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Links 10/25/2025

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A radical reimagining of physics puts information at its centre aeon (Chuck L)

“Not Too Sweet” or Too Sweet to Fail? Taste (Randy K)

Women Are Getting on Testosterone and They Say It’s Absolutely Awesome Futurism. Sigh. My endocrinologist >20 years ago said women should be routinely tested for their testosterone level and weren’t. 1/3 of women (as in adults in their prime) have low testosterone. He was convinced that depression among women was significantly due to low testosterone and that many women taking anti-depressants should be taking testosterone instead.

Climate/Environment

Melting glaciers and thermal expansion are driving the ‘acceleration’ of sea level rise to record levels Euronews

Star-studded Malibu is DYING with just four permits granted to rebuild fire-ravaged enclave and property prices tumbling by up to 60% DailyMail
l

China?

China reportedly caught reverse-engineering ASML’s DUV lithography Asia Times (Kevin W)

China’s new home prices fell at the fastest pace in 11 months Reuters

Overseas renminbi lending surges as China steps up campaign to de-dollarise Financial Times

America’s farmers and first responders and love Chinese drones. And that’s about to be a big problem. Kevin Walmsley

Koreas

South Korea grapples with growing number of idle young adults Nikkei

Africa

South of the Border

Supercarrier USS Ford Being Pulled From Europe And Ordered To Caribbean War Zone

Inside Marco Rubio’s Push for Regime Change in Venezuela Drop Site

Amid tension between Venezuela and the US, Lula criticizes “foreign interventions in Latin America” Defend Democracy

O Canada

Canadian Snowbirds Left Speechless After U.S. Customs And Border Protection Cites “Standard Procedures” Over New $60 Charge The Travel

European Disunion

Russian Roulette in Brussels Overton via machine translation (Micael T)

ChatControl resistance: How a grassroots campaign scuppered the EU’s plan to suffocate online privacy Diem25 (Robin K)

Old Blighty

Local election wipeout would see off Starmer, MPs say after Caerphilly rout Guardian

Limited Crisis Prep Could Trigger Bailouts: Bank of England FinNews Network

Car production slumps to a 73-year low after JLR cyber-attack Guardian

Israel v. The Resistance

US officials arrive for ‘Bibi-sitting’ as Washington tightens ceasefire oversight of Israel Ynet (resilc)

US exploring ways to deploy international forces to Gaza, possibly under UN mandate: Secretary of state Anadolu Agency

Vance says Knesset votes on annexing West Bank are an ‘insult’ as Netanyahu halts progress Guardian

Israeli strikes kill four in new Lebanon ceasefire breach Aljazeera

One target at a time: The logic that helped Israeli liberals commit genocide +972

New Not-So-Cold War

Western Analysts Continue to Push Delusions About Russia Larry Johnson

EU Commission Plan Of ‘Russian Assets’ Loan To Ukraine Ends In Defeat Moon of Alabama (Kevin W)

IIRC, Mark Milley did urge seeking a peace deal in November 2022 and was ferociously slapped down:

Big Brother is Watching You Watch

How Amazon Turned Your Neighborhood Into a Police Database Reclaim the Net

Imperial Collapse Watch

Silicon Valley’s War Profiteers Jacobin (resilc)

Massive Cuts Incoming At NASA As America Just Gives Up Ian Welsh (Micael T)

Trump 2.0

Trump Is Actually Failing Fast—and the Rabid MAGA Bigwigs Know It New Republic (resilc)

On Ukraine and Venezuela, Trump needs to dump the sycophants Responsible Statecraft

‘No Kings’ Protesters Reject Political Violence, Survey Shows Scientific American. resilc: “Wait until an ICE four dead in Ohio moment………”

“Dangerously stupid”: Musk reignites feud with Trump administration Oligarch Watch

How do you solve a problem like Discovery? The Register (Chuck L)

Will Trump End Worldwide Democracy Shams?  CounterPunch

MAHA

Shutdown

US Senate fails to pass bill to pay federal essential workers and troops through shutdown Guardian

a href=”https://www.cnn.com/2025/10/24/politics/anonymous-donor-military-pay-shutdown” rel=”nofollow”>Pentagon to use $130 million donation from anonymous Trump ‘friend’ to pay military members CNN

SNAP Benefits: Trump Admin Rejects Use of Emergency Funding Amid Shutdown Newsweek

SNAP emerges as flash point in shutdown fight The Hill

The Abdication of Congress New York Times (resilc)

>Data Driven Out In the Public Interest

Democrat Death Wish

The Partisans Are Wrong: Moving to the Center Is the Way to Win New York Times (resilc). Editorial.

