The energy emerging from this video is insane
[🥁 42nd Street Subway bucket drum sesh]
[📹 Tyler Moellmann]pic.twitter.com/jMvUfiqu9i— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) November 27, 2025
Robot Walks for Three Days Straight, Hotswapping Its Battery Over and Over in New World Record Futurism
The 25 most powerful ideas of the 21st century (so far), picked by the world’s top thinkers BBC Science Focus
Mapping Children’s Meltdowns in the Brain Nautilus
COVID-19/Pandemics
Scientists Uncover Hidden Blood Pattern in Long COVID SciTech Daily
Measles deaths plummet but infections surge worldwide News-medical.net
Experts Warn Mutating Bird Flu Could Trigger Severe Pandemic, Worse than COVID Tovima.com
Climate/Environment
France blames climate change for ‘deteriorating’ wine industry. But is uprooting vines the solution? Euro news
Revealed: Europe’s water reserves drying up due to climate breakdown The Guardian
Tehran Pollution Reaches ‘Alarming’ Level In Latest Environmental Crisis To Hit Iran Radi Free Europe
South of the Border
Trump declares airspace above Venezuela is to be closed entirely as he ramps up lethal strikes The Daily Mail
ICRC President warns of humanitarian deterioration in Colombia MercoPress
High corruption in Argentina Buenos Aires Times
China?
Chinese Unitree’s humanoid robot can now play basketball with excellent body coordination. This is no easy feat even for real humans. pic.twitter.com/tqoC1ppPz3
— Li Zexin 李泽欣 (@XH_Lee23) November 21, 2025
China launches nationwide high-rise inspections after deadly Hong Kong fire Financial Times
China moves to integrate commercial space into its national space development plan Space News
China Making Plans to Crack Down on Crypto Payments and Stablecoins Coinspeaker
How Worried Should America Be About China’s Submarine Fleet? The National Interest
India
Tariff shock: Indian exports to US crash 28.5% The Times of India
Startups, not streets: Why India’s Gen Z chooses creation over chaos The Economic Times
As India Prepares to Welcome Putin, Its Juggling Act With Russia and the US Continues The Wire
Africa
Africa’s forests now a net carbon source, study finds Andolu Agency
Africa’s Power Shift: Young Nations Choosing Ownership Over Dependency The Voice of Africa
South Africa’s Rail Revival to Boost Tourism and Accessibility for Travellers Travel and Tour World
European Disunion
EU weighs Plan B for Ukraine as Belgium raises bar to unblock reparations loan Euro news
Talks on UK access to an EU defense fund have broken down ABC News
The week Europe realised it stands alone against The Guardian
Germany Urges The EU To Cancel Combustion Engine Ban BMW Blog
Old Blighty
‘Useless’ Budget pulled apart by Asda boss who says UK is stuck in reverse gear Daily Mail
At least 8,000 illegal waste sites in UK, research suggests The Guardian
Israel v. Gaza, Yemen, Lebanon, Syria, Iran
You can’t watch this video and not hate Israel.
Israeli soldiers EXECUTE two young Palestinian men at point-blank range AFTER they surrendered near in the northern occupied West Bank.
This apartheid must end. Boycott and shun everything to do with it.
pic.twitter.com/kyR55cqTzd— ADAM (@AdameMedia) November 27, 2025
Palestinian death toll has surpassed 70,000 since the Israel-Hamas war began, Gaza ministry says APUN panel says Israel operating ‘de facto policy of torture’ BBC
Israeli forces injure hundreds of Palestinians in raids on Tubas, West Bank Al Jazeera
Google trends for Washington DC and Tel Aviv expose another CIA/Mossad assassination Council Estate Media substack
New Not-So-Cold War
Ukraine hit two ‘shadow fleet’ oil tankers with drones in Black Sea NY Post
Russian strikes cause power outages for more than 600,000 in Ukraine BBC
Ukraine peace talks shaken up by resignation of Zelenskyy’s top aide in corruption probe NBC News
Fog and winter weather open gaps in Ukraine’s defensive lines as Russians push deeper into Donetsk Milwaukee Independent
Big Brother Is Watching You Watch
“Delete Facebook” trend surges after Meta’s new AI privacy update Kashmir Digital
Imperial Collapse Watch
OC Board of Supervisors vote to ban homeless encampments Spectrum news 1
The Mar-a-Lago Party That Future Historians Will Never Forget The New Republic
Trump 2.0
Trump approval rating drops to new low: Poll The Hill
Trump: Anything Signed by Biden’s Autopen Is Revoked Townhall
Trump’s Thanksgiving message: Only “patriotic” immigrants welcome Salon
Northwestern settles with Trump administration in $75M deal to regain federal funding NPR
Musk Matters
Elon Musk Moves Closer To $1 Trillion Tesla Prize — Should Shareholders Worry? Benzinga
SpaceX’s Starship FL launch site will witness scenes once reserved for sci-fi films Teslarati
Democrat Death Watch
Carville: ‘No one represents’ Democratic Party The Hill
Strategist Warns Democrats Of ‘Blowback’ As Epstein Files Expose Party Ties Tampa Free Press
Immigration
The Feds drop the hammer on illegal immigration Freight Waves
Our No Longer Free Press
