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Links 11/28/2025

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The Moral Authority Of Animals Noema

Hungry pigs, feral brothers and the Michigan hunting trip that ended in murders Bridge Michigan

Private equity moves into clinical trials Private Equity Stakeholder Project

A Physicist Ran the Numbers on What Would Happen if a Tiny Black Hole Passed Through Your Body ZME Science

Climate/Environment

The Trump Administration’s Data Center Push Could Open the Door for New Forever Chemicals Wired

New data shows insurance costs rising and home values sinking as climate risks grow Moving Day

The dreams and perils of moving capitals in a changing Asia Channel News Asia

The collapse of Maya civilization: Drought doesn’t explain everything Phys.org

Water

The Thing with Rivers Dublin Review of Books

Pandemics

China

Firefighting at Hong Kong blaze ends with deaths over 90, dozens missing Al Jazeera

Why Hong Kong’s Deadly Fire Spread Swiftly – Focus On Fast-Burning Foam NDTV

Hong Kong high-rise fire fuels anger over housing crisis Semafor

***

China’s October Industrial Profits Warwick Powell

India-China Rows

India-China in new spat over Arunachal Pradesh: What’s it all about? Al Jazeera

China begins construction of a ‘mega dam’ that may cause problems for India Earth.com

India protests China’s ‘arbitrary detention’ of citizen at Shanghai airport AP

Modi cabinet’s major move to counter China’s dominance: India to produce 6,000 tonnes of rare earth magnets under new scheme The Week

Syraqistan

Israel/OPT: Post-ceasefire: Israel’s genocide in the occupied Gaza strip continues Amnesty International

Graphic footage: IOF execute 2 Palestinians from point blank in Jenin Al Mayadeen

Israel has attacked Lebanon 10,000 times since ceasefire began one-year-ago New Arab

Israeli forces, Syrians clash in Damascus countryside; casualties reported Al Jazeera

Drone strike hits major Iraqi Kurdistan gas field plunging region into darkness The Cradle

Old Blighty

Judge in Palestine Action case worked for Israeli spy Robert Maxwell Asa Winstanley

How Northern Ireland’s dark policing history looms over Palestine Action protests Middle East Eye

The British Government Is Fooling You Tribune Mag

BRITISH MILITARY TRAINED IN ISRAEL AMID GAZA GENOCIDE Declassified UK

British Army forced to stop using new Ajax armoured vehicles after soldiers using them left vomiting and shaking so badly they couldn’t control their bodies Daily Mail

The procession of university language closures will trip up UK diplomacy Ian Proud

European Disunion

Belgium’s De Wever dials up opposition to Russian frozen assets deal Politico

Chat Control is back on the agenda Thomas Fazi

The Hidden Risks of Platform Control Over Historical Memory Lawfare. Exhibit A:

Confections New Left Review. A review of former Finnish PM Sanna Marin’s book.

New Not-So-Cold War

Putin Lays Final Word on ‘Settlement’ Sham in Kyrgyzstan Conference Simplicius

Ukraine Says It Won’t Give Up Land to Russia The Atlantic

Europe’s Leaders Have No Strategy for Peace Jacobin

Europe thinks the unthinkable: Retaliating against Russia Politico

Latvia will consider removal of railway tracks leading to Russia Latvian Public Media

Baltic nations seek EU bailout as Russia sanctions backfire Daily Telegraph

Africa

Adolf Hitler Is About To Win An Election In This Former German Colony NDTV

South of the Border

Trump: US will ‘very soon’ take action on land against alleged Venezuela drug traffickers The Hill

The Great Game

Three Chinese citizens killed in Tajikistan in drone attack launched from Afghanistan Intellinews

Spook Country

D.C. Shooting Suspect ‘Could Not Tolerate’ the Violence of His C.I.A.-Backed Unit in Afghanistan, a Childhood Friend Said New York Times

Why Is the Establishment Ignoring the Recently Declassified JFK Files? American Conservative

Immigration

Trump says he will ‘permanently pause’ migration from ‘third world countries’ after national guard shooting The Guardian

L’affaire Epstein

US regulators ‘taking seriously’ allegations of bankers’ support for Epstein The Guardian

Trump 2.0

Private equity executive warns pension scheme push risks bailouts FT

The OpenAI Bubble Popped…And Got A Secret Bailout? Seeking Alpha

The Imaginary Peace President William Schryver

FEMA’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad year Grist

Trump-Backed Crypto Company Promotes ‘Shit Piss Skin Can’ Coin Gizmodo

“Liberation Day”

Exclusive: Trump team wants Taiwan to train US chip plant workers, sources say Reuters

The Uniparty

When Power Turns Itself Into a Joke New Global Politics

Thanksgiving Leftovers

Americans are eating less turkey, even as the birds keep getting bigger Sherwood

Is Tryptophan MAHA? NOTUS

Imperial Collapse Watch

‘We Do Fail … a Lot’: Defense Startup Anduril Hits Setbacks With Weapons Tech WSJ

Navy and Coast Guard Keep Building Ships Before the Blueprints Are Finished Resulting in Delays, Cancellations gCaptain

Special Treatment Lines Defense Giant’s Pockets in North Carolina Inkstick

Not in our name Aeon

Revolution on Our Mind: Two Hundred Fifty Years Since the Declaration of Independence ZZ’s Blog

How a Government Think Tank Trained The First Generation of US Software Developers Construction Physics

TRILLIONS SPENT AND BIG SOFTWARE PROJECTS ARE STILL FAILING IEEE Spectrum

AI

A trillion dollars is a terrible thing to waste Gary Marcus

Police State Watch

Police ‘Robot Dogs’ Raise Concerns as More Departments Adopt Them Governing

Antitrust

Casino Country

Lawsuit alleges Kalshi ‘duped’ gamblers into illegal sports bets against the house Raw Story

Class Warfare

Investors are making a killing from soaring house prices Red Flag

The Same Stream Twice N+1

Antidote du jour (via):

See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.

