UFO sightings and nuclear weapons tests linked in ‘significant’ new findings Interesting Engineering
Climate/Environment
RAVAGED The Gleaner
The Advanced Dvorak Technique (ADT) satellite-derived intensity estimate peaked at 185 knots for #Melissa — which, according to the developer at CIMSS, is the highest value to date for any tropical cyclone. pic.twitter.com/Bu0XMbREvV
— Scott Bachmeier (@CIMSS_Satellite) October 28, 2025
Rising heat kills one person a minute worldwide, major report reveals The Guardian
Faster sea level rise threatens China’s coastal megacities Climate & Capitalism
Pandemics
Traverse City Is Now Home To America’s First National Long COVID Treatment Center The Ticker. ‘…with a focus on “providing comprehensive, research-driven care for an estimated 30 million Americans affected by long COVID using technology developed by HealthBio Inc.” HealthBio is led by Dr. Bruce Patterson, formerly the director of clinical virology and co-director of the AIDS Research Center at Stanford University.
Canada is poised to lose its measles elimination status — and the US could, too CNN
Louisiana officials waited months to warn public of whooping cough outbreak NPR
India
India launches cross-border drone strike on Myanmar village, killing child and separatist commander’s son Myanmar Now
Japan
Japan and Philippines boost security ties amid South China Sea dispute Manila Times
How Can Japan Handle Its $550 Billion Trump Problem? Moon of Alabama
China?
Trump is poised to end Washington’s Decade of the China Hawks Semafor
Breaking China’s rare earth dominance could take a decade, Goldman Sachs says Business Insider
Backfire: Export Controls Helped Huawei and Hurt U.S. Firms Information Technology & Innovation Foundation. Background on source.
China Can Fight a Trade War, but Its Real Test Is Growth Reform Council on Foreign Relations
Citing David and Goliath story, Taiwan president says Israel a model for island’s defense Times of Israel. Uh-oh.
Trump-Xi reset could collapse under the weight of its ambition Responsible Statecraft. “Ambition” or agreement-capability issues?
Unless & until the U.S. withdraws its military resources in this part of the world, no “assurances” from a “flip flop” administration has any credibility. Using swear words to buy time won’t wash. https://t.co/x3zDZrzqoa
— Warwick Powell | 鲍韶山 (@baoshaoshan) October 28, 2025
Making Southeast Asia’s AI numbers stack up East Asia Forum
Syraqistan
Israel launches heavy bombardment on Gaza City as US says ceasefire holds Al Jazeera
24 children among 63 Palestinians killed in Israeli strikes on Gaza, despite ceasefire Anadolu Agency
‘Israel’ responsible for hindering captive body recovery: Exclusive Al Mayadeen
Former US colonel accuses Biden administration of diluting report on Shireen Abu Akleh’s killing in favour of Israel New Arab. Abu Akleh was a US citizen.
“The ‘No!’ of Ireland’s new president.” Patrick Lawrence, The Floutist
***
Israeli weapons firm opens first UAE branch The Cradle
Making another ‘desert bloom’: Israel’s water tech seeps into the Gulf The Cradle
Amnesty says US strike on a Yemen prison that killed dozens of African migrants may be a war crime AP
Barrack Warns Lebanon This Is ‘Last Chance’ to Disarm Hezbollah Antiwar
Deep Dive: Trump names first US special envoy to Iraq in two decades Amwaj
Old Blighty
Maccabi Tel Aviv row breaks Starmer’s cover story for colluding in genocide Jonathan Cook
How the UK Lost Its Shipbuilding Industry Construction Physics
Africa
RSF accused of massacring thousands of civilians in Sudan’s El-Fasher New Arab
Sudan at the Crossroads of Empire Abu Hureirah
Trump administration strips Nigerian Nobel winner Wole Soyinka of US visa Al Jazeera
European Disunion
The Inevitable Collapse of Hegel’s World Philip Pilkington
Collective Punishment in Montenegro Lily Lynch
ICCL submits complaint to European Commission over appointment of Niamh Sweeney to DPC Irish Times. “The Irish Council for Civil Liberties complaint focuses on the process under which former Facebook and WhatsApp public policy head was appointed.”
New Not-So-Cold War
THE THREE STAGES OF TRUMP WAR BEGIN WITH THE FIFTH COLUMN John Helmer
Lukashenko & Lavrov at Minsk International Conference on Eurasian Security Karl Sanchez
Thugs vs Wimps in the House of Dynamite Oliver Boyd-Barrett
Kiev fairy tales Julian Macfarlane
AFU against AFU; Who will take revenge on the Nazis? Marat Khairullin Substack
Bandera’s Double Agents Bandera Lobby Blog
***
Red hands and pig heads: Russia’s plan to destabilize France goes on trial Politico
French General Staff Gearing Up To Send 2,000 Troops To Ukraine – Russian Foreign Intel Sputnik
Italian firms to lose €140 million from toilet sanctions on Russia – union chief RT
The Great Game
Uzbekistan and EU Sign Landmark Enhanced Partnership Agreement in Brussels Times of Central Asia
L’affaire Epstein
Elizabeth Warren urges US regulators to investigate Jes Staley ties to Epstein The Guardian
South of the Border
Exclusive: US military officials required to sign NDAs tied to Latin America mission, sources say Reuters
The President’s Murder Spree Claims 14 More Victims Daniel Larison
President Petro Praises Seizure of 8 Tons of Cocaine Without Deaths TeleSur
Wall Street banks say Milei now has a chance to freely float peso Buenos Aires Times
It is now clear what is going on in Argentina: American investors bet on Argie USD bonds which took a bruising in August-September. The US Treasury bailed these investors out by propping up Milei in the elections through their bailout of Argentina. What an absolute mess. 🇦🇷🤡 pic.twitter.com/6N1T6z7Yxw
— Philip Pilkington (@philippilk) October 28, 2025
Trump 2.0
Inside the Trump family’s global crypto cash machine Reuters
Trump CFPB Moves to Bar States From Wiping Medical Debt Off Credit Reports Common Dreams
MAGA’s 9/11 Is an Assassination Ken Klippenstein
Judge blocks Trump shutdown layoffs, citing political retribution Minnesota Reformer
“Liberation Day”
Shutdown
Democrats Signal They’ll Hold the Line Even as SNAP Benefits Are Set to Expire NOTUS
MAHA
Texas attorney general sues Tylenol company over autism claims Texas Tribune
Democrats en déshabillé
Chandler data center project draws in former U.S. senator Daily Independent
New Report From Corporate Democrats Falsely Claims Medicare for All Is “Unpopular” Z Network
Healthcare?