OPINION: Why The Associated Press Is Standing for Your Right to Speak Freely Bucks County Beacon
Trump targets female reporters with disparaging rhetoric Axios
White House unveils ‘Media Bias’ website to expose ‘fake news’ Washington Examiner
Mr. Market Is Moody
Dollar set for biggest weekly fall in four months, Fed path in focus Reuters
Does the fate of the US economy now hinge on one company? Vox
Bitcoin faces 3 headwinds as the cryptocurrency sits 28% below record high Yahoo Finance
AI
Fewer one night stands, more AI lovers: the data behind generation Z’s sex lives The Guardian
97 percent of people struggle to identify AI music, but it’s not as bad as it seems The Verge
No, you can’t get your AI to ‘admit’ to being sexist, but it probably is anyway TechCrunch
Startups Using AI Have a Problem: Anyone Can Copy Their Awesome Idea Futurism
AI Finally Takes On a Century-Old Cancer Mystery SciTech Daily
The Bezzle
The card scam causing ‘real harm’ to businesses BBC
Amazon warns of major Black Friday impersonation scam targeting millions of users Mashabl
Guillotine Watch
World’s rarest marble. Tiffany Marble. This bathtub will cost you $120,000. Matching sink for another $22,000. Caveat emptore: this stone does not have any healing properties. pic.twitter.com/3XNXegyjI0
— Emran Rashid 🇺🇸🇺🇸 (@EmranRashid3) September 27, 2024
From Florence, Italy, Baldi crafted a lavish bathtub using rare purple amethyst and adorned it with 24 karat gold plated legs.
This piece is available for purchase at a price of $125,000 🛀 pic.twitter.com/TmN3zhkuxI— Costa (@dancosta1021) May 3, 2024
Antidote du jour (via)
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here
“EU weighs Plan B for Ukraine as Belgium raises bar to unblock reparations loan”
The EU, especially Ursula, really want to get their hands on those frozen Russian assets. It’s like they plan to skim off a few billion for themselves before sending on the rest to the Ukraine or something. But for Belgium this is a problem. That Russian money is still parked in Belgium’s Euroclear. Now Euroclear is reckoned to have some €40.7 trillion in assets under their custody. Think about that. You are are talking about over US$47 trillion held there. And the EU wants Belgium to hand over that $300 billion to Zelensky of all people who is currently mired in a corruption scandal. If they did that then Belgium would be burning Euroclear down to the ground – and the Belgium economy with it – as all those assets would fly off to other continents. And to add insult to injury, none of the EU members will put themselves on the hook for that money by sharing the risk. Frankly Belgium should tell Ursula and the EU where to go and what they can do when they get there.
Trouble is you just can’t find an honest Nazi anywhere nowadays.
Those two tubs look like they would be perfect for a Money Laundry Room.
I can see why the amethyst tub has gold plated legs. It’s a weight versus strength of materials issue.
I once had the very nervous “honour” of installing a solid gold taps set on a guest bathroom hand sink in the Miami condo of a member of the House of Saud. The sink itself was carved from a single piece of orange onyx in the shape of a tulip. The walls and floor of the half bath room were three quarter thick 12″ X 12″ sheets of the same orange onyx. Gold, at least when nearly pure, (the items were mixed with something else for hardness,) is very, very soft. Almost anything will scratch it. Installing those taps was a minor technical challenge. Strap wrenches and brand new crescent wrenches were the order of the day. Oh, and remove anything that could scratch a surface from your person. Items like wrist watches, rings, zippers, etc. Now lay down towels all around the scene of the action.
Stay safe, with style.
That amethyst tub is nice to look at. I would have used bronze for the base frame and feet because it develops a nice patina. I can’t imagine gold plated surfaces age well in a humid bathroom environment.
Funny you should mention that.
I rented for 14 years a Brooklyn apartment from a guy who did plating, mostly gold, for top line aerospace devices.
Years before I moved in he plated the American Standard fixture set for the shower & bath and they looked exactly the same the day we moved out as they did when we moved in. Gold doesn’t really weather, it only scratches.
Thanks, I would not have expected that.
Gold doesn’t oxidize. That’s why it’s great for electronic connections, and stays shiny forever so it looks pretty.
Otherwise it’s pretty useless.
Very low resistivity too.
Damn man, I can imagine how nervous you would have been. You would have been like a sniper where they draw in a breath, exhale it all out, and then get to work.
A number of those “most expensive” artifacts have been presented in this very site, and each time I felt disbelief in view of all the display of gawdiness, kitsch, or tastelessness (depending on the case).
A curved amethyst bathtub on gold-plated antique-imitating legs? Is this a prop to represent Neron’s bathroom in a remake of “Quo vadis?”
