An eucalyptus in bloompic.twitter.com/ID5wvFC9te
— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) October 17, 2025
How the Horse came to be Ridden 3 Quarks Daily
Google claims its latest quantum algorithm can outperform supercomputers on a real-world task Phys.org
First Shape Found That Can’t Pass Through Itself Quanta Magazine
Clinical trial of a technique that could give everyone the best antibodies Ars Technica
COVID-19/Pandemics
Vaccine Skeptics Said That COVID Shots Would Cause Mass Death. We’re Still Here. Reason
‘Long Covid’ symptoms people are still experiencing to this day have changed an ‘entire generation’ Tyla
Climate/Environment
Scientists have puzzled over what happens to plastic as it breaks down in the ocean – our new study helps explain the mystery The Conversation
Whale and dolphin migrations are being disrupted by climate change Ars Technica
South of the Border
Inside Marco Rubio’s Push for Regime Change in Venezuela Drop Site News
U.S. sanctions Colombia’s president, deploys aircraft carrier in new escalation in Latin America Los Angeles Times
Argentina goes to polls amid economic crisis and Trump ‘interference’ The Guardian
China?
😄Chinese people exercise in parks #China pic.twitter.com/lIYhQXcU4N
— China Perspective (@China_Fact) October 25, 2025
China seeks self-reliance in science in next five-year plan NatureWorld’s Largest Aircraft Carrier Taking Shape at China’s Dailian Shipyard: What Capabilities Are Expected? Military Watch Magazine
Can the West break China’s grip on rare earths? DW
Invisible luxury: How China’s affluent are spending on intangibles Jing Daily
India
India conducts trial cloud seeding flight over New Delhi as smog persists Andolu Agency
Semiconductor push: India ramps up high-tech chip production for CCTVs, servers, HPC; Rs 200 crore investment planned Times of India
Africa
Vacuum of Influence: Western Withdrawal and the Rise of New Powers in Africa Robert Lansing Institute
South Africa Seeking Massive Sum From Investors To Fund Costly Formula 1 Return SI.com
European Disunion
The Final Split: How Europe Broke Apart Over Gaza Fair Observer
Draghi pushes ‘pragmatic federalism’ to get Europe out of its predicament Politico
The ticking bomb of European rearmament Middle East Eye
Connolly declared president of Ireland after landslide win BBC
Old Blighty
Factionalism, farce and chaos dog Reform UK in the garden of England The Guardian
Why electricity costs so much in the UK (it’s not all about the weather) TechXplore
Israel v. Gaza, Yemen, Lebanon, Syria, Iran
Norman Finkelstein absolutely demolished Al Arabiya’s propaganda — exposing their hypocrisy, bias, and moral bankruptcy over Gaza. Calm but ruthless, he turned their “interview” into a masterclass in truth. pic.twitter.com/ciXzwkWHyc
— Ounka (@OunkaOnX) October 24, 2025
Why Is Trump’s ‘Peace Plan’ Focused on Deradicalizing Palestinians, Not Israelis? ZeteoUnexploded ordnance in Gaza wounds children despite ceasefire SCMP
Gaza faces harsh winter as Israel blocks aid, UNRWA warns Andolu Agency
Israeli settlers attack more Palestinians as olive harvest violence surges Al Jazeera
New Not-So-Cold War
Rand Paul: Trump could see ‘all hell break loose’ with further involvement in Ukraine, Venezuela The Hill
On Ukraine and Venezuela, Trump needs to dump the sycophants Responsible Statecraft
Ukraine: Donald Trump pivots again The Week
RAND Urges for Major Chinese Re-Think Amidst Widespread Recognition of China’s Awakening Simplicius Substack
Big Brother Is Watching You Watch
The rise of “catch a cheater” apps exploits our worst human tendencies The Verge
Imperial Collapse Watch
County takes another step in creating tiny homes for the homeless in Lemon Grove ABC News San Diego
Ohio reports alarming uptick in deadly synthetic opioids, including carfentanil WLWT Cincinnati
Trump 2.0
Trump adds 10 percent tariff on Canada amid Reagan ad spat The Hill
Trump Humiliates Mike Johnson Behind Closed Doors Daily Beast
What was in the East Wing of the White House before Trump demolished it? Yahoo News
Bannon Says Trump Will Run for an Illegal 3rd Term Because ‘He’s a Vehicle of Divine Providence’ Scheerpost
Musk Matters
Musk’s ad chief at X departs after just 10 months TechCrunch
Elon Musk Wants $1 Trillion to Build a “Robot Army” at Tesla truthout
Tesla rival claims company won’t even make cars in ten years Teslarati
Democrat Death Watch
‘I am not done’ – Kamala Harris tells BBC she may run for president again BBC
Democrats in the wilderness Deseret News
Immigration
Federal immigration agents deploy tear gas in Chicago’s Irving Park and Avondale neighborhoods Chicago Tribune
Deadly crash in California renews federal criticism of immigrant truck drivers PBS News
What Trump’s federal crackdown looks like in 5 US cities USA Today
Our No Longer Free Press
Conservative content creators doubt YouTube’s free speech turnaround: ‘Just lip service’ Washington Examiner
Israel Bars Int’l Journalists, Aims to Erase Gaza Evidence Miragenews.com
Mr. Market Is Moody
Central banks ditch US dollar for gold Cryptopolitan
Wall Street Is Worried About an AI Bubble—Here’s the Sector Where Stock Prices Really Stand Out Investopedia
U.S. national debt hits $38 trillion, driving mortgage rates higher The Economic Times
AI
The browser wars are back, and this time they’re powered by AI TechCrunch
Teen sues AI tool maker over fake nude images Fox News
Florida Unleashes Autonomous Police Cruisers That Deploy Thermal Imaging Drones Futurism
North Korea’s AI-Powered Hackers Are Redefining Crypto Crime CoinDesk
AI for Science Team Achieves Breakthroughs in Materials Discovery: Business Opportunities in AI-Driven Research Blockchain News
The Bezzle
High-stakes poker scam used rigged card shufflers, X-ray tables, and special glasses The Register
Half-siblings discover fertility fraud, doctor used his own sperm instead of donor WKRC/CNN Newsource
Guillotine Watch
The 5 most expensive cocktails in the world #top5 #expensive #cocktail #cocktails pic.twitter.com/qdwu50jdYz
— Top5expensive (@top5expensive) August 24, 2025
Billionaire Vodka: $3,700,000.
