the House in hiding over Epstein, Congress has essentially been dissolved. The refusal to swear in a legally elected representative may be a test run for simply shutting the whole thing down and refusing to acknowledge the midterms next year.
“The Goon Squad”
Gooners. Not just a movement for young men-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZ3OPifyQZ8 (30:35 min)
A video from ShoeOnHead.
This needs a warning label and I had to go through three Yü tube ads to see it
And now a warning-
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/kUyxymKZ4zQ
“‘Bottoms up” everyone.
So, would “wankette” be considered patriarchal and demeaning? Asking for a friend.
Fertility cultists crying that their child abuse doesn’t work when it’s talked about. Conservatism has never been anything else.
The Rev Kev: Yep, Shoe0nHead always has her finger on the pulse of the U S of A.
I ran across that video by chance about two weeks ago, when she had just posted it. Note that as of this writing, it has 2.2 million views.
And, no, I won’t be going to Amazon to order Pounded by Produce.
Or, “From the best-selling author of Get In My Swamp comes a veggie love story filled with angst and lust.”
Which appears to be self-published through the G.M. Fairy authorial empire.
The author’s web site comes with a warning label.
I guess that this won’t become a Hallmark movie in which a muffin heiress meets the man of her dreams at a romantic inn in Perth Amboy.
Let’s just say that it isn’t War and Peace.
I liked her point about the first book where she says the author could imagine a world with Minotaurs but could not imagine a world without student debt.
That was good.
I thought the best point was at the end, where she related this video to an earlier one (“Is This ‘The Average Male Fantasy'”). In both she boils it down to: men on average want to protect their loved ones, and women on average want someone to rely on who can protect them. Seems everyone wants the basically the same thing, and yet there is so much discord and animosity for some reason.
So the author indirectly and directly blames this on, yes, “lockdowns”. I hate this timeline.
(bold mine)
The “Goon Squad” article does not develop the historical antecedents enough to account for the present conjecture: Porn theaters, mentioned by the article only in passing.
Once upon a time, men “gooned” in porn theaters and “adult book store” arcades. The latter’s still a thing, but as far as I know the porn theater scene is completely moribund (the gay bathhouse world, somewhat adjunct to this culture, is still very active). Most people who were into these scenes would get off and then go, but there were always among them a sub-group of what we might term “hardcore users” or “addicts” or “regulars” who’d always be around. The author misses this aspect of yesterday’s porn scene because he draws too much on the past’s low-intensity, casual porn consumption which is not a proper point of comparison with gooning.
Note also that porn theaters and bookstore arcades are often–but not always–disgusting, similar to the more extreme “goon caves” described in the article.
Porn video stores also had their freaks. In the early 2000s there was a popular blog by Ali Davis called “Confessions of a Porn Clerk”. The blog’s most memorable posts document when author would arrive early to open the video store, there’d already be people lined up desperate and clamoring to get inside.
Gooner culture is a product of the atomization of the viewing experience. Like with movie theaters, declining due to increasingly convenient and high-quality home theaters, mass porn culture has moved from venues into the consumer’s personal space. Also like with home theaters, consumers seeks status by sharing their “awesome” setups with one another.
What I’m saying is: the gooner has been with us since capitalism has commodified the erotic into porn, just as the alcoholic buys their ticket to meets Dionysus from the capitalist (happy to destroy the alcoholic in the process), the gooner buys their ticket from the pornographer who once distributed the goods in sordid theaters and now does so on sordid websites.
A coda: ‘edging’ or ‘approaching orgasm but not going over the edge’ is a widespread element of gay modern fetish culture. For example, there are many “bottoms” who prefer not to orgasm during gay sex and may even will themselves into preventing an erection.
In the more intensely fetishized form of this development, the bottom wears a ‘cage’ (think a male chastity belt) locked over his genitals that prevents him from coming to erection. Usually the key’s in the possession of a top. This fetish is so pervasive–certainly on the rise–that October is the official month to ‘lock up’.
“Locktober.”