Aren’t there any comparable objects out there, perhaps ruinously luxurious, but at least exhibiting refinement, elegance, beauty…?
If the tub were hand-carved by well-treated and well-paid craftsmen, it might be OK. What are the ultra-wealthy going to do with their money (perhaps fund more of these for public baths)? And what will all the sentient tool-users do with their time when everything is automated?
Re. the Sheiks place in North Miami; Dad asked the Lebanese factotum who was overseeing the project something to the effect of, where does he come off spending so much? The Lebanese didn’t hesitate a second, and replied: “What would you do with seven million dollars income, a week?” Dad stood there and picked his jaw up off of the floor, just like the Coyote in a Roadrunner cartoon. The opulence hidden away in that apartment was amazing.
“Trump declares airspace above Venezuela is to be closed entirely as he ramps up lethal strikes”
People are complaining that Trump has no legal authority to close the airspace of another country with an implied threat to shoot down passenger airliners. But little do people know that in the US Constitution, which makes Trump the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces, there is obscure clause which the Founding Fathers put in which also makes him the head of the Venezuela National Institute of Civil Aviation thus giving him legal power.
Of course if Trump does launch an aerial attack on Venezuela, not having so many civil airliners above will make it much easier for Venezuelan aerial defense systems to target any US aircraft. But Trump has to act fast. This US Rep from Florida says she knows that Venezuela is sending uranium to Hamas. Oh, and they have about 1$ trillion worth of oil.
I believe that upon closer inspection, it turns out that the Executive Offices’ “delegated authority” over Parts South derives from the Monrovia Doctrine.
Be Ye of good cheer.
Zelensky declares renaming of Ukraine to Venezuela, in order to get the no-fly zone that he wanted so much. :)
::chortle::
Flight Radar 24 reveals Colombian planes are avoiding Venezuelan airspace (not sure if they always did – its a fairly minor re-route for them, but planes are still flying into and out of Caracas and other coastal cities. Its a handful, but then again, Venezuela is under heavy sanctions.
Just another tarbaby for Trump to tackle in his quest for the Nobel Piss Prize.
My guess is that the airspace ban is a blunt instrument to force Maduro to abdicate and seek asylum somewhere. UAE, or tbd?
I’m really starting to feel that this whole business is like a bad TV show that’s gone into syndication, and is endlessly repeating on late night TV:
Does Trump think George W. Bush lied about Iraq?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiw0ILaXJf0
I guess I’m the early bird today.
Concerning the BBC article on Card Fraud, I noticed this from the London small business owner who takes on the problem directly himself: “… the card machine providers and banks don’t seem to be doing anything.” There it is in black and white. These companies are glad to take the business fees from all concerned, but when it comes to a hard problem, dump the problem in the laps of the victims.
Secondly, I can see this phenomenon as an expression of my favourite Alchemist’s Creed: “As above, so below.” When an ‘ordinary’ person sees the high and mighty getting away with crime with impunity, the idea of emulating their “betters” seems only natural. Gresham’s Law at work in social and financial relations.
Again, stay safe. Those at the “top” are. We deserve no less.
I hate to think ill of my city, but I was reminded of what I consider to be a dark period here in NYC.
I realize that in many ways he is also a megalomaniac like Trump, but it is amazing to me how failed and illogical policies attributed to Giuliani have become the standard for so much of American life.
We have nationalized the “broken windows” prosecution strategy which really boiled down to heavy handed enforcement of “quality of life” crimes which were really about brutal beat downs and civil liberty of coping strategies of the have nots while ignoring or even encouraging financial criminality of the richest. It was a preview of life to come. It was the same with the Giuliani Doctrine where diplomacy was rejected for being the 800 lb gorilla in every room was really about keeping a small group of people wealthy and powerful without any recognition of common good.
So many symptoms of this infection.
This isn’t at all a new phenomenon – it’s being going on for decades. The cardholder calls in a chargeback and the credit card companies immediately yank the funds from the merchant and make them spend time contesting it if they want their money back. My experience in contesting chargebacks has been that the card companies spend about 15 seconds reviewing the merchant’s argument and then rule in the cardholder’s favor. American Express recently made it even harder to recover funds from these scams. You can escalate things, talk to a rep, show them that you are a legit merchant doing business with AMEX for decades, show signed contracts and proof that a chargeback was fraudulent, but if you deviated from ever changing AMEX approved procedures in your contestation, they will take the scammer’s word over yours every time. And they make fees on both ends of the transaction to boot.
Quite the little racket they have going. It’s beyond me why some enterprising lawyer hasn’t brought a class action lawsuit against these companies for knowingly profiting off fraudulent transactions. Everything is a grift.
I heard an interview on I think JavaScript Jabber two or three years ago with a senior Stripe engineer, which provides a kind of API layer for processing credit cards, and he relayed that thieves would donate small amounts of money to charities with stolen cards to confirm that they work, and later the card holder charge backs would nuke charities and small businesses from orbit. Collateral damage, so to speak.