It is a five-liter bottle of vodka though, so at least you can get a little more for your money. pic.twitter.com/eVQyJo5lge— ♱ 𝒜𝓁ℯ𝓍 𝒯𝒸𝒽ℯ𝓃𝓀ℴ𝓋 ♱ (@luke_parodrp) August 8, 2023
Antidote du jour (via)
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here
“In a real casino, the house always wins.”
Not when it’s run by Donald Trump
It Is Trump’s Casino Economy Now. You’ll Probably Lose. (NY TImes)
I wonder if the White House grounds would be big enough for Donny to build a casino on? Only billionaires allowed in of course.
{croupier spins silver ball and announces: No More Bets!}
’47 Red’
During my gambling world tour, I tempted fate (it prevailed against me, as usual) @ the Walkerhill Casino in Seoul, which only allowed foreigners to wager.
Looking back, that was pretty smart thinking on their part, but now Koreans are allowed to bet online, best laid plans.
I spent a few evenings at the Walkerhill Casino back in the mid-80’s when it was still foreigners only.
I was in the US military at the time, hit the blackjack table, and actually walked out to the plus every time. But the last time I went there it got interesting… I was up a few hundred, a lot for a young non-com at that time, when the house suddenly changed dealers. Within an hour I had lost about 75% of my previous winnings, every bet a loser. Lesson learned. I never went back after that.
His ballroom would make a nice casino. Slot machines would of course take $TRUMP coins.
The problem here is that third way dems have been using the same math for many years, and trump is the collapse.
The math doesn’t work. The morality doesn’t either. In this economy, individuals bear the downside risk, while corporations and the wealthy collect the upside. It’s a rigged game where the house — seemingly, the already rich — always wins.
The question is why this hasn’t all collapsed yet. The answer is actually simple: time. Economic systems have inertia. Institutions built over decades don’t crumble overnight. The dollar’s global dominance rests on 80 years of habit, and there really is no viable alternative. And as the economist John Maynard Keynes warned, markets can stay irrational longer than most people can stay solvent.
“What was in the East Wing of the White House before Trump demolished it?”
‘According to the White House Historical Association, “a comprehensive digital scanning project” and photographic record of the East Wing and gardens was conducted after Trump announced his ballroom project in July. The association told PBS that historic artifacts from the East Wing “have been preserved and stored.” ‘
At least someone had some brains to do this before the place got bulldozed. True, that wing was only about 120 years old but it still meant something. Pity that the Rose garden has been lost-
‘The Rose Garden used to feature a green lawn flanked by elegant magnolias and rows of rosebushes, commissioned by the Kennedys. However, the president transformed it into a “Rose Garden Club,” paving over the lawn and adding white chairs topped with Mar-a-Lago-style yellow and white umbrellas.’
https://people.com/before-and-after-pictures-of-changes-donald-trump-is-making-to-the-white-house-11835181
Apparently Trump complained that women wearing high heels found it hard to walk on the grass so paved over it with tiles.
I certainly hope the Big Milhouski’s addition to the White House was unharmed…
https://www.whitehousehistory.org/photos/president-richard-nixon-bowling-at-the-white-house-in-1970
The Washington Post editorial board thinks it is great.
In defense of the White House ballroom
Donald Trump vs. the NIMBYs
My favorite quote from the article:
“It is absurd that tents need to be erected on the South Lawn for state dinners, and VIPs are forced to use porta-potties.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/10/25/ballroom-east-wing-trump-white-house/
The reactionary Trump is ignorant, and not capable of understanding the founders intent when the WH was built. The federalist design of the WH was along classic Greek and Roman lines. The WH would be elegant yet simple and austere, in order to project an image of a democratic republic rather than the grand palaces of royal Europeans.
Forget the monstrous Versailles, even Buckingham Palace, which is roughly 850,000 sq. ft., is more than 15x larger than the 55,000 sq. ft. WH. If the founders wanted a palace to compete with kings and queens, Jefferson, who was an architect, could have helped find the right people to create it.
Trump, on the other hand, thinks the WH is too plain, too ordinary, not grand enough to reflect the greatness, meaning rich like himself, of rulers of the US.
I’m aware the WH has been modified over the years but always fitting its intended design. Trump’s so-called Ballroom, even the name sounds weird because Ballroom means Dance Hall, will be about twice the size of the entire WH.
Tacky displays of gold is not what the founders wanted.
If Trump had normal aesthetic sensibilities, he wouldn’t have chosen to live in an eyesore like Mar-a-Lago.
trump probably doesn’t know that the white house was built with slave labor, and probably wouldn’t care to know. Private, erstwhile oligarch trump was well known for not paying workers contracted to labor at trump properties. He just blew them off with a sneer, and would tell them to take it to court, knowing the financial drain a legal challenge would impose, and that most could never dare undertake. They were forced to realize that they’d been ripped off, and that bourgeois justice is always tilted to the rich and powerful. BTW, whenever a poster here complains that the poor, pitiful trump has been the victim of lawfare, get real. trump is a creature of fraud. It is his milieu. he’s deprived many workers of their wages and stuck it to them; he can go to hell, and take his entourage of attorneys with him.