Excellent historic references! I briefly played with a 90s era band and one of the principals worked in a porn shop of some kind that had private viewing booths and he regaled us with such tales (“never fails, one dude arrives in sweat pants, 5 minutes later there’s another dude in sweats and pretty soon I’m throwing them both out for being in the same booth”) also worked in a record store with a incredible dance music buyer and if he wasn’t at work, he was at the bathhouse where he claimed a “perfect attendance award”
It was also a trope of 70s-90s serial killer lore that the leading suspect would always be the guy arrested with “hundreds of pounds of pornography” which could be anything from a collection of Playboy magazines (for the interviews and soundsystem reviews of course) to really degenerate crap.
The de facto sudden legalization of porn in the early 70s included beastiality and kiddie porn until 60 Minutes and Geraldo Rivera did big “exposes” on them that contributed to the Reagan era moral panic.
As a kid viewing TV news magazines in that era, I was all for heroic Geraldo calling for a crack down on it as you’d imagine. I suspect much of the Generation X conservatism has to do with having been on the wrong side of the generational divide during the in the “whoah, don’t let the baby fall in the hot tub” era.
By the way, speaking of Playboy interviews, I have with unabated pleasure read & reread Marshall McLuhan’s books & articles for over 50 years, from The Mechanical Bride to the doctoral dissertation on Thomas Nashe & the classical trivium, and to my mind the Very Best Introduction to McLuhan’s thinking on media & consciousness & society is contained in the March 1969 Playboy interview with author Eric Norden. (+) (#) (*)
My only regret is that I did not come across this interview back in the day while scouring Edmonton Public Library’s Playboy collection for Buckminster Fuller’s interview.
(+) a redacted interview (decontextualised) via UC Davis Computer Science :-
https://web.cs.ucdavis.edu/~rogaway/classes/188/spring07/mcluhan.pdf
(#) the unredacted interview (in the original context) via the Internet Archive (interview starts p53) :-
https://ia800102.us.archive.org/35/items/playboy-magazines-1953-2013/PlayBoy/Playboy%201969/3%20-%20March%201969.pdf
(*) a good review of the Nashe thesis is here :-
https://cjc.utppublishing.com/doi/10.22230/cjc.2012v37n4a2514
for interest sake, a list of Playboy interviews :-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Playboy_interviews
That issue also has the first presentation of Gahan Wilson’s classic, “I think I won!”
p. 157 of the pdf. Note the original was first person singular, while many subsequent copies go with ‘WE won’, which subverts the ad absurdum of the original.
The tone of the gooners reminds me of the tone in financial crisis yeltsin ’90s russia when all the turbine factory workers became suicides or nihilistic prostitutes to the western occupiers.
For a taste, the interview with dmitri starting on p 4 of propaganda magazine 025 captures it
https://archive.org/details/propaganda-magazine-025/page/n3/mode/2up
as does mark ames’s whore-r stories for the exile, like “masha 4-everyone”
https://web.archive.org/web/20150522203255/http://www.exile.ru/articles/detail.php?ARTICLE_ID=7882&IBLOCK_ID=35
Re; Why did the Armed Forces of Ukraine decide to combine brigades into corps?
“Corpses” is misspelled.
Dark humor.
Q: Why did the Armed Forces of Ukraine decide to drive combine harvester into corpses?
A: In order to declare them deserters, and not pay the families.
While I don’t want to sound ghoulish, I really do wonder how many of the many alleged Ukr “deserters” are actually KIA, assuming they existed in the first place, which is another question.
ACA health insurance premiums set to rise, but seems quite likely it’ll be worse if the enhanced subsidies expire at end of 2025 without Congressional action. Well that’s indeed a stinker. I had regular “semi” coverage through a contracting firm from May 2022 until October 2024, and have been going without since last year ( while doing some freelance work and now a part time role ). Gotta hope the job markets begin to improve in 2026. How’s the phrasing go, hope in one hand and wish in the other (?)
Death. Taxes. Healthcare inflation. Thought it makes sense to update that listing.
As I mentioned further up in the comments, the expiration of ACA subsidies is a “known known” that the GOP has been aware of and refused to deal with in a timely manner, likely due to incompetence. Meanwhile, the Dems only need the passage of time to score a short term political victory, but we know that they too are bumbling fools.
