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Plan to Reflect Sunlight to Power Solar Panels at Night Upsets Astronomers Bloomberg (AFXH)
Removing 50 Objects from Orbit Would Cut Danger From Space Junk in Half ars technica
New research reveals what’s really hiding in bottled water ScienceDaily (Kevin W)
Researchers just unleashed microbes trapped in Arctic ice for 40,000 years: ‘These are not dead samples’ Independent
Climate/Environment
Renewables overtake coal as world’s biggest source of electricity BBC
Climate change is messing with global wind speeds, impacting planetary health Mongabay
Intensification of marine heatwaves and their climate drivers in the Arabian Gulf Nature
Iraq’s Amerli reservoir dries up: Worst drought in a century Shafaq
Asia warms faster than rest of world, impacts continent Nation of Change
Could another poor water year spell disaster for the Colorado River? KNPR
Rich nations profit from the climate crisis as two-thirds of climate finance for the Global South is handed out as loan Oxfam (Ignacio)
China?
How China is challenging Nvidia’s AI chip dominance BBC (Kevin W)
Trump to Unveil Farmer Aid as China Shuns U.S. Crops New York Times
China halts US soybean imports to hit Trump’s MAGA supporters Asia Times (Kevin W)
Snubbed by China: Trump team presses unlikely buyers to snap up US soybeans South China Morning Post
Koreas
Kim Jong Un says North Korea is deploying ‘special assets’ and warns US and South Korea Independent
Korea’s wildlife is vanishing, hunted to the brink of extinction South China Morning Post
Japan
Takaichi means for Japan and the wider world Asia Times (Kevin W)
Yen, bonds sell off as Takaichi win spurs bets on fiscal easing Reuters
India
Indian Think Tank Assesses Indian Trade Karl Sanchez. The climate change/species loss denialism in the aside, “India needs to plan for the eventuality of having two billion people…”
The Antipodes
Slowly, then all at once; Australia’s looming economic disaster Spectator
Record numbers of Kiwis moving overseas amidst cost of living crisis, rising unemployment New.com.au
Africa
Burundi endures ‘worst economic crisis in a country not at war’ Financial Times
Ninth night of GenZ 212 anti-corruption youth protests sweeps Morocco France24
South of the Border
Fishermen in Trinidad and Tobago fear for their lives and jobs after US strikes in the Caribbean Associated Press
Venezuela’s Maduro says US embassy ‘false flag’ bombing foiled in Caracas Aljazeera (resilc)
Milei Authorizes US Troop Deployment in Tierra del Fuego Without Congressional Approval Orinoco Tribune (Robin K)
Another Gen Z uprising?: Protests in Paraguay against the Peña government Peoples Dispatch (Robin K)
European Disunion
From Politico’s morning European newsletter:
MACRON KICKS THE CAN TO WEDNESDAY: We’re frankly loath to write anything about the French government, lest it change before you even have a chance to read it. But as things stand, French President Emmanuel Macron accepted the resignation of his 14-hour-old government on Monday morning — only to task outgoing Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu with leading last-ditch talks.
Vraiment this time: Should Lecornu fail to reach a deal by Wednesday evening, Macron “will face up to his responsibilities,” close advisers told French media. Which may mean he will call a snap election.
Let’s be clear: No one thinks Lecornu will get a deal…
It’s become a theater of the absurd, and we can already envision the key scenes in the movie version:
— The lone figure: Macron made no public statements Monday but was spotted walking solo along the banks of the Seine.
— Triumphant cat lady: Far-right leader Marine Le Pen, a cat lover, took a kitten in a travel cage to a crunch meeting at National Rally headquarters, Marion Solletty reports. “We are ready to govern,” said the party’s president, Jordan Bardella, as he walked in, repeating calls for a snap election in which RN would likely perform very well.
— Et tu, Attal? Gabriel Attal, the close Macron lieutenant whom the president elevated to the post of prime minister at the ripe age of 34 last year, went on TV and declared: “I no longer understand [Macron’s] decisions.”
NOT SO ENTERTAINING: The weakness of France — the EU’s second-biggest economy and only nuclear power — has consequences for Ukraine, Gaza and the entire European economy.
“France is too big to fail,” said one diplomat from an EU country. “So this endless political instability puts the entire eurozone at risk.
Macron ally calls on French president to quit early Financial Times
Why Macron’s meltdown weakens Europe Politico
Europe May Need to Fight a Currency War to Weaken the Euro Bloomberg
No euro for Hungary as EU ‘falling apart’ – Orban RT (Micael T). Orban recognizes that the euro is a roach hotel.
Old Blighty
Police to get new powers in crackdown on repeat protests after hundreds arrested at Palestine Action rally Independent
In the UK, you can be arrested for “terrorism” saying you disagree with a government decision Council Estate (resilc)
Veteran pro-Palestine campaigner Sarah Wilkinson, who was subjected to severe mistreatment in an Israeli prison, has now been detained by UK police at Heathrow Airport for interrogation.
Stripped of her phone and money, Wilkinson stands accused of documenting the Israeli… pic.twitter.com/zoWJrXjTyj
— Quds News Network (@QudsNen) October 6, 2025
Maniac Killers Cult, pt. I Events in Ukraine
Israel v. The Resistance
Trump’s Gaza plan puts Netanyahu in a bind Le Monde. Who writes these headlines? Israel has increased bombing of Gaza, FFS
Gaza plan: Looks Like peace, acts like occupation Responsible Statecraft (resilc)
The 1 Fatal Mistake the Palestinians are Always Making Alon Mizrahi
Israel-Premier Tech to change its name and move away from ‘current identity’Guardian (resilc)
Yemeni army launches drone toward Eilat port in fresh anti-Israeli operation PressTV
New Not-So-Cold War
Ukraine accuses China of aiding Russian strikes with satellite data The Times
An Ethnic Ukrainian Lobby Might Soon Take Shape In The Polish Sejm Andrew Korybko
Caucasus
The Ukrainian scenario failed: Georgia’s State Security Service intercepted weapons for protesters. TopWar (Micael T)
Serbian president warns Balkans tensions could spark global war News.az
Syraqistan
Election without voters: Most Syrians ‘unaware’ about Sunday’s parliamentary election The Cradle
Imperial Collapse Watch
How Russia forced the West to face its own decline RT (Micael T). Um, the US and I think at least France and Germany are firmly in denial.
Milken and Friends Build a $500 Million Monument to Their Version of the American Dream Racket News (Chuck L)
Trump 2.0
FUHRER FASCISM — HOW DID VZGLYAD KNOW THAT TRUMP’S MEETING WITH THE GENERALS WAS A LOYALTY TEST? BECAUSE RUSSIANS REMEMBER HITLER’S FUHRERREID OF 1935? John Helmer. Important.
a href=”https://www.jalopnik.com/1985689/portland-naked-bike-ride-trump-protest/” rel=”nofollow”>Portland Plans Naked Bike Ride To Protest Trump Siccing The Troops On Its Residents Jalopnik (resilc)
Shutdown
Trump walks back offer to talk to Democrats as government shutdown extends Aljazeera
Staffing issues see U.S. flights delayed as shutdown persists Axios
Democrat Death Wish
Dem-aligned think tank blasted for Blinken appointment to board Responsible Statescraft
Charlie Kirk
Just a Coincidence? Charlie Kirk Vowed to Leave the Pro-Israel Cause 48 Hours Before He Was Killed Larry Johnson. The 48 hour part has been rumored before, but now there is more support. The bigger matter is that this story is not going away.
L’affaire Epstein
Top US court rejects appeal from Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell RT (Kevin W)
Trump on pardon for Ghislaine Maxwell: ‘I’d have to take a look at it’ The Hill. fk: “Dear God! I think he is more senile than Biden.”
