Raccoons are self-domesticating and getting cuter Boing Boing
Scientists Say Kissing Is Over 20 Million Years Old and It’s Not Just a Human Thing ZME Science
More countries report rising levels of drug-resistant gonorrhoea, warns WHO World Health Organization
Climate/Environment
‘Potent Metaphor’: Fire Forces Evacuation of UN Climate Conference Common Dreams
James Hansen is trying to get a message across Moving Day
Thousands of US hazardous sites are at risk of flooding because of sea level rise, study finds AP
Media reports that FEMA council report being edited by DHS, raising concerns about FEMA future Balanced Weather
Pandemics
Important Long-COVID Lessons From AIDS Researchers Medscape
‘Too little, too late’: damning report condemns UK’s Covid response The Guardian
Measles outbreak in Arizona and Utah could spell the end for U.S. elimination status NBC News
Japan
Japan exports Patriot missiles to U.S., 1st under eased restrictions Kyodo News
China?
China imports no US soybeans for second month, Brazil arrivals up 29% Reuters
US lawmakers press for new tactics to challenge China’s grip on rare earths South China Morning Post
U.S. Senate passes bill seeking to remove limits on Taiwan engagement Focus Taiwan
Myanmar
Myanmar Junta Accuses US of ‘Hidden Agenda’ in Anti-Scam Crackdown The Irrawaddy
Syraqistan
Huckabee Held Meeting at U.S. Embassy With American Who Spied for Israel New York Times. Huckabee apparently cannot find the time to meet with this American:
🚨 A US Embassy official visited Mohammed last week and gave his father a terrifying update. Said he is “not doing good at all,” has black circles under his eyes, more weight loss, and that guards beat him when he tried to wave to his father on the courtroom security camera.… https://t.co/kkaDzWPKYw pic.twitter.com/fyAvby4T6Q
— jasper nathaniel (@infinite_jaz) November 19, 2025
When Israel’s courts become ‘instruments of revenge’ against Palestinian citizens +972 Magazine
Bill to block UNRWA access to water, electricity passes Israeli Knesset’s first reading TRT World
Old Blighty
Ministry of Justice set to take away the right to a trial by jury The Canary
Central Banks and Government Budgets – As If Democracy Matters Ann Pettifor
European Disunion
EU’s digital law cuts spark fears and doubts on competitiveness Euractiv
How ASML Got EUV Construction Physics
Poland to close last Russian consulate in response to train line sabotage Notes from Poland
Poles’ negative attitudes towards Germans rise to highest level in 25 years Notes from Poland
New Not-So-Cold War
The Alleged 28-Point Ukrainian and Russian Peace Plan Larry Johnson
Leaked ‘Peace Proposal’ Carries Hidden Intrigues, as ‘Camo-Putin’ Signals Defiance Simplicius
High Noon In Kiev Moon of Alabama
THE BULLIES ON THE BEACH ARE BEACHED — TRUMP COVERS RETREAT FROM UKRAINE FRONT John Helmer
Putin Visits West Group Command Post Karl Sanchez
Africa
Bamako is grinding towards a halt The Continent
Mali holds firm: West eyes new front to sabotage Sahel independence The Cradle
The Great Game
Chinese diplomatic tour strives to blunt US trade momentum in Central Asia Eurasianet
South of the Border
Russian Tanker Idles Near Venezuela After US Warship Enters Path Bloomberg
RUBIO SAYS MADURO IS TERRORIST-IN-CHIEF OF VENEZUELA’S “CÁRTEL DE LOS SOLES.” IS IT EVEN A REAL GROUP? The Interecept
U.S. Banks Shelve $20 Billion Bailout Plan for Argentina WSJ
L’affaire Epstein
Epstein Bill Has Foreign Policy Loophole Sam Husseini
Larry Summers is institutional rot: a close Jeffrey Epstein associate & apologist for Israeli apartheid & genocide. No surprise, he has a named professorship at Harvard. https://t.co/0guB8X8kIt pic.twitter.com/LwbsCvrMqy
— Zachary Foster (@_ZachFoster) November 19, 2025
Trump 2.0
Issue 97 – This is hardship Molly White
Trump buys millions in Boeing bonds while awarding it contracts Responsible Statecraft
Trump and big tech take two more stabs at ending AI democracy Blood in the Machine
Donald Trump Faces New MAGA Discontent Over AI Proposal Newsweek
Economy
The US is losing blue-collar jobs for the first time since the pandemic—year-on-year job losses have hit 59k as manufacturing industries lose jobs at a rapid pace while growth in construction & transportation has nearly zeroed out pic.twitter.com/fCOhbA7hqk
— Joey Politano 🏳️🌈 (@JosephPolitano) November 20, 2025
Fox News Poll: Voters say White House is doing more harm than good on economy Fox News
“Liberation Day”
Moody’s: U.S. Ports Face Decline as Tariffs and Policy Uncertainty Cloud 2026 Outlook gCaptain
Shutdown
How the shutdown broke America’s food chain — and what happens next Grist
Democrats en déshabillé
National Security Moms Are Here Ken Klippenstein
WOULD YOU EVER GO ON VACATION TO A PLACE LIKE THAT? Seymour Hersh. A conversation with Thomas Frank.