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111 comments

  1. The Rev Kev

    “Latvia will consider removal of railway tracks leading to Russia”

    If they do this, it will be a case of cutting off their noses to spite their faces-

    ‘Earlier reports said that Latvian military analysts consider the country’s three main rail lines connecting to Russia – around 1,800km in total – a direct security risk. However, Transport Minister Aitis Svinka warned that dismantling the tracks would halt all freight traffic not only with Russia, but also with Belarus and Central Asian states, reducing cargo volumes, increasing maintenance costs, and causing losses for Latvia’s economy.’

    https://www.rt.com/russia/628539-latvia-rail-russia-dismantle/

    As it is, the Baltic States want a bailout from the EU because of the state of their economies so can Latvia really afford to cut those trade ties?

    Reply ↓
    1. Trees&Trunks

      Or you may be a WEF:er out to hurt and kill your own population.
      All the stuff the European misleadership make is backfiring on the peoples of the EU noone else. Their call for war with Russia is another step on their kill the proles plan.

      Reply ↓
    2. Polar Socialist

      To use an old adage, Latvia is a transport hub masquerading as a country. So, yes, joining the sanctions did not make much sense, and removing those tracks would be akin to cutting your own wrists.

      But when you’re fighting for values, you do what you gots to do.

      Reply ↓
      1. Tom67

        All former USSR countries are turning into militarised dictatorships. They are as democratic as Russia or Ukraine and they all need the war to keep their people quiet and the money spigot open. One example: you probably never heard of migrants dying on the Latvian-Belorussian border. The Belorussians let the over but the Latvians won´t let them in. People simply starve or freeze to death. I hadn´t heard of that either until I was asked to help a Latvian lady who was about to be sentenced to several years in prison as she had headed a group that had helped them get away from the border.
        The for me shocking thing was not that something like this was happening (and she told me horrible details) but that you can´t find any mention of that anywhere. It is total censorship like in Russia where you can land in prison just for criticising the war.

        Reply ↓
        2. Donaldo

          It is total censorship like in Russia, and unlike UK and Germany where they arrest grannies for liking the wrong post on the Internet, and release rapists from jail in order to make room for Facebook criminals.

          I remeber reading a few of your posts about Easten Europe, and they are always off in some way.

          Reply ↓
      2. The Rev Kev

        I suppose the calculation was that at the start of the war and all those sanctions were dropped on Russia, that the Russians would be forced to capitulate and be opened up for looting. Economies like those of Latvia would experience a nasty economic shock but then all those dirt cheap resources would start flowing from Russia to them. What they did not plan on was their self-sanctioned economies to have to endure three and a half years of this. It was a gamble and they lost.

        Reply ↓
    4. upstater

      Meanwhile, the Poland to Estonia Rail Baltica is late and over budget. It is a standard gauge 1435 mm South-North line. The rest of the Baltic rail network is Russian gauge 1520 mm. Fever dreams include a tunnel to Finland.

      Baltic ministries to ask for additional EU funding for Rail Baltica

      In a joint report published in June last year, Baltic auditors said another €10–19 billion could be needed to implement the planned works in the three countries, and €8.7 billion in Lithuania alone.

      Prime Minister Gintautas Paluckas has said that the funding gap for the entire Rail Baltica project is currently about €11 billion.

      Gotta have trains to.move the tanks.

      Reply ↓
  2. Victor Sciamarelli

    On the continuing Israel war in Gaza, perhaps Israel will need a bailout before AI and Wall Street. “Israel About to Face Something SERIOUS” | Paul Krugman on Youtube. He said, “We’re witnessing what could become one of the most significant economic inflection points in Israel’s 77-year history.”
    Krugman said, “Though Israel entered the October 7 crisis in 2023 from a position of relative strength…, “We didn’t anticipate a two-year war across multiple fronts followed by a 12 day direct conflict with Iran followed by what we’re seeing now, a fragile cease fire that keeps breaking down and military operations that show no signs of concluding.”
    “The fiscal picture has deteriorated dramatically. The cumulative deficit over the past 12 months has reached approximately 108 billion shekels, that’s roughly $29.5 billion.
    Israel is a small open economy heavily dependent on exports particularly on technology and defense, it relies on foreign investments and access to int’l capital markets so when your deficit balloons during a conflict, your not just dealing with accounting problems, you’re signaling to global markets that your fiscal house may not be in order… Moody’s downgraded Israel twice in 2024—from A2 to BA—Fitch and Standard and Poor’s followed with their own downgrades.”
    “The Bank of Israel and the Finance Ministry estimated the direct cost of the Gaza war at 250 billion shekels by May 2024. After the expansion into Lebanon and the subsequent conflict with Iran in June 2025, estimates climb to 300 billion shekels and beyond. To put that into perspective the entire 2023 defense budget before the war was about 60 billion shekels. We’re talking about costs that dwarf normal military expenditure.”
    “The June 2025 war with Iran added another layer of destruction that’s often overlooked in the political coverage. The Iron Dome, David’s Sling, and Arrow systems performed remarkably well but they couldn’t intercept everything. Thirty-two Israelis were killed, over 3,000 were wounded and…2,305 homes and 240 building were damaged or destroyed leaving more than 13,000 Israelis displaced. That’s domestic infrastructure damage on a scale that Israel hasn’t experienced since its founding.”
    “What’s changed is the duration and scope of the conflict. We’re not talking about a two week operation anymore. The mobilization of reserve soldiers alone carries enormous economic costs. A Finance Ministry study found that the economic cost of a reserve soldier is about 48,000 shekels per month. And when you’re calling up tens of thousands of reservists repeatedly, businesses lose workers, productivity drops, and the economic engine sputters.”
    “Prof Karni Flug, the former governor of the Bank of Israel, recently issued a warning…she stated that renewed fighting in Gaza and higher defense funding needs will put Israel’s public service needs at risk of collapse, her exact words collapse.”
    Furthermore, “funds flowed to ultra orthodox institutions at a time when the government needed every shekel for defense and reconstruction, the labor force participation problem among ultra orthodox men and Arab Israeli women, the economic cost of not drafting orthodox men is about 10 billion shekels per year…” this matters because “demographic trends are moving against Israel’s traditional economic model—the ultra orthodox population is growing faster than the other segments.
    On the int’l front, “the country is facing unprecedented diplomatic and economic pressure. The EU, Israel’s largest trading partner proposed sanctions that would partially suspend the EU-Israel free trade agreement which has been the backbone of Israeli exports to Europe for decades. Several western nations have implemented targeted sanctions against Israeli individuals and organizations. The BDS movement has gained traction it never had before.
    Israel About to Face Something SERIOUS.. | Paul Krugman
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUQe7VdEFtI

