A 21-year-old Japanese snowboarder, Kokomo Murase, just landed a backside triple cork 1620.
She’s the first woman ever to do it.
📹Kokomo Murase
— Science girl (@sciencegirl) November 20, 2025
The Math Shows Jackson Pollock Painted Like a Child Would Nautilus
13 dizzying and dazzling images from 2025 Drone Photo Awards Popular Science
‘Jmail’ is like any other inbox, except this one has Jeffrey Epstein’s emails The Verge
Elizaveta Porodina Traces the Inflorescence of Flowers Atmos
COVID-19/Pandemics
A Virus Takes Flight Georgia Magazine
Long COVID’s Shadow Lingers Forbes
Climate/Environment
First-ever full Earth system simulation provides new tool to understand climate change Phys.org
Antarctica’s Fastest Glacier Collapse on Record Alarms Scientists SciTech Daily
The world lost the climate gamble. Now it faces a dangerous new reality The Conversation
South of the Border
US warns civilian flights as military activity around Venezuela increases Al Jazeera
Trump Begins New Phase of Venezuela Escalations…but Is It Just a Ruse? Simplicius
Mexico’s week in review: Sheinbaum weathers the storm Mexico News Daily
U.S. Banks Shelve $20 Billion Bailout Plan for Argentina MSN
China?
This is not an aquarium, but a subway station in Zhengzhou.🐳🐋🐬🐟😅 pic.twitter.com/ddaiwS2vy1
— Sharing Travel (@TripInChina) April 4, 2023
The next MAGA divide is China The Hill
China unveils ‘world’s first’ autonomous drone that can hunt submarines: Report Interesting Engineering
China’s top scientists chart the future of space exploration CGTN
India
India trade unions condemn new labour codes, plan nationwide protests Reuters
‘Only major economy…’: Harvard economist shows India outpacing US, Europe, China in post-Covid growth Business Today
Trade outlook: India’s exports hold steady amid Donald Trump tariffs; new markets offset US slowdown The Times of India
Africa
Historic South Africa G20 summit declaration prioritises developing world Al Jazeera
Africa loses over $50bn yearly to illicit financial flows – Dr. Aliyu APA News
The Collapse of Western Power in Francophone Africa The Stanford Review
European Disunion
Why Civil Society Is Sounding the Alarm on the EU’s Omnibus Rollback Techpolicy.press
Europe increasingly ‘vulnerable’ to shocks: ECB chief AFP
EU launches case against Slovakia over constitutional changes Courthouse News Service
Old Blighty
The intel scandal behind Prince Andrew’s twisted Epstein exploits The Grayzone
A make-or-break budget: inside the Treasury before Labour’s crucial day The Guardian
Israel v. Gaza, Yemen, Lebanon, Syria, Iran
How many times has Israel violated the Gaza ceasefire? Here are the numbers https://t.co/tVK4Xlkr1X pic.twitter.com/AI4SkOZNsM
— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) November 22, 2025
Israel launches strikes in Gaza ceasefire’s latest test as hospitals say 24 killed APTrump embraces Saudis, UN backs Gaza plan, but Israel faces harsh Middle East reality Jerusalem Post
US ambassador to Israel met with convicted spy for Israel Jonathan Pollard: Report Andolu Agency
Israel expands military raids into Syria’s southern countryside Daily Sabah
New Not-So-Cold War
Trump pressures Ukraine to accept peace deal: Early analysis from Chatham House experts Chatham House
Trump says Ukraine deal is not ‘final offer’ as officials gather for Geneva summit Guardian
US insists it authored Ukraine peace plan ahead of talks on ending war BBC
Ukraine war briefing: defeating Russia an ‘illusion’, says Putin, as he welcomes Trump deal The Guardian
Russia’s drone revolution heaps pressure on Ukrainian defenses CNN
Big Brother Is Watching You Watch
Privacy group sues feds over talks with tech companies on ICE raid trackers Cyberscoop
Court Sides With Quest In Privacy Battle MediaPost
Imperial Collapse Watch
New York City’s homeless population estimated at over 350,000 Xinhua
Georgia agents seize ‘enough Fentanyl to kill millions of people’ WSB Radio
Trump 2.0
The economy rears its ugly head Ipsos
‘A world turned upside down’: MAGA faithful grapple with Trump’s Mamdani lovefest, MTG’s downfall Politico
Musk Matters
Tesla to ramp to 500 Robotaxis in Austin, 1,000 in Bay Area, by end of 2025: Musk Teslarati
Elon Musk’s Starlink is rewiring the world — but at what cost? The Times
Democrat Death Watch
Democrats facing crisis as more than 2M voters leave party in four years: analysis NY Post
Why Democrats lost voter confidence The Enterprise
Immigration
New Orleans braces for Trump’s immigration crackdown: ‘We have rights’ The Guardian
The Trump Administration’s New Mass Deportation Playbook Amereican Immigration Council
Our No Longer Free Press
‘Quiet, Piggy’ ‘Terrible Reporter’: President Trump Escalates Assault on Journalists PEN America
Khashoggi’s widow condemns Trump, Saudi crown prince over response to journalist’s murder The Jerusalem Post
Mr. Market Is Moody
Voters pessimistic on economic conditions Fox News
Satoshi Nakamoto losses $47 billion in Bitcoin amid intense crypto correction Cryptopolitan
Wall Street’s wild week shows just how fragile confidence in the stock market has become MarketWatch
AI
Address ‘Affordability’ By Spreading AI Wealth Around Noema
Whistleblower claims Figure AI fired him for warning their humanoid robot could kill Cryptopolitan
Theologian warns against AI’s false comforts The Catholic Registr
The Bezzle
‘Cloud Storage Full’ scam steals your photos and money Fox News
Visa flags rapidly escalating fraud risks as agentic commerce takes hold Digital Commerce 360
Guillotine Watch
A Gustav Klimt painting sold for a record-breaking $236.4 million on Tuesday night, making it the most expensive piece of modern art ever sold at auction. pic.twitter.com/BiM8vYofuY
— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) November 19, 2025
Highest sale in art auction history was “Salvator Mundi”, by Da Vinci. $450 million.