This latest theft from the public, this ballroom where the elites may go one day to applaud one another and stroke themselves, preening for notice and self-importance, is being funded by the same mega-rich corporations that have bought the government, and who are only too happy, and content, to squeeze every last nickel from everyone else. The slaughter in ukraine and Gaza have only made them richer, and their contempt for human life has found a fellow true believer in the white house. I can well imagine the filthy rich lapping up champagne some evening in the bawl-room, as the murderer trump regales them with stories of how he’s killed some drug dealers in boats, off the coast of Venezuela. Their purchase of the east wing and its occupant makes clear that the people’s government no longer exists. It’s been bought and sold. The demands of the trump market are being met each and every day. The pimp trump has made of the people’s house, a whore house.
Here is an interesting video on the White House and how it has changed over the years with mention how some Presidents on a whim made major changes-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CidE4a2q374 (12:24 mins)
Here’s the official White House website:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/about-the-white-house/the-white-house/
Check out their timeline of major events, it has to be seen to be believed.
It sure does!
Thank you for that Mario.
Dear me …….
Trump Humiliates Mike Johnson Behind Closed Doors Daily Beast
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Mikenocchio is an interesting study, as if Clark Kent emerged out of the phone booth into Super(Ralph Reed)Man, in complete lockstep with all of his puppeteer’s myriad of mistruths, one of his superpowers being the ability to remember layered lies.
There are no known sources of Kryptonite on this wonderful orb, so it looks like we’re stuck with him for the time being.
Mike’s kryptonite is M T-G but, alas she seems to be holding fire for now.
Perhaps a motion to vacate will be our X-mas gift.
>Trump Humiliates Mike Johnson Behind Closed Doors
Johnson vibes like someone that would enjoy that…
‘Please, sir. I’d like some more.’
“HIT ME, SIR, I WANT ANOTHER!”
>billionaire vodka
I went down a rabbit hole and I’m pretty sure this isn’t a real thing.
It only appears in poor quality websites & slopshops
The creator is one “Leon Verres” who seems to exist only as an Instagram account with 3 posts and a terrible website with AI-looking photos and AI-reading text. Also features other products such as a dress made of credit cards (also looks AI)
https://www.leonverres.international
Finally, I think Leon Verres (initials LV) is a take on Louis Vuitton.
The picture of the 3000 diamond vodka (both in the embedded tweet and any other places I found it) looks crappy as heck.
I think it’s someone’s ironic joke.
“World’s Largest Aircraft Carrier Taking Shape at China’s Dailian Shipyard: What Capabilities Are Expected?”
There is one capability that the Chinese are excelling at – launching aircraft and drones using electromagnetic catapult systems. Kevin Walmsley came out the other day with a report on this development because he thought that it was so significant-
https://kdwalmsley.substack.com/p/revolutionary-catapult-gives-chinese
The US Navy still has to launch their F-35s using steam catapults and are really behind. Lots of damning facts in this article.
Don’t really know much about it, but my impression is that due to the complex maintenance system requirement for the F-35, the decision was taken to use the JFK CVN-79 for aircraft/ship integration. Not sure that EMALS was a consideration. Certainly there has been extensive testing at the LBTS at the lab in Lakehurst.
That said, sending Ford CSG to the Caribbean will probably impact the test schedule. Note that the unified combatant commands establish the operational requirement. They have no responsibility for testing so there’s no incentive to prioritize the IOT&E test requirements, including surge and sustained sortie generation rate demonstration.
But if the Chinese are using super-capacitors for energy storage, I can see that as a superior design. Don’t know about these caps, but I assume high accuracy is required to ensure uniform charge distribution as well as charge/discharge rate. That implies produce-ability requirements for manufacturing close tolerances. So not just a design requirement but also manufacturing. Could the US do that? No idea.
Re; ‘I am not done’ – Kamala Harris tells BBC she may run for president again
“Genocide Will Continue”: Fury Grows as Harris Vows to Keep Biden’s Gaza Policy
Never forget.
Don’t call it a comeback, she’s been here for years…. Kamala said knock you out…\ sarc
Hat tip to LL Cool,J, which I believe stands in for “Ladies Love Cool James”. Let’s have a nostalgia presidential primary run in 2027 to 2028, and call it the Democrats Greatest Hits Not a Farewell Tour. And in 2028, they’ll be pitted against a possible run for the Republicans by newly minted vampire Trump, since you know like most villains of Halloween movies they are indispensable to the movie sequels that must follow.
What a stupid timeline.
If Trump somehow makes it ok to run for a 3rd term they could bring back Bill Clinton.
What could possibly make it ok? That there’s been a kind of interregnum?
Think that would be the theory. Think the question went back to the split of the Rs when a faction pushed for the nomination of Grant in 1880. I don’t think the question came as regards Cleveland. Of course that was prior to the amendment.
Trump’s empty podium while Bernie gave his barn-storming speech in Iowa. Summer 2016…. nine years of subsequent trauma.
Might be we have simply reached the end of the rope.
I figured she was planning on running again.
I can only hope she meets the popularity she got the last time when she was forced to drop out before the first primary due to such low approval
Hey, I’ve got an idea. Maybe they can get old Joe to run again. Between him and Kamala, it would be like getting the band back together again.
Dear god, please make this possible. It would be so funny!
She has all the qualifications for President except for policy and appeal to voters, which are the least important ones to the party.
Another instance of verification of marxist class analysis. The conclusion is support your artists financially but not too much because then they become WEF-globalists. Prime example is Bono who hangs around with any Epstein-paedophile he can encounter.
https://www.tmz.com/2025/10/25/justin-trudeau-katy-perry-paris-france/
Maybe she gets the Mick Jagger treatment next time she performs in Canada?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9-U4zhsQrCE&pp=ygUSSmFnZ2VyIHRydWRlYXUgYm9v
I am so old I remember when Madam Trudeau was partying with the band. The Trudeaus build a swimming pool. Pierre pours the cement and Margaret lays the stones. # 74 https://au.rollingstone.com/music/music-lists/mick-jagger-80-wildest-coolest-outrageous-moments-48833/mick-causes-an-international-scandal-for-reportedly-dallying-with-margaret-trudeau-48840/
I remember when it was cool to qualify an otherwise monogamous relationship with the understanding that “stepping out” with a celebrity was permissible. This was known as the “Mick Jagger” exception. I imagine it has a different name these days.