    Reply ↓
    1. The Rev Kev

      Thanks for quoting that detailed synopsis. I was listening to it with my tiny violin playing of course. There is something that occurred to me after reading this. Through all these wars, most of which have been by choice, it has blown the budget to hell. I wonder if it might sink into the minds of Israel’s Ministry of Finance that if Israel decided to go for being a Greater Israel, then this would look like their budget all the time. Hard to be a hegemonic empire when your country is smaller than the US State of West Virginia.

      Reply ↓
      1. Mikel

        “Israel has attacked Lebanon 10,000 times since ceasefire began one-year-ago” – New Arab

        And then there is Syria still getting hit for other reasons.
        And other countries.

        Over two years of non-stop bombings.

        Reply ↓
        1. Yalt

          They’re just “testing the ceasefire” to see if it will hold. Or so we’re told by headlines at NBC, Politico, AP, etc.

          Reply ↓
      2. Lefty Godot

        And “renewed fighting in Gaza” is an interesting way to describe one side shooting and bombing the other, which consists of starving, unarmed civilians. We’ve come a long way in the last sixty years, saturating the information sphere with polite lies (euphemisms) and outrageously obvious falsehoods. How else could people like Kaja Kallas and Donald Trump slither into any sort of leadership position?

        Reply ↓
  3. Steve H.

    > The Moral Authority Of Animals Noema

    Fun read, lots of tasty tidbits. This section

    >> The bees offer a model for the consensus-building politics of citizens’ assemblies that help people reach cooperative decisions after careful deliberation. Healthy human societies could use some political medicine from honeybees. Tell the truth. Don’t suppress dissent. Listen to the experts. Always dance.

    works very well with what McRaney says:

    >> By producing arguments in a biased and lazy fashion, individuals can quickly off-load their unique perspectives and save their mental energy for the evaluation process… Deliberation through argumentation reveals all the varied points of view in a group. Generating increasingly better reasons for one decision or another, the group can, together, zero in on the most reasonable justification.

    Reply ↓
    1. Lee

      IIRC correctly from lectures by Robert Sapolsky on the biological basis for behavior, the tit for tat strategy has deep evolutionary roots and can be seen at work down to the molecular biological level. “Nature red in tooth and claw” and “all against all” are at best but partial truths that probably say more about those who believe such things than the realities they intend to describe.

      Reply ↓
    2. Jabura Basadai

      good points – i found this compelling –
      “Human societies, while often quite different from one to the next, generally have a shared ethos similar to that of wolves: Look after the young; protect the tribe; consider the needs of the sick, injured or old; and value the cooperation of others who may not be kin (friends, in other words). It is biomimicry applied to the ethical world. Wolves were doing it first, and we aped them.”

      while this is true TPTB surely don’t want us to think this way – hurray for wolves and all animals/insects and life forms not human – a friend in northern Michigan who is part of an Anishinaabe clan mentions this type of consciousness often –

      then thought of the merciless murder of wolves out west – particularly Wyoming on the edge of Yellowstone –

      Reply ↓
      1. Lee

        Over several years I did volunteer work with Rick McIntyre. I witnessed amazing things while watching wolves and other critters. McIntyre has been observing and writing about Yellowstone wolves’ behavior everyday for decades, and has seen many more amazing things. I recommend his books, and trips to Yellowstone.

        BTW, the surname McIntyre seems to be derived from the Celtic “mac tire” meaning “son of the land”, the Celtic term for wolf. I have often wondered if that is indeed his true surname but never had the gall to ask.

        Reply ↓
    1. LifelongLib

      I didn’t know about the spurs, but the colors and beak made me think of a plover too. We have adult Pacific Golden Plovers here in Hawaii, but they breed in Alaska so I’ve never seen a baby one.

      Reply ↓
  5. Jessica

    About “A Physicist Ran the Numbers on What Would Happen if a Tiny Black Hole Passed Through Your Body ZME Science”

    1.4 × 10¹⁷ grams = 140,000,000,000,000 = 140 trillion kilograms or 308 trillion pounds. Anything smaller than that you wouldn’t notice. To put it another way, if you were going to be hit by an object under this threshold, the object being a black hole is the only thing that would save you.

    Reply ↓
  6. The Rev Kev

    “British Army forced to stop using new Ajax armoured vehicles after soldiers using them left vomiting and shaking so badly they couldn’t control their bodies”

    The fact of the matter is that they should junk those Ajax vehicles and then sue the manufacturers for producing a vehicle that would lead to more British casualties than enemy casualties. You can’t actually use them in battle as just driving them would debilitate their crews before they even saw action. But they won’t of course and will keep fielding them as it would make some people look bad and endanger some lucrative contracts. I’m not sure how they could use them in action. Probably a commander of a squadron of them would have to use them for a day or two, do a check on how many crew members were still effective, and then have to have them man some Ajax vehicles while debilitated crewmen would be left behind with those vehicles that could not have the numbers to be manned.

    Reply ↓
    1. vao

      Regarding the article: Navy and Coast Guard Keep Building Ships Before the Blueprints Are Finished Resulting in Delays, Cancellations, I would like to point out that there is another fundamental problem with half of the projects mentioned.

      Namely, for the Constellation frigate and the Polar cutter, a standard, existing ship was taken (basically an off-the-shelf product), and then adjustments, customizations, and alterations were piled on to such an extent that the final design had little to do with the starting basis.