No one knows for sure who bought it, but experts think Mohammad Bin Salman has it on his yacht.
There’s a great documentary on it – “The Lost Leonardo” with former CIA officer @GrayManActual https://t.co/lIDBYqVZqU pic.twitter.com/QdZZDjGYl6
— Beau (@beausecurity) November 19, 2025
Antidote du jour (via)
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here
132 comments
Comments are closed.
“The next MAGA divide is China”
Yeah, nah! This sounds like an attempt by The Hill to get people to forget the fight against Israeli Firsters by bringing up the bogey man of China. Epstein? Forget him as all the papers are – mostly – being released so stop living in the past and get with the program. For all we know China may be the home of Chinese narcoterrorists so everybody think about Chyna and forget all about the fight between America Firsters and Israeli Firsters.
The Hill is hopeless.
Of everything in that article, I thought the most interesting bit (not necessarily in a good way) was this:
That means at least 33% of Trump voters and/or The Hill (probably both) still haven’t bothered to learn anything about Chinese thought. The Chinese definitely aren’t trapped forever in the past, but there are some timeless themes, and one is (perhaps with the exception of some Confucian conservatives) that the only real world order always has, is, and will be the Dao: holistic, ineffable, and ever-changing.
Which means that however bad you expect an anti-Chinese crusade to go, it’s actually going to be even worse because it’s actually directed at an illusion in the would-be crusaders’ heads.
Re; Israel v. Gaza, Yemen, Lebanon, Syria, Iran
The World’s Been Too Rough With Israel
One-sided media coverage and feckless political gesturing have fanned the flames of the anti-Israel protest movement that erupted within days of Hamas’s October 2023 attacks, including the adoption of the illogical, ahistorical, and absurd charge of “genocide” and the widespread sanctioning of slogans that call for violence against “Zionists” and other supporters of Israel.
chutzpah
/ᴋʜoo͝t′spə, hoo͝t′-/
noun
1.Utter nerve; effrontery.
2. Nearly arrogant courage; utter audacity, effrontery or impudence; supreme self-confidence; exaggerated self-opinion;
3. (Yiddish) unbelievable gall; insolence; audacity.
4. nationalinterest.org
Speaking of which, I nominate Noam Chomsky to be patron saint of chutzpah.
It took me years to realize that, despite all evidence to the contrary, he spent his entire life running cover for the settler state by trying to pretend Israel was a victim of American imperialism.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/nov/22/noam-chomsky-jeffrey-epstein-ties-emails
I used to spend time around MIT where Chomsky taught and persons I talked to there were always amused by the fact that — given that MIT’s funding came two-thirds (I exaggerate, but not by much) from black R&D projects for the DoD — the sainted Noam was acting as MIT’s beard for its relationship with the US military-industrial complex, in effect.
Re. the Epstein issue, I’d cut Chomsky some slack, however. He obviously wasn’t there to have sex with pubescent girls — most likely had no idea about that side of it — but to hang out with the other intellectual and scientific types that Epstein also drew in. That’s understandable and I’m sympathetic to that.
Intellectual and scientific types are not immune to liking girls, even those of a certain type. Just saying.
I’d be more willing to cut him some slack were he not so testy when asked about his relationship with Epstein.
Yeah, we lost Cheney last week, so the job is available.
Reading that all farms are “smart” now and require high-speed internet, which they can only get from Elon Musk’s Starlink, was a great start to my Sunday.
Apparently Japan used the same language that it used before invading China in WWII.
Mercouris talks about it with smalltownvoice1.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Kq0uFa2nfPM
Before the First Sino Japanese War, Japan claimed Qing China does not have real sovereignty over Taiwan after some Japanese sailors died in a fight with Taiwanese aborigines in whose affairs Chinese gov’t did not interfere with. (“Aborigines” here are the “real” Taiwanese natives, a non Han people with many tribes who are related to SE Asians, not the “we are not Chinese” Chinese who migrated to Taiwan over last half a dozen centuries.) If the Chinese did not have real sovereignty over Taiwan, so the argument went, Japan was free to seize Taiwan. So is the argument being reincarnated, with the non-native “Taiwanese” taking the place of the natives?
farming is one of the last untapped markets for turning everything into a service: everyone from John Deere to Elon is trying to make it happen.
your farm will own nothing and you will be happy.
Sharecropping 2030.
Extracting rents is where it’s at.
JD Vance is all up in that visit, coincidentally.
https://www.farmlandgrab.org/post/32430-jd-vance-funded-acretrader-here-s-why-that-matters
“Only from Elon”, my sweet patootie. Smart farmers should build their own (lowtechmagazine.com).
If you don’t want to build the whole network, you can have a WiFi hotspot in your pick-up, so when you drive by, the sensors can connect and upload their data. It’s not real-time, but you’re more likely to be looking for trends than snapshots, anyway.
Yes, this is a solved problem – compare FarmIQ in New Zealand for another example. Low bandwidth connections, local storage, and data sync back at home base can accomplish a lot.
‘Sharing Travel
@TripInChina
This is not an aquarium, but a subway station in Zhengzhou.🐳🐋’
It looks convincing but I am going to guess that those scenes of aquatic life are being projected onto some sort of screen lining the subway. But it would be an amazing experience. The best part? No graffiti.
You’re right. No graffiti. I wonder if that’s down to the Neo Chinese punishment for that crime of a week’s sequestration of the miscreants in the Sino Disney Bund?
Graffiti = tragedy of the commons.
Case study #81,292 on why America (and now W. Europe too) can’t have nice public things.