What a ‘Private Equity Government’ Means for Public Health MedPage Today
Many voters say health care unaffordable, are open to new insurance system: Poll The Hill
Stillbirths in the U.S. higher than previously reported, often occur with no clinical risk factors Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Imperial Collapse Watch
Why Nations That Bet on Renewables Will Win the Next Energy Era OilPrice
Admiral Obvious Sings A Jingle William Schryver
AI
The End of OpenAI’s Nonprofit Era Obsolete
The Ultimate Infinite Piracy Machine The Economic Populist
The Bezzle
Society will accept a death caused by a robotaxi, Waymo co-CEO says SFGATE
Is Musk’s humanoid robot army worth $1 trillion? Oligarch Watch
Carbon Capture and Storage 😬
Seen over at the other place, posted by Ketan Joshi: “each blue line is what *should* have happened based on each report’s planned state dates. Black line: what happened” pic.twitter.com/iNFVe7qIdD— Ryan Katz-Rosene, PhD (@ryankatzrosene) October 27, 2025
Class Warfare
We Used to Read Things in This Country The Baffler
Antidote du jour (via):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
“Louisiana officials waited months to warn public of whooping cough outbreak”
Maybe those Louisiana officials figured that if they waited long enough, then whooping cough would be able to spread everywhere in the State. Then before you know it, you would have “herd immunity” in the community. Mission accomplished! And why not? That approach worked so well with Covid, right?
I don’t see how China agrees to anything with taco other than a can kick. They hold all the leverage, including the supreme court’s decision on his tariffs which may not drop until next June.
Here comes the Big Lie!
Also, anyone else notice how the India situation (Modi shunned Taco at the ASEAN summit) just dropped off the face of the earth?
We should lay bets about the Trump – Xi meeting. Mine is that Trump demands that China stops buying Russian oil, opens up their economy to Wall Street, sell the US all the rare earths that they need for the Pentagon and finally force Russia to agree to a ceasefire. And he will do all this on the force of his humongous personality.
Side bet – that an image will appear of Trump thumping Xi on the chest with his fat finger.
You left off what China should do for Israel
On Polymarket, the question “Will China lift rare earths export ban by December 31?” currently shows a 37% chance of happening, this following a long decline in likelihood, with a big bump up in the last week or so. No evidence that those placing those bets have actual applicable information, but it’s fun to watch.
China would be insane to the let the US buy rare earths for anything with any remote military application. Otherwise, they are simply selling the US the means to kill Chinese. . . unless the US agrees to reunification on a set time table and closes its bases and keep its navy out of SE Asia, but that isn’t going to happen. Yes, the US can get independent sources for rare earths in 10 years, but in 10 years, the relative power between China and the US will have shifted dramatically against the US. In the meantime, the US will have extremely limited capacity to replace its military capabilities, while its already over-extended. America will be lucky to hold on to the Western hemisphere. Checkmate.
Sounds like a decent bet to take
This is not a hagiography….but it seems that the Chinese leadership is not spiteful, unlike western leadership. They do have long memories though, lmao
Agreeing to resume soybeans buys, etc. will not change any structural trend. Why not make a deal?
If you want to be a leader and winner, you gotta be gracious—a lesson lost at Harvard and Stanford MBA and law schools.
China Hawks–
I thought it was funny that the Semafor article said that the 41 year-old Mike Gallagher had “retired” from Congress. No. He cashed in:
If you scratch a “hawk,” you will always find that they bleed green. Alternatively, it’s all about the Benjamins (Franklin, that is).
War whores bleed green.
An nfl team has a venture capital partnership with MIC connections?!?
Its all about how many sacks (of money) you get.
Pardon the thread crashing but my sources just telling me that the NPS want to close the parks because they, and particularly Yosemite, are being trashed by the unruly masses. Is true?
NPS has wanted them closed, because during Trump’s last shutdown there was a lot of rule breaking.
Its business as usual here, I read Yosemite has flier issues~
I’d guess the base jumper cables will be put up~
Moro Rock here in Sequoia NP would make for most awesome base jumping, here’s somebody contemplating…
https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2001/05/images/20010530-1.html
Indeed. Do note Nat’s post from yesterday on how WWE and UFC squillionaires have insinuated themselves into upper level corporate and government positions.
Not an encouraging trend.
IIRC the Packers are the only NFL team owned by the community in which they play. The other 31 are owned by billionaires, and the league bylaws forbid selling those franchises to any other community ownership arrangement.
You are correct. Sounds like the camel got its privatizing nose under the tent here.
> We Used to Read Things in This Country The Baffler
>> While Chinese schools are teaching students about AI’s impact on society—risks and biases in addition to basic learning—American schools are rushing headlong into serving AI slop as the only version of education children receive.