      The original ships already have compromises and optimizations hammered out in their design; hence, significant modifications require extensive re-designs — which will take more time and entail higher costs. I do not know what is the percentage of tweaking that would justify a design from scratch (1/6th? 1/5th?) but if the project changes the vessel to be 40% larger than the source blueprint, then it seems to me that the USN naval architects are doing something really wrong. Replacing some European communication gear or artillery piece by ones made in USA should be acceptable, but substantial changes to the hull look unconscionable.

      If in addition one starts construction before design is complete, then one is wilfully taking the path of failure.

      Now coming to the Ajax, from Wikipedia:

      “The Ajax is a development of the ASCOD 2 armoured fighting vehicles used by the Spanish Armed Forces and Austrian Armed Forces. The vehicles were originally developed by Steyr-Daimler-Puch Spezialfahrzeug and Santa Bárbara Sistemas in the early 1990s.”

      Oh, it is again an extensive modification of an existing product. And the result is unusable. And it is expensive. And it came very late.

      My tentative assessment: the UK and the USA have lost competence in designing equipment (warships, icebreakers, IFVs). People in the MoD/MoW no longer know how to manage development programmes (including not committing stupidities like extensively modifying an available, finalized design, or starting construction before design is complete). Engineers do not have the necessary experience to avoid serious design mistakes (leading to unusable junk and plenty of rework).

      But the UK and the USA are not mere Third-World countries that must be satisfied with off-the-shelf acquisitions, no Sir! They have a proud tradition of designing world-class naval and armoured equipement, so they must bring in their requirements and go on adapting the available products to them.

      Given what happened with the LCS and the Zumwalt destroyer, I suspect that the crucial competence of drafting sound requirements specifications has also been lost.

      And then we end up with the Ajax, the Constellation, and the Polar.

      Reply ↓
      1. The Rev Kev

        I understand that with the Constellation-class ships, the problems with it began when it was decided to drop in US radars that were bigger, heavier and bulkier. This mean widening the shape of the hull which led to a decrease in top speed and it went on from there. But unsaid in that article was how lucrative it was for those shipbuilders to be constantly making changes at US Navy requests. They made big bank on that and this idea still persists.

        Trump was saying that it was a disgrace how the US had only one icebreaker while Russia has 48 icebreakers. To close the gap the US is jointly building 11 icebreakers with Finland which sounds logical. But what happens when some navy designers turn up on the construction site saying that they will have to change some design features around to suit US requirements and that they had some ideas of their own they wanted to try out. I could easily see this happening.

        Reply ↓
        1. ilsm

          “Big navy” decided the frigates need to be air and missile defense ships, the old SPY 1 isold! The new SPY 6 is going on Arleigh Burke Flt III destroyer at 17000 tons much larger than earlier Arleigh Burks.

          Adding the radar and battle management systems added much larger electrricity needs, weigh and volume in the hull.

          If “big navy” knew in advance they would have known the hulls were slight!

          The ship building system engineer should have cried foul earlier! Maybe he/she was fired for not being team player!

          Reply ↓
      2. albrt

        Somebody pointed out recently that the purpose of these Western defense contracts is to keep money flowing on projects that can’t ever be finished, based on the POSIWID principle.

        The adoption of a design process that cannot possibly work is not because we are governed by three-year-olds, it is because that process produces the most money for the vampire squid while allowing legislators to maintain some level of deniability about falling behind Russia and China. They learned from the F-35 that Wunderwaffe are better if they never actually get completed and tested.

        I can’t recall who said it, one of the substack commentators I think.

        Reply ↓
      3. Mikel

        “Navy and Coast Guard Keep Building Ships Before the Blueprints Are Finished Resulting in Delays, Cancellations”

        Just spitballin’…but could some of this be the result of people involved who believe the only way to innovate is to discard all fundamentals previously established?

        Reply ↓
        1. vao

          Or of people who think that the latest fashionable methods in software — such as Agile or Scrum — which do without the finalization of a design phase before starting programming activities, also apply to the development of tangible artifacts such as vessels and vehicles.

          Reply ↓
          1. Mikel

            Also, not saying you didn’t catch it, but to clarify in case some did not: I wasn’t cheer-leading for discarding fundamentals.

            Reply ↓
          2. Boomheist

            I am also wondering whether these days naval designers use software to do design drawings like are done for buildings. In the old days, the old old days, real people laid out the lines from patters and models, even water testing, and then built from there. Another thing – it’s relativel easy to change a steel boat, just cut away a section and replace it. So people thing they can literally cut and paste and then they wonder when the damn thing is slow or rolls over….

            Reply ↓
      4. ciroc

        For NATO to become a serious combat alliance, I believe nations should standardize their weapons systems instead of developing unique ones. One of the most important lessons from the Russia-Ukraine war is that a diverse array of weapons systems creates more vulnerabilities than advantages. In that regard, the former Warsaw Pact did well. Romanians could fight with Bulgarian-made AK-47s, Hungarians could fight with Polish-made T-72s, and East Germans could fight with Czechoslovakian-made BMP-1s — all without requiring specialized training.

        Reply ↓
        2. Ricardo

          NATO have been working on standardization since forever. It turned out that NATO standardized 155mm guns and ammo, from different countries delivered to Ukraine, are not quite interchangeable. Best they can do is small arms ammo, and STANAG magazine. Maybe because there’s not much money there. Having a standardized rifle would be too much potential profit lost.

          Reply ↓
    2. mrsyk

      I just finished that. Everything you said plus an F-35 comparison because misery loves company, and a quote,


      (Defense minister) Mr Pollard earlier this month visited the General Dynamics plant in Wales producing the Ajax armoured vehicles.

      He said at the time that any concerns surrounding the reconnaissance vehicles were ‘firmly in the past’.

      Mr Pollard told reporters: ‘We would not be putting it in the hands of our armed forces if it were not safe.’

      Lol, how about that?

      Reply ↓
  7. OIFVet

    We ought to be thanking miss Lynch for reading Sanna Marin’s memoir, so that we don’t have to. Whenever I come across something said by Marin, I involuntarily recall Adolph Reed’s description of young Obama in The Village Voice.