I am currently in Malta and there isn’t a lot of graffiti here. About to head to Greece which has I think the most graffiti of any where I visit semi-regularly. I think how much graffiti a place has comes down to cultural factors (there are enough locals who consider it an art form) and intrinsic pride of place. Not sure how much effect negative stimulus like fines have until you get to Singapore style public caning.
If you watch Alex Christoforou’s walk & talk videos, people have noticed which countries have graffiti and which ones don’t. So countries like Greece and Cyprus have graffiti everywhere while countries like Russia don’t. Like you say, it mostly comes down to cultural factors. Personally I find most of it amateur rubbish.
I’ve noticed that almost every boxcar has graffiti on it-no doubt from students of the Krylon School of Art, while it’s rare for an oil tanker car to have any…
Why?
Tank cars of oil and chemicals are loaded and unloaded in relatively secure locations. Oil is often in point-to-point unit trains with few stops. Most tank cars have nasty contents and probably are policed when standing in yards. The sides of tank cars are well off the ground and curved “canvas”. Box cars and auto autoracks have the most graffiti. Autoracks must require tall ladders, gallons of paint and compressors. A spray can can’t get you far on on 85 foot long autorack.
My experience with chlorine (90,000 pounds of compressed chlorine gas per car), also. I worked around them for large parts of two years. They are inaccessible when loading and go straight through to their destination. No sitting idle on sidings, ever. I was 18 and still accustomed to running but I have never seen older men in their 40s and 50s run so fast while putting on their respirators (probably not much help under those circumstances) as the time a valve on a chlorine car failed! Luckily the wind was from the east and the green cloud flowed toward the empty quarter of the plant and on out to the uninhabited surrounds, leaving a long path of dead vegetation in its wake. The plant site is now the #1 SuperFund site in the State of Georgia. Maybe #2, Imagine that!
Which reminds me, we haven’t seen any media reports lately of Biden’s trainbombs, although I assume that’s still an occasional occurrence in America’s honor.
Trains are still crashing, we just don’t talk about it anymore. We had a very significant derailment about 30 minutes east of where I live about 3 weeks ago. 53 coal cars derailed into a creek, damaging the bridge crossing and cancelling the Amtrack service that runs to the Tidewater of Virginia. Nothing explosive, but I doubt coal is harmless in sensitive wetlands. Cleanup is ongoing as far as I know. Reporting has ceased.
https://www.wric.com/news/local-news/new-kent-county/amtrak-service-adjustments-repairs-derailment/
Somewhere, an anonymous bureaucrat or two decided that East Palestine did not merit attention or respect, let alone a visit.
Reasons could be anything and nothing.
If you listen closely, the echoes of How did they vote on X may still resonate in the winds, along with Is their Critter for what we want on Y, today, or against?
People may not realize or appreciate how it is only their blood that makes for sport on politics.
Only Banksy is Banksy. He endorses the others (who sometimes paint over his tags) but most of it is simple territory marking or the prankster rebellion of the powerless–a “so there” to institutional monuments which, in towns like mine at least, are often professional mediocrity rather than the amateur.
My favourite local graffiti, on the underside of a highway bridge, offers some wise guidance:
“Live UR life while UR bones don’t squeak”
The train connecting metro Zurich and the airport has moving image entertainment created using a Zoetrope type technique.
There used to be one of these in the NYC subway, at a decommissioned station in Brooklyn – Installed 1980. It was barely functional when I first saw it in 1987, and was subsequently been restored, though I no longer take that line, so haven’t seen how it’s held up. Lots of fun!
https://www.mta.info/agency/arts-design/collection/masstransiscope
While I will admit that some rare graffiti can be art, in most cases I consider it more akin to a dog peeing on a fire hydrant.
Actually, graffiti was invented in Austria, by Joseph Kyselak.
Next time I’m in the Alps, I’ll bring along a spray can and mark my territory on some rockface.
a la an aboriginal hand print from 10,000 BC
Next time The Rev Kev is in the Austrian Alps, he’ll bring along a Vermont snow plow. :-)
Not only that those are screens, but the scenes of aquatic life are CGI.
We live in the society of fake.
Graffiti is becoming a problem in Sequoia NP, with mostly attempts at art being displayed on expansive boulders, but more than a few Giant Sequoias have made do for ersatz canvas.
> First-ever full Earth system simulation provides new tool to understand climate change Phys.org
The first thing to note is that no claims are made about the veracity of the model. This work documents a benchmark run, tying together different scales of simulation to match with different computing resources. That is, itself, an ambitious project:
>> Storing those degrees of freedom alone requires 8 TiB of main memory in double precision, more than the biggest announced trillion-parameter AI models.
Hopefully, this can pull in massive parallelism, and put to good use a new generation of programmers. Their adaptation of Fortran rang a particular bell, that’s how we wrote our code at the groundwater modelling lab.
But… a poorly understood input parameter can swamp the fineness of detail with noise. Clouds, for instance. Hopefully, this can help us understand the parameter better. But there’s ‘hopefully’ again. I’ve identified my bias, it’s that this is proof-of-concept for massive administrative oversight. Reminds me of university staff:admin ratios, or the F-35. How is it to be tested before the ricebowls are all stacked up? Are the minds going to understanding the climate system; or understanding the technical computational system; or the funding system?
“The world lost its climate gamble” Here is the money,
The missed opportunities between 1997 and 2015 are the failures of the Kyoto protocol to bend the global emissions curve. There then followed a missed decade since the Paris agreement.
We didn’t do so well bending the Covid curve either. Maybe we will do better on the time travel solution.
I don’t think so, if Art Bell was actually interviewing a time traveler from 2063, as he claimed. He was sent back to find heat-tolerant land race grain seed so that he could sequence them to transmit the data to the future so the varieties could be recreated and feed the remnants of civilization.
I used to love tuning in for that stuff late night in the 80s and 90s. I’d have to think the X Files writers got some ideas from Coast to Coast. I want to believe.
‘Maybe we will do better on the time travel solution.’