This Data Shows Why Dems Shouldn’t Run from Climate Aaron Regunberg
How California Spent Natural Disaster Funds to Quell Student Protests for Palestine The Intercept
“MAHA”
CDC Website No Longer Rejects Autism-Vaccine Link MedPage Today
The anti-vaccination disinformation on the CDC site is the predictable consequences of public health downplaying COVlD for years.
People were told vax & relax, wash your hands, C19 is seasonal, don’t isolate. They get infected, health declines, & blame the shot, not the virus. https://t.co/mjw431PSl1
— Mike Hoerger, PhD MSCR MBA (@michael_hoerger) November 21, 2025
TRANSLATED EXCERPTS
About MAHA, “One Health”, “Function Health”, article by Alexandre Monnin,philosopher:
“Not treating patients: a current trend”
Very important article for those who want to understand the transformation of public health.
Horrifying.
1/12https://t.co/nuL5ZRJos2 pic.twitter.com/RVEnOdyXYz— Redkiraz (@Redkiraz) November 19, 2025
Imperial Collapse Watch
Dialogue in Hiroshima Emmanuel Todd
Three Roads Beyond Liberal Democracy Deep Cosmopolis
U.S. Coast Guard will no longer classify swastikas, nooses as hate symbols WaPo
Davos assured Trump ‘woke’ topics were off the agenda FT
Police State Watch
Border Patrol is monitoring US drivers and detaining those with ‘suspicious’ patterns AP
ICE Says Critical Evidence In Abuse Case Was Lost In ‘System Crash’ a Day After It Was Sued 404 Media
How the FBI Became the Face of Deprofessionalization Can We Still Govern?
Homeland Security says operation in Charlotte ‘not over’ despite earlier reports WBTV
AI
The only people who benefit here are the executives of the major labels and AI startups. We need the Living Wage for Musicians Act, which would pay a new streaming royalty ONLY to human musicians, not to corporations making AI slop. pic.twitter.com/jksVmx2Yeq
— United Musicians and Allied Workers (@UMAW_) November 20, 2025
In the A.I. Race, Chinese Talent Still Drives American Research New York Times
Musk says AI and humanoid robots will eliminate poverty, make work ‘optional’ Anadolu Agency
Kicking Robots Harper’s
Holes in the web Aeon
Groves of Academe
When grades stop meaning anything The Argument
Antitrust
Meta Wins Antitrust Case as Big Tech Moves from a Monopoly to a Macro-Economic Problem BIG by Matt Stoller
Big Brother Is Watching You Watch
Former Google chief accused of spying on employees through account ‘backdoor’ Los Angeles Times
Class Warfare
Child care expenses top the cost of rent in dozens of U.S. cities, analysis finds. See where. CBS News
California’s child farmworkers: Exhausted, underpaid and toiling in toxic fields Los Angeles Times
The Promise Of Automation and Abundance Ian Welsh
Antidote du jour (via):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
““Modi on board”: Jeffrey Epstein Pressed Steve Bannon to Meet With Indian PM Shortly Before His Death ”
That is the thing about Jeffrey Epstein. The more you delve into this guy you wonder just who the hell he was. Here he is playing diplomacy on a fairly high level and previously he was trying to set up a back channel between the Russian Federation over Syria though the Russians had his number and lost interest. Again, this too was diplomacy on a high level and you wonder where his diplomatic clout came from. So again, who exactly was this guy?
Poor me, Israelite
I get up in the morning slaving for leverage bread, sir
So that every morsel to Mossad can be fed
Poor me, Israelite
Ghislaine and my harem they packed up and leave me
Darling, she said, I was yours to be seen
Poor me, Israelite
Well, shirt them a tear-up, trousers are gone
I don’t want to end up like Jean-Luc Brunel
Poor me, Israelite
And after a storm there must be a calm
They catch me buying the farm, you sound your alarm
Poor me, Israelite
I get up in the morning slaving for leverage bread, sir
So that every morsel to Mossad can be fed
Poor me, Israelite
Ghislaine and my harem they packed up and leave me
Darling, she said, I was yours to be seen
Poor me, Israelite
Shirt them a tear-up, trousers are gone
I don’t want to end up like Jean-Luc Brunel
Poor me, Israelite
Poor me, Israelite
Poor me, Israelite
Poor me, Israelite
Poor me, Israelite
Israelites, by Desmond Dekker & the Aces
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxtfdH3-TQ4&list=RDmxtfdH3-TQ4
I just did some searching for old links because in Israel at least it was sort of common knowledge that Epstein was working with Ehud Barak, and the latter has an ongoing corruption issue (it never seems to go to trial but he’s been accused for years of using his connections to business and world leaders to act as a ‘door opener’ for those seeking to meet with people he knows). Barak has also repeatedly tried to take Netanyahu’s place at the apex of Israeli politics, first in 2019 when Netanyahu failed 5 times to form a government and there were mass protests, and then just before the 12 day war broke out, he formed a new political party trying again, but the party did not get enough votes to be seated (or tbh enough visible protest traction to be taken seriously by Israeli media). That being said I think Ehud Barak is one of those nexus individuals in the whole question of whether Israel is an actual nation state or a criminal enterprise that provides state cover for international billionaire capital and quasi-legal trade flows.