Fifteen years ago Officer Friendly surprised me by educating sixth graders about how corporate media was trying to influence their habits. AI in schools seems like taste-testing the kids for what flavor of cigarette they like best.
WSF’d. From Aurelien’s neurones to Crocs and Socks, our prior expectations form what we think the world is capable of. And plasticity is highest in childhood.
Good. The end of neoclassicism cannot come soon enough, and the best way to end Rome is to prevent it from scarring children in its image.
It is appalling, on a site devoted to critical thinking, that there would be an advocate for wrecking the thinking capability of children. Perhaps I am taking you too seriously. If /s-NOT, please educate me how this will make things better.
That excerpt reminds me of this debate:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oqtgr0ouFfY/
Jeffrey Sachs vs. Norman Finkelstein: The Great AI Debate
Sachs spouted so many of the usual fintech bro platitudes that I wanted to throw a shoe.
Finkelstein gets to the nitty gritty.
Sachs should stay out of the AI and Lab Leak debates pretty much.
The article didn’t even delve into memes and emojis, the semantic “language” that appears to be slowly, and then not so slowly, replacing the alphabetic written word. Some of the text exchanges that become part of the news lately are nearly incomprehensible to those of us not in the know. I really doubt that a smiley face, a couple vegetables and two or three misspelled words can convey the same nuance and meaning that a couple paragraphs of writing can.
>>>I really doubt that a smiley face, a couple vegetables and two or three misspelled words can convey the same nuance and meaning that a couple paragraphs of writing can.
Isn’t that the point? I had to buy forty year old dictionary set to replace the simplified dictionaries that are online or on the average spell checker.
I’m waiting for emojis to start showing up in names. “Hi, I’m AR-15⚢©borg and I identify as ♔/⚛︎, so make sure you get that right or else!” Generation-⍺ could go nuts with this. Dweezil and Moon Unit, eat your hearts out!
There was an attempt at “creative naming” with Musk’s child with Grimes, but some regulations interfered (they required characters of English alphabet to be used).
re: we used to read things in this country
my hometown has a daily paper newspaper that is still up and running. whenever i am at my parents house i read it every morning. a lot of the political analysis type news i dont care about, but it does have good coverage of local events. i am especially grateful for the part that tells you about any upcoming community events like a concert or craft night and such. it feels like everything in college communicates through instagram. if i want to know what events are happening, i need to follow a bunch of individual groups on instagram and see if theyve posted anything. facebook if it’s an event for old people. i maintain the loss of hometown newspapers is a huge loss for organizing.
over the summer i read Pushing To The Front, a self help book from 1894. every self improvement thing i saw was about stopping your screen addiction, so i wanted to see what self-help books were like before computers. one of my favorite sections lionized the idea of a “country boy” who worked on a farm and was not distracted by anything. there was a funny ancedote about abraham lincoln walking 44 miles to acquire some books he really wanted to read, and how walking 44 miles made those books much more precious to him. we live in a world with an overabundance of cheap information, so the issue becomes sorting through it all. a lot of older books i read digress into poems, while modern books will bold and underline important phrases as to direct your attention. i find great beauty in clear and concise organizing of information, but there’s such great danger of oversimplification.
“Maccabi Tel Aviv row breaks Starmer’s cover story for colluding in genocide”
‘Meanwhile, he must distract attention from the real antisemites – those on the far-right, ranging from sections of the Conservative and Reform parties to an army of white nationalist goons led by Tommy Robinson, a notorious Islamophobe with multiple criminal convictions.’
I have no idea what this guy is talking about here. Tommy Robinson is virtually owned by the Israelis lock, stock and barrel and I believe that they fund him big time. In fact, just the other day he got an invite to Israel by an Israeli minister and may be there right now-
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/oct/05/uk-jewish-groups-condemn-israeli-minister-invite-tommy-robinson-israel
I haven’t had a chance to read it yet, but maybe he’s referring to the fact that Palestinians are a Semitic people too? At least I was under the impression that all Arab peoples were….
Nonsense. Let be quote Wikipedia: “This article is about the racial and ethnic term popular in the 19th and early 20th centuries.” (we are now in the 21st.).
The only valid meaning of “semitic” is to a class of languages that include those spoken by Arabs, Maltese and Israelis (but very few non-Israeli Jews).
Okay, thank you. So it refers to peoples that speak certain languages like Hebrew, Arabic, old Aramaic (I would assume?) and other languages of the Fertile Crescent.
Palestinians speak Arabic.
I am aware how the word “antisemitism “ is used, but it just seems like a pretty inaccurate usage. But then I’m certainly not knowledgeable (one of the many reasons I come here!)
At well as Amharic and some other Ethiopian or Eritrean languages.
Language usage tends not to be accurate. But it doesn’t seem to bother anyone except for “antisemitic”.
I already explained the etymology of antisemitism before, so I will only give the TL;DR version: if you assume that the word “antisemite” designates an enemy of the Hebrews, Arabs, and Abyssinians, and not a hater of Jews and everything Jewish, then you will also have to admit that a “pedophile” is a friend of children, and not a sexual predator of underage boys and girls. Etymology has all sorts of traps and pitfalls.
As for that Tommy Robinson being both an antisemite and being “virtually owned by the Israelis lock, stock and barrel”, there is no real contradiction: ever since Lord Balfour, many of those who most staunchly “stand with Israel” are antisemites — of the hypocritical sort — because Israel represents the best way to get quietly rid of the Jews in their homeland. The family or political background of a number of those statesmen and -women who so vocally defend Israel is, let us say, “interesting” (Macron: admirer of Pétain; Meloni: started her career at the neo-fascist MSI; Merz, von der Leyen: high-ranking nazi officers amongst their relatives, great business relations of ascendants with the Hitler regime; Orban: honouring notorious WWII-era antisemitic Hungarians; Ukrainian banderists: self-evident).