It might be like that original Star Trek Episode where the inhabitants of a doomed planet built themselves a time machine. The inhabitants then individually chose a time period from their civilization’s past that they could travel to and where they could live out their lives.
Christopher Nolan’s movie TENET is actually a riff on this, as its rationale is that the Future is fighting a temporal cold war with us, sending artifacts back that will destroy our civilization and change history so climate change doesn’t happen and their Earth isn’t doomed.
Nolan wrote the script and it was fairly clever stuff. The bad guys — us — won. But it went whoosh over most people’s head and was his worst-performing film commercially. (Granted, it was released at the Covid pandemics height.) So I suspect that he won’t do anything that clever again.
Same plot as Terminator?
As one of the characters says in Tenet while explaining the premise: ‘don’t try to understand it.’ Indeed.
Speaking of explaining the premise of a time travel movie,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVfpUBtdGLs
Noting says clever script like an African American 007 going undercover as a cop and fireman in former Soviet Union. I thought the movie was based on a stand-up comedy bit by Trevor Noah.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LdJ67285W0
There was an old Soviet anekdoty (joke) with that theme. The perfectly trained from birth American spy.
Nature is sorting it out.
A one way time travel solution, at constant speed of 60 seconds per minute. The project would cost quadrillion dollars, suffer delays, and somehow fail to deliver.
It seems the Ukraine project is coming to a close. Perhaps it would have better prospects if they hadn’t supported the first Trump impeachment. Now he seems to have decided (New Year’s resolution?) to get rid of it by 2026. It’s hard to tell these days which will have a longer shelf life, Zelinsky or Gulyaipole. This is to the tune of Wooly Bully by Sam The Sham & The Pharaohs:
Gulyaipole
Odin, Dva, Tri, Chotiri
Ay….., Gulyaipole
Watch Putin now, watch him
Here he comes, here he comes
Watch Putin now, he get ‘cha
Syrskyi told Z man
This town’s fate is sown
You’re soon to lose it
Like Mindich’s golden throne
Gulyaipole, Gulyaipole
Ain’t no jive
Gulyaipole
Swallowed wholly
Gulyaipole
Z man told Syrskyi
Make the troops stand and fight
I have to fly to Turkiye
Be back Friday night
Gulyaipole, Gulyaipole
Gulyaipole
Swallowed wholly
Gulyaipole
Taco told Z man
I’m gonna send my reps
To show you a new dance
With only 28 steps
Gulyaipole, Gulyaipole
Gulyaipole
Swallowed wholly
Gulyaipole
Z man told Taco
I’ll have to change a few
Let me talk to NATO
And I’ll get back to you
Gulyaipole, Gulyaipole
Gulyaipole
Swallowed wholly
Gulyaipole
Mindich told Z man
This is a dream come true
There’s no extradition
And no NABU
Gulyaipole, Gulyaipole
Gulyaipole
Swallowed wholly
Gulyaipole
Watch it now, watch it, here he comes
You got it, you got it
Z man told Mindich
I’ll have to flee as well
Buy me a compound
Down in Israel
Gulyaipole, Gulyaipole
Gulyaipole
Swallowed wholly
Gulyaipole
Watch it now, watch it, watch it, watch it
Ay…. Fly fly fly
reference: Wooly Bully
Holy Smokes! Bravo!!
That’s awesome! I imagine a chorus of dancing bears.
A masterpiece! Chapeau.
Hahahahaha! Excellent.
Heh heh, nice one.
I’ll confess, I have mostly grown tired of these works and tend to skip over… but THIS, this is genius.
Thank you
“Trump Begins New Phase of Venezuela Escalations…but Is It Just a Ruse?”
I’m thinking that it is all a multi-billion dollar game of bluff. And if Maduro holds firm, then Trump may have to take up that deal that Maduro offered weeks ago. With his belligerent style he is probably inclined to just bomb and invade the place except for one thing. All year long he has believed Zelenski, Kellogg and Lyndsay Graham how the Ukraine was holding their own and Russians have been suffering horrific casualties. But now reality has slapped him in the face and even he can see that the Russians are rapidly snapping up territory and are winning. Trump’s reaction was that 28 point “peace” plan which is nothing more that a freeze in place while Trump profits off of it but the Russians won’t buy it.
So maybe now he is wondering if all those stories told by Rubio that if he invades Venezuela, then the people will be throwing flowers in front of advancing US troops and not IEDs may also be the same sort of bs. Maybe too he has to consider that as he goes into next year’s midterms, he could be stuck in two quagmires – the one in the Ukraine and one in Venezuela if he invades. And both would be blamed on Trump even if he does try to throw Rubio under a bus.
The subtitle to Market Watch’s article is, imo, more interesting for reasons that the current stock market valuations and activity have been likened to a bubble, the 1929 crash, and the dot-com crash. According to MW, ”Friday’s market rebound was ‘not built on anything solid but something very ephemeral,’” says strategist.
In 1929, it’s worth noting, the stock market peaked on 9/3/1929 and then crashed on Black Thursday 10/24/1929 and again on Black Tuesday 10/29/29 but that was just the beginning. There were a number of opportunities to buy the dip and the market rose but it declined even more and did not reach bottom until 7/8/1932.
The dot-com bubble peaked on 3/10/2000 and again there were multiple opportunities to buy the dip but the market finally hit bottom on 10/9/2002.
The current market tanked in the first week of April when Trump announced “Liberation Day” and which should have been a warning sign. There are now, as there were in 1929 and 2000, speculators convinced buying the dip is a smart move.
Like 1929 and 2000 the market today is basically leverage and speculation hoping whatever they buy on Monday can be sold on Tuesday at a higher price. This movie will not have a happy ending.
I had a young investor the other day tell me all you have to do it not sell. Keep putting your money in. Timing doesn’t matter. Good luck dude.
I’m in cash and happy as a pig in the mud.
Well there are different investing strategies and being young the investor can assume big losses without much problem. Supposed there is some kind of future of course.