Our No Longer Free Press
New CBS owner David Ellison met with top Israeli general in scheme to spy on Americans The Grayzone (Kevin W)
What Will Bari Weiss Do to CBS News? New Yorker (Robin K)
Economy
Why the cost of buying economic growth is destined to rise South China Morning Post
America is now one big bet on AI Financial Times
‼️US FREIGHT RECESSION is getting worse:
The Cass Freight Index, a key measure of freight volumes, fell in August to the lowest since the Financial Crisis.
Weak consumer spending, housing, and industrial activity continue to hit demand.
The real economy is in a recession… pic.twitter.com/cOULggcMFh
— Global Markets Investor (@GlobalMktObserv) October 5, 2025
Billionaire beef boss says Americans crave so much protein the country is outpacing its own production and turning to imports Fortune (Kevin W)
Mr. Market is Moody
How a US Economic Collapse Could Reshape the World? Modern Diplomacy. Note this is pretty conventional thinking. Jomo has repeatedly pointed out that many Global South countries are close to financial crises.
The System is BROKEN! The Car Market Collapse is HERE! YouTube. resilc: “Lots are full when I drive by in Western Mass.”
Lighting the way for electric vehicles by using streetlamps as chargers ScienceDaily (Kevin W)
AI
AI knockoff of my book (L) versus the genuine article (R)
We need to rise up and stop the tech industry by force. Our livelihoods, our culture, and our ecological environment are worth fighting for. I am deadly serious. pic.twitter.com/MhaAuXyYFI
— Seth Harp (@sethharpesq) October 5, 2025
What Happens When AI Directs Tourists to Places That Don’t Exist? BBC
Wow, it’s really cool that we can use AI to make fake CCTV footage of people committing crimes. Surely this has no downsides whatsoever. https://t.co/SM3UIvJokO
— Joe B (@AstroJoeB) September 30, 2025
The Bezzle
The GENIUS Act is Anything But Ian Welsh
Class Warfare
What happens when giving is fuelled by hate? The rise of retributive philanthropy Globe & Mail (Dr. Kevin)
Craft Breweries Struggle as Sales and Appetites Wane New York Times (resilc)
Antidote du jour (via):
And a bonus (Chuck L):
Elephant pretends to eat this guy's hat..😅 pic.twitter.com/KVe6Ze6eq9
— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) October 6, 2025
For a change from our usual bonuses, one of resilc’s new metal art creations:
And a second bonus:
Epiphyllum oxypetalum, the queen of the night, blooms once a year in the night
Its flowers wilt with the rising sun
pic.twitter.com/oRgBmd8FiI— Science girl (@gunsnrosesgirl3) October 6, 2025
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
“Ukraine accuses China of aiding Russian strikes with satellite data”
It’s kinda sad seeing The Times, which was a great newspaper for such a long time, now reduced to being a propaganda broadsheet and repeating Ukrainian talking points. And I don’t know why Kiev has such a bee in their bonnet about Chinese parts in Russian drones as for a very long time, that is where the Ukraine got their drones from. In recent years The Times is just reporting trash. Thanks Murdoch-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Times
Since I don´t read The Times how is their culture part? Or whichever area where culture is being discussed? Are there still serious reviews, discussions, obituaries, pieces on history? If that was ever their forte…
In Germany the demise of once serious papers can well be traced back to the loss of quality of reporting and writing in that very space.
When there was still resistance e.g. against the “Agenda 2010” of chancellor Schröder in the early 2000s it was in the culture sections, not politics. Same with trying to fight the War against Terror in the US and the EU, surveillance state etc.
The Times has been an unserious publication ever since Rupert Murdoch got has mitts on it. It fills the mirror role to the Guardian in appealing to serious readers to the right of centre, whereas the Guardian pretends to be slightly left of centre. Both reliably establishment voices that toe the line of what is required. In this instance, every opportunity to slant coverage to favour Ukraine, even down to culture and lifestyle pages.
I consider it the New York Nudge. Nearly every article includes passing comments about something that the “powers that be” (large corporations, deep state, big pharma, MIC – you get the idea) want you to think or feel.
An example. In this article about AI, long and seemingly in-depth, a passing paragraph nudging “Russia Bad, Russia Bad”. (4th paragraph) A.I is Starting to Wear Down Democracy.
The Times in the original link is in the UK, not USA.
But both Times, UK and USA, appear to run their influence operations to the same goals.
I was writing satirical letters to Abe Rosenthal about the Soviet made rocks Palestinians were throwing back in the First Intifada.
‘Tis been a propaganda rag since Alan D got his CIA at least, possibly longer depending on opaque connections between the Sulzbergers and Montague Norman at BoE.
They all liked to hang with the Royals in the Bahamas all summer.
Zelensky is no longer a comedian but a sharp edged satirist, whose musings are way above everyone’s head, and the Murdock media organisations are geared to reducing their audiences IQs an average of 10 points a year so most of it is in negative IQ territory and understand everything arse ends up. President Trump is a prime example of the power of this effect.
Goooooood Mooooooorning Fiatnam!
The platoon was shifted back to the world in order to quell unrest in the Peoples Republic Of Portland, where in a daring early morning raid, a mini library was roused-with one banned book in 14 states confiscated, with said pulp perp coming along quietly-a war torn tome.
Pfc Jones asked if he could read it before burning… negatory on that I advised, slipping him a heretofore unbanned and frankly a little dogeared Penguin paperback: Fahrenheit 451.
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Cavendish
Slipping on banana peels where the grapes of wrath are stored
We have let loose the fateful sweet white 9 inch white sword
Neo-Anchuria is marching on
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Business as unusual is marching on
I have seen Banana Republics in the 3rd world-not here
They have built Edifice Wrecks empty of all cheer
One financial bubble after another, the reasoning not clear
Business as unusual is marching on
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Business as unusual is marching on
In the beauty of his thinking tariffs were borne across the sea
With a resultant inflation that effects you and me
As he tried to make us understand it’s a non-negotiable fee
Business as unusual is marching on
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
My Gawd, what is going on?
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
My Gawd, what is going on?
Battle Hymn of the Republic
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jy6AOGRsR80&list=RDJy6AOGRsR80
Not directly related to any of the above, but has anyone seen or heard about Tulsi Gabbard over the past few months? Things continue to go further “off the rails,” now with Trump saying he is leaning towards giving Ukraine Tomahawks.
Also, there appears to be a correlation between less Elon and more stupid foreign policy f(^*&ery, including, but not limited to. Venezuela.
I’m not sure that correlation shows any previous causation. Recall that Musk famously posted “we’ll coup who we want” regarding the ouster of Evo Morales, and that was before he took over twitter and became a right wing darling.
It does seem like we should be hearing more from Gabbard, doesn’t it? Only thing I’ve heard recently was the mention of her being trailed by airport security under the Biden administration, but that was old news that didn’t get much play the first time around, and was only brought up again for partisan political purposes.
Wasn’t she was relegated to Russiagate investigations?
One topic, several dozen people of interest.
Over the next week Hill and Bill are scheduled for their testimonies on Russiagate and more.
Fun times, maybe even some truths.
“Venezuela’s Maduro says US embassy ‘false flag’ bombing foiled in Caracas”
‘…US President Donald Trump is reported to have called off efforts to reach a diplomatic agreement with Venezuela, telling his special envoy Richard Grenell – who had been leading negotiations with Maduro’s government – to stop all outreach with Caracas.’
Trump sure has a funny idea of diplomacy. Bombing random boats and threatening fishing boats in this region, stationing warships off their coastline and having aircraft flying through their airspace while threatening to seize their ports and airports. Add to that Trump’s history of reneging on agreements and outright lying, how exactly is Venezuela suppose to conduct diplomacy with that?