I have a mental image of two sloths trying to battle it out, both too lazy to throw a punch.
The proper thing for the GOP to do would have been to agree to a compromise, but now it is too late to do anything other than kick the can down the road for another year. Off the top of my head, the GOP could have negotiated a deal to extend the subsidies, with caps on income to stop those with mid six figure incomes from getting them, in exchange for making the DOGE cuts to USAID permanent, or some other fiscal cuts to “pay for” the subsidies. How about cutting all aid to Israel, for starters?
But that assumes a functional two party system, which we don’t have. What we have is a uniparty that is for endless war, Epstein’s co-conspirators getting away with it, and endless can-kicking of problems like out of control healthcare costs.
Good luck with the job market. I had a major health issue this year and without the health insurance plan from my spouse’s employer, I would have had all my savings from 20+ years of toil and work vaporized. People who are outside the corporate or government employment world are truly thrown to the wolves. “Just die!” as Lambert used to say.
Some of us are Lay members of the Confraternity of Saint Luigi. Our version of the Anti-Neo-liberal Creed is: 1) Because Markets Suck, and 2) Go Kill the Parasites.
All the rest is commentary.
Stay safe.
Yeah I appreciate the feedback and the note of encouragement. I may just have to dip out of corporate employment in 2026, and strongly consider my retailer roots that required math skills and reading SKU….hey look at a corporate acronym. I have a hand in making this my present and possible future, but job market gains that initially posted since 2023 now look over green.
The Trump economic messaging* is beginning to sound much like that mayor sounded from the first Jaws movie ( sarcasm warning )….” Everything is great and please enjoy our hospitality and ocean views, no mind to that large fish or the ocean has the red sheen of blood…”. I can stand Treasury Secretary Bessent but that’s about my limit on administration spokespeople.
“Breathing Through Our Butts Declared Safe After First Human Trial”
Next stop. As suggested by South Park, if you stuff food up your butt, you can then poop out your mouth-
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/dJhHFrGnSX0
Scrolling through cable channel offerings middle of the week, and came across some older episodes that were like minded….no idea if the corporation below has ever haggled the network to not run this anymore.
South Park episode of “HumancentIpad”…oh and little Cartman doing his usual brat behavior since his mom wouldn’t buy the most pricey Ipad.
Worth pointing out that the chemical being used is perfluorodecane CF3-(CF2)8-CF3, a “forever” chemical.
Long(ish)-chain perfluoroalkanes have been known for decades to be able to transport molecular oxygen.
I remember seeing in the seventies a photograph of a rat submerged in a beaker of perfluorononane that apparently was able to survive some minutes. What the chemical did to the alveoli wasn’t reported but since it is spectacularly unreactive there was presumably no chemical attack of the cells. Still, it wasn’t a pretty picture at all.
The hamster dunking was a memorable scene in the 1989 James Cameron film “The Abyss” which then showed the stuff in use by the ultra deep sea divers. Alas, the liquid breathing technique still seems impractical for lungs, butt maybe the other end would work!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_breathing
Should be obvious…think of all the people who talk through their butts.
Youtube 20:00
The criminal justice system isn’t broken, it is working the way it was designed to work: to disenfranchise black and brown people.
“Why Are Electricity Prices Rising?”
For those who want to go a bit more into this subject, here is an interesting article from last month-
https://www.construction-physics.com/p/whats-happening-to-wholesale-electricity
“What’s Happening to Wholesale Electricity Prices?”
Your link provide insights on wholesale prices but this doesn’t appear to be the main driver of rising electricity prices in the US which depend on a few more things. The link provided today does a good job IMO. This seems to be more about fees on energy transport and distribution climbing a lot. This, as the link notes, has to do in big part with events like fires (California) and storms, floods… which imply investments in the grids (repair and preventing future problems) though i believe that there is more to it than just extreme events. There was a recent flood of articles blaming it all on AI though i agree with this article and AI probably has little to do with rising electricity bills. It seems to me there is little interest on publishing fair analysis.