I’m guessing this guy is young enough he didn’t live through the dot-com bust or GFC of 2008-9 and watch is 401k take a tumble. I think those of us who lived through those two events are still a little shell-shocked.
There is nothing like watching your balance get pummeled on a daily basis and can’t do anything about it (some can I’m sure) over the course of a few months.
Yea, this guy is young enough if this market takes a large leg down he can recover his losses, but how long will that take? Nobody knows. That’s the problem. He might get it all back, and he might not. But he thinks timing doesn’t matter. Well, IMO, it kinda does.
Bitcoin going from nothing to $56k and then down to $14k on its way to $123k i’m sure shaped more than a few young ‘investors’ opinions.
No doubt, but I’m not sure I would call them “investors.” :-)
Wait until this guy discovers margin.
A day before this an analyst in the same outlet was saying that now was good time to buy. It is indeed always the same.
Yeah, buy the dip! works until it doesn’t. We’ve had an amazing run up since the April lows though, to be sure. I think 10/10 was the first flashing red light. We ran up into ATH, but haven’t gotten back there yet. Friday was probably in the top 8 highest volume spikes on ES futures in 12 months. Only managed a close mid body into the prior day’s down bar. We had a better close on less volume on 10/13.
It’s going to get pretty interesting in the coming months, I think, but I’m a perma-bear and NC feeds me daily; it has been a very bad year to be a perma-bear so far!
That big candle you are talking about on 10/10 is quite interesting (looking at the S&P index). Since that trading day, the market has traded inside that candle since then, except for a run-up a few days before the last Fed interest rate cut to all time highs (or close) and then right back into the candle. It made one more attempt upward, but reversed and sank back down to the bottom of that candle, even closing a bit below. Friday’s action brought it back inside that candle where it sits as we speak.
IOW, it looks like that candle has become some support and resistance and might be something to watch for people who get into that stuff.
Regarding the US “shelving” the $20B loan to Argentina,
There were to be two twenty billion dollar loans. One in the form of a currency swap. The second as a bank issued credit line. I seem to remember Trump pitching this second loan directly to Argentinians, “Vote for Milei, win twenty billion”, to parse. Straight faced election interference, and then no payout.
The private-sector loan didn’t get off the ground as banks awaited guidance from the Treasury Department on what collateral and guarantees they could use to shield them from losses, The Wall Street Journal previously reported. Now, bankers are saying it is no longer under serious consideration, according to people familiar with the conversations.
I know I’m a broken record, but imo the 20 billion rumour allowed the banksters to cash out and the glibertarians to live to fleece another day. Now Argentina will be dropped like a hot rock.
But don’t take only my word on it….
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/09/us/politics/argentina-bailout-investors.html
FTA…Those efforts have been complicated by the fact that major hedge funds, including those led by friends of Mr. Bessent, stand to benefit financially from an Argentina economic lifeline. Funds at investment firms including BlackRock, Fidelity and Pimco are heavily invested in Argentina, as are investors such as Stanley Druckenmiller and Robert Citrone, both of whom worked with Mr. Bessent when he was an investor for George Soros.
As we used to say in my ultimate frisbee days, Turn and Burn!
Word.
Theologian warns against AI’s false comforts The Catholic Registr
~~~~~~~~~~~
That’s rich, make believe is railing against technological make believe…
Astroturf war.
“Address “Affordability” by Spreading AI Wealth Around”
In other words, Norma wants to “socialize the losses”.
AI “wealth” is an abuse of language: AI is pure wealth destruction and looting.
A few years ago a few wild turkeys showed up in our island city off the coast of Oakland, CA. I don’t know if they were introduced here by humans or somehow managed to disperse on their own through cities and suburbs from more rural areas, where they had been previously introduced for recreational hunting. In any event, they have become quite numerous with several good sized flocks wandering here and there keeping the human soul from care.
Alameda’s Gone to the Turkeys Alameda Post
We have upwards of a few dozen wild turkeys that effectively rule the roost around the all cats and no cattle ranch. too big and dinosaur’y for the hair’m to handle, better stick with lizards, voles and gophers.
About a month ago, fairly early, I look out the window to see Buster the Big White Cat sitting amongst a group of a dozen or so turkeys. Now, when turkeys are feeding they look like a group of litter pickers moving slowly and deliberately, and Buster is sitting right in their midst. At one point a turkey actually brushed against him. He raised his paw up for a second, but then put it back down and waited for them to pass.
– ‘The Math Shows Jackson Pollock Painted Like a Child Would’ – Nautilus
There is a conspiracy theory that the CIA covertly supported abstract expressionism in the postwar West for the same reason it supported anti-Soviet critical theory: as a means of convincing the “left-leaning” intelligensia of the dangers of Stalinism, in this case the threat to individual artistic “expression” by an imposed Soviet collectivist “realism.” I make no claim to any sort of artistic expertise, and I actually like the Pollock paintings I have seen in person; they do have a certain emotional appeal. But I admit that when I have read some analyses by art “experts” of Pollock’s work over the years I have imagined some CIA psy-operator laughing his ass off in his office somewhere.
In this article we have added a layer of “expertise.” An “international team of scientists” have utilized “fractal analysis and lacunarity” to uncover the secret of Pollock’s genius. It turns out it is that he painted like a child. The “math” proves it.
Who am I to argue with the experts? Still, I keep hearing that laughter coming from somewhere.
It’s a well-documented conspiracy theory; Frances Stonor Saunders “Who Paid the Piper?” is a good starting point. I think in the US it was published as “The Cultural Cold War.”
For a conspiracy theory there is a lot of evidence that it’s what happened. During the WW2 Museum of Modern Art and the State Department were completely intermingled, and in the post-war world, were Soviet Union was claiming that capitalism created “a cultural wasteland”, these people figured pushing for America avant-garde was the best defense. Unfortunately most of the US government detested the art and the artists (“If this is art, I’m a Hottentot”, as Harry Truman said).