Or, to put it another way, using taxpayer dollars and consumer funded illegally imposed tariffs, the US military is murdering innocents for propaganda purposes.
How Russia forced the West to face its own decline RT (Micael T). Um, the US and I think at least France and Germany are firmly in denial
******
I noticed this article right after reading the other big post on income inequality.
At what point do Western elites start noticing western decline? I doubt that Arnaud Bertrand and Bill Gates and so on are currently in any way affected. So why would they act?
‘At what point do Western elites start noticing western decline?’
Are you kidding? Germany is being rapidly de-industrialized, France is heading towards an IMF bailout and the economy of the UK is imploding. Meanwhile Latvia and Lithuania are reportedly considering remote participation in the Climate Change Conference in Brazil because they can’t afford the hotel bills but can afford money to the Ukraine. And yet Western elites are still talking about fighting Russia by the year after next. They have literally bet the bank – and their countries – on this war and have no idea what to do if Russia wins it.
But those aren’t the elites. Larry Fink, etc are doing great.
Don’t forget 1780s France. When the regime fell, the wealthy also got the chop. I’d call that a precedent.
Also remember that some of the most fervent revolutionists, at least early on, were also the elites–the Duke of Orleans, anyone? I always figured that they tbought they would naturally be the ones to lead the new regime once the old fell. Funny hoe that worked out. (Or maybe it did work…the Duke may have lost his head, but his son did become the king eventually–a revolutionary regime, too, in fact.)
I believe Afro makes a point here that has some merit though not too much. The West might be in decline but all those millionaires and billionaires who are in charge do not notice personally. Very much on the contrary what they probably notice is that the populace has less and less means to fight for social justice and that’s fine with them. Yet, they make their very best not to notice an obvious decline in many aspects other than the luxury items these people value. In particular their moral decline.
Moral decline? Is there even any kind of consensus on what morality is, anymore?
There are those adversely affected by decline and those who profit from it.
Maybe the question should be: When will there be no profit from the assortment of proclaimed declines?
And this…an entire museum to an alternate reality:
Milken and Friends Build a $500 Million Monument to Their Version of the American Dream – Racket News
It’s unbelievable the way Germany has jumped out of the trench and charged the machine gun nest with nothing but a bayonet.
According to their lore, it’s what Russians do all the time, and somehow end up winning (though they can’t afford the bayonets for every soldier, and some charge armed with bare hands, or shovels if they are lucky). Maybe they are trying to copy the recipe, just like Trump is trying to copy the parades (he thinks that the parades are the secret sauce). :)
On forcing the West to face its decline, it is interesting that, in the RT author’s view, Turkey is included in the list of Western proxies (Israel and Ukraine) fighting a rearguard action for the West against the new order. I always imagined that Turkish expansion into Syria was driven by internal reasons. Does it signal a Russian push to get Erdogan off the fence?
It’s hard to argue that Western leaders are making reality-based decisions yet — after all, they create reality with their words (at least according to their narrative)!
Naked Capitalism does a great job exposing the relentless propaganda we live under for most areas of this modern life but has a huge blind spot when it comes to Big Pharma’s relentless manufacturing of consent, and delusion, about vaccines.
I highly reccommend you suspend your pre-judgement and read XXX’s new book. If you can read that and not have your eyes opened, I would be very surprised, but would also be happy to hear any substantial rebuttals to this rigorously cited work from an insider position.
https://www.amazon.com/
I gave up on sharing my wariness about The Batman origin story for Covid.
His recent senate testimony will be more accessible to our readers.
I think NC has been the rare place where the effectiveness of the RNA vaccines/treatments has been questioned, fairly often, as well as the CDCs insistence on claiming Covid was not airborne. And I’d rather not give Bezos a click today, thanks.
Yeah, smallpox and other pathogenic microbes are our friends. They were particularly helpful to Europeans in wiping out those pesky New World indigenous populations.
If Siri’s fellow personal injury attorney, RFK, gets his way, a large scale real world experiment is about to be conducted, and we’ll see who is left standing at the end.
No kidding. Thanks for the rec and al, but I think we’ll pass on the ambulance chasing, ex Arthur Anderson CPA, and former clerk for the Supreme Court Justice of Israel as a reliable source on this topic.
How DARE you spam us. You left the same fuckwit comment on 2 posts. I am leaving this up for a bit so those who replied to see it, then deleting the body of your comment AND your entire comment history. Have also mangled your link for now just for fun.
This is why I am an avid reader of NakedCapitalism… well moderated, and straight to the point!
Here here!
Please– don’t mangle, REDIRECT!!!
To something fun!
https://rickrolled.com/?title=Statistical+analysis+of+vaccine+efficacy&desc=Verifying+access%E2%80%A6
rufeliss, as tis said.
🪦
Re; New Not-So-Cold War
From Black Mountain Analysis:
Tomahawk for Ukraine: Never-ending Saga of the Wunderwaffe to Turn the Tide [i]
In this Substack, I previously discussed several cruise-missile options — Storm Shadow/SCALP, Taurus, and the newer JASSM — and there is both technical and material availability to some degree to use the latter two alongside Storm Shadow. Tomahawk is simply out of the question.
Tomahawk is out of the question unless US directly enters the fray, Mike argues (as do the Russians). So it looks like the US war-machine will need another means of squeezing revenue from elsewhere, as if the Gaza genocide, the six other countries Israel has been bombing, the unwanted toys already sold to Ukraine, and hellfired fishing boats still aren’t enough to sate its appetite.
They will squeeze Tomahawk revenue by firing a salvo at Venezuela, or some other target of opportunity. Yearly productions is probably in dozens, so they can’t be too trigger happy with those.
You’d think that they would hoard all the missiles that they can for the upcoming war between Iran and Israel. And you would think that because of that, that Israel would be trying to broker peace between the US and Venezuela. Can Trump ask for a Nobel peace prize for not starting a war with a country that he was ready to?
Thanks for posting that analysis. I read the piece and here, IMO, is the money shot:
So this article is the equivalent of a cold shower for all the neo-cons who want to make it sound like we can just send a bunch of these missiles over on a pallet, hand them over to the Ukrainians, and say “there you go! Have at it!”
The deep integration with Navy systems makes that notion as credible as Trump’s Nobel Peace Prize campaign.
Meanwhile, Trump must certainly be getting classified briefings saying the same, which means he’s holding junk cards and bluffing.
Or bullshiting, possibly even mistaken.
Recall that he appears to be getting his intelligence briefings from officials who insist that Russia is getting its butt kicked and that Ukraine can win the war.
True, Trump may have surrounded himself with sycophantic yes-men too weak to tell him the truth.
I believe, though, that if there are serious technical issues such as the ones raised so brilliantly by Mike Mihajlovic from the Black Mountain Analysis blog that make delivery of Tomahawks missiles implausible, some Navy general must have put in a phone call to the White House to deliver the bad news.
Which leads me to conclude that Trump is knowingly bluffing with a 7-2 offsuit hand.
No way that’d happen, especially after that navy admiral got AI’ed into a low-cut dress, heels, and purged… navy-boy may as well have jumped into that barrel on his own.
On that thought, maybe we should take a closer look at Trump’s arm-candy the next time he walks into one of his casinos… Trump, that is.
It’s worth keeping an eye on developments in France over the next week. This is not your ordinary political crisis.