Campaign 2026: As Maine Goes Washington Monthly

Mamdani

Mamdani calls out NYC election foes for ‘racist, baseless’ attacks Gothamist

Jeffries endorses Mamdani in New York City mayor’s race The Hill

Health Care

Private Medicare, Medicaid Plans Exaggerate In-Network Mental Health Options MedPage

Obamacare premiums to rise 30% on average in 2026 Seeking Alpha (resilc)

Our No Longer Free Press

Newspapers closing, news deserts growing for beleaguered news industry Associated Press (Robin K)

Economy

Competition for Natural Gas Sends U.S. Prices Skyward OilPrice (resilc)

We Are About To Have Another Year Of Not-Great U.S. Auto Sales Jalopnik (resilc)

Mr. Market is Moody

Another US lender tumbles as credit jitters accelerate City AM

AI

A Short Seller’s AI Exercise Paints a Dire Picture of Private Equity Institutional Investor (resilc)

Offshoring automation: Filipino tech workers power global AI jobs Rest of World (resilc)

The Bezzle

We’ve Confused the Receipt With the Result Corbin Trent and America’s Undoing

The Enshitification Of Everything As Seen In Common Automotive Tools YouTube (resilc)

Antidote du jour (via):

And a bonus:

See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.

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19 comments

  1. The Rev Kev

    “Canadian Snowbirds Left Speechless After U.S. Customs And Border Protection Cites “Standard Procedures” Over New $60 Charge”

    This one I do not understand. Relations between Canada and the US remain tense and a majority of Canadians have voted with their wallets by not visiting the US anymore but other places like Europe or other parts of Canada. Rather than trying to cool things off, somebody in the Trump bureaucracy has decided to ramp up things with the Canadians that are still visiting the US – the snowbirds. So they are imposing lengthy new procedures like searching their vehicles like they were hiding drugs, photographing them, fingerprinting them and to top it off charging them $60 for the privilege in a sort of shakedown. Sounds like to me some sort of petty revenge or something. Some of Trump’s government are still offended personally by the fact that Canadians do not want to become Americans so perhaps this explains these new procedures.

    Reply ↓
  2. ChrisFromGA

    Ballroom Blitz

    Sung to the tune of, “Ball Room Blitz”, by the band Sweet

    Melody

    Are you ready, Fred?
    Ginger? (Yeah)
    Jared? (Okay)
    Alright, fellas, well, let’s go!

    Well, it’s been getting so hard
    Living with the Trump economy, ah-ha
    My dreams are getting so strange
    I’d like to tell you everything I see

    Oh, I see the Gipper is back
    And as a matter of fact, he says tariffs are no fun
    And TACO looks cornered, with his lies, you’ll deplore ’em
    Cause he thinks he’s the rational one

    Oh, yeah, it was like lightning
    Everybody was frightening
    And his brain turned to pudding
    And they all started feuding
    Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

    Now the Gipper is back, for the tariff attack
    But Trump’s brain has gone on the fritz
    And the East Wing’s been quartered, so boy, I better warn ya
    Trump is goin’ on a ballroom blitz
    Ballroom blitz
    Ballroom blitz
    Ballroom blitz

    Oh-oh, I’m reaching out for something
    Telling lies is all I ever do
    Oh, I softly call bulldozers
    When they appear, there’s nothing left of you, ah-ha
    And the plan to attack is ready to crack
    As he razes the East Wing from on high
    And the rare erfs are cornered, everyone’s a mourner
    Xi could kill you with a wink of his eye

    Oh yeah, it was electric
    So frantically hectic
    And the band started leaving
    ‘Cause they all stopped breathing (yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah)

    Now the Gipper is back, for the tariff attack
    But Trump’s brain has gone on the fritz
    And the East Wing’s been quartered, so boy, I better warn ya
    Trump is goin’ on a ballroom blitz
    Ballroom blitz
    Ballroom blitz
    Ballroom blitz

    [Interlude]

    Oh, yeah, it was like lightning
    Everybody was frightening
    And his brain turned to pudding
    And they all started feuding
    Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

    Now the Gipper is back, for the tariff attack
    But Trump’s brain has gone on the fritz
    And the East Wing’s been quartered, so boy, I better warn ya
    Trump is goin’ on a ballroom blitz
    Ballroom blitz
    Ballroom blitz
    Ballroom blitz

    It’s, it’s, a ballroom blitz
    It’s, It’s, a ballroom blitz

    Reply ↓
      1. The Rev Kev

        I wonder if they took an archaeological look at the eastern wing when it was cleared out but immediately realized that Trump would never “waste” any effort on that but would just bulldoze everything away. I saw a clip where Trump was giving a press conference and he talked about the sounds of demolition in the background and how wonderful it was. But that was not the full clip as it had been cut. The original had him say something along the lines that it was the sound of money.