    Reply ↓
    1. Afro

      I didn’t know what you meant, I looked it up in case others are curious:

      In Chicago, we’ve gotten a foretaste of the new breed of foundation-hatched black communitarian voices; one of them, a smooth Harvard lawyer with impeccable do-good credentials and vacuous-to-repressive neoliberal politics, has won a state senate seat on a base mainly in the liberal foundation and development worlds. His fundamentally bootstrap line was softened by a patina of the rhetoric of authentic community, talk about meeting in kitchens, small-scale solutions to social problems, and the predictable elevation of process over program — the point where identity politics converges with old-fashioned middle-class reform in favoring form over substance. I suspect that his ilk is the wave of the future in U.S. black politics.

      https://www.politico.com/blogs/ben-smith/2010/03/obama-and-the-left-95-edition-026114

      Reply ↓
    2. The Rev Kev

      I was reading her Wikipedia entry out of curiosity when this popped up-

      ‘In January 2024, Marin started working in a new steering committee International Task Force on Security and Euro-Atlantic Integration of Ukraine. According to a statement released by the Ukrainian president’s office, the steering committee’s primary objective is to develop a strategy for Ukraine’s closer engagement with the Euro-Atlantic security area. The group is led by its founders Andriy Yermak, Chief of Staff of the President of Ukraine and former Nato Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen. In addition to them, 15 former European and North American heads of state, diplomats and officers (including Boris Johnson and Hillary Clinton) are members of the group.’

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanna_Marin#Post%E2%80%93premiership_(2023%E2%80%93present)

      Definitely a case of how you are judged by the company that you keep.

      Reply ↓
    3. JMH

      I looked up the description in Reed’s Wikipedia article. What sprang to mind? All hat and no cattle … and I fell for it when he ran for president … and then he bailed out Wall Street as his opening act.

      Reply ↓
      1. Henry Moon Pie

        Reed had him pegged, didn’t he? I used to quote that passage frequently on DailyKos when Obama was President. That’s part of why I went through 4 or 5 usernames over there.

        Reply ↓
      2. Jabura Basadai

        and IIRC Obama and the Dems had control of both houses his first go-round and didn’t do a damn thing to create Medicare For All – bailing the banks was enough and the last time ever voted for a Dem –

        Reply ↓
  8. The Rev Kev

    “British military trained in Israel amid Gaza genocide”

    In all fairness to Keir Starmer, where else was he supposed to send British troops to learn how to suppress civil populations?

    Reply ↓
  9. eg

    “A trillion dollars is a terrible thing to waste”

    Looks to me like we have entered the Chuck Prince phase of the AI mania — “As long as the music is playing, you’ve got to get up and dance.”

    Reply ↓
  10. JohnA

    Re Confections New Left Review. A review of former Finnish PM Sanna Marin’s book

    The book was ‘ghost’ written in English directly according to the review. Not sure how much Swedish Ms Marin understands – Swedish is still an official language of Finland although native speaker numbers are apparently dwindling – but were the book to come out in Swedish translation, the title ‘Sanna Mina Ord’, leaps to mind. Literally ‘My Words are True’ or ‘Truth be Told’ (sarc). [Sann, sant, sanna, depending on what the word agrees with grammatically = True.]

    Reply ↓
    1. OIFVet

      A tweet in English by Ms. Marin several days ago updated English grammar, punctuation, and the spelling of several words, including “chatastrophy.” Rather fitting given her pretensions and the actual results of her body of work.

      Reply ↓
  11. The Rev Kev

    “The collapse of Maya civilization: Drought doesn’t explain everything”

    The Itzan site in modern-day Guatemala may not have been directly affected by the drought but it should be remembered that those in regions like parts of Guatemala and Mexico were. And it may have been that the people in the later regions scattered to safer regions like Itzan which sent them into chaos as well. It would have been a sort of cascade effect as masses of refugees flooded into areas that had escaped the droughts and bringing them down as well. I read of something similar in South Africa about two centuries ago where you had refugees moving together in a mass that numbered anything up to a million people sopping up resources as they went until that formation broke up under its own weight.

    Reply ↓
    1. converger

      Not unlike the cascading climate migration crisis currently underway. We are doing a terrible job with the 80 million or so people being displaced by climate-related disaster, war, brutal oppression, and economic disruption. We are on track for 800 million climate refugees a generation or so from now.

      Societies collapse when 10% of the population has nothing to lose. How we take care of people in need could become a defining moment for whether or not we get to keep a global civilization.

      It’s not a question of whether we can. It’s a question of whether we will.

      Reply ↓
    2. flora

      Drought doesn’t explain everything.

      Ya think? / ;)

      Spanish conquest of the Maya

      “Before the conquest, Maya territory contained a number of competing kingdoms. Many conquistadors viewed the Maya as infidels who needed to be forcefully converted and pacified, despite the achievements of their civilization.[2]

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_conquest_of_the_Maya

      Gun powder, western diseases, missionaries and horses.

      Reply ↓
    3. Posaunist

      Our (well educated) tour guide at Tulum some years ago said that the empire collapsed because of corruption. The article cited considered resources but not much else. I suspect it may be a case of the researchers’ only tool being a hammer.

      Reply ↓
  12. leaf

    There are some worrying reactions to the Hong Kong Fire

    For instance, some Japanese are gloating and even put the picture of the man crying and screaming that his wife was trapped inside as the header for Reuters Japan for a bit
    https://x.com/Carlzha/status/1994188039946453102
    https://x.com/reutersjapan/status/1993813488905724253

    Hong Kong separatists and some Indian nationalists wasted no time in attacking Chinese people and practices
    https://x.com/kevinkfyam/status/1994008494887010653
    https://x.com/arunpudur/status/1993957311938023839

    Looking at the number of views and comments people are making from all these Western aligned people, it feels like war with China will be sold to the public just as easily or even more so as with Russia

    Reply ↓
  13. Screwball

    It is a holiday weekend and of course that means sports, especially football. There were three games yesterday on Thanksgiving, including the Lions, who lost to Green Bay. Today I learned why. According to some of their fans, a few of their players did a Trump dance when they played in Washington (against the Commanders) after scoring a touchdown, and now they are losing and it’s because of Trump.