Having accepted his Prime Minister designate’s resignation yesterday morning, Macron did an about face and asked Lecornu to carry out two days of “final consultations” in an attempt to unblock the situation. If that failed Macron would do something vaguely defined. To the extent that anyone can decrypt what Macron is up to, it looks as though he is threatening the French political system with total chaos if he doesn’t get what he wants. The only reasonable interpretation of his muttering about “assuming his responsibilities” is that he will, after all, dissolve Parliament and call fresh elections, making three since 2022. This will not strengthen his position, but rather weaken it, but I don’t think he cares. It will be his revenge on the French people and the political system for failing him.
Consider: the only party that will benefit from such elections will be the Rassemblement national (RN). Straw in the wind: an opinion poll yesterday recorded 43% of those surveyed as favouring a Prime Minister from the RN. In 2024, their candidates gained 37% of the vote and this time it can only be more. The biggest victims will be Macron’s own party, which is falling apart anyway, but other parties of the Right will almost certainly lose votes to the RN as well. The “Left” electoral alliance of 2024 looks under strain, and it’s not clear that other parties are prepared to spend time building the umpteenth “anti-fascist” election alliance to deny the RN seats. The likely result is a move to the Right in the National Assembly, and a situation even more fragmented and unmanageable than now. The country will be ungovernable. This, in effect, seems to be the threat that Macron is making, rather like a suicide bomber threatening to blow up everything if his demands are not met.
Why? One can only speculate, but my interpretation is that Macron is a bitter and disappointed man. His contempt for France and the French was never hidden, nor was his desire to use the Presidency to go on to “better” things: perhaps the first executive President of Europe or something. But that hasn’t happened, his pet projects of impoverishing the French people have been resisted and he doesn’t bestride Europe like a colossus. It’s hard to know what he would actually do anyway after 2027: he has more money than he knows what to do with, and anyway he wants to be adored and obeyed in public, and treated like a monarch. If he can’t have what he wants he will destroy everything. He has already destroyed the political party system of the country, undermined France’s status and influence and brought the institutions of the Fifth Republic into disrepute. Heaven alone knows what else he is capable of.
A majority of French people now want Macron to resign, and even some of his allies (like Edouard Philippe, his first Prime Minister) are calling on him to go. If his ploy with Lecornu fails (and there’s every sign it will) and elections are called, then between a paralysed Parliament, a dysfunctional political system, an angry population and a bitter and resentful President, we could be in for an exciting eighteen months.
Macron acting like the proverbial spoiled and capricious child? Unsurprising.
Exactly, and nothing screams spoiled and capricious child more than the photos of Macron tearing up the Med on a jetski off the French Riveria in summer.
Perhaps a partnership with Tony Blair is in his future – I’m sure Blair’s co-conspirators can find some small country to throw up against the wall that Macron could later step in to run.
He can run Lebanon once it is totaled by the west also.
No one can run Lebanon.
A reverse Bonny Prince Charlie? I don’t think the English ever hosted a French pretender before (since they were the biggest French pretenders until the end of 18th century themselves…)
Might any noble titles be bestowed, and by whom?
Baron Macron
de Nemoursde Nulle Part?Comte Macron de Quelque Chose?
Vicomte de Rien?
Marquis d’Untel?
He’s a Key to the City Recipient, Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire. Perhaps he can find something to do there.
Hung upside down at a local gas station to be spat on and pelted with rocks?
If he really wants to keep out rhe RN as the ruling party, he needs to resign pretty quick because an appeal court said it will issue a decision on Marine Le Pen’s case – a pure example of lawfare – by summer next year. This may even mean that if he does resign this year, they may deliver a decision enabling her to run el pronto, as they say in Barnsley.
“Removing these 50 objects from orbit would cut danger from space junk in half ”
“The bad news is, since January 1, 2024, we’ve had 26 rocket bodies abandoned in low-Earth orbit that will stay in orbit for more than 25 years,” McKnight told Ars.
I notice that he does not identify who sent up those 26 rocket bodies since the beginning of last year. Now why is that? Regardless. Perhaps an international law should be agreed on that if you send something like that up, that you should be able to bring it back down again in a controlled descent. Or will private corporations refuse to do so as it would effect their bottom like. So would the Kessler Effect but they don’t consider that.
Blighted city gonna set my soul
Gonna set my soul on fire
Got a whole lot of money that’s ready to burn
So get those seaside highrises up higher
There’s a couple million Palestinians out there
And they’re all livin’ devil may care
And I’m just the devil with a lot of dare
So Viva Gaza Vegas, Viva Gaza Vegas
How I wish that those Gazans
Weren’t in the way
And even if there were no more
I wouldn’t miss a minute of sleep anyway
Oh, there’s casinos, and casitas, and seaside ideal
A fortune won on every Jared deal
All you need is a mass exodus and a nerve of steel
Viva Gaza Vegas, Viva Gaza Vegas
Viva Gaza Vegas with your ersatz fascism
And the local population crashin’
All their hopes down the drain
Viva Gaza Vegas turnin’ the rubble of a hubble
And turnin’ consternation into condos
If you seize it once, you’ll never have to seize it again
I’m gonna keep on my campaign run, I’m gonna have me some fun
If it costs me my constituents their very last Dime
If they wind up broke up well
I’ll always remember that I had a swingin’ time
I’m gonna give it everything I’ve got
Lady luck, please, let the dice stay hot
And let me shoot a seven with every shot
Viva Gaza Vegas, Viva Gaza Vegas
Viva Gaza Vegas, Viva, Viva Gaza Vegas
Viva Las Vegas, performed by Elvis Presley
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MO1KyNUOIs
“Trump team presses unlikely buyers to snap up US soybeans”
Just winging it here but perhaps Team Trump could coat those soybeans in chocolate and sell them around the world as snacks. It almost worked in “Catch 22” with excess cotton.
‘beans there-done that’
Soybean farmer after losing livelihood thanks to Benedick Donald
‘Soy what’
Ah yes! Where is Milo Minderbinder when you need him?
I suspect we will soon have tofu to go with all the rice that has been piling up on the food bank shelves lately.
I am sure the Prez will show them how they can raise soybeans for $14 a bushel and sell them for $10.22 (today’s price) a bushel and still make a profit.
“Slowly, then all at once: Australia’s looming economic disaster”
Presumably this link was included as a test of our neoliberal moron detection systems? Recently Bill Mitchell had a blog entry titled “My current number one candidate for worst economics article of the year” in reference to the UK Guardian entry by Patrick Commins, “Jim Chalmers’ budget victory lap outpaces reality as Australia’s debt continues to climb.”
Clearly The Spectator Australia has no intention of giving up Bill’s prize without a fight … 🤨
What could possibly go wrong with a country that depends on rocks and crops, I ask you. Both major parties now see debt as not being a problem anymore so spending a coupla hundred billion on nuke bots that we won’t see for a coupla decades, no problem. Our Prime Minister – “Albo” – I still consider a hack but the leader of the opposition seems to be really keen on fighting China and doing whatever the US tells her to do. Frankly it might be a blessing in disguise to have our credit rating slightly lowered to get our pollies to wake up to themselves.
I once heard a story about how back in the old days of the USSR a part of their aid to Cuba was through buying sugar, the island’s principal export back then. What happened is that, since there was a culture of eating beet sugar in the east, the cane sugar ended up filling up tons of warehouses and the commissars had no idea about what to do with it, but at the same time they also couldn’t stop buying it given the nature of the relationship. Now, that was a country (ostensibly) helping a beleaguered ally with strong ideological ties; can the US, every day finding itself new enemies among old friends, say the same?