But it looks like a lot of old links have been scrubbed – I sent Yves a screenshot of the warning I got from Google when searching, it might just be because I’m currently in Europe. Anyhow this came up again this week because apparently Jacobin finally put together the connection based on the recent documents released:
Jeffrey Epstein Claimed to Have Meddled in Israel’s Elections | Jacobin
Drop site on Epstein and Barak seeking funding for Israeli cyberweapons funding
Jeffrey Epstein Pursued Swiss Rothschild Bank to Finance Israeli Cyberweapons Empire | Drop site
*Sigh*
Google very much favors recency and “authoritativeness”. You cannot use Google for information, particularly for anything >1 year old.
Guess who on the dynamic duo helped him socialize in the right circles.
Senior US officials asked Davos management to tone down or avoid discussions on areas including female empowerment and diversity, the green transition, climate change and international development finance as a condition of his participation, two of the people said.
“The US side wanted to make sure Trump’s appearance at the elite, progressive event would still play well with his Maga base,” one of the people said.
p.s.
Irony is officially dead.
Lol, a fire breaking out at the United Nations Climate Change Conference qualifies as ironic too. This timeline has a dark sense of humor.
In other “irony is officially dead” news: How billionaires took over American politics, from the billionaire-owned Washington Post.
“Irony is Officially Dead” really deserves to be one of our Links topic sections.
Is “bubba” William Jefferson Clinton?
I’m noticing a weird youtube algo phenomenon – if I listen one of my normal youtube political channels and nod off, I am waking up to Heather Cox Richardson talking at me. I’ve also seen her videos in the recommendations lately too, and to my knowledge I’ve never read anything she’s written, nor does her take on things agree much with my regular watches. Is anybody else seeing this? Is she the algo’s new chosen one who we all need to hear whether we want to or not?’
This reminds me of the similar Lex Fridman phenomenon from several years ago – lots of people reported waking up to him on their videos and I had the same thing happen, however in that case I previously looked up some of his videos and watched them on my own.
Footoob algos aren’t very clever. I always delete cookies on closing a tab so Footoob is usually in a state of ignorance when I start. But no matter what I watch the next thing it wants me to watch is one of Lex Fridman, Jordan Peterson, or Rick Beato. I have less than zero interest in seeing even a thumbnail of any of those. So, given that Footoob is working only with the one thing I have viewed, it is basing its next choice on that and the aggregate statistics of all users. Hence I infer that Footoob is either going for Fridman/Peterson/Beato because they are popular and make a lot of ad revenue or because those channels pay for positioning, perhaps both.
Perhaps the algos don’t need to be very good, kinda like Google Search doesn’t, because in the end it’s job is just to put ads onto our stuff.
Maybe just set YouTube to not select a following video based on some algorithm. Just manually select which video you want as each one ends.
I don’t have an account. YouTube ads for me are mostly right-wing family bloggers, scammy online schools, and occasionally perfume at this time of year.
The suggestions are more than half things that more or less make sense based on what I just watched, and a good quarter is a mix of right-wing stuff and standard news.
This is the same if I spend a week watching puzzles about jigsaw puzzle competition, or a week watching videos of nice ladies who do their own sewing or have a clothes alteration business. Or if it’s been a solid week of various lefty channels.
Clearly there is preferential placement, and I strongly suspect that Prager U, for instance, pays to be shown with certain content.
It’s frustrating.
No, but the right panel ‘suggested’s have deteriorated from a wild mix of various kinds of music to a very tedious parade: music ones I’ve recently watched and don’t need to be reminded to watch, plus the usual promoted crap which apparently goes by age group, and now way too many AI slop story-videos. I miss the days when that right panel was a rabbit hole into vintage music.
I’m so old I remember when there were no suggestions at all – you just searched for what you wanted and watched it. That may have been before the Do Be Evil empire purchased it. Now even when it recommends something I actually planned to watch, I won’t click the recommended video but I’ll do a search myself to get to it the old school way. I’d like to think I’m denying the algo some satisfaction by doing that…
I agree in principle, but then I never would have known about the Nicholas Brothers!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5k1u_9_L10
Jesus, that was stellar!