It would really upset me if the CC scammers changed their targets to the Democratic National Committee and Republican National Committee for the test payments…
“Google trends for Washington DC and Tel Aviv expose another CIA/Mossad assassination”, this concerns the shooting of two National Guard members in DC. Apparently, online searches of the shooter’s name before the shooting took place. Hard not to conclude that the shooting had sponsors.
Then there is this:
“You might think this is just conspiracy theory nonsense and there is nothing to see here. Well, you are kind’a right because Google has erased most of the search data!”
So Google erased evidence of searches relative to the perpetrator peaking in the DC and Israel one day before the attack.
Indeed. This is absolutely normal.
This reminds me that in the vast majority of attacks by Al Qaeda and ISIS since and including the 11th September 2001 (including in the USA, the UK, Belgium, France, Spain, Austria…), intelligence and security services in the USA, Europe, and elsewhere were perfectly aware that the perpetrators were dangerous terrorists, had placed them under surveillance, had compiled quite incriminating dossiers on them, had been explicitly warned by third parties (including other intelligence services and police) that those persons were planning attacks, knew that in some cases arrest warrants had been issued — and, oddly enough, did strictly nothing to prevent the tragedies.
Well, some people managed to get those stock shorting orders in to profit from the misery of the 9/11 victims, so not merely resting on their, uh, laurels. /:
Indeed. And remember it was the Russians who warned about the Tsarnaev brothers responsible for the Boston Marathon bombings.
And remember all those “terrorist” attacks the FBI claimed to have thwarted under St. Robert Mueller’s leadership in the early 2000s, which turned out to be entrapment by the FBI. They’d approach some unstable young men who had no intention of committing any crimes, and wind them up until they touched some weapon the FBI provided and then bust them. I remember one such article from before the Boston Marathon bombing where the FBI tried to get someone to use a pressure cooker bomb in an attack, but their patsy wouldn’t go for it, preferring to use a flaming bag of poo on the doorstep as their weapon of choice. Not long after, the Tsarnaevs did use a pressure cooker bomb in their attack. What a coincidence! And then after the attack, a Tsarnaev associate died mysteriously at the hands of the FBI.
I apologize for the lack of a link regarding the flaming bag of poo story. For some odd reason, I was never able to find the article again after the Boston Marathon attacks. Imagine that.
Happened here in BC’s capital. Entrapment by RCMP with pressure cooker bomb
https://globalnews.ca/news/9097868/nuttall-and-korody-sue/
Don’t put it out with your boots, Ted:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Fk6M1gqV-0A&pp=ygUkZG9uJ3QgcHV0IGl0IG91dCB3aXRoIHlvdXIgYm9vdHMgdGVk
This mirrors the reporting I read about Google trends before the Charlie Kirk shooting. Spikes in searches for the Losee Center, George Zinn, Timpanogos Regional Hospital, and Tyler Robinson, and more; emanating from D.C. as well as Israel…also scrubbed after the shooting.
But the US is the City on the Hill, the light of the world! Unpossible as Charlie Pierce puts it. Easy enough to call lines of bread crumbs coincidental and scoff at your childish conspiracy theory. Then there is hiding in plain sight and saying, “Who? Me?” … you have to be joking. I would never do a thing like that.”
This sort of thing has appeared too often.
“How Worried Should America Be About China’s Submarine Fleet?”
I liked the way that they end this article-
‘Combined, these new capabilities transform the PLAN’s submarine arm from a coastal force into a centerpiece of A2/AD strategy, complicating US operations in the region significantly.’
In this case, the ‘region’ that they are talking about is China’s coastline. The author is wondering how China got such a good force but it is not hard to work out. For decades now western countries have used China’s coastline as a naval parade ground so China decided to develop a force that would push them far away from there and out into the blue Pacific. Any country would have done the same and even Yemen has done this. At least this guy wasn’t shouting about a Submarine Gap.
US freedom of navigation operations (FONO) occur at the pleasure of the PLA Navy! They probably look at the operations and gather data on emissions etc.
Integrating surface and submarine operations (including sophisticated undersea surveillance networks), supported by land based long range anti ship operations the PRC would establish a kill zone more than 1000 km from PRC coast. That would include ocean space around Japan and Korea.
What kind and weight of operations could US execute to make it safe to operate outside PRC littorals?
Possible RAND’s pulled PRC paper was deficient in highlighting PRC capabilities. Too beak for consumption in the pentagon?
Probably not so much the Pentagon but the Neocons like Lindsay Graham. They are always pushing against China, even after things blow up in their faces like with the refined rare earths fiasco. It’s like a ratchet which always goes one way and can never be wound back.
It blows up in “our faces, not “their faces”.
Getting “their faces” into the blast radius or their bodies into the ratchet is the whole trick now.
Until we sort that, well, this is what we get.
Worry about Chinese submarines? Why? I can do. nothing about them
Re. “How Worried Should America Be About China’s Submarine Fleet?,” the US has far more serious things to consider vis a vis China.
The FT has one of its ‘The Big Read’ pieces on —
Is China winning the innovation race?