– ‘Dem-aligned think tank blasted for Blinken appointment to board’ -Responsible Statecraft
The link didn’t work for me. This one does:
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/blinken-war-crimes/
The Dem think-tank is the Center for American Progress. The explanation is simple:
“Blinken’s appointment accompanies an apparent shift in priorities at CAP. Last year, CAP President Patrick Gaspard slammed Blinken’s decision to certify that Israel was complying with U.S. law surrounding weapons transfers… But Gaspard has since been replaced by Neera Tanden, a long-time Democratic operative who directed Biden’s domestic policy council. In a prior stint as president of CAP, Tanden faced criticism for working closely with pro-Israel lobbying groups like AIPAC. She also prevented staffers at ThinkProgress, CAP’s influential news and analysis website, from criticizing Israel or even mentioning Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to former ThinkProgress staffers…”
It’s just the CBS/Tik-Tok stategy: replace the leadership with ardent Zionists, which in this case simply meant bringing back Neera Tanden via the usual revolving door. This story is so utterly and disgustingly commonplace that I can only think of one other that rivals it in terms of repetition: the daily Gaza death toll.
Re: Blinken to Think Tank — correct link
New research reveals what’s really hiding in bottled water ScienceDaily (Kevin W)
Spoiler alert. Microplastics! Did you know that Polyethylene microplastics cooperate with Helicobacter pylori to promote gastric injury and inflammation in mice? That might explain why so often the treatment of H. pyloryi fails in humans.
Regarding the “system is broken” video about new cars whose window stickers have prices higher than I still owe on my house with more than twice my mortgage payment, Uncle Tony’s Garage has a related video where people are turning towards buying much older bread and butter cars as at least three season daily drivers. I’ve been doing that for years, it also helps being retired that I drive a fraction of what I used to. https://youtu.be/PlHxJgMGx1c?si=7nQVyakxy4xUTWsf A neighbour across the street inherited a 1996 Mercury Grand Marquis and a 2003 GMC truck from a relative and decided they’re going to drive nothing newer from this point on. They’re on a fixed income.
In agreement with the “system is broken” video, where I live I see possibly only one large new vehicle dealer who appears to still be selling some cars but some of his lots are also full of aging extremely overpriced “new” cars. Anywhere else I go, I see the same unsold vehicles over and over as well as fewer new vehicles on the road. A couple of my neighbours worry about what their next vehicle is going to be when their four or five year old SUV or truck dies, too complicated and expensive to repair. We’re all largely on fixed incomes on this part of our street. My wife nearing retirement has an employer who is already experiencing this the hard way with a dead Chevy truck he’s still making payments on that is undriveable at 60,000 miles. It’s only a couple of years old. If it were not his business truck, he would ditch it for something older as well because he’s fed up with what feels like a scam to him.
I just add this to the big list of reasons of why the West is in decline.
Post roughly 2018 cars are all rolling surveillance machines too.
aye. ive driven this beat up 2000 dodge pickup since 04, or so. dash was already caved in, and i tie the tailgate shut with rope…i intend to drive that thing into the ground.(then either obtain an even older truck(i like 69 chevys, or just collapse first and go with a buckboard and a mule)…but the clutch went out 2 weeks ago…drove it over there with the old trucker’s trick of idling down and jamming it into gear,lol.
cost $1200 for clutch, including an oil change.
talked to the mechanic’s wife for 30 or more minutes…and a lot of what y’all are saying was discussed: new cars are fer shit, are impssible to repair, and a $3 sensor somewhere will cost $1200 to fix…easier/cheaper to total it,lol.
she said she hears from a whole lot of customers, asking about old cars and trucks…if they know of any, etc.
i asked about the parts availabiliy for my truck, and she said:”warehouses full of that stuff…and cheaper, too”.
it has a tiny “computer” that does nothing but manage fuel injection and rudimentary diagnostics(old school, using codes that she had to hunt for in a frelling hardbound book(!!)).
doesnt talk, doesnt sing(i long ago removed the dingdong thing that tells ya when the door is open)…and if i could still bend like that, even i could change the oil, starter, alternator, brakes and such.
as ive said before, mom’s spaceship/suburban…total opposite (ding ding ding, flashing screen…look at screen and it sez “do not look at screen while driving”,lol.)
i cant even find the battry.
When teaching my nephews how to drive manual I made sure to let them know that you -can- shift without the clutch, and showed them how. Really, really bad for the car, but in a pinch…
Also the push start when the battery’s dead.
I don’t know if it is bad for the car if done correctly. I learned to “double clutch” from my uncle who drove trucks in the 20’s/30’s when the transmissions had no synchronizers to allow smooth shifting – so double clutch and no jamming it into gear necessary.
y’all made me look it up,lol.
its called “floating”, and is only recommended in cases like mine, where yer stranded and the clutch breaks.
I drive a 1987 Toyota pickup and a 1996 Ford Escort. I’ve been pretty happy with that combination, but when you drive an older car and you have promises to keep, you need to have a second vehicle as a backup. And repairs have become much more expensive recently, to the point where I’m starting to rethink my strategy.
I would note, however, that the absurdly over-priced vehicles seem to be trucks/large SUVs from (mostly) domestic auto manufacturers. You can still find a new Subaru or Honda crossover/sedan for literally a third of those sticker prices. I don’t know if it’s brand loyalty, conspicuous consumption, sheer pig ignorance, or a combination thereof, but I can’t understand having essentially a second mortgage on a truck that only becomes less reliable and more expensive to maintain with each successive generation.
Most of what I use a car for I can also do with an electric bike.
This is well worth a read, on this past weekend’s protests in Europe, the Global Sumud Flotilla, and a six nation tour on the history of Palestinian activism.
“Europe exploded with rage”: Global Demonstrations and the Shifting Ground of Policy, Rima Najjar, Medium
This, from Spain’s chapter, The presence of Spanish parliamentarians aboard the Global Sumud Flotilla was not anomalous — it was the result of sustained lobbying, cultural work, and testimonial amplification. Activists like Jaldía Abubakra — who would later join a segment of the Global Sumud Flotilla’s journey — have not only resisted criminalization but have helped shape the language of solidarity itself, insisting on the right to name zionism as a structure of violence and to treat Palestine not as a humanitarian crisis but as a political cause. The demonstrations of October 4, 2025 — massive, coordinated, and defiant — are testament to this slow, strategic buildup. They mark not just a rupture, but a reckoning: the moment when symbolic solidarity gave way to infrastructural refusal.
Highly recommended.
“The System is BROKEN! The Car Market Collapse is HERE!”
I forgot where I read it, but a lot of comments to that YouTube video and others lamenting the current high prices of workhorse vehicles like trucks or large SUVs seem to think that the domestic car industry is either out of touch, or keeps producing cars that aren’t selling instead of cutting prices. However, this assumes the current operating business model of manufacturers is sell car -> get money.
Most manufacturers today are finance companies that happen to manufacture cars instead of car manufacturers that offer financing on their products. If a dealership actually upfront bought all of those cars, as prices, on their lots, they would need to have upfront capital costs of $10s of millions. Instead, they usually finance the purchase of these cars with floorplan loans. Besides banks, car manufacturers also provide these floorplan loans. These often include the holdbacks or other manufacturer incentives that give money to the dealership once the vehicle leaves the lot.
As long as the vehicle stays on the lot, unsold, it remains as collateral for the loan, and thus the loan underwriter continues to collect interest on it. During COVID there was an inversion, where dealerships were netting money from floorplan financing instead of losing it, because the sales turnaround was so quick when interest rates were low and supply was limited.
Those in the C-suite and short term investors probably figured out that they can juice the stock price by making their financing arm look like a major money maker from interest income from floorplan loans, transferring money from dealerships back to the manufacturer. Once dealerships start going bust, and those loans default and manufacturers have to take back inventory, that will be a problem for the next CEO and investors who decided to hold long term instead of get in on the plot.