    TDS is a powerful drug. If has a hold on both sides. This is not healthy or good. I imagine turkey dinner was not so much fun for many yesterday.

    Reply ↓
    2. Bugs

      Packers won because of their socialist ownership structure and the stability that comes with knowing that the team can never be moved from that little city on the Fox River. Long live Lambeau Field. Go Pack Go!

      Reply ↓
      1. Craig H.

        Am I the only one who thought the Packers receiver could have been called for offense pass interference on the last touchdown? Close call maybe but definitely a decisive play.

        Reply ↓
    3. Alice X

      Ok, I’m a bummer, but these folks are millionaires (maybe) because many of the many watch these present day gladiators get their brains pounded to increase the wealth of the billionaires in their public funded colosseums.

      Oh ancient Rome, if you could see us now, with our instant replays.

      I’ll show myself out now.

      Reply ↓
  14. flora

    re: Private equity executive warns pension scheme push risks bailouts – FT

    “Private equity” sounds so much nicer than its real name: Vulture capitalism.

    Reply ↓
    2. Mildred Montana

      And what do vultures do? They feast on the dead. Haven’t heard much about PE getting into funeral homes, cremations, and cemetery plots but I’m sure that’s next on its list.

      Talk about the cost of living. Wait until you see the cost of dying in the near future. Once your earthly remains are prey to PE even death won’t be an escape. The circle will be complete. Cradle to grave extraction.

      Reply ↓
      1. The Rev Kev

        I can see it now. You will have to have monthly payments for your ma in the cemetery and if you miss a payment or two, up she comes.

        Reply ↓
  15. farmboy

    estimated at over $50 billion across the past three crop years
    “Most major crops expected to post deeper losses despite One Big Beautiful Bill boosts coming later (Agri-Pulse): The American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF) projects that margins for most of the major U.S. row crops will deteriorate further this marketing year, as producers face elevated input costs and weak export demand. In an analysis published yesterday, five of the seven crops analyzed are expected to post larger losses per acre than last year—with cotton and rice hit hardest (losses of roughly $370 and $364/acre respectively). Only soybeans and sorghum are forecasted to improve slightly.

    These mounting losses—estimated at over $50 billion across the past three crop years—are straining farm credit and pushing some producers toward bankruptcy. While the recently enacted “One Big Beautiful Bill” increased funding for commodity, insurance, and export-promotion programs, those enhancements won’t take effect until FY 2026-27. For now, the AFBF is calling for immediate “bridge” assistance to help farmers cover accumulated losses and maintain capital access ahead of the next planting season.”

    Reply ↓
    1. The Rev Kev

      ‘Only soybeans…are forecasted to improve slightly.’

      Are they sure about that? Or are they calculating that they will get the China market back again?

      Reply ↓
  17. farmboy

    “What stuck with me from the recently published interview with Ilya Sutskever, and still makes me think, is that, alongside Ray Kurzweil and Elon Musk, Ilya himself also assumes that in the not-too-distant future our brains will be connected to a cloud – and that our limited human knowledge will transcend all boundaries as humans and machines merge into a kind of biological AI.

    Probably the most likely outcome at this point. And Neuralink demonstrates how well the development is progressing. You can think what you like about Musk, but no one can deny his foresight.”
    Chubby♨️
    @kimmonismus

    Reply ↓
    1. Ira Leifer

      Musk foresight = the boring company.
      Musk Foresight = getting involved in DOGE which alienated most of his customer base.
      Musk Foresight = political insider deals to get SpaceX on the federal subsidy trough. Its something, but I would not call it foresight. I would call it corruption.
      Musk Foresight = BYD is a joke (Senate, please ban BYD).
      Musk Foresight = neuralink? Color me skeptical…

      Reply ↓
    2. Acacia

      Ppl seem to assume that neuralink will be completely under user control.

      Kinda like the way Windows 11 is completely under user control, has no secret back orifices, etc. ;)

      Reply ↓
  18. Tom Stone

    I highly recommend Kash Patel’s children’s book, it is what got him the job as head of the FBI and it is a classic of its kind.
    If you need tips on how to suck a grapefruit through a garden hose without bruising its skin it would be hard to find a better source.

    Reply ↓
    1. vao

      Kash Patel has written a children book?

      Perusing Wikipedia’s page about Mr Patel…

      “Patel has written three children’s books inspired by his political views.”

      “The Plot Against the King, a storybook about the Steele dossier…”

      Perusing Amazon about Mr Patel’s books…

      “The Plot Against the King: 2000 Mules […] bring[s] a fantastical retelling of the horrible plot against Donald Trump to the whole family…”

      “The Plot Against the King 3: The Return of the King […] is a great way to start a conversation with your kids about the election…”

      I do not know whether he used ChatGPT to write his children books, but in any case we definitely live in an Onionesque world.

      Reply ↓
  19. TimH

    “Restating his traditional position, the Belgian leader said he would agree to the loan only if governments agree to immediately stump up the full amount if Russia reclaims the assets.”

    I have a suggestion for Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever. Make sure there’s no conditional, like the SMO being over, for the EU coughing up the dosh. Think how long the N-S Korea war has been, officially.

    Of course, if no conditions, Russia should demand the money immediately the paper is signed, since a clearing house has no right to sit on legally owned funds.

    Reply ↓
  20. ciroc

    >Hungry pigs, feral brothers and the Michigan hunting trip that ended in murders

    In the end it was Boudro’s testimony that sealed the murderers’ fates. Her vivid descriptions of the “pinging” of the metal bat off the hunters’ skulls; the sound of Tyll’s skull splooshing open like a smashed pumpkin and the brothers laughing derisively when they saw that Ognjan had peed his jeans in fear were compelling details that bolstered her credibility.

    The jury needed less than three hours of deliberation: Guilty.

    Resolving a long-unsolved case based solely on one woman’s courageous testimony seems like a triumphant victory for justice. However, I cannot agree with convicting someone based solely on the perceived credibility of a single eyewitness account in the absence of physical evidence. It’s possible that the testimony was fabricated to frame the notorious troublemaker brothers in the community.