Once the world’s factory, Beijing’s relentless focus on R&D means the country has become the world’s laboratory
https://www.ft.com/content/3eccd40e-5ec0-43e8-a521-3b87e29e323b
https://archive.ph/2hmfX
Short answer, from the FT, is yes. Setting aside its capitalist priors, it’s a decent factual piece of journalistic analysis such as you almost never get from the likes of the NYT, the Guardian, and all the other mainstream rags. And that’s because it’s written for people who actually need to know in order to form decisions. Which is confirmed by the 90 percent of commenters below the line who concur, and add information in some instances. I especially liked this comment —
‘Anyone, with functioning eyes and ears has concluded about 24 months ago that China is now the global technology and innovation superpower by wide margin. My own Overton Window firmly moved to this last December.
‘However propagandists at FT were talking about debt and real estate of China. Those are not untrue but not relevant anymore.
‘I pay my FT subscription only to understand what propaganda is MI6 driving. Otherwise from Mumbai it’s difficult to understand mind of MI6.
‘From this article, it’s clear now they have accepted superiority of China. Now the messaging for the crowd has began.’
In short, when the US has lost MI6 and the City….
My short, lazy read of history goes like this:
Empires, most empires anyway are built first on trade, then on a military to protect the trade routes and enforce trade rules. The ancient Phoenicians, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans fit this pattern, I think. The modern empires of UK and US, too. (Yes, I’m leaving out colonialism here.)
So what did the West do to preserve its premier trading status? Why, they sent their manufacturing capacity to other countries to save on labor costs and break unions.
Stock market soared. The West sold the family silver and declared itself rich. Riiiight….. Bunch’a shortsighted idiots.
Now those other countries are making things to trade that the West used to make. And those other countries are increasing military capacity to protect their trade routes. When exactly did Western “leaders” stop reading history. When did they assume that Francis Fukuyama’s 1992 book (coinciding with Clinton’s presidency) “The End of History and the Last Man Standing” was correct and the final word on the matter going forward? Did they all assume “this time it will be different”? Or that the future of the country didn’t matter because “I’ll be gone, you’ll be gone”, and we’ll get rich in the meantime? Or were they simply clever and amoral?
/ end rant
Thanks for this comment.
The Phoenicians never had an empire. You had city states that occasionally were very powerful economically. They mostly competed with each other and had ever-changing alliances with true imperial powers outside their immediate geographical area. Their military focus was predominantly defensive.
Carthage, originally founded by Tyrians, was another question.
Thanks.
I like your comment but a better analogy for the family silver would involve a golden goose. The West didn’t sell the golden goose. They gave it away.
Sorry to nitpick.
Adding to my above comment, this scene from the old move The Hunt for Red October comes to mind. For those who haven’t seen the movie, it’s about a cat-and-mouse search for the enemy sub (US vs old Soviet) and the underwater dual that follows. The Soviet sub captain locks torpedo target on the US sub and fires, thinking the shot is a sure kill of the US sub. It’s not.
“You arrogant ass. You’ve killed us!”
Here’s the link. utube, ~2+ minutes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kaBIMuW74Q
“The week Europe realised it stands alone against Russian expansionism”
In which the Euronumpties turn themselves and the political economy of their nations into pretzels over “the Russian threat.”
Wait until their citizens discover that the whole thing is an empty charade. The Russians aren’t coming — there’s nothing in Europe that they either need nor want.
That article was quite the tour de force. Starting with the observations of famed historian Kaja Kallas, the author lays out the whole list of fear-mongering lies about the expansionist intentions of predator Putin, demonstrated by the entirety of Russian history, and the duplicity of the Trump administration that would sell-out the Civilized World to the Evil Rooskies. The author, Patrick Wintour (brother of Anna Wintour apparently), is the “Diplomatic editor” of the Guardian. He clearly knows his “diplomacy” when he sees it.
It is really hard to believe that this Oxford educated “journalist” from a distinguished family could actually believe the statements that are asserted in this piece of propaganda. But as I read this I kept thinking of that famous and oft-cited Chomsky statement to the BBC’s Andrew Marr when the latter denied he was “self-censoring” for propaganda purposes: “I’m sure you believe everything you’re saying. What I’m saying is that if you believed something different you wouldn’t be sitting where you are sitting.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2EPgix5_5w
I guess this is how you get to be Diplomatic Editor of the Guardian.
I only got two paragraphs into it, didn’t have the stomach then a friend showed up, but I was struck by how very close the headline and deck got to saying “The week Europe noticed that NATO is finished”.
Kaja Kallas claims RU/USSR has invaded 19 states on 33 occasions since 1900. I have not seen her list, so here’s my suggestion (in alphabetical order):
Afghanistan, Austria, Bulgaria, China, Czechoslovakia, Estonia, Finland, Georgia, Germany, Hungary, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Yugoslavia
That’s 17, of which 13 were invaded during WW2 (and there’s quite a difference between rolling into eastern Poland in 1939 vs rolling into Berlin and Vienna in 1945, but I won’t quibble). Leaving 4:
Afghanistan: it was a hideously complicated situation back in 1979 and not just a simple invasion out of the blue, but I’ll give Kaja that one.