And this recent story…
Grabbed from a random site that’s not walled:
https://www.marketplace.org/story/2025/09/25/what-tricolors-collapse-means-for-auto-lending-subprime-loans
I’ve seen those comments as well. If one looks at it from a 20th Century point of view, the car makers are out of touch at every level. The thing that is apparent to me is the the car companies don’t care for the very reasons you outlined. Its to keep people trapped in the finance system overpaying for the rest of their lives, that the vehicles self destruct quickly is a feature not a bug so product can keep moving. So as long as the stockholders are happy, who cares about the poor souls trying to pay for these cars? Certainly not the manufacturer/finance people. As I commented earlier, there are people walking away from the new car grift and looking for something older to drive.
Car makers restrict US market to higher end offerings only.
GM has stopped sedan sales, whereas in Mexico the Chevrolet Onix subcompact is big seller, doing 48..49mpg (US gallons). Who needs a hybrid?
The Onix Plus is the electric version and only $20,000 US dollars:
https://cars2wd.com/2026-chevrolet-onix-plus/
“Researchers just unleashed microbes trapped in Arctic ice for 40,000 years: ‘These are not dead samples’”
I would think that it might be best to treat such specimens as biologically hazardous until proven otherwise. Supposing, just supposing that there was a deadly virus killing humans 40,000 years ago denuding whole regions of people. And that the only reason why it stopped was because it burned itself out as humanity was spread so thin. So along come these scientists thawing out 40,000 year old soil samples and unknowingly reactivating this super virus which still have the taste for our breed. It could all happen so easily but this time around humanity is far more numerous and densely packed. Come to think of it, that would make a helluva novel/film.
These scientist remind me of the mad scientist who invented a device that could instantly destroy the entire world. Only thing was he did not know if it would work or not in spite of his calculations. So one day, overcome with curiosity, he activated the device – and never found out.
I was reading Braudel’s Material Civilization and he notes, when talking about diseases, how many of the afflictions that plagued the Middle Ages simply don’t exist anymore (or at least not in their old forms). It probably would be a good idea to leave such diseases dead, unless we want a redux of the 14th century.
My first thought:
“Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.”
https://youtu.be/g3j9muCo4o0
“Come to think of it, that would make a helluva novel/film.”
See: Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow (AKA Smilla’s Sense of Snow)
I enjoyed that book. It was difficult to put down.
Speaking of being difficult to put down, reminded me of my cat.
“Caro said that the microbes they used likely couldn’t infect people — but the team kept them in sealed chambers regardless.”
And if those pictures are of the actual researchers in that environment, did they collected the samples without any type of bio-hazard wear and then study the microbes before it was decided they couldn’t infect people?
But it’s important to keep them in sealed chambers regardless?
What am I missing?
“So along come these
scientistsoil companies thawing out 40,000 year old soil samples and unknowingly reactivating this super virus” – FTFYThe scientists are only getting a slight jump on the rest, it’s all going to melt sooner or later. Might be good to know a few weeks ahead of time what we’re in for…..
I read the article all the way to the end. The researchers treated the specimens exactly as you would wish, keeping them sealed in the containers as they watched for growth. A major justification for the research is to determine the viability of microbes that will be released as arctic ice and permafrost melt. That is explicitly mentioned in the article.
It’s coming.
The US doesn’t believe in the Precautionary Principle. They might have even banned it…
That’s Photoshop, not AI, Seth Harp, crybaby (from the Latin esquire). We need to start inflicting drastic social and economic consequences on people who lie in order to gain property. Maybe we should just take their organs and give them to people who whine less.
What a strange, trivial point to get upset about. The actual contents of these knock-off books are clearly AI generated, even if the covers happen to be photo-shopped.
People who’ve spent more time on the question that I have seem to think that, for sure something happened at the gathering.
Nonetheless, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Kirk was dropping the pro-Israeli bit simply because it was too difficult to get good footage of “winning” that debate.
I get the real sense from the article that hedge fund gazillionaire Bill Ackmann* is one of a kind when it comes to fervently supporting the Israeli efforts and that their right is might. Counter opinions are unwelcome and shall be dismissed with haste. Maybe Kirk was perhaps naively thinking that such real life discussions were more debate amongst a friendly crowd of his organization supporters and the donor class. Need more meat on that bone is my personal takeaway.
Up until these supposed, or quite likely, true meeting rumors started to float around, I just put Ackmann in that special class of investing guru who is a special brand of as$hole; updating my take that even among all of them he is worthy of being set apart.
No, you should see the absolutely appalling message I got from another billionaire hedgie some time back…I was advised against publishing but in the safety of comments might be OK:
I then told him my maternal grandmother’s maiden name [xxxxberg]. That knocked him back and he went on tilt.
Damn, Yves…that sucks.
i have been fortunate, in hindsight, i suppose…ive only encountered maybe 5 actual jews in my lifetime. Only one who wasnt immediately identified as a total dick was Bernie Katz, who ran that all night deli on sixth street in austin.
conversely, i knew lots of Palestinians in austin, and found them smart, polite, generous and(except for the keeping women hidden thing) all around decent people.
(and i ended up being allowed into the kitchen so as to learn about how to cook what they were cooking on several occasions…Amfortas the ecumenical diplomat!)
its looking like the zionists are getting pretty desperate…seeing their value in the world diminished so much, and actually having people stand up to them, after all these years.
and my Czech ancestors wee very likely Bohemian Jews.
i admire the religion, itself(“wrestling with God”, etc), but the israelis/zionists have prolly ruined Judaism for the next 100 years.
Man, I still miss Katz’s Deli.
yeah. i can cook a runnin dog, but have never been able to replicate their knish.
and Bernie was a cool cat. would make the rounds and shoot the bull with you.
AI Written?
As an aside, that letter appears to me to be AI written. Even with all the crude comments it flows too well for someone who appears to be highly emotional. The tempo, organization, and flow seem too sterile for any human I have ever read. Rather than me becoming emotional from the comments (as if they were aimed at me), if anything I thought it humorous.
My guess is that someone has trained an AI to respond to any writing that doesn’t praise Israel and so we may see many more such letters.
Please do not see AI under every rock. This is the contemporary version of seeing Commies under the bed.
No, we had an exchange. This was a real guy from his actual real address. And this was before using AI to write for you was A Thing.
And something from AI would be more polished and have less repetitive phrasing, and would not have accused me of being anti-semitic by virtue of having a (supposedly) French name. Nor would an AI have been thrown for a loop by being presented with a Jewish name for a maternal grandmother.
Thanks for showing us that, Yves!
All they have is bs identity politics left.
Cheers!
🫡
Jesus Christ, Yves, just… Jesus. I’m sorry that happened to you.
Though I admit I chuckled at “Monsieur Yves.”
In French, Yves is a very common masculine first name; its female version is Yvette.
Wow that is a remarkable anecdote to produce for us all to see and understand. Then again or as well for consideration there is the tried and true phrasing ( in this instance the source who sent you such a slanted piece of their mind ) “when someone shows you who they really are…”.
Really over the top email to you by a super propagandised individual. Hope you didn’t find it too disturbing on a personal basis. It gives us an idea of why one of your previous comments editors (katie bird?) couldn’t handle it any more and left.
It’s even worse than the anti-Russian super pro-Ukranians for whom anything in the slightest even-handed is 100% Russian propaganda.
In this case the accusation is bigotry by virtue of being against the extreme actions of a state. It’s an obvious sign of desperation and the need to mindlessly block out reality. The fact many Jews, if not most outside of Israel, are against what Israel is doing is ignored. Pretty sad.
Hi Keith! I’m still here! I think you are remembering Jules…
Hi katiebird!
Yes it is Jules I was thinking of. Glad to learn you’re still with us.
Just wanted to make sure everyone saw that Medvedev referred to Macron as “micron.”
I like Macrobe. It captures both the fantasized reach and the humble reality.