So, freshly formed CIA came to help. Former MoMA executive secretary Thomas Braden became CIA’s “supervisor of cultural activities”. IN 1954 Venice Biennale the US pavillion was arranged by US government, but by MoMA (funded trough CIA), so it could go all modern without “using taxpayers money”.
The same year, without any cynicism, in MoMA’s 25th anniversary, president Eisenhower states that “When artists are made the slaves and tools of the state; when artists become the chief propagandists of a cause, progress is arrested and creation and genius are destroyed.”
CIA founded the Congress of Cultural Freedom in Paris and put Braden in charge. They also funded Partisan Review and made it to collaborate with MoMA to establish both as a major presence in the European cultural life.
My father showed at the the 1956 Biennale. He made the last page, in black and white.
Shame the CIA didn’t fund him, we could have used the money…
I will inform the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, Germany that they are spreading a conspiracy theory with their information boards.
I cling to the hope that it was all a double-fake; that the artists, writers, remote viewers etc were taking the dotty rich uncles of the CIA for a ride rather than being influenced by it…
In this case I would think the artists (and their estates) would thank the CIA for providing them with the means to milk the *real* “rich uncles” who just had to have a “Pollock” for their home or museum.
https://www.myartbroker.com/artist-jackson-pollock/record-prices/jackson-pollock-record-price
Contemporary painting and capitalism, posted 8 hours ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuxxH2oH1oI (8:00)
The Price of Everything trailer, 6 years ago, trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mbqcY9g5CM (1:48)
Another conspiracy theory is that Pollock was advised on what to paint by influential critics of that time. Regardless, AbEx is maybe the most hated art ever by the ‘kid’s diaper after eating a box of crayons’ public.
Well, the goal the whole exercise was another Russian revolution.
Who’s to say it won’t be a Malorussian Revolution to follow?
“Trump Says Legislators Committed Treason by Noting That Soldiers Are Not Obligated To Obey Unlawful Orders”
The fun part begins when this goes to court and the Trump regime has to argue that they have the right to make military personnel follow unlawful orders. That is one circle that cannot be squared. And if it went against Trump, then he could be open to having his forces commit international war crimes.
Treason is to “levy war against the United states or to give aid and comfort to its enemies.” I believe that is the exact wording in the constitution. Sedition is this case would be speech designed to promoter rebellion. The congress critters did not such thing. They reminded members of the armed forces that it is legal and proper for them to resist unlawful orders. As I see it, ordering the destruction of boats and their passengers on the pretext that they are carrying drugs is performative. Are we to believe that the US navy is incapable of stopping those boats, determining what they are carrying, arresting the crew if they believe they are in violation of some law, holding them for legal proceedings. That is what the Coast Guard would do. It is what the Navy should do. But no, we must have explosions, sinkings, deaths to show how tough and dangerous we are … how tough and dangerous and uncompromising our Donnie is. After all who cares about those inconsequential people who are declared to be drug smugglers with no evidence, not Donnie, that’s for sure.
Meanwhile the navy idles about off the coast of Venezuela occasionally blocking passage to ships heading for Venezuelan Ports. Blockade? Isn’t that an act of war? Then again we are in a brave new world in which such fussy niceties are so, so passé. Might makes right, right? Or does it. Let’s see what happens.
I remember the Nuremburg Trials, and thinking they were nice but very naive. Every soldier, indeed every citizen, has the duty to refuse an illegal order. It’s in the UCMJ and every other book on “military justice.” The trouble is, as soon as a private or sergeant or lieutenant does that they’ll be Court Martialed for mutiny. The person who issued the illegal order(s) will only be punished after his country has been beaten in a war, and then only if the winners decide to. More likely to just treat him/her like Saddam Hussein, or Qaddafi.
Looking forward to scouring the email trove for Epstein’s tax and financial advice.
As someone who is very much prone to hurtling down steep frozen embankments on purpose repeatedly, I genuinely enjoy watching snowboarders doing manic stuff from the safe confines of a lift chair.
At a resort you’ll almost never see skiers doing crazy shit, and perhaps the main reason is the 30/30 rule, in that nearly all boarders are under 30 and almost all skiers are over 30.
Heading to Mammoth soon for my first ever November skiing (sheltered life, I know) with much of the mountain open.
My family had a property at Breckenridge and I spent most of my adolescence through early 30s skiing and snowboarding. I always assumed the reason you don’t see skiers doing crazy stuff is it’s a lot easier to break more bones and joints with both legs moving separately (not to mention the much longer lever of the skis themselves) than a snowboard, where both feet are strapped and stationary. Even though I learned on skis first, and really young (so I retained a sort of automatic sense of balance and comfort as I aged), after I switched to snowboarding and then went back to skiing I felt like my knees (torquing injuries in a fall) especially were at risk.
I lived in Tahoe in the embryonic days of snowboards in the 1980’s, and oh how we hated the squeegee men (hardly any women boarders back then) who only seemed to excel in ruining perfectly good ski slopes, but they got a lot better as time went on, and might’ve saved skiing from being another activity nobody does anymore (I’m looking at you, tennis) by being different in their approach.
Kind of standard clothing for a boarder has the same look as the duds you’d wear for your job in the meat locker, and as far as doing jumps and spins and whatnot, skiers are facing down all the time, whereas a boarder has a sideways view of goings on, and perhaps easier to pull off.
Boarders are encouraged by other boarders to do tricks, whereas skiers don’t feel the same pressure from other parallel planked ones.
“13 dizzying and dazzling images from 2025 Drone Photo Awards”
The image to look for is the one called “The Lone Horseman” and is from the Cappadocia region in Turkiye. Incredible that such a geological formation like that exists.
Sad!
Hegseth and Air National Guard “Raizin” Caine seemingly can’t tell Trump that US commissioned officers have a different oath than enlisted servicemembers. Ichecked the oath has not changed since 1972.