Thanks.
lyman alpha blob: How is Heather Cox Richardson getting into your house?
The antidote is to listen to Marió singing Khasisi epie kai o Theos, “Even God Smokes Hashish.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=583nKNDsJec
This will cause the algo on YouToob to go nutty.
My surmise is that the surveillance / marketing state is desperately trying to push various products. And there isn’t much difference between regime historian Heather Cox Richardson, recently seen with Hillary Clinton, and a Black Friday sale. Here in the undisclosed region, my use of YouToob in English and Italian (with a bit of Greek and French) occasionally results in strings of ads from an Italian used-car app or for Italian fish sticks.
I will have to try that DJG. I have mostly been listening to my rebitika on CDs or every once in a while on spotify. Thanks for the one you posted – excellent tune! I just got the new experiment started by playing one of my favorites with a related theme – οταν καπνιζει ο λουλας. The first couple lines roughly translated – “When the bong is smoking, you, you don’t need to talk.” I’d like to think that means something similar to “When the van is a rocking, don’t come knocking” but in this case it is more along the lines of “Be quiet so the cops don’t catch us.”
I’ve watched it already, hoping for a reasonably priced Maserati, but I got sucked into a rabbit hole of really entertaining Italian music videos.
no such thing as a reasonably priced Maserati (unless you are a very good mechanic and can internalize the maintenance, or have the same attitude to owning a Maserati like owning a boat).
And Maserati does command the collectors’ premium like Ferrari.
…did you say maserati? it is friday so…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaTK-5tkekc
those suv’s are ruining their groove, but this is a corvette killer par excellence
I think he says the price in there somewhere, but if you have to ask…
In a weird way, this isn’t much different…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6CTRt77JZo&list=RDw6CTRt77JZo&start_radio=1
This too but it’s ore communist look at all those peoplemcontributing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ct65mJmHQnw
I did try to edit that …3.2.1.
Otan kapnizei o loulas: Doesn’t that mean “When you smoke the flower…” ?
Sounds innocent to me.
In return, so as to make everyone’s algo swirl and twirl, the wonderful concert at the Olympic Café in Paris of 15 years ago (!!!):
Sex Drugs & Rebetiko:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3ejyl3WcxY
Good question! The word I’m familiar with for flower is λουλούδι (which I find quite fun to say, similar to potpourri or brouhaha). I met a Greek guy who named his daughter that which I thought was a really beautiful name.
When I first ran across the song, I wasn’t familiar with the word and thought λουλας might be a variant of λουλούδι. Interweb translation comes up empty for λουλας. I think it was in my modern Greek dictionary where I saw it translated as “bulb”. In the rebitika culture, the manges (the street hustlers) smoke from a hookah. So λουλας is the subject in the song title, and καπνίζει is a third person singular verb. So literally, it’s “When the bulb smokes”. I think. I’m far from fluent. Your link above uses the Greek word I’m more familiar with for hookah, which is argile.
If I got it wrong, any Greek speakers feel free to pipe up.
And evidently I messed up my link to the song above. If anyone wants to hear the song, try here – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlW-8zZMy3Y&list=RDFlW-8zZMy3Y&start_radio=1
Studied ancient Greek a long time ago, but I think your translation is correct.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%CE%BB%CE%BF%CF%85%CE%BB%CE%AC%CF%82#Greek
I’m bookmarking that link for when I need cheering up.
Oh, wow, lyman alpha blob! I was listening to Daniel Davis interviewing a psychologist on POTUS’ mental deterioration last night, and decided to finish the fascinating talk after I tucked myself in for the night. (Which I almost NEVER do because why fall asleep when one’s brain is overloading on bad news!)
I woke up some hours later to the voice of Heather Cox Richardson.
I have been reading her daily news reports a couple of times a week, because I find she does a nice job providing historical background. And, my age cohort Dem friends on social media regularly post her written reports. I do not follow any other news programs that report regularly on domestic affairs so she provides a good compilation on a selection of domestic news.
However, I have decided that she is probably funded by who … the DNC? I have never heard her mention the genocide in Gaza and she does regular sniping on Russia. IOW, she seems to stick to the mainstream DNC narrative.
And, yeah, whatever happened to Lex Fridman?
Just watched that Daniel Davis video. Ooof.
Don’t want to be accused of self-promotion, but I just wanted to let any members of the Commentariat know that we have a half dozen cute raccoons available for $1 each F.O.B. Cleveland. I haven’t measured their noses, but considering this line of ‘coons has called our house “home” since before we lived here, they are pretty well adjusted to humans.
Also available: skunks; ground hogs; opossums.
Moon Pie’s Wild Kingdom.
That’s a good deal on those raccoons, but I’m overstocked at the moment. I’ll take your possums, they eat ticks, which I also seem to be overstocked with.
I’d propose trading 6 Marmot Cong for half a dozen of your raccoons if you threw in a possum to be named later.