Yes – electricity pricing is a very arcane subject and even those working in the sector find it hard sometimes to identify the root causes of particular price movements. But intellectual laziness leads people to blaming whatever it is they don’t like about their electricity provider or just the world in general (greenies, nuclear power, AI, solar, gas… you name it, its been blamed).
I suspect that a key driver in the US in infrastructural, as the US is way behind in modernisation and upgrades compared to other developed countries. Also, the very rapid changes over the past decade or so in grids has led to a lot of lagging investment and bottlenecks.
Incidentally, I just read yesterday that there are initial discussions between Ireland and Spain on an interconnector. I don’t know the capacity, but one between Ireland and France is under construction now. I suspect that one motivation is that regulatory delays has meant that undersea cables (which have far fewer legal obstacles to overcome) are just easier and quicker to lay than cross-country high capacity or DC lines.
And on the subject of the arcane mysteries of electricity pricing – the other energy related article posted – the embedded X – tweet shows what happens when someone retweets something that they don’t really understand. For one thing, just look at that Chinese regression line (squint closely and you’ll see why its going down). Plus, just look at the current dollar per watt capital cost of solar in the US – one tenth of Chinese nuclear! Context is everything (and yes, I know these comparisons are very simplistic).
I found today a link on the Ireland-Spain interconnection though I haven’t read it and, like you, have no idea on the project capacity. These days I am analysing the response to the blackout in Spain which by itself is a bloody complex issue in which all administrations, apart from utilities, transport and distribution companies etc.. have some role to play. This would be simplified, IMO, with better coordination and some way of central or unified planning. I believe that many resources and efforts are wasted with the way things are done and there are too many political and corporative noises. In particular things are in part delayed because whatever you do, it has to pass at least two, let’s call them “fair competition tests”: one in Spain by the CNMC and a second at the EU level. At least, I can say that the current Minister in charge of this, Sara Aagesen, is a competent person with previous experience on the matter.
Jared’s response to Dimkoff spilling the beans was priceless. I put it into my facial movements translator app and this is what Kushner’s body English said:
‘D’ough!’
” ‘I’m not a bad boy’: Belgium’s De Wever defends Ukraine loan veto”
The Belgiums are not stupid here. The EU wants Belgium to take the Russian money out of Euroclear and to give it to Zelensky. But Belgium knows that if there is any blowback, especially legally, then Belgium will be left by the EU to twist in the wind. That is why Belgium is saying that they will not release that money until ALL the EU countries agree to be on the hook for it legally if things go wrong. The EU cannot agree on this of course which is why they fobbed it off to December.
Funny you know. A year or two ago those Russian assets were valued at about $280 billion with the bulk of it held in Euroclear. But now they keep on talking about a lower figure of about $140 billion. So what happened to the rest? Inflation?
Consultation fees, escrow fees, security fees, etc. etc.
“Europeans” with very few exceptions appear ready (if one believes reports from globalist media) to kick the can once again. In some cases because the leadership wants it, and in others because arm twisting like in Spain. There is no other option left apart from confiscating the assets which would provide for something like a year of war extension or so if the war does not end before. I am increasingly convinced that this will be done but it will be problematic in many senses. How the financial burden will be spread amongst the different countries is something with potential to turn very, very, problematic. If you ask me I find it all incredibly stoopid. I suspect everyone is (hopelessly) praying that at some point the sanctions will make the day, or some other miracle.
They are waiting for Putin and Xi to die from all the cancers they have, or for the new Russian and Chinese revolutions to remove them from power, whichever happens first.
On Serbia and Vucic, just came back from Serbia a couple of weeks ago and Vucic is being dumped by US and EU. His diplomatic shenanigans was tolerated because US administration was trying to make a deal with Russia. That fell apart over the last couple of months, so both US and EU are cracking down on any collaboration with Putin, meaning Serbian regime is a prime target.
As a part of that, Serbian state oil company, partially owned by Russian Gazprom, had its sanctions waiver pulled and Trump’s nominee for the ambassador in Serbia, Mark Brnovich, had his nomination pulled a week ago. Brnovich is close to the Serbian regime and had regular meetings with Serbian officials since his nomination was announced in March, despite repeated warnings from his allies in the Trump administration to lay low until the nomination process is complete. Current charge d’affairs Alexander Titolo will be appointed as ambassador instead as the State Department wants an experienced diplomat in that role for the near future.