    Reply ↓
    1. Mirjonray

      I grew up about 60 miles away from Mio, so it’s not like I have any inside knowledge of the situation. It’s more like I knew people who knew people who lived in the area. What little I heard was rather unpleasant, in that people thought Tyll and Ognjan were jerks and got what was coming to them. I think it had more to do with upstate people not having warm feelings toward uppity tourist-types from downstate. So I was surprised when I read that the Duvall brothers split their time between downstate Monroe and upstate Mio. Before today I though the Duvall brothers were northern Michiganders through and through.

      i too feel uneasy about them being convicted based on one person’s eyewitness testimony, with no other evidence. I even remember at the time of the trial there was a lot of talk about whether Boudro was a reliable witness. And that whole thing about the small-town locals trembling in fear at the very thought of the Duvall Brothers sounds like an overused TV trope. In spite of all this, I would bet a few small coins that the Duvall brothers are guilty .But the whole story just reeks all the way through, as in, a lot of things don’t pass the sniff test.

      Reply ↓
  21. pjay

    – ‘US regulators ‘taking seriously’ allegations of bankers’ support for Epstein’ – The Guardian

    Most people are now aware that Epstein’s ridiculous negotiated sentence and non-prosecution agreement in Florida served to cover up a huge number of more serious sexual offenses that were being drawn up for prosecution (Michael Tracey apparently excepted; he seems to see the Epstein saga as an extended “Me too” attack). But very few people are aware that those long negotiations also smothered an extensive investigation into money laundering and other financial crimes that were perhaps even more significant, and more dangerous to powerful elite interests. Jason Leopold and Bloomberg News has done a lot of good work on this angle. I don’t know if this has been posted here before, but I found it very informative in filling in some gaps not covered in other stories:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-hHaIIppz8

    Reply ↓
  22. Mikel

    The OpenAI Bubble Popped…And Got A Secret Bailout? – Seeking Alpha

    “Trump just signed a new executive order, referred to as the “Genesis Mission.”

    a national effort to accelerate the application of AI for transformative scientific discovery focused on pressing national challenges…”

    A trillion dollars is a terrible thing to waste – Gary Marcus

    Includes a quote from IIya Stutskever: “We are no longer in the age of scaling, we are back to the age of research.”

    Glass half-full take: If the costs (including those outside of financial costs) are reigned in, it’s better than the enshittified acceleration of applications.

    Reply ↓
    1. Mikel

      But keeping in mind Marcus’s closing remarks:
      “An old saying about such follies is that “six months in the lab can you save you an afternoon in the library”; here we may have wasted a trillion dollars and several years to rediscover what cognitive science already knew.

      A trillion dollars is a terrible amount of money to have perhaps wasted. If the blast radius is wider it could be a lot more. It is all starting to feel like a tale straight out of Greek tragedy, an avoidable mixture of arrogance and power that just might wind up taking down the economy.”

      Reply ↓
    2. ilsm

      Will Trump pay OpenAI to compete with “AI that Works. I have referred to AlphaFold before. That the amino acid sequence can, in a biological environment, specify the structure of a protein has been understood since 1961, with the work of Christian Anfinsen at the National Institutes of Health. ”

      From today’s coffee break.

      Better cheaper faster way to AI that a few buyers may pay?

      Should let the trillion buck weaklings fade!

      Reply ↓
  23. Jason Boxman

    I had a friend that was a senior software engineer at startup building out software for drug trials; as I understood it, the product direction eventually involved morally questionable choices, and he finally left the company. I never inquired what specifically was done, but it seemed like it could effect safety. This was in the past 5 years.

    Reply ↓
  24. Jason Boxman

    How Black Friday became a retail letdown: ‘To sustain the ride, they started to dilute it’ (CNBC)

    Black Friday is arguably the biggest shopping day of the year, but the event has changed and is no longer marked by riotous crowds, unbelievable deals and marathon hours.

    Consumers are spending less over the Thanksgiving weekend, and foot traffic on Black Friday has barely budged in recent years.

    “The integrity of the event is pretty much gone,” said Mark Cohen, former CEO of Sears Canada. “In today’s day and age, promotional pricing just gets better and better from a consumer’s point of view the closer you get to the holiday.”

    A celebration of vacuous consumerism!

    When the modern-day version of Black Friday became popularized in the 1980s, it took an entire year of planning to pull off, Cohen said.

    “The art was to convince a vendor to give you an enormous discount on cost so that you could create this tremendously compelling offer to the consumer that would then … benefit you for the balance of the holiday season,” he recalled. “But it required an enormous amount of work.”

    Retailers had to pick the perfect product, set the perfect price and make sure their competitors didn’t get wind of their promotional plans. Then, they had to make sure they ordered enough inventory to sell out, but not so early that it would cause riots.

    Wowzers, why not? Riot for consumerism!

    Reply ↓
  25. Robert Gray

    re: The Thing with Rivers Dublin Review of Books

    from the article:

    > Every one of England’s rivers is now dying, polluted beyond legal limits, …

    Is this true?!? It’s just so bloody difficult to keep up. It seems like only yesterday they were trumpeting ‘The Thames has been saved! Pollution reversed! Clean water all the way up to Putney!’ That doesn’t sound like a dying river.

    Reply ↓
  26. Gulag

    Regarding the National Guard shooting in D.C. (See Jeff Childers “Ambushed,” Friday November 28, 2025).

    “So far this week, we have seen three extraordinary but seemingly unconnected events:

    1. Sitting senators and representatives strongly imply that Trump’s orders are illegal and should be refused.

    2. A national billboard and website strategy promising to protect soldiers who refuse orders, by giving them free lawyers, and specifically identifying Trump’s immigration policies as potentially illegal.

    3.The brazen, daylight assassination of at least one and possibly two soldiers who were following the kind of orders that the website dislikes, by an apparent CIA-trained jihadist.”

    That’s lots of uncanny temporal synchronicity!

    Reply ↓
    1. jsn

      Every day is January 6 now.

      80 years of expanding funding for official secrets and their ancillary behaviors and those behaviors more or less define our news flow now.

      Every once in awhile you still stumble on unconnected criminality, but the official crimes have grown so large most things newsworthy end up implicated.