Delayed delivery F.O.B. Ho Chi Mineral King Cong after they wake up from big sleep in April, powerful hibernators they are.
If there are no takers here, you might want to contact this guy.
In other raccoon news of the future:
In ten million years descendants of raccoons will replace extinct humans, becoming the second technically advanced Terran species, according to John Michael Greer in his essay, The Next Ten Billion Years.
I guess the critters are evolving right on schedule.
Lee: In ten million years descendants of raccoons will replace extinct humans, becoming the second technically advanced Terran species, according to John Michael Greer
Eh. It’s been done.
Inevitably, as the vast mass of SF writers past and present resemble all those monkeys eventually typing Shakespeare’s works — except with SF writers it’s every possible idea for an SF story (inevitably, if you predict everything, you’ll predict nuclear weapons, telecom satellites, AI, cellphones, and get a few things right in there) — someone already wrote a novel where Raccoons Inherit The Earth (right after Bears Discover Fire).
Beyond the Burn Line by Paul Mcauley
Blurb: –
‘In the deep future beyond the burn line of the Anthropocene and the extinction of humanity, the city states of an intelligent species of bear have fallen to a mind-wrecking plague. The bears’ former slaves, a peaceable, industrious and endlessly curious people, believe they have inherited … Mother Earth. But are they alone?
‘After the death of his master, a famous scholar, Pilgrim Saltmire vows to complete their research into sightings of so-called visitors and their sky craft. To discover if they are a mass delusion created by the stresses of an industrial revolution, or if they are real – a remnant population of bears which survived the plague, or another, unknown intelligent species…’
And so on
I have 5 security cameras. One is in my back yard low to the ground so I can get a better look at the animals that go through at night. Small town in NW Ohio. I have, cats, skunks, squirrels, chipmunks, dogs, raccoons, opossums, and an occasional deer. Fun to watch, especially when they come up and look right in the camera.
The first opossum I saw, I only got a small part of the little critter, the back end. I thought “I sure hope that is opossum and not a huge rat.” Thankfully it was a opossum. They are ugly critters for sure.
Possum story. I was sitting out late one night, no lights. A possum come around the corner not five feet away. It got an eyeful of me and fell over, evidently dead. I talked to it, sang ditties to it, even barked at it. Nothing. Dead as a doornail. Stepped inside to refresh my whiskey. Long gone when I returned outdoors.
I reckon you’ll see a fox and/or a coyote soon.
That’s wild.
In the summer I sit in the garage at night and watch all the dog walkers and passer byes. I have a TV and a fridge out there so I have entertainment and beer that is near. I’m retired so that is the highlight of my day.
One night I was sitting there. I heard the alarm go off on my phone so I knew a critter was just around the corner. It was a skunk. He walked right up to my garage door about 5 feet away from me. He just stopped, sat there and looked at me. I was afraid to move, so I sat there too. Maybe 2 or 3 minutes in stone cold silence and no movement. Finally the little guy wandered off. No way was I moving no matter how long it took.
One day I watched 3 deer walk through my yard, and I’m several blocks from a river and in town. Amazing. The deer the last couple of years in town has been incredible. They seem to have no fear.
Fun to watch.
Are the skunks armed or unarmed? It’s an important distinktion for wannabe* skunk** owners like myself….;-)
I remember long ago and far away (well, as a pre-teen in the pet section of McCrory’s in Wyoming Valley, Pennsylvania) seeing two of them for sale at the pet section.
*actually, something was annoying the cat late one night, went out to check, and I found out that I’m already technically a skunk owner as I turned the corner and found myself face to face with a Striped Sprayer. It ended well, I’m grateful to say.
**also raccoons, opossums, porcupines, and coyotes in the distance.
On an evening when we had our granddaughter for an overnight, we took her out in the early evening to catch some fireflies. We did manage to succeed before I spotted a skunk headed for a hole under the fence that our neighborhood menagerie takes to get to our neighbors’ side of the fence.
Our experience with porcupines was in the high country of New Mexico more than 40 years ago (could it really be that long?). We had 3 dogs, and the porcupines constituted something of an IQ test for them. The first time they encountered porcupines, they all got a mouthful of quills. The second time, one dog was almost quill-free, a second had maybe a dozen, but the third–we just called him Pup because he never grew up–still had a mouthful.
Even after taking the dogs to a vet for his help in removing the quills, Pup had them push their way up through the top his snout for days.
“Huckabee Held Meeting at U.S. Embassy With American Who Spied for Israel”
This really demonstrates the schism with those Americans that support America First and those who support Israel First. Jonathan J. Pollard is one of the greatest traitor in American history and the only way that he should have ever left prison was feet first. And yet Israeli First Huckabee not only met with him but in the US Embassy of all places. Pollard actually came out and said ‘Just as certain members of the Trump administration profess an ‘America first’ doctrine, I wholeheartedly embrace an ‘Israel first’ doctrine.’ So any American that professes to be an Israel First follower should be seen for the security threat that they are and be invited to emigrate to Israel. And Huckabee? He’ll skate free from this incident when at the very least he should have been called home ‘for consultation.’