All those years of singing, touring, drugs and stupidities just to get laid with her? Neither crime nor rock’n’roll seem to pay off.
Money makes you lose taste too.
Madam Trudeau was bipolar so if in one of her highs, at that party she is more likely than not to have gone the full nine yards.
My experience with a former bipolar GF is the only supportive argument I have.
County takes another step in creating tiny homes for the homeless in Lemon Grove
This boondoggle is about 500 meters from where my family lived on the last lemon grove in Lemon Grove until the state bought the land to turn it into a freeway interchange.
To say that this area is and has always been an undesirable neighborhood is a vast understatement.
The project proposes to house 60 people.
I can spot 60 unhoused people within a 2 kilometer radius of this area within 20 minutes.
No lie.
To call this more than a drop in the bucket just for the Lemon Grove/ Spring Valley area, much less for San Diego County, is laughable.
An actual solution to the shelter problem that is always rejected out of hand is a massive expansion of small trailer parks.
This is last stand of NIMBYism in Southern California.
Thanks for the perspective. My images of Lemon Groove are from the (romanticized) 80’s.
And the mobile home policy of which you speak is the same here in NW AR: prime landing spot for CA expats and homeless peeps!
I couldn’t agree more about allowing the mobile home parks. I live in the Midwest and there are some truly beautiful parks with mature trees and larger lots. Most of these were started by an individual and run treating the inhabitants very well.
The model where the owners pay a lot fee has become extremely exploitative, but a new idea to have the parks cooperatively owned by the people is working well. https://resources.uwcc.wisc.edu/housing/UWCC%20Webinar.Housing.pdf
City development folks will not hear of the idea, so the industry has formed an association.
Its a weird gig, zenith & nadir hanging out cheek by jowl, every house in the SoCalist Movement is worth near a million bucks, while those in close proximity might have a net cash worth of $14 on a day when panhandling action was brisk, because you borrowed another homeless person’s dog for the afternoon.
What will the tiny homes cost around San Diego? They need to be mindful of the competition with Los Angeles and San Francisco, where eye-popping costs, er, money-laundering and fraud, reign with minimal public oversight.
Is Portland next? If you know people there have them look at how so many are existing in inhumane conditions.
The local politicians need to take accountability for allowing people to live in squalor and breeding grounds for disease. They won’t act until somebody shames them! The video narrator says many but not all of the encampments and trash areas are hidden from view. Unhide them.
Privately owned trailer parks (almost all are), whatever size are extremely exploitative. These people want to own their own homes but cannot manage a house with land (another area of exploitation, to be sure) and want to escape the also exploitive apartment market. They are then trapped into that system.
I have long thought that land for trailers (manufactured housing) should be on state offer (if not outright nationalization of the heretofore private practice). But then, I’m for nationalization (or smaller collectivization) of most private property, though that is, obviously, against the overveiling grain.
Here in Hawaii, we are too good to allow trailers. Better to have Lahaina refugees living in the streets. But we do push for “kauhale” (give it a Hawaiian name and all is good). Places with communal kitchen and bath. They look more like chicken coops to me, but maybe I’m just biased.
“The browser wars are back, and this time they’re powered by AI”
I’m trying to think of a good reason to use a ChatGPT-powered browser. Gimme a minute………Nope, I’ve got nothing. And then there is bit in that brief article-
‘It’s one of the biggest browser launches in recent memory, but it’s debuting with an unsolved security flaw that could expose passwords, emails, and sensitive data.’
I was wondering the same thing. From the article:
That’s not a browser, that’s a search engine (or perhaps a plugin at most). Why does it need to be an installable piece of software and own the whole browsing experience? Is ChatGPT really better at parsing and rendering HTML or optimizing client side Javascript than the current generation? Why would we even want ChatGPT to do these things, given that they are largely solved and heavily optimized problems? To better interpret the meaning of bad or malformed HTML? That’s what Internet Explorer tried to do, and we know how that turned out.
Of course, it’s not hard to guess the real reason, and indeed Atlas has a feature that will use your data to train ChatGPT if enabled (and installed software can gather much more data than a plugin or search site). It’s switched off by default, but it exists. Here’s betting that either it will silently change to on by default at some point, Facebook style, or that it will turn out that all the features that make Atlas actually unique and different (and not just a cut-rate Chrome) require it enabled.
At first, I was afraid, I was petrified
Kept thinking I could never win with Walz by my side
But then I spent so many nights thinking how the voters did me wrong
And I grew strong, and I learned how to get along
And so i’m back from nabbing second place
I just walked in to find you out Trump had unburdened Secret Service in haste
I should have changed that stupid lock
I should have made another key
If I’d have known for just one second he’d be back to bother me
Go on now, go. Open up the 2028 door
Joe, just turn around now ’cause you’re not welcome anymore
Weren’t you the one who tried to hurt me with goodbye?
Did you think I’d crumble?
Did you think I’d lay down and die?
Oh, no, not I
I will survive
Oh, as long as I know how to sell (nudge nudge wink wink) books I know I’ll stay alive
I’ve got all my life to live
I’ve got all my word salad to give
And I’ll survive
I will survive, hey, hey
It took all the strength I had for my campaign not to fall apart
Kept trying hard to mend the pieces of my broken part
And I spent, oh, so many nights just feeling sorry for myself
I used to cry, but now I hold my head up high
And you see me somebody new
I’m not that dithering little person that turned off you
And so I felt like dropping in
And just expect me to be President in trying again
And now I’m saving all my hope for the Donkey Show loving me anew
Oh, no, not I
I will survive
Oh, as long as I know how to sell (nudge nudge wink wink) books I know I’ll stay alive
I’ve got all my life to live
I’ve got all my word salad to give
And I’ll survive
I will survive, hey, hey
I Will Survive, by Gloria Gaynor
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHhZPp08s74&list=RDFHhZPp08s74&start_radio=1
And now I have her kamalaness dancing and singing in my head like Gaynor. Ick.
