The last frontier of empathy: why we still struggle to see ourselves as animals Guardian (Kent Y)
Why Don’t People Return Their Shopping Carts? A (Somewhat) Scientific Investigation Behavioral Scientist (resilc). This says so much about America…
What’s in the junk? London Review of Books. Anthony L: ‘The idea that there is a gene for intelligence is a category mistake. It is like thinking there is a gene for ‘handsomeness'”
#COVID-19/Pandemics
⚠️Japanese mutant H3N2 flu update:
Seasonal influenza cases in Kawasaki have gone vertical and are currently deep into the "large/ explosive" epidemic zone, and still accelerating.
This is far above anything seen in previous years.
Japan has ongoing HPAl activity (mostly H5N1,… pic.twitter.com/ynrUQsUde5
— Dr Richard Hirschson (@richardhirschs1) November 16, 2025
#H5N5 #H5N1 #H3N2 @CDCgov @USDA
⚠️⚠️⚠️ Update: What we know about the WA H5N5 case
Here’s a rundown of what we know for sure about the H5N5 case in Washington, along with what we might also surmise. There are some real red flags here.🚩
There are indications that public health… pic.twitter.com/5Je8Zl0ITZ
— K-in-CT 😷😷😷 (@KinCONN) November 18, 2025
It feels like just a question of time before there is a large marburg outbreak.
That 21 day incubation period is the kicker. pic.twitter.com/NmVhZzsSwn
— tern (@1goodtern) November 16, 2025
Climate/Environment
Not new but still shocking.
👉 since half-life of carbon in the atmosphere is 50 years, 📈 1👇 shows rich countries responsible for getting world to the edge of catastrophic heating
👉 📈2 shows rich countries made progress, but emerging economies must do most of the cutting now… pic.twitter.com/hPNTHwbo6B— Richard Baldwin (@BaldwinRE) November 18, 2025
Tyson agrees to settlement over climate-smart beef claims The New Lede
China?
One Chinese-made component that Tesla is struggling to substitute is the lithium-iron phosphate battery. China’s Contemporary Amperex Technology, or CATL, has been a major supplier to Tesla for the battery, known as LFP.
— Paul Triolo (@pstAsiatech) November 17, 2025
BYD, Xpeng and rivals race to shore up growth as investors turn skeptical Nikkei
The Vanishing Craft of Journalism in China Pekingology
Japan
Japan’s Takaichi Has Few Good Options to End China’s Retaliation Bloomberg
Japan Protests Chinese Ships’ Intrusion near Senkakus Nippon
Japan’s economy contracts as exports get hit by US tariffs Independent
Koreas
Korea faces longest sustained decline in youth employment rate since 2009 global financial crisis Korea Joongang Daily
India
Gold, Silver Rush Widens India’s October Trade Deficit Despite Strong Overall Outlook NDTV. This along side India’s US exports jump despite 50% tariffs as trade tensions ease BBC
Nine killed as explosives linked to Delhi blast blow up at Kashmir police station Independent
Deadly Blasts In Delhi and Islamabad Raise Tensions Between India and Pakistan w/ John Helmer Dimitri Liscaris, YouTube
Bangladesh
Protests break out as verdict against Bangladesh’s deposed leader Sheikh Hasina begins BBC
Africa
Ethiopia Accuses Eritrea of Violating Its Territorial Integrity DNE Africa
Sudan’s army captures two areas in North Kordofan as RSF burns more bodies Aljazeera
Jailed Tunisian politicians go on hunger strike against presidential crackdown Financial Times
South of the Border
Will Ecuador allow US troops on its soil? DW
After Gen Z march in Mexico, government and critics spar as Trump cites ‘big problems’ south of border Los Angeles Times
America’s invasion of Mexico Digital nomads are tearing neighbourhoods apart Unherd
European Disunion
Fears of French industrial crisis persist despite €30 billion in investments Le Monde
The German economy Sozialsmus via machine translation (Micael T)
Denmark’s drive to conscript teenage girls: ‘We’re pretty scared’ The Times
Old Blighty
Israel v. The Resistance
Palestinian deaths in Israeli custody have surged. A prison guard describes rampant abuse Associated Press (guurst)
Tensions rise as Israeli troops attack UN forces in southern Lebanon Arab Weekly
Why Is “Progressive International” Not Backing Uniting for Peace? Sam Husseini
* * * What’s the shadowy organisation taking Gaza Palestinians to South Africa? Aljazeera
🇿🇦 South Africa’s Foreign Minister Ronald Lamola said the recent transfer of Palestinians from Gaza to his country appears to be “a clearly orchestrated operation.”
▪️ “It does look like it represents a broader agenda to remove Palestinians from Palestine into many different… https://t.co/JXENDXKny8
— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) November 18, 2025
* * * The Global Zionist Organ Trafficking Conspiracy Kit Klarenberg
Violence flares after Iraq vote as MP’s guards storm Peshmerga home Arab News
Iran says no prospect of talks as West builds pressure over nuclear issue Aljazeera
New Not-So-Cold War
From Politico’s European morning newsletter. Note this discussion omits two issues mentioned by Alexander Mercouris in recent broadcasts: one, that Euroclear has threatened to sue the Commission if it tried to proceed with the asset theft plan, and two, that the Commission does not include as an option stopping the funding of Ukraine.
ONE MONTH TO SAVE UKRAINE: European leaders will fly into Brussels on Dec. 18 for the final European Council summit of 2025. The stakes could not be higher: They must find a way forward on thorny proposals to ensure Ukraine doesn’t run out of money midway through next year — jeopardizing its security and its very existence.