Make Amaleks Go Away
>>>child care expenses top the cost of rent
I’m glad I live in an area settled/colonized by gemutlichkeit Germans. Their kids set up a library district, a park district.
reasonably priced child-care before and after school—with transport, programs at the library, sports, swimming, even Santa Claus, etc. (though the politics of the librarians are eye-rollingly obvious via their book recommendation lists, lmao)
This kind of functional, “good government” is uncommon in blue states, (seemingly) non-exisistent in the Sun Belt.
No wonder people are so angry in general, and angry at goverment—no sense of what a functional, non-hysterical bureaucracy can positively affect their life
Over-the-top new film from Israel concerning some rather serious middle-class upset over the Gaza genocide…
YES by Nadav Lapid
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1onUOERhXo (trailer 1.50)
Think István Szabó’s Mephisto set in present-day Tel Aviv.
“U.S. Coast Guard will no longer classify swastikas, nooses as hate symbols”
Banned because the swastikas stood for genocide and evil. Now when the zionists have proven that they are genocidal and evil, the swastikas are good symbols, I take it.
What happens when you have a demonstration of Nazis in say Washington DC. And the Swastika signs that they carry have the text below them saying ‘US Coast Guard Approved’
The Coast Guard! Of all branches.
Perhaps Pete kept lobbying and only got a yes when asked the Coast Guard, “May I meet you?”
Border Patrols sensor network.
I live immersed in this system less than two miles from the border in a sparsely populated area. Something has changed in the way that the information is processed and reacted to.
For example, I have been taking a just before dawn daily walk with the dogs on the same route every time for at least nine years. When I first started a couple of times BP agents showed up, got barked at, saw what was happening and left the scene. Now I see agents two or three times a week.
Yesterday drove out ,waved at an agent under the Anduril camera on a stick which swiveled to my truck,something that that has happened hundreds of times.For some reason instead of that the usual reaction which is that the agent waves back, I got a helicopter, three BP trucks and four SUVs full of soldiers. They were embarrassed and tried to act like they had something to do out there.
It’s not like they don’t know who I am and what I am doing out here.
This by the way is an area that is locked down on the Mexican side and has had no migrants crossing since Feb 2024.
I live under 100 miles from the border, and frankly I’m getting sick of the constant stops on US land on US highways while just going about my business. Usually just waved through, but I keep hearing in my head ‘right of the people to be secure in their persons and property from unreasonable search and seizure’. And it was one thing when it was a BP guy and me doing a quick check. Knowing all these encounters are now recorded and stored for all time to be used in my surveillance dossier by any tyrant–makes me sick.
About those Flock traffic security cameras…..not so secure. utube, ~45 minutes. The first 6 minutes give the quick overview (no pun intended.)
We Hacked Flock Safety Cameras in under 30 Seconds.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uB0gr7Fh6lY
Here’s a website that maps Flock camera locations in the US. So many cities are Flocked. ahem. Is your city on the map? / ;)
https://deflock.me/
“Russian Tanker Idles Near Venezuela After US Warship Enters Path”
Looks like the US has decided to do a blockade of Venezuela as well. Interesting bit is that nowhere in that Bloomberg article is the word ‘blockade’ used at all. The blockade is of course illegal as the UN has not sanctioned such an action but Trump would not care. Putin meanwhile tries to give words of wisdom to Trump-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWga3RxlOr4 (1:06 mins)
Thanks, I was wondering about the legality of what is obviously a naval blockade. “Playing with fire” comes to mind.
Could it be that the 20 billion to argh and TINA was a sell the news moment designed to pump so bessents buddies could dump? Global capital uber alles… Same with the soybeans, they screwed american farmers because they can get away with it and being morons can’t see the consequences of their moronity and figured imo that china would go along to get along…
“China has lent $200B to U.S. tech and infrastructure projects, report finds”
…
“Chinese lenders backed 2,500 projects in almost every U.S. state, from gas pipelines to airport terminals, even as Washington warned developing nations about Chinese debt traps.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/11/18/us-china-tech-infrastructure-lending/
https://archive.ph/D53xf
Was the entire scheme about the ‘debt-trap diplomacy’ for BRI projects made up because the US was fighting developing countries for access to China’s capital flows?
Wild
DeepSeek will run on (at a fraction the load of US’ AI) that infrastructure, which won’t pay off their debt.
QE will take care of the bond holders.
The Aeon generative AI article is excellent and makes the point that seems obvious to anyone familiar with the internet and search engines. And that point is that all the world’s knowledge is not on the internet! The article talks about the web’s English language bias but also about how many cultures depend on oral traditions or simple life experience. This is also why the lived life of ordinary people often provides greater wisdom than the academic life of the over educated. Universities, after all, were originally to teach religion to priests that were supposed to keep the public thoroughly indoctrinated. One could say that AI is this ancient model brought up to date but it’s more likely that the Silicon Valley types think the web is the repository of all knowledge.