I don’t follow French politics much, but when I’m in a joking mood, my brain jumps from Macron -> Macaron -> “Le Grande Cookie”
Craft breweries closing article, well that seems to have happened gradually then all at once as the proverbial statement goes on declaring bankruptcy. Consumer spending and tastes are usually fickle when it comes to all manner of local brewed beer or lager offerings. Nearby in Asheville, I will presume without evidence that Sierra Nevada has been able to reopen their massive brewpub and restaurant location near the French Broad river. Good to have scale and therefore that bit of operational leverage on the smaller competitors in the craft brewing industry.
On the topic of beers and seltzers, I found yesterday a funny meme on IG featuring a country song on “Beer for Breakfast”… No one will ever write a song about “White Claw” for breakfast…\sarc
I recently went to a local microbrew – 8 bucks for a beer! I ordered one and shared with the wife to enjoy the scenery with a beer. And only one at that price. Light bulb! At TJs I can get a nice bottle of wine for less. Perhaps all is not ok…
…and beer is very reproducible in terms of taste, totally unlike wine, and not-so-great beer is usually drinkable, again unlike wine.
Took me a while to come to terms with the fact that I’m just not a wine person. Sure, I’ll drink it, but I generally prefer the table reds versus anything fancy in either color. My favorite, though? The heretical (in the US, at least), if wonderfully drinkable 50/50 mixture of Coca-Cola and cheap red – Calixmoto, I think? Spain?
I paid £5 for a pint of Guinness at the London Irish Centre and that was happy hour….
I had a pint of Asahi the next day for lunch in a ramenaya and that was £7.50!
8 bucks is cheaper than either….
I love microbrews—–but the reality is that the country has too many microbrew brands given the fixed costs of running even a small brewery. The market can only support X actual microbrews (Sam Adams, Lagunitas, et al don’t count).
The volume and $$$$ in the USA is still in Bud, Corona, Miller Lite, etc.
And it doesn’t help that in much of the USA, state law requires a third-party distributor (who is often a defacto monopolist and well-connected to the state legislators via $$$$).
Next PE play?
Roll up, slash expenses, especially payrolls, pay out some huge dividend to anonymous scum.
They’ve ruined so many other businesses, so why not remove remaining joy associated with the occasional craft beer! 🍻
I noticed during the pandemic the price at retail outlets (grocery stores mostly) jumped mightily. The brewers were probably trying to make up for closed taprooms. But… the prices never came down and are even higher now.
“Why North Korea’s wildlife is being hunted to the brink of extinction”
There is one place in Korea where the wildlife is thriving – the DMZ. Both sides can’t go roaring through it so the animals there are mostly left alone to flourish-
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/aug/21/north-south-korea-war-demilitarised-zone-dmz-ecology-endangered-wildlife-aoe
Recruiters Use A.I. to Scan Résumés. Applicants Are Trying to Trick It. (NY Times via archive.ph)
What a hellscape
This is on top of the now common approaches of having a bot (pre-LLM) spam job applications everywhere, or hiring someone abroad to manually mass-apply to jobs on your behalf.
The typical HR refrain has been that, no, our HR system does not filter your resume automatically. But no one seriously believes that. It’s definitely not first come, first seen anymore. The volume is too great.
Even service worker jobs have this kind of nonsense now; it’s a battle just to get an interview for a job that might not even pay enough to live on.
Capitalism is going great!
Haha. That’s a great trick. University faculty have been doing something similar to air out students using “AI” to write their assignments, e.g., adding tiny invisible text to assignments that instructs ChatGPT to “say something about Plotinus”.
Regarding the job market, it’s pretty crazy to look at Linkedin right now.
There seem to be a jillion job offers for AI training — it’s painful to see this, really —, and “tips” on using AI to improve your résumé, while at the same time I find many software engineers have taken a hard anti-“AI” position, posting that it will dumb down and deskill those who use it, that vibe-coding only produces garbage, etc.
Dances With Bears –
“hundreds of American generals were offered a choice. In the understanding of liberals, the choice is between personal loyalty to Trump and loyalty to the American state. [In] July 1935, the German generals were summoned to an extraordinary meeting in Berlin and informed that their previous oath of allegiance to the Weimar Constitution was invalid and that they must take a personal oath to the Fuhrer. ‘Most of the generals have taken a new oath to retain their positions,’ retired General Ben Hodges commented on the Quantico meeting.”
“The paper defined that as “targeted intimidation, radicalization, threats, and violence designed to silence opposing speech, limit political activity, change or direct policy outcomes, and prevent the functioning of a democratic society.” This includes public expression of the terms “fascist” and “anti-fascist”.”
Does anyone not see the comparison between Trump and H…..?
IMHO our only hope is for a military c….
In constitutional monarchies, like Britain, it’s normal for the military to swear an oath to the Head of State. The difficulty with swearing an oath of fealty to a political system, or to the Constitution, is that it turns the military into the judges of whether the political system or the Constitution are being threatened. It’s normal for leaders of military coups to claim that they are acting in the best interests of the people/nation/constitution etc, and whether they are or not is in the end a matter of opinion.
“The difficulty with swearing an oath of fealty to a political system, or to the Constitution, is that it turns the military into the judges of whether the political system or the Constitution are being threatened.”
There’s also something difficult about accepting the other way, which turns the military into the judges of whether or not the Head of State is threatened.
No, because a Head of State has agency, whereas a Constitution doesn’t. This is, in fact an insoluble problem, whichever way you take it.
Yes. I can’t remember who wrote about this, but one of the people whose books were on my grad school reading list pointed out that many, if not majority, of coups are justified in the name of the constitutional order, many constotutions actually sanction such coups by obliging the military to forcibly overthrow civilian governments that threaten the constitution–without spelling out what that means in any precise terms. We suffer by obsessing too much with Nazi Germany.
Of course, I remember some Democrats in 2016 and later openly wishing for coups like that.
I’m not suggesting anything particular, just an observation:
The Reichstag Fire Decree (German: Reichstagsbrandverordnung), officially the Decree of the Reich President for the Protection of People and State (German: Verordnung des Reichspräsidenten zum Schutz von Volk und Staat), was a decree issued by German President Paul von Hindenburg on the advice of Chancellor Adolf Hitler on 28 February 1933 in immediate response to the Reichstag fire. The decree nullified many of the key civil liberties of German citizens. With the Nazis in powerful positions in the German government, the decree was used as the legal basis for the imprisonment of anyone considered to be opponents of the Nazis, and to suppress publications not considered “friendly” to the Nazi cause. The decree is considered by historians as one of the key steps in the establishment of a one-party Nazi state in Germany.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichstag_Fire_Decree
(italics mine)
H was able to write his own book…
MAGA on the March
The shutdown meant no jobs report. Carlyle’s analysis shows it would have been pretty bad (CNBC)
We’re gonna get tired of so much winning, it’ll be just unfair to all those countries run by punks. They’re gonna be shining my shoes and handing us planes as tokens of appreciation…\sarc
One thing about this shutdown, and once well, someone or anyone with two dimes worth of common sense finally sorts out this is a real loser for the Team R this time next year. Inflation isn’t solved at all, mortgage rates and housing is still broadly unreachable for a key generation reaching the prime years to form families and have children, and we haven’t actually resolved either war like candidate Trump loudly and proudly boasted only he could accomplish. Yeah it’s great alright.
This stupid timeline will continue until morale improves.
My Twitter ‘for you’ feed is filled with reminding me of that important event happened on this day, the violence with the overtones of religious strife, degradations against families, spitting, vengeance: McGregor v Nurmagomedov.
Algo values.
Freedom of Speech:
Can NC and MoA resist the governments censorship?