Bad memories: Kyiv’s allies are hoping to avoid a repeat of October’s EUCO when Belgium objected to plans to use a colossal €140 billion of frozen Russian assets to underwrite a reparations loan, citing legal fears. Diplomats have since fumed at the Commission for having failed to respond to the concerns ahead of time. On Monday, in a letter obtained by POLITICO, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen warned capitals that the alternative to the move is costly national or EU borrowing, and urged them to agree a way forward…
It’s not just Belgium: Other countries are increasingly critical of the Berlaymont’s failure to put forward a concrete proposal, instead having focused on trying to convince them that the Russian assets plan is the best of a bunch of bad options. “There is no realistic option here except for using frozen assets,” said one diplomat from a Central European country…..
Get on with it: Speaking to Playbook, Ukraine’s EU ambassador, Vsevolod Chentsov, said “a swift agreement on the reparations loan is essential” and will provide predictable funding from early 2026 without costing taxpayers…
Finnish line: Speaking in an interview with Playbook’s Nick Vinocur in Brussels on Monday, Finnish President Alexander Stubb said the EU could ultimately have to settle for a “combination” of the three options under consideration: using Russian assets, combined with both national and EU borrowing.
Ukraine Is Buying Fighter Jets With Money It Does Not Have? Moon of Alabama
BREAKING:
🇷🇺🇺🇦 An assassination attempt was foiled on Russia's Secretary of the Security Council Sergei Shoygu while the Troyekurovskoye Cemetery, Moscow. – TASS
Russian outlet TASS reports two Russians attempted to blow Sergei Shoygu up at Troyekurovskoye Cemetery in Moscow.… pic.twitter.com/2gbQtk2kt2
— Megatron (@Megatron_ron) November 18, 2025
Our son of a bitch Events in Ukraine
NATO raises alarm as Russia finalises nuclear-powered Burevestnik missile Euronews
The US is scaring Russia with junk aircraft – B-52H Nuclear bomber approaches Russian Arctic over Finland International Affairs (Michael T)
Poland’s Railroad Sabotage Incident Is Highly Suspicious Andrew Korybko
NATO faces logistics challenge over moving tanks across EU in face of Russian threat Le Monde
Syraqistan
Military escalation | Clashes renew between “National Guards” and government forces in Al-Suwaidaa SyriaHR
Pakistan-Taliban Ties Hit A New Low As Two Countries ‘Trade Insults’ Amid Clashes News18
Caucasus
‘Time is running out’: Serbia eyes winter energy crisis Pryor Information
Big Brother is Watching You Watch
This App Lets ICE Track Vehicles and Owners Across the Country 404 Media
We Hacked Flock Safety Cameras in under 30 Seconds YouTube (Friend)
Imperial Collapse Watch
Ready for War: A Way Forward for Industrial Preparedness CIMSEC. “I can’t even…” on multiple levels.
Trump 2.0
Trump’s Grip on Republicans Shows First Signs of Slipping Wall Street Journal. Lead story. No archived version yet.
Trump Says America Is in ‘Golden Age,’ Straining to Address Affordability New York Times (resilc). Trump reveals he is a less accomplished propagandist than Goebbels.
Trump ‘more likely to win lottery’ than BBC lawsuit Telegraph
Trump DOJ’s James Comey case faces widening judicial backlash The Hill
Trump, ignoring MAGA critics, is set to deepen US commitment to Saudi Arabia Politico
Trump’s Saudi First Foreign Policy Continues Daniel Larison
L’affaire Epstein
Trump SHOCK REVERSAL On Epstein Files In 11th Hour Loss Breaking Points
“National Security” Blocks Epstein Files Release Ken Klippenstein
As Summers Sought Clandestine Relationship With Woman He Called a Mentee, Epstein Was His ‘Wing Man’ Harvard Crimson (resilc)
Mamdani
How young Zohran Mamdani voters persuaded their parents to get on board Gothamist
Economy
From Boom to Bust: Inside the U.S. Boat Market Crash YouTube (resilc)
Fed Vice Chair Blames Tariffs for Lack of Progress on Inflation Michael Shedlock
A new rare earth crisis is brewing as yttrium shortages spread Reuters
Mr. Market is Moody
QE Is Coming: The 2008 Roots of Fed Dominance Investing
Nuclear Stocks Crash, With A Potential Payoff Still Years Away OilPrice
AI
Google boss warns ‘no company is going to be immune’ if AI bubble bursts BBC. Lead story. Sure sounds like a threat.
The Bezzle
Crypto market sheds $1.2tn as traders shun speculative assets Financial Times. Lead story. No archived version yet.
Crypto’s Riskiest Coins Plummet to Lows Not Seen Since Pandemic Bloomberg
The Crypto Industry’s $28 Billion in ‘Dirty Money’ New York Times. resilc: “No way is it that little.”