Georgia: technically, the other guys shot first. And the original deployment of RU peacekeepers there back in 1992 raised no hackles with the collective west. I dunno.
Moldova: the inhabitants of Transnistria seem rather keen on being governed from Moscow, not that Kaja and the EU care about self-determination. And that ‘invasion’ took place in 1991 when it was still part of the USSR, so technically it wasn’t an invasion. I dunno.
Ukraine: even messier than Afghanistan, but I’ll give Kaja that one too.
I cannot ID the other 2 countries Kaja has on her list. Suggestions are welcome!
During WWII:
Korea (to boot out the Japanese on the way to Japan);
Iran (joint invasion with Great Britain to ensure a path for the Land-Lease to the USSR).
Nice catch, missed those two! I was thinking maybe Norway (the Red Army crossed over the border towards the end of WW2) or Mongolia (the border clashes with Japan in 1939), but both of those are really stretches (even by Kaja’s low standards).
How about a list for the US?
Post WW II occupation. Soviet troops entered Korea from China after the Japanese surrender. They supported Kim, ancestor of the current Kim now in Pyongyang. The Soviets armed up the Koreans in their occupation zone.
A part of Kim’s new forces had fought the Japanese and Chiang’s Chinese in the north of China during WW II.
The zones were agreed with the US whose troops of US 8th Army occupied the area of the south where US install a Park who was educated and lived in USA while Korea was occupied by the Japanese. US troops occupied Korea in June 1950, as opposed to very few Soviet troops in the north zone.
From Autumn, 1950, Mao supported Kim henceforth as much or more than Stalin.
That said Kajas’ simplistic list is propaganda.
Ottoman Empire in WWI. Kars.
@Maxwell Johnston at 12:14 pm
Larry Johnson has a post on this. He lists countries invaded by Russia/Soviet Union and the reasons and then the times Russia/Soviet Union have been invaded.
Need I add that what Kaja Kallas says is nonsense.
https://sonar21.com/the-eus-kaja-kallas-is-bad-at-history/
“SpaceX’s Starship FL launch site will witness scenes once reserved for sci-fi films”
I wonder if they will build a backup pad or two in case something goes wrong like an explosion? In contrast. I was watching a video about Chinese Tekonauts the other day and something interesting came up. About two or three weeks ago a micrometeorite damaged the return vehicle attached to the Chinese space station. The video went into some length into how rapidly they adapted so that 16 days later they could send up another vehicle to the station, deliver the new crew and bring back those aboard. But what really made it possible was this. The Chinese will have a rocket ready to go on scheduled missions. But nearby they have a rocket ready to go as an emergency back up in a 5 or 16 day window. Logical and practical.
Meanwhile, remember those two Boeing astronauts stuck on the ISS for a coupla months when their delivery vehicle suffered multiple failures? Elon Musk was on Joe Rogan the other day and he said that the Biden admin decided to let those two astronauts stay stuck there until the elections were over. And I believe him.
You may have seen the story linked here that said the Russian launchpad for cargo ships to the ISS has been damaged and may be out of service for two years. Here’s a link on it
https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/11/russian-launch-pad-incident-raises-concerns-about-future-of-space-station/
Why loss of Russian participation matters
Our public network has done several shows lately on the ISS. In one they discuss how loss of orientation could cause the whole thing to fail.
“Tehran Pollution Reaches ‘Alarming’ Level In Latest Environmental Crisis To Hit Iran”, AQI hitting 170-200 yesterday. The author mentions the ongoing severe drought Iranians are enduring and makes it their own fault, lol,
Decades of mismanagement compounded by prolonged drought pushed Iran to the brink of what experts call water bankruptcy.
No details on “decades of mismanagement” of course.
Strategist Warns Democrats Of ‘Blowback’ As Epstein Files Expose Party Ties:
Damned idiot that Strategist –
Who gives a flock about blowback or party ties!!!
Better to let it all out than act the cowardly nut clutching wimp this ‘Strategist’ appears suggest partiy types take heed and to be afraid of ‘Blowback’ . That strategist ought to find employment more suited to his abilities – don’t know what that would be….can’t think of anything ….I’m sure things will work out for Scott Jennings.
Good luck Scott
Apologies for the attack
I wonder if “blowback” ever occurred to yonder Dem strategist when considering Ukraine or Gaza.
Mitigated once the checks cleared?
“‘Useless’ Budget pulled apart by Asda boss who says UK is stuck in reverse gear”
The guys at The Duran were talking about this and how the entire British political establishment are out of ideas as well as being useless-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2qNecfAIjY (20:07 mins)
Shocking revelations how degraded the railways have become as Alexander Mercouris talked about what a train trip from London to Edinburgh entailed too.
Is that the same video where they think some people in the Reform party could fix things? I’ll pass, but Thanks.