There is no “obey orders” (as in enlisted oath) in the officers’ oath an officer first duty is to the constitution not Trump!
‘Caine enabled’
There’s a presumptive requirement on military personnel in any country to obey a “lawful order.” Such an order has to be legal as regards criminal law generally, legal as regards military law (eg you cannot order a soldier to desert) and consistent with military ethics (you shouldn’t order a soldier to exercise your dog.). Such an order has to be obeyed. By extension, an order that violates one or more of these criteria does not have to be obeyed, and indeed it could be a crime to give such an order. In real life, an order is assumed to be legal unless it is self-evidently illegal (“on its face”), because you can’t stop military operations to have seminars about legality. However, this argument is very circumscribed: it’s no part of an officer’s duty, for example, to go hunting through legal textbooks to see whether this or that order could be inconsistent with the Constitution of their country. That’s an entirely different issue, handled at a completely different level;.
Great missing historical oversight in this article.A major reason for our British decline was the Japanese ‘ world class manufacturing model’ Kanban,JIT,Zero changeover time etc.This decimated our native industries as well as those in the USA as it turned over our many of our preconceptions.e.g associating huge quantities of WIP with an organisations good health.
One early example of this, in 1977 we bought our first CNC machine.Tbe Japanese were able to guarantee to fly over an engineer from Paris to the UK within 24 hrs while Herbert and Ward – a world famous Birmingham M/C tool company only 60 miles up the road took 2 weeks to send us an engineer!.
A specialist in Japanese manufacturing techniques I undertook a prestigious MBA in 1994 hoping to learn the latest Japanese manufacturing techniques in for Ops Management part.I ended up giving (paid) lectures in them,as it was palpably obvious the segment was way out of date.Go figure!Just a couple of small examples from over a wonderful 30 years making things from 1970.The last example,in 1970 approximately 10m were employed in making things when I left in 2000 around 2 m were left
When Japanese auto engineers toured the Jaguar plant in the 60s, they were shocked to see a test facility in which every engine was run to reveal defects. This indicated the absence of statistical quality control of sub-components. The British manufacturing sector became noncompetitive because of cultural inertia. Now it is the turn of the USA to decline, as it attempts to set industrial policy through a government run by squabbling billionaires. In the early industrial era, entrepreneurial innovation could proceed in parallel in multiple sectors, without elaborate coordination. Those days are gone. Coherent national industrial policy is propelling China into the lead, and the U.S. can’t shake its deep-seated fractious social characteristics in order to catch up.
Apropos of not much, but why did DT Barnum dress like Potsie from Happy Days yesterday, it’s not even remotely his style?
But will he show up at a beach with water skis and a leather jacket?
Will there be a shark?
It’s in the tank baby!
Ayyyy!
‘A world turned upside down’: MAGA faithful grapple with Trump’s Mamdani lovefest, MTG’s downfall Politico
Hilarious reading the reactions to this “lovefest” by the likes of Laura Loomer and Elise Stefanik. Here is the latter’s response:
“We all want NYC to succeed. But we’ll have to agree to disagree on this one,” Stefanik posted on social media on Friday, repeatedly invoking the pejorative despite Trump’s about-face.”
The “pejorative” is “jihadist.”
Remember what happened to ardent Trump supporter MTG when she tried to “agree to disagree” on an issue or two? It would be great to see Stefanik get the “Marjorie Traitor Brown” treatment from Trump. Stefanik running for governor of NY will probably motivate me to vote again – she is one of the worst in a terrible Congress. Unfortunately, Stefanik is not Greene, and Mamdani is not Israel. So I won’t hold my breath.
I could not get to this story through the link provided; here is a more direct route:
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/11/22/trump-mtg-mamdani-maga-future-00666113
Re ‘Quiet, Piggy’–Trump in his bubble of fake macho is gross but that doesn’t automatically make his targets into heroes as Pen would have us believe. Are the Disney corporation or the NYT really crusaders for truth and justice or merely competing oligarchs wielding their own form of power? The recipient of the Piggy quote works for Bloomberg who just spend millions trying to stop Mamdani. Even in the supposedly far more left 60s and 70s the MSM endorsement of Vietnam produced print alt news that served the role of current digital versions. These latter don’t get in your face insults from DJT because they don’t get to ride on his jet.
Some of us would have a lot more respect for the MSM if they’d get off their high horse about the sanctity of the fourth estate and talked more about oh say genocide.
U.S. Banks Shelve $20 Billion Bailout Plan for Argentina MSN
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Don’t cry for me Argentina, the truth is I never loaned you…
I have to wonder about all the uproar over welcoming MBS due to Kashoggi’s murder. Horrific to be sure, but it also happened several years ago and it didn’t cause any major breach in US/Saudi relations.
Meanwhile the Zionist entity continues to murder more journalists than anyone can keep track of, including US citizen Shireen Abu Akleh, whose murder the Biden administration actively helped cover up – https://truthout.org/articles/official-says-biden-admin-shunted-his-finding-idf-intentionally-shot-journalist/ Yet we hear barely a peep about Abu Akleh and her dead colleagues. Clearly the outrage is highly selective.
And no matter the level of outrage, it hasn’t stopped Uncle Sugar from supporting either of these murderous rulers.
I try to keep my double standards in harmony.
The cognitive dissonance, if you manage it right, makes a lovely atonal symphony.
But my cognitive dissonance is starting do develop it’s own cognitive dissonance.
Would that be a self-owned cognitive diss?
Quite!
From JAMA, Nov17, 2025.
Software as a Medical Practitioner—Is It Time to License Artificial Intelligence?
From the abstract:
“The Healthy Technology Act of 2025, a bill being considered by Congress, would permit artificial intelligence (AI) systems to prescribe medications without human sign-off. While allowing AI to practice independently may still be a stretch, large language models are already being used to support diagnosis and treatment.1 These applications challenge the current regulatory framework for clinical AI, which has focused on software as a medical device (SaMD). The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has cleared more than 1000 AI tools using this framework, mostly for narrow, well-defined tasks. However, generative models can be applied across domains, straining the SaMD framework. In this Viewpoint, we explore the application of a licensure paradigm to clinical AI systems, arguing that this offers a more reliable regulatory framework.”