Serbian government is now in difficult position, they have the option of renationalizing the state oil company, but Russia has already warned them that this will cause them to stop the gas deliveries. On the other hand, if the company is not nationalized, their oil supply, coming through Croatia pipeline (old Yugoslavian Adriatic pipeline) will be cut off. Additionally, the anniversary of the Novi Sad railway station tragedy is coming up on November 1, and there is a large protest planned in Novi Sad. I don’t have much reliable info on what is planned, but locating the protest in Novi Sad rather than the capital Belgrade, will pull the security services out of Belgrade and allow things to happen. It’s possible that Vucic will be ousted on November 1 and there is a definite push to do so by the end of the year.
MAGA on the March
Inflation rate hit 3.0% in September, lower than expected, long-awaited CPI report shows (CNBC)
It’s a strange world that hot inflation is a good thing, but whatever gets Fed rate cuts excites the market. Ongoing inflation isn’t great for the rest of us, though.
So, the Fed is making an admission against interest that the US economy is struggling.
Either that, or they’re deliberately going to run inflation hot, and screw the little guys. Little guys include MAGA, so Trump is deliberately putting Wall St, over Main St.
They manipulated the Owners equivalent rent to get that figure and didn’t really try to hide the manipulation that much. Why would they, everyone is in on the grift now ?
It will go on until it can’t , TINA now.
This is so 2025 in America, so I gotta post it. NY Times (archive.ph is back) has a who’s who of how to identify the many state security forces that are now touring American cities.
Know before you go!
How to Make Sense of the Federal Forces on the Streets (NY Times via archive.ph)
With a (in this, not interactive) graphic of the different security force uniforms, to help you, thoughtful citizen of America, with discerning who is ICE, BP, National Guard, and FBI, DEA, and Secret Service. Oh. my!
America is going great!
Hooray!
Priceless! Thanks for sharing, as I don’t subscribe to The Grey Lady. The photos with detailed explanations of uniforms and equipment are marvelous. I’m definitely not planning to visit the USA anytime soon, either. Forewarned is forearmed.
The past is another country, and so is the USA.
Re Time Warner–so if Ellison buys will the much loved Turner Classic Movies become Ellison Classic Movies? Who knew we would become nostalgic for the “mouth of the South” who himself once wanted to buy CBS and possibly Paramount?
Turner is still with us and perhaps living at his buffalo ranch in Montana. It’s likely many today don’t even know who he was but he started the whole idea of 24/7 cable news and it was arguably better run when he was doing it. Now it is just another political football in the hands of landshark oligarchs. Oh sorry….about to be.
I thought Ted Turner had indeed bought the farm several years ago. Were those just untrustworthy rumors of an early demise? I stand corrected, he is above ground …
Back to the equity traded under symbol WBD, maybe the next owner or acquiring media firm looks into long term CEO, David Zaslav, and ask rhetorically regarding his excellent pay packages , “WTF” ? Actual investment wealth destruction, and corporate legacy being melted like a bad guy on Indiana Jones movie. I know that in recent years Mr. Zaslav was getting paid an exorbitant sum with paltry returns to show for it.
I’ve pulled various TCM titles from my library, and they are (nearly?) always dye-burnt DVDs, not volume metal-pressed ones. Implies that they are print on demand, and demand is too sporadic to anticipate.