“Etymology has all sorts of traps and pitfalls.”
Nobody uses “decimate” “correctly”…
do you have any evidence that Balfour was personally antisemitic? The effects of his policies (Alien Act) certainly were.
Something else interesting about this article, it spends pages denouncing Starmer’s pro-Zionist, anti-Palestinian actions but Jonathan Cook never mentions in it that:
– Starmer’s wife is Jewish
– Starmer’s children are Jewish
– Starmer has addressed Jewish conferences claiming that his ancestors are Jewish, he has Jewish family in Israel and he is a proud Zionist!
Is this a taboo subject for journalists, however independent, and Cook fears the knock at the door? Or is it a misguided belief in playing the ball, not the man; when politically Zionists stoop at nothing?
Why is there a cone of silence over this, even more than over the alleged Ukrainian rent boys setting fire to his house and car…?
Carbon capture–
It’s my contention that the push for carbon capture is coming only from the oil companies who are looking for taxpayer money to fund carbon capture to replace the natural sources of CO2 in the McElmo and Bravo domes as they’re depleted. Big OIl has been using CO2 for tertiary recovery in old oil fields in the Permian Basin since the early 80s, and to continue it, they will need new sources of CO2. So, just as they did in the 80s when tax breaks went a long way toward building the pipelines that carry the CO2 to the oil fields, Big Oil is looking for tax breaks and even grants to make the transition.
Carbon capture has nothing to do with reducing carbon emissions. Quite the opposite.
Sort of like natural gas a bridge fuel, ha.
The industry is actually interested in carbon offsets. However, the definitions of sequestration by the accreditation agencies would generally not meet scientific standards, so I would reject them for publication—the time scales are too short.
For example, I could get carbon credits for buying degraded forest land in Central America, promising not to cut it down for ten years (and making slight improvements), and then cutting it down in ten years.
Has anyone seen the front page of USDA dot Gov?
It says:
“Senate Democrats have now voted 12 times to not fund the food stamp program, also known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Bottom line, the well has run dry. At this time, there will be no benefits issued November 01. We are approaching an inflection point for Senate Democrats. They can continue to hold out for healthcare for illegal aliens and gender mutilation procedures or reopen the government so mothers, babies, and the most vulnerable among us can receive critical nutrition assistance.”
We are all 12 now.
ACA premiums have done nothing but rise (sometimes slower, sometimes faster) since its inception.
Basically, the Democrats are fighting for just trying to make that not so noticeable.
Re: MoA on Trump and Japan
The Richard Katz substack behind b’s post is well worth a read.
https://richardkatz.substack.com/p/the-mussolini-corporatism-behind
But is it ‘Mussolini-style corporatism’ or ‘Deng-style corporatism’. Or what Rachel Maddow would call ‘Putin-style corporatism’?
Allow me to simplify. Corporatism by any name is corporatism. No mention of Trump-corporatism?
“Ubij Turčina” is analogue of “Ubij Srbina”, but that doesn’t fit in the narrative this lady is trying to push.
“MAGA’s 9/11 Is an Assassination”
‘Miller had told Fox News after Kirk’s death: “The last message Charlie Kirk gave to me before he joined his creator in heaven, was he said that we have to dismantle and take on the radical left organizations in this country that are fomenting violence.”Miller had told Fox News after Kirk’s death:’
Charlie Kirk was saying other stuff the week or two before he was murdered. Like when he demanded to know where the hell all the money going though Turning Point USA was going and saying that he was going to have an Elon Musk style audit of the whole organization. Or when he told a billionaire where to put his donation when that billionaire told Kirk that he would not allow Kirk to have Tucker Carlson on his program. Or how Kirk could not ignore all the evidence of genocide in Gaza and was moving away from Israel as a result. But of course Miller would not mention any of that. Gotta go after the lefties.
That agitator is hooked on finding the “fomenting violence”.
Indeed. But it is surprising that Klippenstein, who is generally pretty plugged in, discusses this as “MAGA’s” 9/11 with no acknowledgement whatsoever of the split Kirk’s assassination has caused in MAGA world. It is clear that the Trumpian Right wanted to use this as a “domestic 9/11.” But they have not quite been able to do so precisely because of the questions raised by very visible conservatives like Candice Owens and Tucker Carlson and libertarians like Judge Napolitano. The extent that this is significant is shown by the degree to which the administration and its allies (domestic and foreign) are now trying to *repress* all information on Kirk and his alleged assassin, rather than carry out a loud Crusade in his name.
The Kirk assassination is getting the Epstein treatment by the Trump forces. And as with the latter the mainstream Establishment is happy to go along with this. For the rest of us I say “go Candice.”
She has been good on this issue and one of the few people to pursue the story. I did see this Breaking Points report the other day though and I’m not sure what to make of it since I normally just see Owens in clips posted by others. She was definitely not someone I’d watch or read until the Kirk story broke.
I think she is joking about the tech overlords being actual lizards, but the rest of the clip they highlight where she talks about demons being real makes me wonder if she’s losing her grip. Maybe this was taken out of context? Or she’s always been a hardcore biblical literalist? Or maybe the brain fog is slowly getting to us all?
As I say, those mortal enemies in the lib-Dem Establishment and their sworn Super Evil “MAGA” conservative Republican enemies can certainly agree on one thing: Charlie Kirk was assassinated by a lone nut named Tyler Robinson. And anyone who questions the official story is a crazy Conspiracy Theorist. Now let’s shut the f**k up and move on.