        Reply ↓
  3. Steve H.

    > U.S. intelligence has confirmed that Larry Ellison’s wife is a Chinese intelligence operative who infiltrated Silicon Valley to obtain strategic tech information.

    Larry Arnault’s account has been suspended. Surely a coincidence.

    Reply ↓
  5. DJG, Reality Czar

    Pete Buttigieg doing daily press conferences. (In Norwegian.) Hillary Clinton endlessly on the TV box.

    Earlier this year, the wonderful novelist and essayist Daniela Ranieri published a book on the enduring problem of Matteo Renzi, who is, in many respects, the Hillary Clinton of Italian politics, wrong about everything, always wrong-way about tactics, but ubiquitous on the boob toob.

    I attended the presentation of the book to the public at the Salone del Libro, here in the Chocolate City (it happens also to be the biggest book fair in Italy). Ranieri and Marco Travaglio analyzed how Renzi is a great favorite of the media workers, no matter how much his policies fail. He’s always available for an interview, and he tells them more or less what they want to hear.

    This put me in mind of the many media creations in the U S of A. (The most recent of which is likely to be Bari Weiss, who, if anything fits the bill of the expression “media whore.”)

    So let’s have Pete Buttigieg be the official spokesmodel of the toothless opposition. He can be assisted by Elissa Slotkin, lady-splaining how to bring peace to the Levant. Nancy Pelosi can give stock tips. They can do the daily press briefing on The View.

    After brunch, a veto-proof majority!

    Reply ↓
    1. The Rev Kev

      Pete Buttigieg doing a daily Dem press briefing on Capitol Hill? Is that wise? When he was Transportation Secretary he would go MIA for months at a time, often during a crisis involving transport. What happens if when he is due to give a press briefing, nobody can find him? What are they going to do? Show an empty lectern? I can only guess that the Dems want to show his ‘What, me worry?’ face on a daily basis so that he can be pushed as a major Democrat Presidential nominee in 2028.

      Reply ↓
    2. Ignacio

      Yeah, Renzi starred, of course, in the World in Progress event in Barcelona (Escalibada City?, he, he) last week joining Borrell and other globalists saying exactly what the organizers (Grupo PRISA) were wanting to hear. A Love Story.

      Reply ↓
  6. Ben Panga

    Re: U.S. intelligence has confirmed that Larry Ellison’s wife is a Chinese intelligence operative who infiltrated Silicon Valley to obtain strategic tech information.

    The tweet no longer exists and the account has been suspended.

    Can find nothing else on it, beyond reposts of screenshots of that one tweet.

    Reply ↓
  7. Wukchumni

    Newspapers closing, news deserts growing for beleaguered news industry Associated Press Newspapers closing, news deserts growing for beleaguered news industry Associated Press
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    In one way, newspaper reporters resembled actors and actresses in Hollywood, in that the same 151 people did all the heavy lifting in their respective industries, and good luck breaking into either business-it wasn’t uncommon for a fishwrap scribe to have decades @ the QWERTY, and they really ought to have named it Nepowood. as the chances of breaking and entering the entertainment industry were about nil unless you had parental guidance.

    To watch newspapers flail about like so many fish out of water is hard to take, the LA Times lost $48 million last year.

    That’s $4 million a month, month in and month out.

    The one thing left over from the glory days of newspapers is their office building, its of so much more substance than the product they put out.

    The local Big Smoke has the Visalia Times-Delta, a venerable old paper started in 1859, and their building is way too much for an enterprise that relies on AP reporting and tends to leave older stories up for weeks if not months (‘Legendary actress Diane Keaton dies at 79, reports say’ is up for grabs today online in their headline stories) and dutifully reports local high school sports scores as their main objective in letting us know what’s what.

    Essentially the newspaper could be run out of a basement, although there aren’t many here in Cali, so an attic would have to suffice.