Looked up how old Turner is and turns out he’s considerably younger than I thought! So he really was a youngish hotshot back then.
re: Berlin court sides with Digitial Services Act vs. freedom of speech
German CICERO magazine.
use google-translate
How Berlin courts abolish freedom of expression
Freedom of opinion includes being able to acknowledge opinions, i.e., to be informed. Nevertheless, two Berlin courts ruled that sometimes only a single opinion is permissible—namely, that of the WHO. This ruling is based on the Digital Services Act.
by lawyer Jan Ristau
https://archive.is/9vUUj
“(…)
According to the court, LinkedIn was entitled to stipulate in its “Community Guidelines” that anything that contradicts the guidelines of leading global health organizations and health authorities could be considered “false or misleading content” by LinkedIn, with consequences ranging from post blocking to account suspension. The right to freedom of expression and information had to be weighed against the right to entrepreneurial freedom. The court considered LinkedIn’s intention to “set a benchmark or define a standard with regard to information that can be categorized as fundamentally dangerous or hazardous to health, without having to verify in each individual case whether a specific statement is correct, partially correct, or incorrect.”
(…)
Kerstin von der Decken, Professor of Public Law at Kiel University, writes
(…)
“Protecting” freedom of expression means that neither the state nor the individual may prohibit an opinion. These principles have been reduced to absurdity by the Berlin Higher Regional Court. The Higher Regional Court’s ruling allows LinkedIn to prohibit not just a single opinion, but all opinions except one: that of the WHO.
(…)”
p.s. This detail seems to get lost
“The right to freedom of expression and information had to be weighed against the right to entrepreneurial freedom.”
The Trump administration may well be preparing the ground for this slippery slope of favouring right to entrepreneurial freedom to right to freedom of expression as mentioned in the above linked article on WARNER BROTHERS´s takeover.
Once this is in motion it´s Pandora´s Box cracked open.
And: Obviously on the grounds of such reasoning as by the court the entire EU warmongering would as well be illegal.
A request for the readers: Has anyone used or does anyone know anything about GroundNews? It’s a news aggregator that claims to uncover biases and agendas in media. A friend is thinking of signing up…
I’ve heard good things about it. It shows where different stories are being reported (70% right-leaning media vs 30% left-leaning, for example) and you can see how the same story is reported across the spectrum.
There’s lots of discount codes for signing up, I think Channel 5 news on YouTube has one
World’s 10 oldest currencies that are still in circulation
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/life-style/travel/worlds-10-oldest-currencies-that-are-still-in-circulation/articleshow/124112240.cms
I could guess half.
Re newest sanctions on Russia —
Not fake news: the EU’s 19th sanctions package bans the export of toilets and bidets to Russia. Aside from demonstrating how petty the Eurocrats are, it’s the gift that keeps on giving to Russian comedians and humorists. The Runet is already lighting up with silly memes: politics + toilets = hilarity.
Anyway there’s nothing special about EU toilets, and the Russians make plenty of their own. But Japanese toilets are the bomb:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toilets_in_Japan
Mercouris began his podcast with a comment on the Welsh elections, which made me wonder, despite not knowing anything about Welsh politics beyond some outdated truisms.
So the Labor got thrown out, Reform didn’t do that well, but Plaid Cymru was the big winner. Seems consistent with my hunch that “crazy RW” parties aren’t that popular, but serve mostly as outlets for frustrated and unhappy erstwhile “left” voters. If the erstwhile “left” parties think that they can appeal to their lost voters by either mimicking the “crazy rw” or, conversely, just condemning them without doing anything, they are sorely mistaken. People already don’t like the “kings.” They just hate the anti-kings, too.
Don’t over interpret the result. Plaid polled 45% and Reform 35%. Tories scored 2%! The majority for Plaid over Reform is only 4,000 and that’s in a seat that has been 100 years socialist, never kissed a Tory etc.
The more interesting analysis is that, if the Plaid vite holds up at the Welsh Senedd election, all three Celtic nations (Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland) in the UK will be in the hands of independence-seeking nationalist parties, most to the left of Labour.
Reform’s problem is that it is the English nationalist party but there is no English parliament. The rightwing nature of English nationalism lands badly in the Celtic Nations. But I am not sure Reform needs their votes to win at the next GW!
I have to peddle a link from Ritholtz here about the ascendance of China. It is an Aurelien level essay (David you gotta read it).
https://www.theideasletter.org/essay/the-great-reckoning/
It softballs some issues that need more detailed historical focus but that would make it a book. After reading it the one thing I would observe with my limited exposure is that the embedded culture of the Chinese has great respect for productive behavior. The west seems to have more admiration for successful criminal behavior. I’m not sure what the synthesis would be as Chinese culture becomes dominate.