      Reply ↓
    2. Henry Moon Pie

      Wait until Putin drives the Banderites out of Ukraine. Guess where they’ll be going, though I’m sure Canada will get its share.

      Reply ↓
  29. Lefty Godot

    “Trillions Spent and Big Software Projects Are Still Failing” – yes, IT has a management problem, but the nature of the technology amplifies the overall bad management problem that plagues institutions large and small, private and public, across the US (and probably the rest of “the West”). All the silver bullets of software development methodology have attempted to paper over the need for a certain type of mindset and talent that is needed for making a software development team work, because all employees are supposed to be interchangeable units on a spreadsheet and numerical performance ratings are supposed to weed out the poor performers. And neither of those latter suppositions corresponds to reality. So we get more bad software systems that are then “upgraded” to have features that no users actually want. Or we get systems that are never delivered after years of development, or delivered so late and so over budget that they no longer fit the institution’s current needs and economic constraints. But as long as management is rewarded for short-termism, “failing up” to avoid the consequences of bad decisions, treating workers as disposable “human resources” that can be managed and fired by algorithm, and embracing the latest fads and promises of new shiny tech solutions, the IT systems will continue to at best be cumbersome and buggy and at worst (eventually) end civilization in some catastrophic systems and network collapse.

    Reply ↓
    2. Adam Eran

      Recommended in this connection: Bent Flyvbjerg’s work (How Big Things Get Done: The Surprising Factors That Determine the Fate of Every Project, from Home Renovations to Space Exploration and Everything In Between). It’s pretty humbling.

      The failure of such big projects–and not just IT–is a commonplace. The vast majority either fail, or aren’t on time, or cost much more than projected. The illustrations Flyvbjerg uses include the Sidney Opera house and California’s high speed rail. Ego, politics and the personal profit of the managers are common causes.

      Reply ↓
    3. Polar Socialist

      After years in the area of software development, I’m of the school that there should not be Big Software Projects. That just is not going to work.

      Maybe it’s from living in the *nix world for so long, or because most of my projects – software and architecture – have been one off, made to measure things. And most of the time to replace a huge monolithic piece of code that is unmaintainable, unchangeable, unwieldy and unusable for many edge cases.

      And naturally, command line beats graphical user interface 95% of the time, but oddly about the same ratio of development time and resources go to making the GUI work.

      I won’t even start on the issue of clients not really knowing what kind of software they need, even if at times they do know what they want. Way too often there is a marketing person confusing them even more about the distinction and overriding the poor developer who (thinks he) knows the right questions to ask…

      Reply ↓
  30. Mildred Montana

    File Under Imperial Collapse Watch

    I was reading “The Way Of All Flesh” by Samuel Butler last night and in passing he referred to the “Struldbrugs” from Jonathan Swift’s “Gulliver’s Travels”. Having not read the book (me bad) or knowing what or who the Struldbrugs were, I looked them up. They were, according to Swift’s novel, humans born immortal but who aged normally. Subject to all the progressive infirmities, degenerations, and failings of old age they nevertheless never died.

    In the interests of society at large however, they were declared to be legally dead at the age of eighty, stripped of all legal rights, and granted a small pittance if needed so as not to become a burden on society. No longer could they meddle in the affairs of the nation.

    Now here’s where it gets really interesting (and relevant to today’s Washington gerontocracy). The Struldbrugs were wisely declared legally dead at the age of eighty because otherwise:

    “…avarice is the necessary consequence of old age, those immortals would in time become proprietors of the whole nation, and engross the civil power, which, for want of abilities to manage, must end in the ruin of the public.”

    Does this not sound like all those old coots and biddies in Congress? Avaricious, clinging to power, lacking abilities to manage, leading the public to ruin. Time to declare most of them legally dead, for the good of the nation. Jonathan Swift would concur.

    Reply ↓
    1. LifelongLib

      Well, the Senate actually rewards seniority, so maybe senators at least are encouraged to stick around as long as they can?

      I wonder too if anyone who does retire is afraid of being replaced by a person with drastically different politics i.e. from their perspective (and maybe ours) somebody even worse.

      Reply ↓
      1. The Rev Kev

        They get a bit extreme about it. I think that it was last year that a female Senator or Rep was actually found to be living in an aged care home due to her advanced years but was not willing to give up her position in Congress.

        Reply ↓
  32. AG

    re: Germany vs. free speech

    CJ Hopkins again searched by police

    A Visit by the German Thought Police
    https://consentfactory.org/2025/11/26/a-visit-by-the-german-thought-police/

    p.s. Terrifying and fascinating how much things have changed and nobody takes notice: Until post 9/11surveillance state was expanded too in FRG you could even participate in private military training abroad, e.g. in Afghanistan or Lebanon. If people helped German leftwing terrorists there was a part of the established public that would support your claims of resisting the state invoking the struggle of anticolonialism. And so on.
    Unimagineable today.

    Reply ↓
    1. principle

      You can begin by informing us uninformed who the f is Timothy Snyder? :) Popular Substackers aren’t much different from popular Youtubers or TikTokers, and those outside those bubbles have no idea who they are.

      Reply ↓
      1. AG

        I think the serious problem is Snyder´s (fraudulent) elite scholar credentials outside Substack, YT etc. universe – Snyder is part of the old, analogue scholarly world: The people you used to turn to if you wanted to to know what is going on beyond the noise.

        That Snyder never was a sincere part of this is a different question. But if laws are passed by parliaments, like the BS over Holodomor legislature in Europe, whose expertise is used? Snyder´s.

        What YTer influences laws of entire continents?
        On that level folks like him have normative power.

        That is a serious issue. Which is why these “intellectuals” are dangerous. Eventually their toughts and their speech turn into material means and thus – war, destruction, dead.

        Reply ↓
        1. Jabura Basadai

          Be careful of your thoughts, for your thoughts become words
          Be careful of your words, for your words become actions
          Be careful of your actions, for your actions become habits
          Be careful of your habits, for your habits become your character
          Be careful of your character, for your character becomes your destiny
          Chinese proverb

          Reply ↓

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