I was absolutely disgusted by that clip. It was absolutely taken out of context with the clear intent to completely discredit Owens as either batshit crazy or blinded by her overwhelming grief into falling into her insane “conspiracy” hole. The “lizard” comment was snark. Since she is apparently a strong Christian believer (Catholic, I believe) she may well use “demons” and “demonic” in reference to evil in that ambiguous way that many Christians do who kinda actually believe in such forces. I don’t know, but I had seen a longer clip from this segment of her show and that’s how I interpreted it.
I certainly don’t agree with a lot of Owen’s personal beliefs. And I stay skeptical about the information she provides on Kirk, as I do with any source. She may well prove to be unbalanced, or who knows, maybe even an agent provacateur. But I haven’t seen that so far. She has good insider information on Kirk and his organization, good contacts, and has asked many relevant questions about the assassination, its aftermath, and those who have attempted to use it for various political ends. To completely smear her like this from the “left,” in a manner very similar to that being done on the “right,” rather than address any of the valid questions she raises, is despicable – and completely unsurprising.
If officials want to reduce “conspiracy theories,” then they should perhaps answer some very basic and obvious questions, or at least avoid giving obviously false or ridiculous answers to them or shift to straw-man attacks that scream “cover up.” And by the way, that goes for Brigitte Macron too. I doubt many on the left have bothered to take that issue seriously, let alone actually looked into it. I am absolutely *not* making any claim about that, any more than I would claim to know what actually happened to Kirk. But the failure to answer easy questions or provide what should be easily available evidence and instead obfuscate, avoid, and straw-man in a way that suggests something suspicious is striking in that case as well. It might well be just to cover up Bridgette robbing the cradle years ago. But these clowns on the “left” treat it like belief in lizard people.
Thanks. She does seem to have good info on the Kirk’s organization and I definitely don’t trust the official version of events to date. I don’t know much about the Macron thing, but the fact that he’s taking French snark posters to court over it is hilarious. On a related note and much more important, the only politician I noticed calling out the Zionist entity for breaking the cease fire and murdering another hundred or so Palestinians was Marjorie Taylor Green. If there was any big outcry from the DC set, I missed it.
All of these I would never have guessed could happen and the world resembles an Ionesco play. Stupid timeline, and a dangerous one.
2 days after a Jewish fellow killed a German diplomat in Paria, Hitler unleashed Kristallnacht
Benedick Donald didn’t even wait that long…
Well you can’t let a ‘crisis’ go to waste. Who cares about the truth of the matter? Let the spin and propaganda begin.
Pardon me, but who are you going to believe, Rev Kev or stevie miller? Now really, be honest.
“View / Trump is poised to end Washington’s Decade of the China Hawks”
I don’t believe this for a second. Never gunna happen. Trump stuffed his Cabinet with China Hawks and I cannot see them sitting around saying ‘Well I guess it’s over. We’ll make our peace with China then and maybe things will go back to the way that they were.’ And it is not just Trump’s Cabinet. What you could call the Deep State is dedicated to bringing down China and maybe even breaking it apart for exploitation. It is part of the uniparty foreign policy and they will never give it up. To do so would be giving up on American dominance in the 21st century. Trump was the fool that they found to enact that policy but it turned out that China is not a pushover and has fought back. And even if Trump made some sort of agreement with Xi, it would not take long to undermine that agreement and salami slice it to death with new sanctions and new laws which the weak Trump would go along with.
The thing about Chinese feud, is 20 minutes later you’re hungry again for more confrontation
LOL
Breaking China’s rare earth dominance could take a decade, Goldman Sachs says -Business Insider-
This isn’t about China or rare earths, but it seems to me that there wouldn’t be any ability to do anything without the capability to stick to long-term planning. And while results are not always the best or the money always wisely spent (!!), that capability still exists.
And is it a straw man set up suggesting that anybody considered this particular project a quickie job?
I read this article, because one normally associates GSachs with intelligent analysis. so when the article says it takes 10 years to open a mine and five years to build a refinery, it sullies the GSachs name. Five years? Aside from how one builds a refinery for rare earths without refined rare earths, in what universe are the permits and many legal challenges a five-year process? The last mine to open in the US took 23 years – Kevin Walmsey (China Business Insider, YouTube) had a very detailed and well-sourced discussion. Whereas these GSachs numbers were pulled out of where the sun doesn’t shine.
My SWAG is hide reality to goose the stocks of Rare Earth companies the US govt (socialist like) is investing in because GSachs has bet big on them.
“In what universe are the permits and many legal challenges a five-year process?”
They already said who they are competing with on this planet.
A natural product of the US, having 1.3 million licensed lawyers and a predisposition for lawyers to end up as politicians.
Consider that China also seems to possess the patents on advanced refining processes. The US might be eating humble pie on Intellectual Property pretty soon, unless it can develop new techologies that can bypass China patents.
Boy, can’t post the link for the quote. The article is China’s Patent Surge And Rare Earth Innovation Supremacy: “It’s About Owning The Future,” from rareearthexchanges.com
What GSach knows about mines!
The “mine” for gallium is slag from bauxite refining, very small assay!
How long to ramp up bauxite refining?
Are REE dug from the ground?
“Citing David and Goliath story, Taiwan president says Israel a model for island’s defense”
The thing where it all falls apart is that China is where Taiwan exports most of their goods to and imports most of what they need in return. But Taiwan’s politicians have got to say what Washington tells them to say to keep them happy.
The first thing I thought when I read this headlines is that I do hope that Taiwan realizes they are Gaza in this David and Goliath Israel model they imagine.