I would say things like attitudes change a lot faster than you’d think. (And the perception, even faster.) In earlier half of 20th century, popular perception was likely the opposite–especially in Asia, including among the Chinese. A lot of literature was generated by Chinese “reformers” urging their countrymen to be like Americans abd value productive work. Cultural determinism doesn’t help explain much.
It’s a decent article but it doesn’t go far enough. It refers to China as the ‘world’s second-largest economy.’
It is not. In real terms of civilizational infrastructure build out, innovation, and so on it’s in first place.
Elite self-gratification, I’d say. Look at Trump, with his paint on tan, signifying nothing but leisure time.
Look at what plays on netflix or tubi. I can’t really speak to life on the streets in 19th century China. From the fall of Sun Yat Sen through the communist revolution China was pretty upside down. The Chinese from that era (1910-1940) that I knew were of the elite not the street.
I have a sort of theory about this: people play to the environment, of the rules, leadership, customs, etc. When productive work is punished–b/c the magistrate needs a second concubine, because it’s a “privilege” that needs to be taken away, etc–you get people trying to cheat the system from bottom up. And when you have a whole population of people who place little on productive work, you get “leaders” who try to maximize their cheatings, and the cycle continues.
Who’s to blame? Hard to tell: leaders do shape the environment, but only to a limited degree. Some major social changes that knock both the elite and the masses from their moorings, probably, is essential. The Chinese had a century of humilation and another several decades of upheaval. What have we got?
This is the Friday Breaking Points discussion which starts with some reporting on how close Trump is to invading Venezuela:
EXCLUSIVE: Saagar And Ryan EXPOSE Trump Venezuela Regime Change LIES
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2PRNPBZRSY
They think we’re getting close to actually going.
W’s War on Terror (and by the way, judging by events in America, it looks like the word “terror” has won) was the tipping over point for so much of the bad trends and events that dragged America down to where we are today. To think that we’ve learned NOTHING and we’re going to do this all over again is astonishing.
Yep, now he’s deployed a carrier. It seems like it might be approach go time. It’s a lot of posturing for no follow through. And they already offered to give Trump the minerals, all of it, except regime change, and Trump declined to accept peace as an option.
MAGA on the March
Here’s where the economy is starting to show ‘K-shaped’ bifurcation (CNBC)
Hasn’t this bifurcation been going on now for the best part of 40 years?
18 U.S. Code § 209 prohibits federal employees from receiving salary supplements or compensation from non-government sources for performing their official duties. This law is designed to prevent conflicts of interest and ensure impartiality in government service.
Paying the troops with private donations is black letter law illegal … not that it would stop Orange Julius.
Legal hair-splitting: are troops “Federal employees?”
Question to ponder: If, say Larry Fink from BlackRock donated $1B to pay the Army, could he expect to get some consideration in return, like invading Ukraine to recover all the lithium mines and coal deposits he pledged as collateral for some crazy loan scheme?
The latest from Brian Berletic, a written article from New Atlas.
https://journal-neo.su/2025/10/21/future-global-order-pivots-on-ukraine-proxy-war/
Important, as they say here
We’re done. Someone turn off the lights
Lol how many guns does the constitution come with?
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/24/us/politics/president-trump-2028-steve-bannon.html
Remember the Louvre heist and how the thieves used a furniture lift to do it? Well the company that makes them is now using that theft in its advertising-
‘IF YOU’RE IN A HURRY. The Böcker Agilo carries your treasures up to 400 kg at 42 m/min – quiet as a whisper thanks to its 230 V electric motor.’
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/louvre-thieves-furniture-lift-heist-company-hoping-to-cash-in/
That’s capitalism for you.
More of a meme culture example than capitalism. A photo with some witty text benath is a basic meme format. Sign of the times.
Chris Hedges drops the hammer for the many, and many the Palestinians (and thus how we understand the Oz National Press Club could not handle it); detailed:
It continues
A Teen in Love With a Chatbot Killed Himself. Is the Chatbot Responsible? (NY Times via archive.ph)