Why electricity costs so much in the UK (it’s not all about the weather) TechXplore
I believe the article is fair enough but something should we added when one compares electricity prices between countries. I am not sure if this article is comparing apples to apples. Is it comparing the actual bills that households have to pay or the average cost in terms of let’s say pounds/kWh?. This makes a difference because average demand, is about 12600 kWh/year in the US, 6500 kWh/year in France or 4130 kWh/year in the UK. With such differences. IMO, this suggests that in the UK less money in per capita terms has to be invested to improve the grid or to reduce curtailment to obtain similar results compared with the US or France. On the other hand, because economies of scale, these investments in the UK have to be more carefully thought. I don’t know, may be my head is overheated.
Michael Hudson has been using the term Automatic Intelligence, but I think that still misses the key point. How about The browser wars are back, but this time they are powered by Average Intelligence.
I really like Artificial Information. Looks like information, but is less nutritious, and may contain up to 80% rodent feces and insect parts.
😂👍
“For years, these individuals allegedly hosted illegal poker games where they used sophisticated technology and enlisted current and former NBA players to cheat people out of millions of dollars,”
“an X-ray table that could read cards face down on the table, and special contact lenses or eyeglasses that could read pre-marked cards.”
Sounds like a case where people were unknowingly exposed to harmfull X-rays which ionize cells and has been linked to cancer — for those people cheated – they should get on with sueing the crap out of those in on the con – compensation for the human and constitutional rights violations which they were subjected.
Additionaly the extreme duress that their new uncertainty as to their health outcomes may lead.
“Can the West break China’s grip on rare earths?”
Until you see university courses being taught in how to refine rare earths to undergraduates and professors that teach how to do it, then and only then can you say that the west is serious in doing this. But if this never happens, it is all jazz hands on the part of politicians and they are not really serious.
Politicians and fund-raising ‘investment’ banksters.
All that “e-money”, zeros and ones — including the latest vapor denomination of various cryptos…
zooming around the earth at the speed of light— disruptive and damaging as all get-out.
The only answer is to send musk’s pop rockets into a space far far away from reality, and then use their returns to conquer the chinese/russian menace.
The answer is of course the west can mine and refine REE.
The actual question is how long will it take to build the mines and refineries that will produce the what you need.
I’ve heard that if all goes well and that there are no problems that develop, that it will take about 30 years to catch up to the Chinese. Of course by then the Chinese would be 30 years more advanced.
High speed rail from LA to Las Vegas is just a cover story to transport rare earths from Zyzzyx* Road-adjacent.
* proper name Scrabble players whet dream of name
The ambient / electronic track “Zyzzyx Road”, by Jon Jenkins:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_ggNdbQl8Y
Very nice!
Thanks.
You’re welcome, Glen, glad you like it. I can also recommend his collaborations with David Helpling, notably “Treasure”.
Your so negative,look at how germany is adapting to these challenges. the humiliating years of producing quality consumer durables are over, daddy has told them.
some might say that’s a bad thing,what with ww1/2 and all that
In the run up to the World Wars, Germany had large, mostly young, and fairly homogeneous population with a sense of self, whether we liked what that meant or not. What does any Western country have now?
Dutch disease?
US needs to greatly increase bauxite refining.
One problem is REE ores are very low yield.
Gallium ore is widely dispersed in bauxite. Refining bauxite for aluminum produces very low yield for gallium ore. Bauxite refining uses a lot of electricity. US needs that for GPU chip use. But, can’t make the Gallium….
China does a lot of bauxites refining US and Canada not so much now.
Other REE may have similar advantages to China.
A lot of REE are extracted from tailings of other mining, iron ore etc.
I don’t actually see the US doing the mining or refining at scale due to high capex costs and low returns, and massive environmental issues.
The later is a big reason for much of the mining/refinjng done in China and not the US.
I agree!
But “national (in)security” never worried about ROI!
Guaranteed 6% return on “costs” for R&D.
This do?
There’s a lot of domestic interest in these kinds of things. There is a base of students who would like to pursue mining engineering as a career. We’ll see if our market gods allow that double coincidence of want to produce something lasting.
I may get in trouble with this one (assumptions about “best”, but this is according to my retired mining engineer father-in-law), but let’s see what’s up at the two best mining universities in America:
Critical Minerals – Colorado School of Mines
https://www.mines.edu/critical-minerals-research/
MONTANA TECH RESEARCHERS AT FOREFRONT OF EFFORTS TO BRING RARE EARTH ELEMENT MINING, PROCESSING TO U.S. SHORES
https://www.mtech.edu/news/mnews/2023/06/montana-tech-researchers-at-forefront-of-efforts-to-bring-rare-earth-element-mining-processing-to-u.s-shores.html
But I agree with you that the more important aspect is what our “market gods” want. This is pretty much the same brain trust that decided off shoring America’s industrial base was a good idea. And that’s really the problem, America’s elites are constantly propped up, never allowed to fail, just blithely get to make bad decision after bad decision and still show up on a Sunday talking heads show as “the experts” on how to run the country.
“Ukraine: Donald Trump pivots again”
He does and he doesn’t. He flip-flops in the same way that Macron does. One day he is all in on Zelensky and then a week later he is talking to Putin. But when you watch what he does, it tells a different story. He always escalates against Russia and arranges provocations, just so he can get ‘leverage’ over Putin. So he will send new weapons to the Ukraine, approve an attack on Russia’s nuclear triad, does more sanction against Russia, especially it’s oil industry, and now he is talking about Tomahawks. He never, ever eases off against Russia with any of these measures but just ramps up more and more. This is now absolutely Trump’s war now as he has fully gone with the neocons and made this war his own. And if the Ukraine collapses, the failure is going to be entirely his lock, stock and barrel.