It appears that I’m referencing a different Duran video…apologies.
Re; “Mar-A-Lago Party:
Laugh line of the day:
“He certainly had not read F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel…”
There is also that quote from The Great Gatsby-
‘They were careless people, Don and Melania – they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.’
Seems apt.
I have always considered that Tom and Daisy quote the “money line” from Gatsby. It applies to quite a gaggle her on Gatsby’s 100th anniversary.
Agree too on that Tom and Daisy quote being the “money line.” It’s the one part of that novel I remember the most.
re: “the energy emerging from this video is insane”
As is the very loud noise. As a regular rider of the subway, I’d like to not have impromptu drum sessions on the platforms where I am stuck waiting for a train. There used to be some nitwit who would play a trumpet in the subway car on the N/R line. Like the drummers, he was not terribly talented, and my life was not changed for the better after hearing his ‘artistry’. No wonder everybody uses Uber to get around town.
San Francisco had its own energetic street musicians around Union Square and elsewhere. They kindly lulled hotel guests to sleep and encouraged aerobic sidewalk maneuvers, even in the pre-poop map days. /s
As a former drummer, I do find people banging away in drum circles to be extremely annoying. A favorite story from the Occupy protests – there were a few people who may not have been the most politically motivated who took advantage of the local encampment to have a temporary home. There was one younger man who was a little rough around the edges and may have had a criminal record who was one of those who slept in the park. He apparently did not like hippies with no talent as percussionists either. When a group of them starting in at the crack of dawn before he was ready to wake up, he emerged from his tent, grabbed a hammer, and smashed it right though one of the drums. Unfortunately, despite his righteous action, he was then arrested and removed from the encampment, but at least he was able to get that valuable message across first, and lighten the din.
That being said, that guy in the middle in the video is an extremely talented drummer. I watched it twice.
It is a doggone shame that the Lucky Strikes are no longer with us. Here they are, live in the Herald Square station (34th St.)
https://youtu.be/R8KTDtW_idI?si=SLOF2oW5zavc7h0i
Bucket Boys on Bourbon St used to play outside my bar and cause a racket, which yours truly kinda enjoyed!
Now it’s a breakdance krewe that talks for about 20 minutes, gets a YUGE crowd, and performs a less than 3 second stunt where one of its members jumps over 5 white men.
Ah, the “Characters” that inhabit the Quarter. Do the street punks still do the old, “Hey Mister. Bet you five bucks I know where you got those shoes?” scam?
Great New Republic takedown of our oh so corrupt president.
At January’s Capitol Rotunda swearing in the background was a sea of Botox with Mrs. Vance seemingly the only normal person on hand. Gatsby of course was a work of fiction as were the Hunger Games films whose unsubtle satire of a ruling class out of control seems increasingly real. Those of us who once thought there might be some hope in Trump are feeling increasingly foolish. TDS folks may have hated him for all the wrong reasons but he seems determined to prove them right.
Spoiler: Nvidia.
https://www.compactmag.com/article/the-great-feminization/
Is this the tripiest tripe that ever triped? It’s circulating in parts of Reddit that should know better. And is compactmag.com a stealth RWNJ outlet? The Wikipedia article about it sounds sort of benign. I’m clueless about this stuff.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_(American_magazine)
Tripe is delicious, if the cook knows what they’re doing. Calling something tripe without at least hinting at what is objectionable is just an old guy yelling ‘get off my lawn’. Can’t even tell if you’re objecting to – is the article too ‘woke’? or not woke enough for your taste? The article gives a fair amount of heft to both sides of the argument, in my reading. My biggest complaint was that the author focused on L. Summers getting cancelled for bell curve musings instead of destroying the economy, which would have been more just.
You’re right about Summers destroying the economy being the real scandal. His resignation as Harvard President is often cited in accounts of the Epstein resignation, but the wrong reason is often adduced.
Almost all accounts of Summers’ resignation as Harvard President cite his comments about women in science, but it is worth remembering that the proximal cause of his resignation was the bitter attacks and questioning he got at a February 2006 meeting with faculty. When Summers economist protege Andrei Shleifer lost a Federal False Claims Act suit against him, Summers protected Shleifer’s job at Harvard and cost Harvard $28 million in damages and penalties as a result of Shelifer and his wife’s peculations during their time setting up Russian securities markets under a Federal contract with Harvard. Summers told the faculty meeting he didn’t know nuthin. The article that touched off the questioning is here.
Summers has big prestige as an economist, and — obviously — as an academic patron, but his mismanagement of the Harvard endowment, and his role advocating the most disastrous policy failures of the last thirty years suggests you don’t want him handling your money.
I enjoyed the Compact ‘Great Feminization’ article quite a bit- and think its
author made a pretty good case.
I found it interesting that all these feminized fields, they’re all the arena of the PMC. Is the issue with feminization or just a peculiar strain most particular to PMC class women?
I have no idea, but all the areas and fields mentioned, from HR, to colleges, to law, are all professionalized, credentialed fields.