US Politicians and Their Net Worth YouTube (resic)
Class Warfare
Fueling Debt: How Rising Utility Costs Are Overwhelming American Families Century Foundation
Fascism of yesterday and today Rebelion via machine translation (Micael T)
Antidote du jour (via):
A bonus. Darwin Award win averted:
Apparently this lady was repeatedly getting close to the elk. Both the elk and the onlookers had enough with the bull getting ready to charge and the onlookers yelling at the lady to back off. pic.twitter.com/5emW5aAkGn
— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) November 17, 2025
A second bonus:
The easy way to convince your dog to take medicine…
— Tansu Yegen (@TansuYegen) November 17, 2025
And a third:
The relationship between cats and birds has fascinated humans for centuries, both biologically and culturally. pic.twitter.com/drd9Z8wpOZ
— We don't deserve cats 😺 (@catsareblessing) November 17, 2025
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
Heh. In the FT —
Oracle’s astonishing $300bn OpenAI deal is now valued at minus $74bn
And suddenly, there may be a reverse Midas at the centre of AI’s circular economy
https://www.ft.com/content/064bbca0-1cb2-45ab-85f4-25fdfc318d89
https://archive.ph/uLke9
obviously, they must immediately double down.
You would need these enormous data centers not so much for AI but for the idea of tokenizing everything in the country and continuously tracking and surveilling everything, for digital currencies and/or crypto.
There’s currently an effort by the Nasdaq in this direction.
Nasdaq Looking to Unveil Tokenized Trading Platform Next Year: Will the SEC Approve?
November 12, 2025
On September 8, 2025, Nasdaq submitted a first-of-its-kind application to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to amend Nasdaq rules to permit the trading of tokenized securities alongside traditional, non-tokenized securities. Investors would have the ability to trade, settle, and clear securities on Nasdaq’s trading facilities through a permissioned, or in other words, restrictively accessed, blockchain run by the Depository Trust Company (DTC). The tokenized trading feature may be available as soon as the end of Q3 2026, if approved. This effort seems likely to garner serious attention from the SEC in light of the Trump administration’s and SEC Chairman Paul Atkins’ emphasis on strengthening American leadership in digital financial technology and making America the “crypto capital of the world.
https://www.carltonfields.com/insights/publications/2025/nasdaq-looking-to-unveil-tokenized-trading-platform-next-year-will-the-sec-approve
Why this, why now?
Here’s a 5 minute clip from longer Solari Report: Tokenizing the Planet.
Creating a New Debt Sink by Tokenizing the World
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbJcWk8FAPw
This is the dream. They won’t abandon it quickly or easily, imo, no matter how much money they lose initially.
Catherine Austin Fitts in a 2 minute utube clip about digital ids, (that also require huge data centers.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2g6eeBul5E
not so much for AI but for the idea of tokenizing everything in the country and continuously tracking and surveilling everything,
There is far too much glamour around the real AI use cases so let me break it down in very plain terms that non-technical people can understand, because all the heavy breathing around the imminent death any day now of OpenAI and the failure to launch of generative AI risks obscuring what I think is going to be the lasting and real impact of the technology over the next decade or more.
Last week there was a post about how OpenAI’s inference costs exceed their training costs in terms of their metered cloud spend*. There were a lot of questions about what inference actually is and how it could be possible that it exceeded training costs and if this was the case, didn’t it make the entire artifice a colossal waste of resources?
Training is the process of taking some massive amount of input – for example, SMS and call logs with their associated transcripts and metadata – and applying weights and biases (numeric values for each discrete bit of information loaded into a special database, where each bit is a token, which is 1-2 characters). The weights and biases are what make the model useful or not for a specific use case: they effectively denote some bits of information as more important due to their relationship to other bits of information. For example. if you’re training on call/sms data, you probably want to weight the individuals making the calls quite high, and if you have metadata or call transcript logs you might want to bias towards specific terms. The finished product is the model and is typically packaged as an executable that is called by another application. It is assumed that the public chat interfaces of the frontier models (like if you just go to chatgpt dot com) are not static executables, but actually updating and continuing training on the models based on the public prompts and context data that are provided, as these are not under any kind of agreement.
Inference is the process of querying the model based on the training set, such as asking to see a bubble plot of SMS messages over the last week from users in a specific geographic coordinate area that used the terms ‘kill’, ‘gun’, and ‘shoot’. It’s resource-intensive because it is reviewing the relationships between the tokens based on those weights and biases in the training, constructing them into a ranked list of items, potentially re-ranking based on additional context or other query parameters, then serving the set back to the user. If the model is a general purpose one like OpenAI’s models, then it has to chew through immensely more data than one that is specific to the use case for the query.
I don’t know anything about this concept of ‘tokenizing everything in the country’. This means nothing to me. However I think, based on my plain description of what model training and inference is and the example I used, it is very easy to see what the data centers could be used for if there aren’t enough successful business models based on generating content slop for VFX, video games and Spotify. Because before in order to query this amount of data you had to know how to interact with big data stores like Hadoop and those have special query languages and huge storage overhead. A specially trained model does not need a special query language or complex ETL pipeline to bring the data into a format that can be used to make a presentation to request a warrant. Someone with a few weeks of training seated in front of a computer could reference a prompt library to pull out what was needed in minutes. The call logs, transcripts, metadata and interpersonal references are already stored and retrieved by multiple corporate and government entities and have been for over a decade.
*: Since Zitron doesn’t publish his leaked documents I can’t be 100% certain but I think the most likely documents he is being provided for both in the OpenAI and Anthropic pieces are the metered usage reports from which are derived the billing data. I’m being intentionally precise in my language: think about your utility bill and how it is a table of how much metered use on a particular day. Where I live there are also monthly discounts based on things like which billing plan I am on and previous month credits for communal building areas. So there is metered usage data and then there are discounts applied to that data, and from that you get a bill. It is the same with the cloud platforms. The critical thing to know is that the cloud platforms do not as a general rule put the billing discounts in the platform usage reports; they’re applied ex post facto by an account team, because these accounts aren’t just paying by credit card like a normal company or person, they get net 90 and invoices. The metered usage reports are available to hundreds if not thousands of employees. The billing discounts and invoices are available to a very small number of people on the account team. Zitron is likely calculating his spend numbers based on the published rate minus the known discounts. This is why I think his conjectures are a part of the story but not enough to make the bold claims he is stating. Yet again let me repeat that I think he has the general direction of travel correct and I am not defending OpenAI or Anthropic. I just do not think we’re in the end game for either actor yet.