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2840933?guestAccessKey=243dfbf1-6018-44c3-8c63-969f2c02cee3&utm_medium=email&utm_source=postup_jn&utm_campaign=article_alert-jamainternalmedicine&utm_content=olf-tfl_&utm_term=111725#google_
Paintings are by far the largest bubble (you could buy Van Gogh’s Mlle. Ravoux for $19k in 1939, it sold for $441k in 1966 and is probably worth $100 million now) of all things bubbly.
The craziest thing is you could faithfully digitally reproduce any of them that would look like the real thing from 25 feet away.
I’m not sure if that bubble will ever pop. With all the money laundering likely going on, those wild ass valuations are a prime feature. On the most recent TrueAnon Liz and Brace were discussing their toe-dip into the recent tranche of JE emails that were released. One of the emails implied (all implications, off course) that MBS bought a Da Vinci at 100M (I think) as a “favor”, knowing full well it was incredibly overvalued.
Everything is a scam. Or like Carlin said – it’s a big club, and I’m not in it.
From The Economic Populist.
How Wall Street Killed Single-Family Home Building
Our new paper sheds light on an overlooked driver of the housing supply crisis–and the soaring price of homes.
https://economicpopulist.substack.com/p/how-wall-street-killed-single-family
Its about that time to acquire a guillotined pine tree that’s around an adult in age, bring it home and put it in your living room in a basin of water so it’ll look fresh and not dead for the next month.
Never really understood this ‘reanimator’ gig, can somebody’s walk me down from this tree obsession?
Dear Wuk
Aren’t there bushloads of small pines or firs where you live? We cut ’em down en masse & burn ’em so as to make space for their bigger siblings.
The lucky one gets to come inside and be adorned. Xtianity is a tree cult, isn’t it?
What a stupid timeline, the world is gonna burn to the ground, but
Americans are holding onto devices longer than ever and it’s costing economy
Help. Send brainz.
MSN link for
‘A world turned upside down’: MAGA faithful grapple with Trump’s Mamdani lovefest, MTG’s downfall (MSN)
I think MTG knows exactly which way the wind is blowing for the GOP after T went back on his words on too many issues.
From the AP news service about a recent election:
Democrats win big over GOP incumbents in 2 statewide Georgia utility regulator races
https://apnews.com/article/georgia-public-service-commission-democrats-republicans-election-13064b8409c924571c4ebb5d356c5e15
First para:
“ATLANTA (AP) — Two Democrats romped to wins over Republican incumbents in elections to the Georgia Public Service Commission on Tuesday, delivering the largest statewide margins of victory by Democrats in more than 20 years.”
As for T claiming he is MAGA….. L’ MAGA, c’est moi!
T seems to have lost his head. / ;)
Adding, here is MTG reading her resignation statement.
https://x.com/mtgreenee/status/1992035608387039359
It will be interesting to watch as Trump’s beliefs continue to diverge from reality, I don’t think it will be pretty, but it will certainly be interesting…
Little things like the the Economy or Wars not going his way or perhaps a whole shitload of people getting very sick indeed.
There’s also Vance standing behind him and undoubtedly getting feelers from people who want to be his #2.
Add paranoia to cognitive dissonance to dementia to narcissism and it’s going to be more fun than a barrel of flunkies going over Niagara falls.
What OpenAI Did When ChatGPT Users Lost Touch With Reality (NY Times via archive.ph)
The ultimate dark pattern, it’s invisible.
From Due Dissidence guys. A ~20 minute segment within the longer podcast. I started the utube at the beginning of the segment. This made me laugh out loud several times.
Talk about chutzpah. / ;)
https://youtu.be/mbefa30PIOE?t=1225
I wonder if 236 m for a Klimt is a sign of bubbles?
The Nvidia diagram from yesterday is oddly concerning, though I don’t understand it… seems some of these companies are partners rather than competitors? Not arms-free deals?
Anyway, the 6-month run up in us margin debt ending in October was 333b of new debt vs just 651b over the previous 16 years since the bottom of the GR crash, looks to me a feeding frenzy, just as happened before the dot com (7 months) and GR (4) crashes began. (Sources: FINRA).
But that’s just 2 cases of major market crashes, FINRA margin data only began in 1997, maybe this time we’ll see a new pattern. If not, the magnificent 7 might be less magnificent.
The deal is just like before with rating agencies and and incentives via income derived by rating other peoples product or RE juiced from appraisals and 30-ish loans given based on selling its risk for a short term payday high for the right sorts of people. When it comes a cropper the gov back stops it or everyone has a Minsky moment. Then their is the Geopol thingy ….
I love how Fox news stories like ‘Cloud Storage Full’ scam steals your photos and money are in part just paid product advertisements for a computer security service. It isn’t even subtle, wow. Literally looks like the service wrote the post, and Fox published it. Couldn’t even bother to hot link the repeat mentions of their website, oops. Reflective of service quality?
It is curious to see how overt the racism in America has become, it’s worse than it was with Bull Conner in the early 60’s and it is right up there with Strom Thurmond’s ( Joe Biden’s buddy) 1948 Presidential campaign.
Strange times.
Smoking crack
Bessent believes there won’t be a recession in 2026 but says some sectors are challenged
These people are high.
Epic – On Piers Morgan, The Grayzone’s Max Blumenthal confronts former US ambassador to Venezuela James Story over his history of coup plotting and collaboration with violent opposition elements.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHNAXDvGR4A
It really is a tour de force and then some. Max unpacks verifiable knowledge only to cop the unverifiable suggestion that he is on Russia’s/Putin’s payroll …. the absurdity of it can kill brain cells … blokes white teeth is like a neon sign for flexian …