Anniversary of Black Tuesday today…
Too many tier drops for one heart to be crying
Too many tier drops for one heart to carry on
AI is way on top now since sanity left ye
You’re always laughing away p/e at me
But watch out now, comeuppance see you sometime
We’ll wait for just a little while
And then the market’s gonna put you way down here
And you’ll start crying after ninety-six years
Cry, cry
And when the circuit breakers don’t brake, the machine stops
You’ll be right down there, looking up
And I might wave, lookie here
But I don’t see you waving now
I’m way down here, wondering how
Despair is gonna get you but I know now
You’ll just cry, cry, You’ll just cry
Too many teardrops for one heart to be crying
Too many teardrops for one heart to carry on
You’re gonna cry again after ninety-six years
You’re gonna cry again after ninety-six years
You’re gonna cry, cry, cry, cry now
You’re gonna cry, cry, cry, cry
Ninety-six years
Come on and let me hear you cry, now
Ninety-six years, woo
I wanna hear you cry
Night and day, yeah, all night long
Uh, ninety-six years, cry, cry, cry
Come on Dow Jonestown, let me hear you cry now, all night long
Uh, ninety-six years, yeah, come on now
Uh, ninety-six years
96 Tears, by ? and the Mysterians
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOCOMYGIfUQ&list=RDbOCOMYGIfUQ
“AFU against AFU; Who will take revenge on the Nazis?”
Maybe the regular Ukrainian army. Pokrosk is about to fall so Zelensky ordered the Azovs into there to hold the line but they outright refused to go. I understand that head military spook Budanov had to send in his own elite forces to hold the line but they are now trapped to. So I do not think that the Nazis will be popular with the regulars as this is not the first time that this has happened.
Apparently the Donald has gotten the message about the inevitable decline of Western power. So under his orders, we’ll be going back to steam and magnets soon. Someone should really tell him how useful the ether is for military projects too. Then we’ll have a real cracker jack force to take down Maduro – it’ll be a real lally-cooler!
That looks like an improvised stand-up comedy bit. If he was better at it, he would have added that elevators in Trump towers will be switching from electric to hydraulic. :)
Trump’s economy sure has a lot of large layoff announcements of late.
Paramount to Lay Off 2,000 Employees (NY Times)
Meanwhile, we have Trump’s vision for homelessness
In Utah, Trump’s Vision for Homelessness Begins to Take Shape (NY Times via archive.ph)
America is going great!
Living on another planet
So people get involuntary treatment, then get kicked back into the exploitative neoliberal capitalist system to try to find a job that pays enough to afford rent.
Yes, that’s the ticket!
It’s also worth noting that this does nothing to help the homeless that are fortunate enough to live out of their cars or on friends’ or relatives’ couches, the shorter term homeless that our system of housing as private property fosters.
LOL, yep.
Meta just fired 600 from its AI unit and Amazon fired 14,000, Google just fired 200 workers training AI systems who complained about working conditions. Let the good times roll.
The track record for this is not good so far:
AI layoffs to backfire: Half quietly rehired at lower pay
https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/29/forrester_ai_rehiring/?td=rt-3a
Exclusive: US military officials required to sign NDAs tied to Latin America mission, sources say Reuters
Who or what individuals are the NDAs supposed to prevent getting info??? Does it include congressional folks and what parts of civillian oversight will be eliminated or invoked? does it include the Antifa crowd (whoever or whatever a definition of antifa means, or, by whom or what group is making up the definition), or the radical left (whoever or whatever a definition of radical left means, or, by whom or what group is making up the definition)? dito any other made up name or other ill defined trendy word.
US does not want any Smedley Butlers complaining about the Marines fighting for big oil.
NDAs for top secret documents. Makes sense. Biden had secret documents in his garage, but he wasn’t sent to jail because he did not sign an NDA. :)
Society will accept a death caused by a robotaxi, Waymo co-CEO says – SFGATE
It’s really about how much responsibility for safety Waymo accepts.
Well, at least they’ve done the minimum of keeping door handles…so far.
I dunno, every time I get into the cockpit of the mighty Tacoma*, i’m cognizant that vehicles kill 40,000 Americans year in and year out, so many Christines as it were.
Never really dwell on it though, the price of 4 wheels good.
Its of course different when a machine kills you of its own accord, in particular if you’re a pedestrian.
* not so mighty as of late-the clutch on my manny tranny went out after 231,241 miles. I reckon that I pressed down on it a few million times
p.s.
Had time to kill-premeditated as it were and walked out onto the sales lot and there were more new vehicles than usual-and in particular at least a dozen new 4×4 Tacomas-which I thought odd, as maybe 3 out of 10 Tacomas I see are 4×4.
These have the not well received new in the last couple years V4 with turbo boost engine, and apparently aren’t selling well. The idea that a friggin’ truck is $46k doesn’t help matters.
$46k would have bought you a brand new Ferrari 308 back in the day-the Magnum PI kind
I think cars driven by people who f*ck up and kill someone is very a different thing than an autonomous car killing someone. People who make driving errors kill people, not cars directly. Although I guess you could argue that the person who did the programming is akin to the driver??? I dunno. I do know that I’ll never take a ride in an autonomous car.
If someone gets killed, someone has to go to jail. It’s that simple. People would not have problems with autonomous cars, if programers/CEOs/anyone go to jail for every person killed by those cars.
ITIF and background on Huaweii – is it good for background? ITIF has a clear economic warrior by sanctions bias (rather than say competition by best quality and technology and features) – their recommendation is to go after third countries to force them to ban Huaweii.