My dream is to get my MSTE degree from an Ivy school and become CTO at a Fortune 500 company /s
P.S.:
MSTE: Master of Science in Token Engineering
CTO: Chief Token Officer
Thanks much for this, very informative. I especially had no idea that that was how training worked.
You know it just occured to me, the data centres already have water and electricity but no one actually wants the centres in use. Maybe they could be converted into affordable housing, getting two problems with one stone?
Your typical data center would be a horrible residence. The arrangements I’ve seen are less appealing than turning an interior tenancy in a mall into an apartment.
And they’re exactly where every mayor wants their homeless!
Maybe because I’m not familiar with the argument against but this isn’t crypto – my understanding is that it’s just a different way of securing post-trade processing to identify ownership, and it may be cheaper and less susceptible to fraud. That could be sold at a premium as a service.
Flora: Investors would … trade, settle, and clear securities on Nasdaq’s trading facilities through a permissioned, or in other words, restrictively accessed, blockchain run by the Depository Trust Company (DTC).
Of course. That’s exactly what they ought to do.
Because it simply isn’t enough that these datacenters are already giant energy consumers needing more energy and water for cooling than the US can plausibly build out in the next decade.
No. So now they combine that with blockchain, when blockchain ‘data mining’ consumes over 175 terawatt-hours of electricity annually, which is about the same as entire mid-sized countries like Poland or Argentina. With the only real product of that data mining in the real world — the non-crypto world being waste heat
“Poland’s Railroad Sabotage Incident Is Highly Suspicious”
I notice on the news tonight that there was none of the normal ‘Russiadidit’ but they were not saying who actually did this sabotage. I found that significant as it seems they were already thinking of false-flag operations and that would mean Ukrainians.
The “Russiadidit” seems to be a patience game. Now a little bit later, it was Ukrainians but it was really the Russians.
https://www.dw.com/en/poland-railway-sabotage-suspects-ukrainians-working-for-russia/a-74790998
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/polish-railway-explosion-ukraine-warsaw-russia-sabotage-b2867115.html
https://tvpworld.com/90077918/poland-ups-alert-level-after-russian-linked-sabotage-on-strategic-rail-line
This is a repeat of the “Russian spy drones over European NATO bases”, and of the “explosive packages sneaked by Russian intelligence services” cases, where Ukrainians, not Russians, were found to be the culprits.
All that crying “Wolf!” is getting eminently tiresome.
I have a number of friends who are convinced that Russia is starting with Ukraine and then will invade the West. No point trying to discuss otherwise. The continual MSM refrain of Russiadidit maintains this understanding.
No need to discuss. Just ask a number of friends for a numbered list of things that Putin want to steal from the west. Things that Russian invaders are willing to die for, like washing machines.
To be fair, even the Russian government has been admitting for a long time now that Russians and Ukrainians are the same people. So it’s not really wrong to identify the culprits as “Russians”. They basically are.
Cloudflare global outage of over 40 minutes around Linkstime today. A lot of impact since half the web runs through Cloudflare.
So now it works again (this being central EU) local time 15:35.
I already had nightmares of some new censorship operation but when I saw The Duran was working fine I sensed it´s something else. Eventually even BERLINER ZEITUNG was reporting it online.
More like 2.5 hours downtime as of now. For those running affected sites this info might be useful https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45963780 . Manually changing your DNS A record could also be an option.
For timeline
https://www.cloudflarestatus.com/
I’ve been unable to access NC until now. The good news is that half my chore list is already finished.
ayup. ive finished the honeydo plumbing bs at moms.
and can safely avoid her til its feedin time.
of course, no more heavy-ish chores for me, today…bc i dont bend that way any more(changing guts of toilet)
I just tuned in and wondered why there were only 23 comments.
yeah. when i refresh NC ive been getting that…something to do with Dallas.
i have no idea what “cloudfare” is or does.
is it a system of tubes?
Cloudflare is the middleman.
middleman who keeps your internet content secure in a medieval castle defending it against Viking hoardes, who then dispatches your content via race cars.
Cloudflare really did a number down here and getting into NC was a hit or miss proposition – mostly miss. After a few hours I gave it up as a bad job and went to bed. The Cloudfare panel said it was a problem in Brisbane but it looks like it was all over the place.
Cloudflarestatus.com Past Incidents says Cloudflare Global Network experiencing issues.
re: Israel vs. Richard Falk
How could Canada turn into this political shithole?
Canada Interrogates 95 Yr Old ex-UN Rapporteur on Palestine
Authorities detained the human rights expert Richard Falk and his wife, scholar Hilal Elver, as they entered Canada for a conference on that nation’s complicity with Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
https://consortiumnews.com/2025/11/17/__trashed-2/
+
conversation with Richard Falk
Consortium News looked back at the career of Richard Falk, a former U.N. special rapporteur on Palestine, and outspoken critic of U.S. foreign policy, who joined CN Live! on March 17, 2021.