    Reply ↓
  8. The Rev Kev

    ““Dangerously stupid”: Musk reignites feud with Trump administration”

    Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy is also acting administrator of NASA at the moment and is really butting heads with Elon Musk and it is not only the call to reopen contracts that has riled Musk. NASA’s budget is decreasing and apparently Sean Duffy thinks that it is a great idea if NASA is folded into the Department of Transportation. After all, everybody knows that spaceships & the ISS are exactly like planes, trains and automobiles, right? It was only a few months ago that Duffy called for free trade in aerospace so I guess having an independent government organization dedicated to space would just be in the way.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sean_Duffy

    Reply ↓
  9. DJG, Reality Czar

    Mahira Rivers, “Not Too Sweet” or Too Sweet to Fail?

    After the extended discussion of Gooners yesterday in the comments section to Links, I will not mention Pounded by Produce. On to more important issues: And sugar is important.

    The article is worth a read for the detailed discussion of how sugar has been creeping into recipes in East Asian cookery. The mention that sugar has been used as a spice in cookery there put me in mind of some medieval Italian recipes for ravioli and other stuffed pasta that also used sugar as a spice. Yes, sugar on stuffed pasta — certainly, no longer done.

    Having lived so long in the U S of A, I was aware of problems with sugar in the U S diet. It also concentrates the mind that there are diabetics in the family. So I learned to avoid the major troublesome foods in the U.S. of A.: the endless juices, the jelly, ketchup, soft drinks, marshmallows, and breakfast cereals. That photo of hi-protein Cheerios today — wowsers, who falls for that?

    The sameness of sweet as a taste becomes a problem at the table. The extensive use of sugar where it doesn’t belong becomes a health problem. One notable eruption of sugar where it doesn’t belong is in U.S. bread recipes that use a tablespoon of sugar to goose the yeast into activity. Superfluous.

    I have also been thinking about the taste profile of Italian food. The book / essay by Massimo Montanari about “amaro” and how bitter is the taste that defines Italian cookery is fascinating. From coffee to the huge family of chicory and friends, to broccoli and all of its relatives, to bitter oranges and bergamots, to the use of rosemary and rue, Italians do enjoy bitter.

    Rivers talks about the (declining) taste of sour in many Asian cuisines. And in Italy, the sweet-sour tang of tomato is common indeed and unlikely to go away.

    Is the issue Westernization? Is U.S. cookery truly that sweet and that influential? Or is sugar just one more cheap source of calories in an industrialized chain of production?

    PS: As Giuseppe Barbera explains in Agrumi, a history of citrus, in the nineteenth century, the Sicilians made fortunes exporting lemons (not sugar) to the U S of A. But the Sicilians have a special relation to lemons. Mary Taylor Simeti thinks that Sicilians have a genetic inheritance that lets them eat lemons by the slice, something that I can do. But is it genetic?
    PSS: Amaro by Montanari:
    https://www.laterza.it/scheda-libro/?isbn=9788858149348

    Reply ↓
  10. Wukchumni

    I put a spell on you
    ‘Cause you’re mine
    Bi-a-do-ya, di-a-do-ya, dia-do-a, dia-do-a
    You better stop the things you do
    And I ain’t done lyin’, no I ain’t done lyin’

    I can’t stand it
    Your runnin’ around
    You should know better fourth estate
    I can’t stand it
    Since you put me down

    I put a spell on you
    Because you’re mine

    Do ya love me
    Do ya love me
    Do ya love me
    Oh my
    And always care if you don’t want me
    I said I’m yours right now

    I put a spell on you
    Because, bi-a-doot, di-a-doot, di-a-doo
    You’re mine

    I Put a Spell on You, by Screaming Jay Hawkins

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82cdnAUvsw8&list=RD82cdnAUvsw8

    Reply ↓
  11. The Rev Kev

    “US exploring ways to deploy international forces to Gaza, possibly under UN mandate: Secretary of state”

    This must be driving the State department to distraction. They would prefer to use the countries that have signed up for the Abraham Accords – the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain, and Morocco – but the numbers are not there. There are other countries that might get involved but not without a UN mandate.Trump hates the UN and this might mean that he would not be able to fully control that force which he would hate even more. Of course any country that sent forces in would know how dangerous it would be. Not so much attacks from Hamas as attacks by the Israelis who have a long history of doing stuff like that. Trump would prefer to have total control of that force but certainly he would not send US troops in as too risky politically. But even if such a force was assembled, Trump would demand that they take all the weapons off Hamas and very few countries would agree to put their troops in such a position. It would be doing Israel’s dirty work for them and since the Israelis have not been able to do so in the past two years, any such force would find that task impossible.

    Reply ↓

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