So its background argues that the ban was on cybersecurity concerns, and that was why it should be illegal for my barber to buy one. Hmmm. Anyway, its background neglects whether Huawei provides greater value to customers. Absolutely no technology discussion – just how to ban them. Hmmm – I wonder if there are conflicts of interest?
https://itif.org/our-supporters/
Qualcomm!
This is good.
https://scheerpost.com/2025/10/29/strategic-incompetence-in-the-age-of-trump/
I came across some AI web browsing hell by accident; not going to link to it, but the browser isn’t free if you wanted to actually use “AI” much:
They’re charging $20 for the “pro” plan, and there’s a $250 “ultra” plan. Can you imagine, paying for a web browser in 2025? That comes with AI?
Use cases are claimed to be sales, recruiting, data collection, and research and analysis, hooray!
The founding team looks like high school students for this, one of the kids absolutely looks under 18.
What a dumpster fire.
Wow, they posted on Reddit about it:
So all your data goes into their providers, be it OpenAI, or Google, or whoever’s LLM it uses. Yay! Their web site doesn’t mention which provider they use, so I guess you have no idea where it goes.
Yesterday I went browsing for a site to store and share some music I’ve been making with a friend. Just needed a simple site to host a playlist of current versions of our songs as we refine them.
Initially I went to SoundCloud as it’s always been the standard for such things but when I uploaded the first track it started “analyzing” the song. Read further and found they have all sorts of AI built into their platform now. Quickly deleted the song and looked into other options.
Almost every music hosting site/app I found had AI integrated into it for everything from analyzing songs (genre, bmp/key, sales strategies) to editing (creating splits, conjuring up new parts, creating samples, etc) and more.
After over an hour finally found one that simply allows me to upload songs, create a playlist, and share it privately.
Not sure how much of this is customer demand and how much is riding the hype and wedging AI into everything but it’s really annoying.
One: I don’t want to use AI.
Two: I definitely don’t want my music training AI!!!
Re – Why Nations That Bet on Renewables Will Win the Next Energy Era
I struggled to get further than “Russia’s weaponization of gas supply”, but did and it’s basically someone touting green using a non green point of view. Why the hell is the “strategic necessity of clean energy for defense readiness” important.
The articles’ “bottom line up front”:
“Unlike fossil fuels, which rely on cross-border supply chains and chokepoints, renewables draw on local, inexhaustible resources.”
You need megatons of lithium for batteries to overcome outages and darkness.
“Distributed networks of solar, wind, and storage systems create resilient power grids less prone to systemic disruption.”
You are prone to supply chains just not oil/LNG chains.
“The more distributed your renewable base, the less you depend on foreign suppliers to feed your grid.”
If you have mega tons of copper, aluminum and steel.
I rarely go to oil price to see the Brent and WTI pricings.
Not necessarily. You need lithium if you want batteries to be small, standardised, and portable, none of which are required at a national grid level. At very large scales, other options like pumped storage hydro are often more cost effective.
I’ve been unable to understand how Russia weaponised the supply of cheap gas. The whole point of de-weaponising Russian gas seems to be a feebleminded European political élite weaponising it against Europe after being conned into comitting industrial suicide by the Empire as it seeks to eke out its decline phase for a little bit longer than it deserves by flogging overpriced LNG to the Balkanizing European masses.
Apparently Russia can only wage war because of the cheap energy it exports. Admittedly around 15% of the Russian government’s tax revenue comes from the oil, gas and coal companies, but Russia consumes domestically 70-80% of what it produces, so I fail to see how that 3% of the revenue makes or breaks Russia’s war fighting capability.
From the beginning of the next year Russia will rise the value added tax by 2%, and as it is the biggest source of revenue (37%), it’s likely to bring in more revenue than the oil exports are shrinking (if they were, that is).
So, less apparently, it seems that the amount of oil Russia export has very little effect on it’s capacity to pay for the war (in the old school way, not the MMT).
I believe the only things Russia has not “weaponized” are rubber duckies. It’s just totally lazy journalism conforming to the existing mantra.
“MOSCOW, RUSSIA — A systemic crisis unfolding in the Russian grain industry over the last three years has reached its climax, as farmers massively abandon wheat production, and exports exhibit an unusual negative dynamic.
Nearly 35,000 grain farmers went bankrupt over the last five years, according to the Russian Grain Union, the leading business organization in the industry. The trend is only gaining momentum, as most farmers no longer have a margin of safety in the form of reserves accumulated during the industry’s more profitable days.” https://www.world-grain.com/articles/21828-russias-lurking-grain-industry-
Grain industry sources telling farmers the announcement of a deal with China will be sell the fact even. Cofco(Chines state buyer) bought US soybeans for the first time, 3 cargoes. ho hum
In 1972, the U.S. and the U.S.S.R were deep in the middle of the Cold War, but that did not stop the daily business of trade among nations. In fact, given the dicey agricultural policies and poor weather of the Soviet breadbasket, crop failure was not unusual. Soviet agricultural trade representatives often turned to the foreign commodity markets to make up the difference.
In July of 1972, the Russians began buying up foreign wheat, purchasing 10 million tons from U.S. brokers by August. Richard E. Mooney’s economic analysis in a 1975 issue of The New York Times states that despite receiving reports of crop failures in the Soviet Union and elsewhere, the U.S. government failed to appreciate the significance of the global grain shortage and the effect it might have on the U.S. economy. As federal grain subsidies continued to favor bargains for the Soviets buying American wheat, the price of domestic grain rose sharply, causing a food price crisis back home. According to John A. Schnittker in a 1973 paper for the Brookings Institution, the U.S. government wasted $300 million in public funds and lost the same amount in potential revenue by unwittingly subsidizing the Russian wheat purchases.