102 min.
https://consortiumnews.com/2025/11/17/cn-at-30-watch-cn-live-dissident-intellectual/
https://behavioralscientist.org/why-dont-people-return-their-shopping-carts-a-somewhat-scientific-investigation/
I’ve found it interesting that there are such regional differences in cart returning behavior. For instance, here in the Chicago metro area the return rate is much lower than it is in Wisconsin where I often visit. A study on regional differences would be interesting and perhaps telling.
my unscientific observations, Whole Foods is the worst by magnitudes—ironic given the value of cars in the parking lot, lmao.
Costco is a distant 2nd, but at least the people there have the sense to put their cars against bollards, so the cart doesn’t roll across the lot.
Trader Joe’s, Walmart(Supercenter), (Super)Target, are equally good-typical-unremarkable.
We need a Desmond Morris for shoppers!
Here in Europe, a good indicator of the trustworthiness of a supermarket neighbourhood is whether you are required to deposit a coin in the trolley slot (releaseable on returning it) to unlock the trolley. Where there is a coin release system, many supermarkets offer customers a free plastic coin size token that does the job. I have several tokens that work equally well in Britain, France and Spain for example. From empirical observation, most people seem to return trolleys to collection points. Have never seen it as an issue. Most people seem well-behaved in that respect in Europe.
Why is returning your cart viewed as an altruistic endeavor whereas self-checkout is viewed as capitalistic enshitification?
I have 0 concern with returning my cart (so long as it is fixed on a curb.) I figure its an extra task that may lead to the grocery store staffing one extra employee
My daughter was a cart returning Costco employee. She doesn’t share your opinion.
Cotton made “jobs” for slaves, too.
Local grocery chain hires folks who are clearly in some sort of “special needs” category for cart return. They always seem happy in their work, even in the most unpleasant weather in a cold climate. Easy to imagine that finding other employment would be a struggle for them.
Do you realize that you just horribly insulted someone’s daughter. Matthew 7:1-5
Yeah, my daughter graduated at the top of her university class. Not to disparage others. In fact, I don’t think the less academically performing deserve to pick up after rude dicks, either.
So your point is that the “less academically performing” do not “deserve” gainful employment if in your(or your daughters) opinion the work is in some way demeaning?
Really?
Because in my experience, there is not and never was a separate job for cart collectors. It is additional work for store employees. And when people do not return carts, they too often dump them so as to mess up parking or worse, handicapped spaces.
Aldi requires a quarter deposit to get a cart,
Every single cart is returned.
Albrecht was not the richest man in Deutschland for nothing.
Where I live in the global south, we have bag packers who work with the cashiers. While your items are getting checked they pack them up for you.
You leave your trolley behind at the cashier for another group of workers to collect and the bag packer takes your purchases to your car with you in a separate, designated cart that they take back. You can tip them too but you don’t have to. I remember when I was a kid one of them used to give me chocolate every easter.
The pay isn’t great but a lot of people fresh out of high-school/drop outs of high school take it up, often as an interim job. A lot of my patients with significant impairments because of early-onset psychosis have gotten jobs there too as they recover. They’re really helpful regardless but if it’s busy and there’re none available you have to carry your bags out in your hands which can be rough.
Nothing like watching the elderly and infirm struggle across a windy parking lot with loose carts rolling around!
Bobcat Goldthwait had a bit about being on cart duty in his early days.
Right – that’s exactly my point. An employer who no longer has “additional work for store employees” will be quick to get rid of any unessesary employee.
I will never block a handycap space and I will actually lift up the wheels and put them over a curb so the cart is stabilized and won’t role away into traffic.
You can make the case that I am taking up a parking spot with my cart which is inconvenient to others who are not affiliated with the store. I dont have a good reponse to that except to say if a cart return is relatively convenient I do return it. But I’m not going to go out of my way to return a cart and save the employer resources just like I won’t go out of my way to self-checkout.
Its interesting that the commeteriat insists on inconvenencing themselves just to help the capitalist’s bottom line without even questioning why or if that norm should be the standard
This seems somewhat relevant: https://youtu.be/X95o53Gepmg
“These carts are public domain, Ricky.”
Sorry, but your argument completely overlooks the inconvenience caused to other customers. For instance: I go to the cart rack. No carts. They’re all out at the perimeter of the parking lot and your “extra employee” is on a break. Therefore, because of the selfishness (read: laziness) of some people, I must hunt down a cart. And I might be just as disabled or enfeebled or overweight or in a rush as they are. So none of those are justifications for not doing the right thing.
Your logic suggests that we all go around never thinking of other people, making messes at our tables in restaurants and in the washrooms because those behaviors create “work” for waitpersons and janitors. Well, employment opportunities aside, I for one don’t like sitting down at a food-bespattered table waiting for the server to show up or going into a washroom covered in secretions of various sorts.
But then again, maybe I’m just too picky and don’t care about other people making a living.
I am (unofficially) disabled on account of a number of things, and I still have the decency to return the shopping cart. I suffer hyperacusis and otalgia (an earache). In this context, the casters on the shopping cart clanking on asphalt is so obnoxiously loud for me that it literally hurts my ears, yet I always return the shopping cart. In order to prevent the sound and lights inside a typical grocery store from causing me pain and exhaustion, I wear very dark sunglasses and earplugs when shopping. The earplugs are essential when I am on the asphalt parking lot. Casters rolling on the linoleum floor at the grocery store aren’t too noisy, but casters on the concrete floor at Home Depot are uncomfortable.[1] Adding in a PA system, numerous other customers rolling clanky carts on concrete, and noisy air conditioning will result in a cacophony of sound that will hit me like kryptonite hits Superman.