Exactly, TRK.
Remember when he said he would end the Ukraine war in 24 hours? Either it was never his intention and he outright lied, or he was deeply unserious making such an important claim; in both cases he should have never been permitted to occupy the presidency.
How many people have preventably died since? It’s all a consequence-free game to these psychos.
“Vaccine Skeptics Said That COVID Shots Would Cause Mass Death. We’re Still Here. Reason”
A couple of points. First, the author, Ronald Bailey, essentially sets up a straw man, which quickly becomes clear when he begins by quoting a small number of obviously extreme skeptics. Here’s one example:
The category of COVID “vaccine skeptics” was extremely broad, but I think it fair to say that the vast majority were skeptical based on perfectly reasonable grounds. They would include at least one, if not a combination of these points:
– the mRna vaccines had not been tested for long-term effects
– they were being used on short “emergency authorization” notice, which, among other things, absolved their manufacturers from legal claims should things go wrong (i.e. a no-lose proposition for Big Pharma)
– they were widely marketed dishonestly (e.g. as preventing COVID, and/or its transmission)
– they were pushed on everyone, despite a good deal of evidence suggesting that only those who were most vulnerable to COVID should have been mandated, or targeted
Beyond that, the author ignores the very real side-effects issues that remain concerning.
On a related note, readers might find the following excerpt from a 2000 article of his, in the same publication. It was entitled:
Bailey uses something of the same technique in the earlier article, but I’ve chosen two paragraphs from his conclusion:
In summary, I wouldn’t have much confidence in the author’s ability to proclaim when concerns about something should be considered to have been wrong.
From Escape Key:
The Financialisation of Compliance
“Imagine your payment for a product doesn’t go through until a third party confirms the item meets certain criteria — carbon footprint, ‘ethical sourcing’, regulatory compliance… whatever. Not a voluntary check you choose to make, but a programmed condition built into the payment itself.
The infrastructure to make this work is being built right now by the world’s most powerful financial institutions, and they’re surprisingly explicit about it. What’s more: it’s no longer just pilots and prototypes.
Parts of this system are already operational.”
https://escapekey.substack.com/p/the-financialisation-of-compliance
Carbon footprint panic ex-China and India isn’t going to change much on the margin. They build so many coal plants so fast, for example, that their carbon increase dwarfs whatever decrease or even neutral efforts occur in the West.
Weaponizing that with a social credit system is another punishment and control method to pacify the population.
um, ‘pacify the population’ or control an increasingly irritated population. See also the late 1880’s-90’s US population and the rise of state level populist parties, which elected many member to Conress and state lege. Scared the daylights out of the estab Dem and GOP parties. (The old estab Dem and GOP parties hated that populist intrusion on their fixed, corrupt, political control at the time. Tweed, Pendergast, etc.) / ;)
The Bosses of the Senate.
https://www.alamy.com/the-bosses-of-the-senate-illustration-from-puck-image186173748.html
See also this old Puck Magazine cartoon about the US Senate from the time. This wiki image allows large enlargements of the cartoon for better reading of the text.
The Bosses of the Senate. From wiki.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bosses_of_the_Senate#/media/File:The_Bosses_of_the_Senate_by_Joseph_Keppler.jpg
Yes, linking to this cartoon twice because it’s so representative of that ‘Gilded Age’ time.
And, of course, it will surprise no one to see that in the cartoon the ‘bosses of the Senate’ resemble large, cloth, money bags dressed in top hats and coat tails.
This is pretty interesting considering how difficult accountability is in nation -to-nation environmental policy
Thank you for the plantidote!
A couple of weeks ago Putin stated a potential imminent announcement of “new weapons”; reader NN Cassandra suggested it might be the nuclear-powered cruise missile which was reportedly in the works, which Polar Socialist then identified as the Burevestnik missile.
This may not qualify as such an announcement, but TASS has reported the following statement by Putin regarding a test of that missile:
Russia’s Burevestnik nuclear-powered cruise missile covers 8,700-mile distance
Can it reach New Zealand? Asking for a friend.
I think the shtick about the Burevestnik is that it can attack US after taking a detour over NZ, or Antarctica, or some other crazy way point.
My friend, who for some reason is fascinated with survival bunkers, says “Thank you!”
RAND Urges for Major Chinese Re-Think Amidst Widespread Recognition of China’s Awakening – Simplicius Substack
Not really an all-new strategy for RAND to spout. Excerpt from a 2023 paper – not specifically about China however, it proposes an approach to dealing with conflicts in general:
https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RBA1862-1.html
What Is a Less-Hardline Approach?
When two states are rivals or have significant differences, they can choose either a hardline or a less-hardline approach toward each conflict of interest. A state adopts a hardline approach when it tries to achieve its goals by outmaneuvering or coercing a rival and does not seek a resolution that accounts for the rival’s interests. In contrast, a state adopts a less-hardline approach when it seeks to advance its own interests by proactively addressing what it perceives to be the rival’s interests or concerns. We focus on less-hardline approaches in peacetime rather than concessions made in a crisis to avoid war or during an ongoing war to end the fighting.
The defining feature of a less-hardline approach is a state’s willingness to address the other side’s concerns as a means of achieving its own goals. However, less-hardline approaches can vary in breadth and depth, from small compromises on peripheral issues to larger concessions on more fundamental conflicts of interest. In addition, a state can shift toward a more conciliatory policy in one area even as it sustains hardline policies in others. Moreover, a less-hardline approach can still involve a tough stance during negotiations.
>Invisible luxury: How China’s affluent are spending on intangibles
Both the Communist Party and the general public in China disapprove of showing off material wealth. Therefore, the shift toward experiential consumption among the wealthy is a natural trend.