Someone please put this AI fad out of its misery. The web is a super useful resource but certainly a false god if used for everything.
Painful. Even knowledge more than 5 or 6 years old is often not on the internet.
And most LLM beasts are set to favor .gov sources and the current administration has done a number on that source.
I’m not 100% certain, but I suspect that one big flaw in all these LLM’s is that they are trained on a version of the English (or French, German) language that is a snapshot from the year 2023.
Non-dead languages are always evolving … terms like “cap” and “6-7” that the cool kids use didn’t exist even a few years ago. So, we have a problem with the notion of “train once, and forget.”
Of course, the proponents will argue that the models can just be updated with new training data … that’s true, but remember it’s expensive for the business crowd who are counting on cheap “good enough” slop to sell to the masses.
As an experiment, what if we all started communicating in Olde English circa 1764 … go not thither where thou knowest not whether ye shall be welcome!
“Scientists Say Kissing Is Over 20 Million Years Old and It’s Not Just a Human Thing”
Of course it was us humans that developed kissing into an art form and here I was reminded of the ending to the film classic “Cinema Paradiso”-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFZqrcqKGhY (3:17 mins)
What a great film that was~
Have you noticed how seldom people kiss nowadays on the digital screen compared to back in the days of smooching being a staple?
I heard they found a cave in Normandy with 30,000 year old images of a caveman and cavewoman doing kissy face, which is why they call it a French Kiss
Oh sure they kissed a lot but if there was a bed in the scene they had to keep one foot on the floor.
The movies were always about sex including after the Hayes Office. One early Edison film is called The Kiss.
Thank you!
California’s child farmworkers: Exhausted, underpaid and toiling in toxic fields Los Angeles Times
~~~~~~~~~~~~
They managed to include 1 underage Ag worker in Godzone, while the rest of them are all of the bend & stoop Ag variety on the coast.
The average age of a fieldworker doing reach up pick & prune Ag here is pushing 45, underage workers are hardly the issue.
re: Germany debanking
via German blog MULTIPOLAR
use google translate
Termination for political reasons: Renewed accusation against “GLS Bank”
Government-critical journalist Aya Velázquez criticizes the “uncommented” termination of her bank account / “GLS Bank” already terminated accounts with the opposition magazines “Manova” and “KenFM” starting in 2021 / Bank promotes support for “independent media” in Eastern Europe
https://multipolar-magazin.de/meldungen/0343
re: “Golden Dome” as gold mine
A New Gold(en) Mine for Arms Contractors
by William D. Hartung, Ashley Gate and Tom Engelhardt
https://original.antiwar.com/william-d-hartung/2025/11/20/a-new-golden-mine-for-arms-contractors/
Just logging off for the night but thought to mention the fact that they got around to finally burying Dick Cheney. My understanding that he was buried in a granite sarcophagus with a three-ton granite lid. But before the sarcophagus was closed, technical consultants Sam and Dean Winchester made sure to spread salt in the coffin, added accelerant and then burned the bones so that he could never come back again as in ever.
What no Natron? They could have thrown in some bombs and missiles (and a shotgun) for his passage into the afterlife.
The U.S. flag was held at half staff for weeks while they kept Cheney on ice awaiting internment .
Too long!
Yes, I noticed. I raised one to full-staff at a park near my swimming hole. When Scalia kicked, I was living in Portland, Maine. I used to go around town raising flags.
Was not expecting a Supernatural reference, thanks for the laugh Rev.
re: Lebanon
by German daily JUNGE WELT
use google translate
short interview with Lebanese MP Ali Al-Mekdad
by Hüseyin Doğru – who is the very reporter from Germany who this year was sanctioned by the EU without any due process and on completely bogus grounds
“The goal is to protect Lebanon.”
On the demand for disarmament and the consequences of Israeli strikes against Hezbollah. A conversation with Ali Al-Mekdad
https://www.jungewelt.de/artikel/512673.libanon-das-ziel-ist-es-den-libanon-zu-sch%C3%BCtzen.html
I LOVE Ian Welsh. Long may he write!
Another good Construction Physics on the amazing complexity of the tech we take for granted and how making it became Netherlands IP. Was it really only a couple of decades ago that America was leading the charge?
From Measles outbreak in Arizona and Utah could spell the end for U.S. elimination status
On the one hand, so what?
(bold mine)
But SARS-CoV-2 is endemic, and we’re told that this is good, it means we done, and it isn’t an issue anyway.
Why should we be caring that measles is endemic?
Said sarcastically, of course. What a dumpster fire. A resurgence of a completely vaccine preventable disease in 2025 seems about par for the course anymore.