By the way, I am a caster connoisseur. I paid for and mounted some fancy expensive casters on my furniture. Having super smooth and silent casters to roll around on my fake hardwood floor is awesome. I can easily shuffle my furniture around and do a bang up job mopping or sweeping. My downstairs neighbors are undoubtedly thankful.
[1]: Yves has a recent post about concrete floors at Costco causing joint pain. Nobody would think that concrete floors cause my ears pain.
For one, it’s a false equivalency since self-checkout can objectively be a better option, especially when you’re picking up only a few things. But it’s also just a-hole behavior in general since you’re making things worse for both the workers and other customers. A better analogy would be, instead of acting with the bare minimum level of consideration and throwing away your leftovers at whatever fast food spot, you leave it for somebody else to deal with. After all, why shouldn’t the quick service corporate overlords hire somebody to clean up after you?
tragedy of the commons/minimizing your personal negative externalities, writ large a/k/a why America can’t have nice stuff.
the person who bears the brunt of the waste-matter rolling downhill is the one dudette/dude who has to go around and pick-up all the carts.
90 seconds of putting the cart away gives me extra steps and doesn’t make some dude’s job unnecessarily more miserable.
At the big mall here, which is set up so as to have to have cart collectors (big grocer on second floor, parking and front drive on ground floor, so shoppers take carts to curb to load into vehicles and then a store employee comes pretty often to herd carts back upstairs), someone left a cart badly placed. It rolled into a ride-share car making a pick-up. denting the door. I could not move fast enough to grab it, called out, but the driver didn’t get what I was saying and didn’t intercept in time.
So yes, to your point, a fresh example of loose cars as hazardous to cars.
This is great! Now do e-scooters.
https://youtube.com/shorts/6Gkonk6YVss?si=ixPhzFdajk9g7fuH
Class consciousness, humanity’s conscience.
The shoppers at Whole Foods in Mountain Brook, AL and Portland, Maine were very good cart-returners.
I postulate that beyond the gut of the quantifier our coastal corridors have become the 10% have been insulated from the moral corrosion of neoliberalism even as their local poor have borne the brunt.
Commentary from another Ohio transplant who was raised to bring back the cart:
https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=7pDpBxja5W0
RIP Dom Leone.
From the link
To clarify, a professor at Columbia Business school is bothered that people don’t act a certain way which would otherwise boost the company’s profits and help to eliminate a job that they benefitted from in high school.
In my experience the great majority of people do return the carts to the “cart corral” Of course that leaves room for those inconsiderate few who do not – a minor annoyance.
A hundred years ago H.L. Mencken famously said that no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people. Today he might well have said that that person would also not go broke overestimating their laziness. Especially given the passing of a century, the advent of the automobile and the computer, the decline of physical exercise, and the average gain of a hundred pounds per individual.
A few things about the article:
1. I was shocked that only 6% of those questioned said sorry. The rest had justifications of one sort or another and a worrying large percentage mentioned physical violence towards the questioner as a possible response. What a dreadful commentary on society as it exists today.
2. I would have thought that polite, considerate Canadians would have performed better. They didn’t. But then obesity (and its concomitant, laziness) is only slightly less common here than it is in the US.
3. The article included two photos. In both the individuals were fifty pounds or more overweight. If one were to extrapolate these two photos to the general population, one might have the *real* answer as to why they might prefer not to return their shopping carts. That hundred yards of walking is just too much for them. Simply that. Their excuses are merely obfuscations.
only place i go with carts is the local grocery store(where everyone returns their carts to the rack at the front of the store(small town, everybody knows everybody, so easy to enforce such behavior))…and the HEB in Fredericksburg, where they have corral-like racks scattered throughout the parking lot, so its easy to put yer empty in one of those.
and they do apparently have dedicated cart wranglers, with a lil tractor thing to push a herd of them uphill.
mostly young athletic guys, lost in their earbuds…so i havent had occasion to poll them. (my Youngest is def in their cohort, and says the ones he knows ask for that assignment: its a workout, earbuds,and relatively unsupervised).
notably, at both places, i have seen people on numerous occasion stack an oldster’s cart with theirs and take it where it goes.
(i do this, too).
conversely, in austin…especially the less rich places…theres carts all over the place…in the ditch, on the sidewalk, etc. due to people not having a vehicle, and it being a pita to lug groceries by the bus.
when i left austin for out here, i snagged one of these…for to bring groceries into the house(now i just use the wheelbarrow)
People tend to mostly be good about returning carts where I am. Smallish area and most people don’t want to be that jerk who left the cart in the middle of the lot. If I notice someone bringing in a cart when I’m headed into the store, I ask if I can take it for them. I need the cart anyway, and always get a happy response.
“don’t worry, they pay someone to do that” has become a red flag for me.
It was this phrase (when leaving a hotel room) that made me realise I didn’t want to be friends anymore with someone I’d known for years.
It’s a small thing, but if you’re willing to leave your sh*t for some low-paid worker to deal with, you’re not for me.
From the Bloomberg article on difficult Chinese/Japanese relations: “While China’s ties with Japan have been rocky for decades over disputes spanning Tokyo’s invasion of its neighbor in the 1930s” You know that dispute. World War II. Yeah, that dispute.