All so familiar…
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jefffromm/2023/11/09/gen-z-and-affluent-consumers-are-re-shaping-the-experience-economy/
How Gen Z And Rich Consumers Are Re-Shaping The Experience Economy
https://www.businessinsider.com/sc/consumer-spending-is-shifting-to-purpose-passion-and-bucket-lists?op=1/
Why consumer spending power is shifting toward purpose, passion, and bucket lists
And I’m not going to blow up the comments section with all the “wellness” promotion in the USA over time.
Some may be more so than others, but “natural” economic trends could be another discussion.
RAND Urges for Major Chinese Re-Think Amidst Widespread Recognition of China’s Awakening – Simplicius Substack
It’s only their proposal about “Less Hardline Approaches” – spouted previously – repurposed.
Can Anyone Rescue the Trafficked Girls of L.A.’s Figueroa Street? (NY Times via archive.ph)
Imagine if Trump bothered to do any good with all his federal forces.
It’s a thin line between the illusion of civil society and an openly brutal world.
What’s interesting is what’s not discussed. Nothing about the John’s, little about the slavers. Just the inescapable horror of it all and the understaffed local police attempt to temper it all. It’s both unsettling and vacuous at once. No causality, no solutions, just raw horror. It’s also hyper local. No comparisons to other cities or countries.
Good observation, Jason. It carefully avoids placing this kind of misery in a larger systemic context, which it likely doesn’t want people to think about too hard.
In the public interest I decided to try to find what company the driver was working for, and as per usual the people who were hiring the immigrant are nowhere to be seen. Anecdotally, I’ve driven the west coast several times in the last few years and I-5 between stockton and LA is a plague of amazon contractors driving, not always very well, all sorts of tow motors, there’s a little sticker on the back of the container that gives it away. And I can’t think of anyone on earth planet who loves him some cheap labor more than…you know who I’m talking about…
Every once in a while escapist fiction can provide a respite from the crazy.
Lois Bujold’s “Vorkosigan” series is first rate space opera and Larry Correa’s “Monster Hunter International” is straight up B movie entertainment with one of the best “Hooks” I have encountered…”One day I lived the American Dream, I threw my boss out of a 14th floor window”.
Stay safe and take an occasional break from the show.
Don’t know if you’ve seen this so here’s a link:
Baen Book Free Library
https://www.baen.com/allbooks/category/index/id/2012?page=1&q=&dir=DESCorder=release_date&pageSize=30&pageSize=30&filter=release_date&dir=ASC&hideBundles=0&hideEarcs=0
Here’s a better link – the web page doesn’t like all the extra terms:
Baen Book Free Library
https://www.baen.com/allbooks/category/index/id/2012
Big thumbs up on both those!
For something gentler, I recommend the “Beware of Chicken” series.
And the Baen freebies….mmmmm…..
re: COVID-19 Files Berlin
This may only be local news but for those non-Germans who are still interested as reported by BERLINER ZEITUNG
machine-translation
Berlin’s Corona protocols
“No information directly to the press”: What Berlin’s crisis managers should keep quiet about during the pandemic
The Corona crisis managers repeatedly wrestled with their information policy – not only towards the public. There were also internal disputes.
https://archive.is/H2cKV
re: US podcast on “general strike”
COVERT ACTION MAGAZINE
A General Strike Can Change Everything
By Rachel Hu and Chris Garaffa
52 min.
https://covertactionmagazine.com/2025/10/22/covertaction-bulletin-a-general-strike-can-change-everything/
What a farce
‘No Idea How Long People Can Hold Out’: Federal Workers Feel Brunt of Shutdown (NY Times via archive.ph)
All avoidable, if liberal Democrats had made the subsidies permanent under the great Joe Biden. All avoidable today, if Senate Republicans simply passed the CR with 51 votes.
This misery is a choice. This is the casual indifference of the elite. You can’t speak of greatness of a national that can’t even “fund” its government. (And does so with keystrokes, not taxes.)
Regarding the Democrats’ identity crisis–I will never understand why they thought the working class still supported them. My home town was destroyed by NAFTA, as was most of our industry. Did they think we didn’t notice? Indeed, calling someone a ‘Democrat’ has long been an insult among the working class. They not only ignored the boarded up towns, tent cities and drugged zombies, but were openly delighted with the fate of us evil gun and Bible clinging deplorables. I never voted for a Republican, ever, but I think the Democrats need to collapse and turn into some other party.
Some interesting and consequential news:
https://scheerpost.com/2025/10/26/first-circuit-judges-strike-down-israel-lobby-suit-against-mit-for-permitting-gaza-protests/
….
The judges note that the plaintiffs do not allege that the pro-Palestine protesters engaged in name-calling that demeaned Jews. Rather, they are accused of having criticized the actions of the state of Israel. The plaintiffs maintained that criticizing Israel is antisemitic because so many Jews make Zionism part of their identity.
The panel laughed this position out of court. “Plaintiffs are entitled to their own interpretive lens equating anti-Zionism (as they define it) and antisemitism. But it is another matter altogether to insist that others must be bound by plaintiffs’ view. Plaintiffs’ equation finds no consensus support in dictionary definitions. Nor does a review of the academic literature point to any consensus that criticism of Zionism is antisemitic.”
….
Thank you Kouros, adding (from the decision):
Thanks for these bits both.
Hope springs eternal. No joint statement. Just a pause. TACO as usual. Compare to Canada where Trump holds all the cards.
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/10/26/trump-china-trade-tariffs.html
How the Horse came to be Ridden 3 Quarks Daily
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Great story and it made me think of the Zebra, which has steadfastly refused domestication, even though it looks like a horse with racing stripes~
I estimate there to be 300 horses around these parts, and maybe 7 of ’em get ridden, the rest are just ungodly big animals with a large feed and vet bill, that hang out.