Or maybe women are all the same in large groups, credentialed or not, irrespective of class affinity?
I thought it was an interesting argument to equate a biracial person not wanting to meet up with someone known to be a bigot as some sort of toxic feminization making its way into the industry of journalism. The article was basically an essay on why men act rational and women act irrational. A lot of these arguments scream hysteria to me, but maybe that’s just me being feminized and based on vibes instead of rationality.
Was it? The point was made about intra-group conflict versus inter-group conflict. I didn’t get the sense that the behavior was irrational within context.
A serious problem is that I do not see the author providing any evidence to back up their statements. Looks like a rant to me.
Be careful of the people that come along with their own twist on the subject and say “Nothing a good war wouldn’t solve.”
The e-bike craze
The Shocking Crash That Led One County to Reckon With the Dangers of E-Bikes (NY Times Mag via archive.ph)
20 minute read.
Watching that humanoid robot playing basketball, all I could think was “Man, nobody calls traveling any more”
Want to bet that some one of the robots to come will be able to dribble, pivot, jump and shoot?
The video did not show where the ball went after the robot made its shot. I doubt it made any baskets or they would have been shown. What good is the robot playing basketball if it’s a poor shot?
Exhausting to keep reading these
From Fewer one night stands, more AI lovers: the data behind generation Z’s sex lives
As is typical, misses the fact that if you’re on the apps, and you’re not a top 10% guy, you aren’t really getting any matches. So the outcome is not really a surprise here
Duh?
The apps overwhelmingly favor the best looking men. Full stop.
The obligatory reference to 3 month “lockdowns” that were anything but is tiring as well.
MAGA on the March
How life changed in a rural town that lost its clinic after Trump’s megabill (CNN)
Ukraine hit two ‘shadow fleet’ oil tankers with drones in Black Sea — NY Post
This has been possible since 2022, so one has to wonder why UKR did it only now. Three possibilities:
a. to provoke RU into retaliating vs vessels heading to/from Odessa, so that UKR can howl about RU aggression and prod its allies into intervening (or at least more cowbell = sanctions)
b. to provide a bargaining chip in negotiations w RU; i.e., if you don’t soften your terms, we can shut down your oil shipments via the Black Sea
c. to demonstrate UKR’s potential usefulness as an anti-RU bulwark going forward, especially if it retains a Black Sea coastline
To which I would add a fourth (and perhaps the most likely): just for the sheer nihilistic fun of it (especially while Zelensky and Yermak are out of town, leaving the too-clever-by-half Budanov unsupervised). As we approach the end game in this conflict, we can expect more such wild attempts at escalation.
A likely result of these attacks (aside from whacking a vessel or two in transit to Odessa) will be to convince the Kremlin that post-war rump UKR must be landlocked (with Odessa and Nikolaev becoming RU-controlled ports).
Upon hearing about this stunt, my first reaction was that it might be an unfortunate accident (stray mines). I could not believe that UKR would do something so stupid and self-defeating, but once again I was wrong.
Like you said, the Ukraine keeps on giving Russia reasons to take the Russian city of Odessa and leave the Ukraine a land-locked country. Those attacks have also caused this-
‘A major crude hub on Russia’s Black Sea coast that handles around 80% of Kazakhstan’s oil exports has suspended operations after a mooring at its terminal near Novorossiysk was heavily damaged in an attack, its operator, the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC), said on Saturday.
The consortium, whose shareholders include major energy companies from Russia, the United States, Kazakhstan and several Western European countries, described the incident as an attack on infrastructure serving the interests of multiple states. “No sanctions or restrictions have ever been imposed on the CPC, reflecting the company’s recognized role in safeguarding the interests of its Western shareholders,” the statement said.’
https://www.rt.com/news/628675-drone-strike-halt-black-sea-oil-terminal-operations/
The Ukrainians are going off the reservation then. That or they are following orders.
Trump: Anything Signed by Biden’s Autopen Is Revoked – Townhall
“With Biden, he goes a step further—was the man even cogent enough to know what was being discussed for signature?”
“Joe Biden was not involved in the Autopen process and, if he says he was, he will be brought up on charges of perjury.”
Since this story has been presented again, I guess a lawyer can fill in the blanks…
Would Biden be considered cogent enough to be brought up perjury charges because he could say he was involved?
If that happened, would the administration have to prove he’s cogent enough for perjury charges in the present, but not cogent in the past?
I think Trump should be encouraged to wear his crown at ceremonial occasions, such as SOTU to emphasize that his authority comes from Gawd and not the consent of the Governed.
Divine Providence…
He should wear it upside down.
That would make it a Crown of Thorns and encourage, shall we say, inappropriate self-images in the continually declining mind of our Divine Fearless Leader.
I was thinking more of a dunce cap, but maybe you have a point.
:-/
India Is a Rising Power, but Its Capital Is a Lethal Gas Chamber (NY Times via archive.ph)
Gotta be bad combined with Climate and an ongoing Pandemic.