Re The Guardian and new word pseudospeciation
Not to beat one’s own drum but this is what some of us have been saying here forever. Those liberals who sneer at Creationists or write plays like Inherit the Wind have all too often been reluctant to accept the true implication of Darwin– that we too are animals with powerful instincts that can only be controlled by realizing the same. “Good vs Evil” doesn’t cut it except as a judgment over vestigial impulses that we all share.
Which is not to say that some religions haven’t embraced the principle if not the science. “Hate the sin but love the sinner.” Good advice.
For those in doubt on the points you raise, I recommend Robert Sapolsky’s series of lectures on the evolutionary basis of human behavior, Human Behavioral Biology. Fascinating stuff.
If those pretty scared conscript teenage girls do not scare President Putin’s Russia, nothing will.
I wonder how many the Danes figure they will need in order to defeat Russia.
Shouldn´t there be a legal basis to at least charge government officials of EU´s states for their far-reaching policies that are violating the various demands to solve crises peacefully based on false premisses or premisses not sufficiently proven. If I go to war or alter a country´s political, social, economic course to prepare for war without serious evidence that is criminal. After all if a paper spreads allegations and cannot bolster them with enough plausbile evidence they have to retract and if they reject that publishers eventually can end up in prison. National security cannot suffice to eclipse any of these due process principles implemented in “democratic” systems – principles which are also intended as a safeguard for the population against a government going rogue.
The whole EU is based on false premisses or premisses not sufficiently proven. It’s not a bug, it’s a feature.
Simplicius was recently wondering why all the hoo-haa about corruption in Kiev. After all there’s nothing really new or unusual about corruption in Kiev so what is this big stink for and why now? Events in Ukraine has an idea:
According to what I read earlier in the year when Zelensky tried and failed to bring NABU under Ukrainian administration, it’s more like a quango under foreign influence than a government office.
Recycling Lead for U.S. Car Batteries Is Poisoning People (NY Times via archive.ph)
Antidote-worthy: sea wolves raid crab traps to feed on bait
They show up when you empty a crab trap. On case you throw back the undersized crabs. Which you cannot do without illegally feeding marine mammals. It’s a pickle!
Thank you, Yves.
Further to the Summers links and consideration by Gordon Brown and Ed Balls of placing Summers at the Bank of England in succession to Mervyn King, I have a hunch that the trio met Epstein and perhaps Mandelson in London, at Mandelson’s, or Summers’ home on Cape Cod, which Brown and Balls visited every summer, or Epstein’s NYC town house.
Oh good, let’s give Larry a chance to do at the Bank of England all the successful things he did when he was put in charge of investing at Harvard.
– “National Security” Blocks Epstein Files Release – Ken Klippenstein
– As Summers Sought Clandestine Relationship With Woman He Called a Mentee, Epstein Was His ‘Wing Man’ – Harvard Crimson (resilc)
Taken together, these two stories nicely capture my fears about the “release” of the Epstein files. I fully expect any real revelations regarding Epstein’s relations with foreign governments or intelligence services to be missing or heavily censored. That will leave the titillating salacious gossip like that about Summers for the press to “expose” and giggle about. Of course the Harvard Crimson is going to cover Summers preying on a “mentee.” So is the NY Times. CNN and Fox News can compete to see how many such references they can find to Trump and other Republicans vs. Clinton and other Democrats. It will be great entertaining fun! And we will learn little about Epstein’s actual role in life.
Here’s hoping that the real investigative journalism at places like Drop-Site News and the Grayzone continues to inform us. I certainly have no problem with such embarrassing revelations about the miserable Larry Summers. But there are much more important issues at stake in this case.
This App Lets ICE Track Vehicles and Owners.
If they drive. Far more effective are the cash apps on smartphones, which every single person seemingly carries with them everywhere now.
Buy a coffee with your smartphone and ICE knows immediately where you are. Also, ties in with security footage at the counter. More people are in detention because of not using cash for small purposes than any other means of discovery.
Cash obviates this. That is what smart people will use.
I see the NY Times has found yet another way to minimize the Epstein effect:
– ‘Epstein Emails Reveal a Bygone Elite’
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/16/style/epstein-emails-reveal-a-lost-new-york.html
“The disgraced financier’s recently released documents are steeped in a clubby world that is all but gone.”
Thank goodness! I’m sure glad we don’t have to worry about such nefarious activities by our elites today. How terrible it must have been to live back in those dark ages in which clubby elites ruled the world!
The NYT in 2025, bravely probing further and deeper into Moron Space than humanity hitherto believed was possible. From today’s —
Sex Had Become a Chore. Then They Started Reading Romantasy.
The wildly popular fiction genre allows readers to talk openly about yearning, sex and desire. And it’s spilling over into their bedrooms.
https://archive.ph/DDh2U
The Most Impactful Political Handbag Since Mrs. Thatcher’s
Sanae Takaichi, the new prime minister of Japan, makes a statement about work — with style.
https://archive.ph/DFVID#selection-433.0-495.17
Re: Carts and staffing. Jeff Bezos is one of the richest men in the world. He asks his checkout people to also be the baggers. However the process takes so long that customers end up doing all their own bagging. In our Whole Foods parking lot there are not places to return your cart, you must take them back into the store.
It appears that he is asking us to do all the work so that he can make money and not hire more people.