I don’t know what you mean. We aren’t being censored so what is there to resist?
The new big gun that the Administration intends to deploy is to yank the not-for-profit status of publishers and foundations that engage in wrong-speak OR get money from said foundations that engage in wrong-speak (above all, recipients of Soros Open Society funds). We are not a not for profit. It makes no sense for itty bitty org if you intend to comply with all the requirements (setting one up is trivial but the ongoing administrativa is a lot).
However, we and other sites have been throttled in Web searches for years, and some sites are being shadow-banned on YouTube. You can’t fight the algos.
I was thiinking of the paragraph in “Dances With Bears,”
“The paper defined that as “targeted intimidation, radicalization, threats, and violence designed to silence opposing speech, limit political activity, change or direct policy outcomes, and prevent the functioning of a democratic society.” This includes public expression of the terms “fascist” and “anti-fascist”.”
as well as the many ways our government has censored the news and social media.
If I may I’ll take your response “We aren’t being censored” to mean that our government cannot censor NC or MoA. I do hope that this will continue far into the future. Thank you.
“Targeted” and “Designed” …words that are doing a lot work.
If you had read some of the many other comments on this directive, you would see they are concerned about doing that on “social media” and that is what they are monitoring and their big gun is to remove not for profit status. We already said we are not exposed to that.
We don’t use FB, Instagram, Tik-Tok, or BlueSky at all. We only auto-tweet headlines on Twitter. So we also aren’t on their radar.
M T-G is now attacking Mike Johnson from the right (on the Epstein files, support for Israel) and the left (Obamacare subsidies expiring)
https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2025/10/07/congress/mike-johnson-marjorie-taylor-greene-obamacare-00596240
I am sensing that the GOP is going to turn what should have been a strong position into a debacle. Trump is clearly bluffing on mass firings of federal workers – ain’t gonna happen.
As the shutdown lingers, the odds of a total sellout and cave in to Schumer and Jeffries are a-risin’!
MTG seems to be following the same sort of path that Le Pen cut in France. Social conservatism plus pressing the interests of, as JC says, “the many, not the few”. From being a bit of a joke, she’s making herself an electoral heavyweight beyond her own State, as one of my US cousins suggests.
My late Grandmother Fuller had a word that describes Pete Hegseth and quite a few others in the Trump Administration “Blivet”.
Defined as five pounds of shit in a one pound bag.
Stay safe and enjoy the show, it’s going to get a lot crazier, soon.
The elephant antidote reminds me of the “brag tag” found in Tilley hats. There’s a zookeeper in … Toronto? … whose Tilley hat has been eaten repeatedly by an elephant. He simply waits for the passage of time – and hat – gets out the hose, extracts the hat for a better cleaning, and goes back to wearing it.
Until the next time.
A testament to the durability of the Tilley….
That guy’s hat is now covered in elephant snot and drool….
Maliciousness for the sake of it
Trump suggests not all furloughed workers will get back pay: ‘It depends’ (CNBC)
I just read the Guardian version of this story.
Yes reflexive spite, but also a way of getting Fed workers to leave?
Rus Vought (ironically pronounced Vote) misses no opportunity to dismantle things.
That post about the GENIUS Act was not written by Ian Welsh. It was written by Sean Paul Kelly, who is guest posting at Ian’s site.
The Russian article referenced by Helmer seems to have a very different import than he attributes to it. I read it as very supportive of Trump’s position and intent. The quote from the original article Helmer uses to substantiate his reading, which he attributes to the Russian author of that piece, appears in the original as a quote of commentary offered by a retired American general. Please compare Helmer’s text:
According to Vzglyad’s writer, Gevork Mirzayan, “hundreds of American generals were offered a choice. In the understanding of liberals, the choice is between personal loyalty to Trump and loyalty to the American state. [In] July 1935, the German generals were summoned to an extraordinary meeting in Berlin and informed that their previous oath of allegiance to the Weimar Constitution was invalid and that they must take a personal oath to the Fuhrer. ‘Most of the generals have taken a new oath to retain their positions,’ retired General Ben Hodges commented on the Quantico meeting.”
with the original from the cited article:
In fact, hundreds of American generals have been offered a choice. In the understanding of liberals, the choice is between personal loyalty to Trump and loyalty to the American state.
“July 1935. The German generals were summoned to an extraordinary meeting in Berlin and informed that their previous oath of allegiance to the Weimar Constitution was invalid and that they must take a personal oath to the Fuhrer. Most of the generals have taken a new oath to retain their positions,” retired General Ben Hodges commented on the Quantico meeting.
In Trump’s understanding, the choice is between whether the army – the new Hegseth army, which has rejected ultra–liberal innovations – is ready to restore order in the country or whether it will watch from the sidelines as America decays.
The author of the piece, Gevork Mirzayan, is juxtaposing “the understanding of liberals”, exemplified by the Ben Hodges quote and “Trump’s understanding”, which the Russian author seems to view favorably.
I’m not a Russian speaker, but I’m using the text Helmer provides, and it seems to be nearly an inversion of meaning.
Ben Hodges, a noted warmonger, idiot, and cartoonish villsin from the central casting, is a strange source of the quote for sure.
Buy Now, Pay Later. The bill comes due.
They Got to Live a Life of Luxury. Then Came the Fine Print. (NY Times via archive.ph)
America is going great!
That’s an important piece. I looked up “Who owns Klarna?” and it appears to be private equity end-running the banking system. Nothing to worry about there!
Yeah, this is the latest example of using Tech as a shield to engage in lawlessness through “innovation”.
Modern life can be confusing due to the pace of all-around enshittification.
It seems like only a few years ago that shopping addicts were leaving the tags on when wearing their designer duds, purses and maybe even shoes.
How did they ever avoid the, uh, sole scuffing?
All to catch and post that selfie for a fleeting boost to self esteem, or some new ineffable intangible.
Elsewhere, parents or more likely grandparents were cringing, and muttering about how they grew up believing that If you can’t pay for it, you can’t afford it.
Or a variant of that – if you have to ask the price, you can’t afford it.
Could another poor water year spell disaster for the Colorado River? KNPR
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The bigger issue with the Colorado is one of far too many straws vis a vis over-allotment. It almost doesn’t matter what kind of winter we have, it’s a fade accompli that nobody wants to address.
The New Yorker article by David Owen about the Colorado River allotments is one of the best pieces I have ever read.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/05/25/the-disappearing-river
As everyone upstream invests in making their water use “more efficient”, less and less water makes it downstream.
Time to re-read The Monkey Ranch Gang, 50 years old this year IIRC!
Where is the firm of Hayduke Abbzug Sarvis & Smith LLC when you really need them?
Monkey Wrench, KLG!
Our long awaited big fat Greek restaurant opened over the weekend… and haven’t been yet, but soon
https://thebusinessjournal.com/tonys-taverna-brings-a-taste-of-santorini-to-the-sierra-foothills/
Loved the big crunch report. Brahmin’s eyes opens and a universe comes into being; Brahmin’s eye closes and a universe closes… paraphrase from Joseph Campbell.
Via Larry Johnson:
https://sonar21.com/a-video-update-on-the-wests-faltering-tnt-production-and-aerial-attempts-to-provoke-russia/
United States short of cotton products? Holy cow!!
A bit late to links today (yesterday?) but
is a bit misleading.
Earth is about 70% water, so any landmass is warming ‘faster than the rest of the world’.
Global Warming is the real Lake Wobegon, where everyone is warming faster than the average.
for the next Links:
paraphrasing Dom Deloise,”Texas! has a Moron init!…”
https://x.com/KenPaxtonTX/status/1975581768876237115
i cant find a “Leftist” in Texas, except for in that mirror over there.