Ha, and it is worth relinking that the ongoing COVID Pandemic, SARS-CoV-2 being endemic, is not a good thing either: Enduring Outcomes of COVID-19 Work Absences on the US Labor Market.
Jason Boxman
I suspect that the US would long ago have lost its return to virginity (in measles) if the national government and a lot of state governments had not shut the door on reporting. Canada lost its eliminationist tag a few months ago, mostly for outbreaks in bible-belt areas of BC, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Southern Ontario. But at least most of the disease control centres were keeping track.
I clicked on the NY Times front page video about the upcoming White House meeting with the NY mayor.
The WH press secretary said, “It speaks volumes that tomorrow we have a communist coming to the White House…”🤣
It speaks volumes that someone that has only uttered the words “affordable housing” is called a communist.
The type of mindset that accepts nothing less than fealty to vile and rabid greed.
It speaks volumes that Cold War Kool-Aid works on someone born post Cold War. I wonder if she will also be able to duck and cover when the going gets tough.
Against most pundits’ expectations, Trump and Mamdani seem to have had a warm and friendly exchange and found common ground.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/nov/21/donald-trump-zohran-mamdani-meeting
Remember that one time, when we had the then largest shutdown in history over The Wall?
Trump’s All-but-Forgotten Border Wall Reaches an Angry Laredo, Texas (NY Times via archive.ph)
More Democrat virtue signaling, where people once again suffered for reals, and in the end, here we are, half a decade later, and we still be Walling.
I just called the local hospital bed place in Westerly, RI (with a branch in Mystic, CT), trying to get a hospital bed for an elderly parent who just got out of rehab (destitution straight ahead). They are all out; the woman told me that I was the third person to call today. She seemed pretty weirded out by this; so am I. It doesn’t seem like a good signal.
Here in the SF area, both my husband and I suddenly have clogged ears. Hmmm.
I would recommend hunkering down right now.
Synchronic word of the day:
>H: Kathryn Bigelow’s Empire of Fear
>> This is how modern propaganda works, not through flag-waving, but through immersion. The more “authentic” it feels, the less you question the fantasy. It is why Zero Dark Thirty retains credibility and reverence among the liberal elite and American critics, and Red Dawn doesn’t.
> McRaney “How Minds Change”
>> The second active ingredient [of persuasive conversation], which only works once rapport is established and resistance is set aside, is the power of narrative transport… Narrative transport is that feeling when you become so fully immersed in a story that you forget yourself for a moment… When we’re engaged with a story, we don’t prepare a rebuttal because we feel swept up.
Remember the Red Scare interview of Nick Fuentes that was linked here a few days ago because Fuentes declared that Naked Capitalism was his favorite “left” website? That interview is now a hot topic around the Web.
Glenn Greenwald
Megyn Kelly (interviewing Emily Jashinsky)
The only problem is that you have to wade through a lot of what is a less-than-scintillating interview to get to the NC shout-out. Maybe that’s for the best. An onslaught of groypers would be pretty disruptive.
Trump’s praise for Mamdani upends Republican talking points as they bond over New York, working class and FDR – US politics live, Guardian. This,
Trump repeatedly stepped in to defend Mamdani from hostile questioning from outlets like the New York Post and Fox News, When Fox News correspondent Jacqui Heinrich pressed Mamdani about whether he considers Trump to be a “fascist”, the president offered the mayor-elect an unusual life raft. “That’s OK,” Trump said while tapping Mamdani’s arm. “You can just say it, it’s easier than explaining it.”
Heh heh heh, surprise! Going to be an interesting lemonade out of that.
Honestly, least bad news all day.
Maybe T really was just believing what everybody told him and realized M wasn’t actually that bad. They are also kinda similar on some level – 2 New Yorkers winning races despite being outsiders in their party. They’re also both hated by establishment dems.
I’m wondering if part of it is T trying to save his poll numbers and get back some points with his working class base but I honestly have no clue. Apart from the potentially ominous declaration that he’ll be helping Mamdani (the video disappeared on me with the news about MTG so I can’t find the exact quote) this really seems better than a lot of alternative outcomes.
Double head spinning whammy with the MTG news, which I had only just noticed.
Agreed. It broke minutes ago in the time it took for me to open your link and then refresh the page. There wasn’t a detailed story at that time either but I’m definitely interested to hear more of an explanation. On it’s face it seems like she was/feels genuinely physically threatened.
For those with more than a passing fancy in Mamdani, here is a chance to listen to incoming Chief of Staff Elle Bisgaard-Church.
Exclusive: Mamdani’s incoming chief of staff talks Trump-Mamdani meeting, NY1.
The mayor received better optics than the Euro leaders who sat in front of Trump like schoolchildren.
But this is the era of whiplash politics…
I hope this does not mean that Mamdani is just going to be another AOC or Meloni.
Marjorie Taylor Greene Says She Plans to Resign in January
Wow