Knocking on people who do not return their carts is another neoliberal form of shaming in my opinion. Other grocery stores make allowances for their customers. Just not Jeff. Just one person’s opinion.
that gels with my observations above: HEB pays to have conveniently located racks in the lot, and pays people to collect them(ive been going to that store for 30 years, and have known many of the employees for that long, and regularly poll them and others: by allaccounts, HEB treats their people well).
the lil grocery out here, its a social thing…a more or folkway…a norm.
part of the local social contract. but this community is different in tha regard from anywhere else ive ever been(and this fact is remarked upon by everyone who visits me out here from elsewhere)
only people who leave their carts in the lot, loose, are the derned hunters who invade us every november.
Fueling Debt: How Rising Utility Costs Are Overwhelming American Families;
Newsom appoints California Public Utilities Commissioners who grant rate increases. Coincidentally, PG&E is one of his bigger donors. Bribes or politics?
Not mentioned, the state and localities banning natural gas hookups, which is far cheaper heating and cooking than electricity, and people recharging cars on their home utility connections.
Hoocoodanode that an Adderall addled grandiose narcissist might be a problematic President…
One sure bet is that things are going to get much crazier before the end of the year.
And this is the first time I have seen Christmas stuff in the stores before Halloween.
I saw artificial Christmas trees for sale in my local Home Depot right after Labor Day.
Agree 100% that Orange Julius has gone crazy pants and just making it to 2026 seems like a good goal.
What are the odds of two US Presidents in a row with mental problems? Do we blame it on the Cubans? How about Russians, Chinese, Iranians, and BRICS? How about that feisty country north of Iran? Definitely interesting times.
This is garden variety dementia. Athough Trump is also an extreme narcissist and the disinhibiting effects of dementia make that worse.
Also we have a chart running tomorrow on how in the UK late onset dementia (voer 70) has spiked post Covid in the UK. Both Trump and Biden had Covid.
re: EMP & Steven Starr
Starr who sometimes in the past joined the Moon of Alabama comments section has now a conversation with Pascal Lottaz on NEUTRALITY STUDIES:
The Billionth-of-a-Second Attack That Ends All Critical Infrastructure | Prof. Steven Starr
56 min.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88B9WAaQWvE
re: German member of BSW Sevim Dagdelen with Pascal Lottaz
YT seems to force me to listen to its English AI dubbing, argh
For most here that will be helpful though
Germany Sacrifices Itself for US Empire: The True Purpose Of German War-Hysteria | Sevim Dagdelen
44 min.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjI0ZfMMY6E
The House Epstein File’s vote. From WaPo.
tl;dr
House votes 427-1 to release the Epstein Files.
House votes overwhelmingly to compel release of Jeffrey Epstein files
The move sends the legislation to the Senate, where pressure is growing to make the Justice Department release more documents.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/11/18/house-epstein-bill-justice-department/
The House on Tuesday overwhelmingly passed a bill to compel the Justice Department to release files related to deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, ending a months-long impasse and sending the legislation to the Senate, where pressure is growing to follow suit.
The 427-1 vote was the remarkable culmination of a bipartisan crusade by Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky) and Ro Khanna (D-California) that until Sunday had met fierce resistance from President Donald Trump, who repeatedly insisted that the focus on the Epstein files was a “hoax” promoted by Democrats.
Taibbi’s latest, public excerpt, the embedded WaPo video is worth watching:
The Epstein Circus Will Shatter Our Last Delusions
https://www.racket.news/p/the-epstein-circus-will-shatter-our
Regarding the climate post. The half life of carbon in the atmosphere is not 50 years but more on the order of 200 years.
America’s invasion of Mexico Digital nomads are tearing neighbourhoods apart Unherd, discusses the ongoing gentrification of Condesa by wealthy (by comparison) Americans, many who work remotely, and the associated housing/affordability squeeze. A good read. My favorite line, from a discussion of businesses targeting gringos (a sarcastic no kidding goes here),
There are even scandalous claims that some restaurants have toned down the heat in their salsas.
breaking, apparently: “Deemed as Passed”
https://x.com/ChrisMurphyCT/status/1990909736074584275
senate just passed through the epstein thing.
and MTG has big brass balls:
https://x.com/AntiTrumpCanada/status/1990842131670352037
Made another deposit at the first national food bank of Tiny Town and had a nice chat with the guy running it…
He related that for the first time ever, they’ve had current NPS employees from Sequoia NP in need-as they weren’t getting any pay during the shutdown.
This little piggy went and asked about Epstein,
This little piggy dared alone,
This little piggy caused a beef,
This not so little piggy had none of that.
This not so little piggy went …
Wee, wee, wee,
all the way home!
Re COVID-19/Pandemics, looks like it’s time for another round of Beat the Reaper: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5AZwkz8zLU
re: Ukraine corruption
recommended
Ukrainian historian Marta Havryshko on System Update
TC 50:50-1:08:00
https://rumble.com/v71uk4m-system-update-show-548.html?e9s=src_v5_sa_o%2Csrc_v1_sa%2Csrc_v1_ucp_f
re: EU insanity Ukraine
JACQUES BAUD with NIMA
with a remarkable, emotional last 30 minutes
Col. Jacques Baud: If the U.S. Leaves, Ukraine Falls — Europe Finally Admits the Truth?
72 min.
https://rumble.com/v71uugi-col.-jacques-baud-if-the-u.s.-leaves-ukraine-falls-europe-finally-admits-th.html?e9s=src_v1_cbl%2Csrc_v1_ucp_a
Dear Yves,
Why do I love, and support, NC? Well, the link to Utube about the boat market is an example. A fast and hardheaded discussion of a piece of the economy to which I have no personal connection, but which is interesting and emblematic — something I can share with friends I don’t hear from as often as I would like. Many thanks.