As it turned out, the shortage in Russia was part of a worldwide shortage in grain production that almost wiped out international stockpiles. Clifton Luttrell wrote in the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Review in 1973 that the U.S. government did not recognize this as it was happening because the government did not have a big-picture view of agricultural output worldwide.
At that point, sophisticated agricultural monitoring was only in its infancy. According to Gary Weir of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, despite using satellites to photograph grain-growing areas, the resolution was not clear enough to reveal much information on the health of crops, leaving the probable outcomes of Russian harvests opaque to U.S. intelligence. Afterwards, the debacle was nicknamed the “Great Grain Robbery.” To prevent another such calamity, U.S. intelligence began looking at earlier technological research.
https://earthzine.org/the-great-grain-robbery-of-1972/
Last week I weighed in on a Zitron post for the first time. Tldr: I think he has a general good point (costs are out of control) but he’s really over his skis with what is to blame. His theory on why Cursor’s costs have ballooned the past quarter was that Anthropic’s fee increases are effectively draining startups who compete with one of Anthropic’s business models (Anthropic has a basic code assistant compared to Cursor’s, I don’t think they’re competitors). I conjectured that Cursor’s big jump in operating costs was actually due to developing their own models instead of just fee increases by Anthropic, and model development is staggeringly expensive. Well, today Cursor announced they developed a new model just for Agents. As far as I am aware this is the first model for Agents, so it will get a lot of attention. I haven’t tested it yet so I don’t know how good it is or what really sets it apart yet.
I don’t mean to knock Zitron too hard, but this is one of the issues I have with people trying to report on something in detail that they don’t know much about. Anyone with a little software development experience who had used Cursor or the frontier models could have guessed that Cursor was developing their own models, they state they do that in their docs, they have settings options that have to be disabled if you don’t want them training their models on your code and prompts. I think he has some of the general direction correct (costs really are out of control! the frontier model developers really do a lot of unethical stuff! they also don’t have a real business case if their models fall behind, so they’re in a race to the bottom to consume everything and push out smaller startups who don’t have model development costs!). But I think using his analysis to predict when the AI bubble is going to pop is probably not enough to get a clear understanding of what is really happening.
“She who must be obeyed” went out with a friend for the day. She left me on my own to entertain myself.
That involved tuning into Bloomberg TV just after the Powell announcement. I do not do TV!
One guest said employment issues are structural bc AI!!! That implies to have positive ROI AI has to put half the white collar employment out of work.
A couple of other cheerleaders for AI on the cable TVized zoom!
The bubble is very fragile, the Bloomberg cheerleading is obvious.
What happens when last weeks’ NVIDIA GPU’s are obsolete in 24 months?
If data centers are anything like past data HW models they will be constantly revised and upgraded.
I suspect there are SW improvements coming that date the end of this generation LLM.
Where is that cheap Chinese AI we no longer hear about?
Where is that cheap Chinese AI we no longer hear about?
Deepseek came up in the comments yesterday and I discussed why the majority of my US customers aren’t allowing their users to use it (and that I use it and am quite happy with the results for my work).
🇨🇺🇺🇳 Only seven countries out of 184 spoke out against ending the blockade of Cuba
Against: Argentina, Hungary, Israel, North Macedonia, Ukraine and the US
Abstention: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Costa Rica, Czech Republic, Ecuador, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Morocco, Poland, Romania, Moldova
https://x.com/MyLordBebo/status/1983572279322644988
The level of vasselage here is staggering. However, I don’t understand Hungary here. Would Orban bark if the US allows Hungary to buy Russian Oil and Gas?
Speaking about vasselage, it’s not surprising that Hungary is there, but that some Eastern European countries are missing.
Told you he is a sneaky bastard.
Well, fuck Orbán.
Just can´t stop hating those evil Commies, can he.
File under Dems search for authenticity. Glenn Greenwald on Gavin Newsom.
Dems’ Embarrassing Search for Authenticity
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0vUd8vSY1M
America’s digital infrastructure is shaky (again);
Microsoft Azure challenges AWS for downtime crown https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/29/microsoft_azure_outage/
Oops:
BREAKING: Alaska Airlines’ website, app impacted amid Microsoft Azure outage
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJVkLP57yvM
I’m sure AI will fix this (not).
In this edition of LLM is being forced upon you, Gmail now has advanced “suggestions”, where apparently every few words I write are wrong, and helpfully Google is offering help bubbles like “simplify this sentence” and “improve word” choice.
Go to hell, Google.
Someday, we’ll all speak with the same monotone, approved voice, with only approved thoughts.
Revealed: Israel demanded Google and Amazon use secret ‘wink’ to sidestep legal orders (guardian)
Long piece. Joint investigation with +872 mag
The strict controls include measures that prohibit the US companies from restricting how an array of Israeli government agencies, security services and military units use their cloud services. According to the deal’s terms, the companies cannot suspend or withdraw Israel’s access to its technology, even if it’s found to have violated their terms of service.
…Israeli officials inserted into the Nimbus deal a requirement for the companies to a send coded message – a “wink” – to its government, revealing the identity of the country they had been compelled to hand over Israeli data to, but were gagged from saying so.
I’m surprised by no comments in NC on Traverse City long covid clinic. Google the various clues, participants names, the Texas based aggregator of primary care practices in several states that does not accept Medicare, HealthBio promoting off label use of a drug claimed to be the invention of one of the principles of HeathBio, an admitted “clinical trial” based on telemedicine without the rigor and patient protections and informed consent of real trials, and a video of a panel chaired by RFK Jr. that is basically a complaint about preauthorization denying payment for experimental treatments. This recalls the numerous treatments most proven of little value in the acute phase of the pandemic.