Yeah, a great story, a key point was the genetic change that allowed horses to carry more weight (ie human riders) on their backs. Quite a revolution for us bipeds. I love horses, but only from afar, as I could never manage to have one. And Zebras? Best just leave them as they are, our horses, having passed from our use as transportation transition to a new status, as you say. Still, if I could have one I would, even without purpose…
wowsers Now onto further thought processes as to the conjoined principle. What effect did the then new horse relationship and humanities’ social relations align? How as[sic] inequality was propelled?
From ‘Zoom towns’ to land of doom and gloom: Pandemic-era hot spots are now full of desperate sellers Daily Mail
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
We were a pandemic-era hot spot with precious little in the way of inventory of real estate before & after Covid on account of AirBnB et al. If anything out of towners bought here specifically to do short term rentals on.
621 out of 1300 domiciles are STR’s, and by all accounts everybody with a garage mahal for rent did great this summer, only encouraging some of the 679 other home owners not yet playing the game~
From Reason Magazine on Covid Vaccines: “Disclosure: I have had nine mRNA COVID-19 shots so far. “
Re: Chinese people exercising
I guess you’d have to call the 1970’s the most active period for Americans from a doing physical stuff perspective.
10k’s popping up all over the place, peeps running 6.2 miles. I think just walking 6.2 miles would be enough to do in a bunch of us.
Tennis was at its height of popularity and what a workout-it came with its own names for injuries-such as ‘tennis elbow’.
Racquetball courts were all over the place, a much more aggressive flavor of paddle sport, I always thought.
Aside from the resurgence in popularity among young adults in hiking and backpacking, I don’t really see much physicality being exhibited compared to once upon a time.
Dunno. Jogging and aerobics were 1980s fads.
And your examples skew elite. For many, sports was softball, baseball, basketball, volleyball.
True that…
I played little league along with every other boy in town, although they was a lot less participation in Pop Warner, baseball still being the top dog of sports 50 years ago~
I was on a university racquetball team. The elites played squash.
I was diagnosed with tennis elbow but all I was doing was playing the violin. I found a few simple exercises that corrected it. My main exercise is walking.
Genocide is in making life unsustainable, even absent the bombing, it continues. From Truthout:
I can barely imagine these conditions. It seems to me that all of Gaza is now one displacement camp.
re: RU-USA
POLITICO
No clue what POLITICO is construeing from a few bits.
But nobody knows anything. I guess.
‘Diplomatic solution’ to end Ukraine war in sight, Russian envoy says
Kirill Dmitriev, Putin’s special presidential representative, is set to meet with Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff on Saturday in Florida.
Oct. 25th
https://www.politico.eu/article/diplomatic-solution-end-war-ukraine-russia-envoy-kirill-dmitriev/
The only substantial actual quote by Dmitriev in this huge headlined text:
re: Zelensky “You know, his previous position was that Russia should leave completely. So actually, I think we are reasonably close to a diplomatic solution that can be worked out,” Dmitriev said.
On a secondary note: Is there a SINGLE US DEMOCRAT making public demands for a serious peace with Russia???
Considering that the fate of mankind is on the line if something really goes south (we got no 100% fail-safe) kinda in-te-re-sting.
Speaking of responsibility & leftwing-ism vs. “isolationist GOP”, n’ stuff…
Currently the left rallying around the flag – to my humble and small European hill perspective – couldn’t be less provincial.
Yes: Gaza. But then there is not much more, or is there?
(Venezuela as of late but only because of those rubber boats getting blown out of the ocean by F-35s.)
Apparently the US Left today is only capable of either coalescing with Neocon globalism (remember Matt Duss?) as a sick aberration of “international concepts”. Or ignoring the rest of the world altogether.
I at least don´t see the the big schemes of former Third World solidarity of the old era.
For the current moment is seems as if Mamdani´s very cautious – understandibly so – no-political-violence strategy utters such a fallout as to ignore all cases that do not fit immediate and undisputable contextualization in terms of good (Gaza) vs. evil (Israel).
Out of question that one must acknowlegde that it is historic how that worked to his benefit. (However only thanks to the preceding formative bravery of thousands of students many of whom have ruined their career prospects for coming decades.)
On the other hand there is a reason why the old-style progressive lefitsts´ current platforms such as DemocracyNow, ZNet, The Nation, Common Dreams and a few more have mostly shifted their resources to Gaza.
Not least to the fact that almost all critical reporting is somehow tied to DJT. Speaking of agency…
To give merit to Russia from a more classical Global Southern perspective is mostly limited to outliers such as Prashad or Michael Hudson, latter conveniently categorized as “hardcore” economist. So no threat to political discourse from his side, they may think.
Or when did Michael Hudson last give an interview to Amy Goodman??? (my search result says 2018)
ZNET has been featuring him at least with Ben Norton around 6 times this year.
re: from B. Clinton to Trump
CONSORTIUMNEWS
Another piece in the realm of No Kings discussion –
by Norman Solomon
Corporate Democrats Paved the Way for Trump
Democrats may be denouncing the current assaults on social programs, writes Norman Solomon. But three decades ago Bill Clinton’s embrace of the private sector began clearing the path for Trump’s wrecking crew.
https://consortiumnews.com/2025/10/23/corporate-democrats-paved-the-way-for-trump/
2x CONSORTIUMNEWS on Israel/Gaza
1) A Tale of Two Chants
U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer wanted punk band Bob Vylan prosecuted for chanting “Death to the IDF!” Now he’s bullying police to let Israeli football thugs into the U.K. to chant “Death to the Arabs!”
by Jonathan Cook
https://consortiumnews.com/2025/10/24/jonathan-cook-a-tale-of-two-chants/
2) ICJ Exposes Israeli Lies About UNRWA
The international court said Israel had “not substantiated its allegations that a significant number of UNRWA employees were members of Hamas.”
by Julia Conley
https://consortiumnews.com/2025/10/23/icj-exposes-israeli-lies-about-unrwa/