An emperor for all seasons Aeon
A deadly history haunts this imperiled California lighthouse. Here’s why fans want to save it Los Angeles Times
That tiny blue dot is a whale navigating busy ship traffic in Chile’s Gulf of Ancud, tracked for a week.
— Science girl (@gunsnrosesgirl3) October 21, 2025
NOAA cancels funding for data collection crucial to tsunami warning systems Alaska Public Media
Climate/Environment
Magnitude of disaster in Jamaica and Haiti becoming clearer Balanced Weather
Overlooked East Antarctica melting may skew sea level forecasts Phys.org
What happens if property insurers are allowed to exclude wildfires from coverage? Moving Day
Pandemics
Neurodevelopmental Outcomes of 3-Year-Old Children Exposed to Maternal Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) Infection in Utero Obstetrics & Gynecology
Persistent neurological sequelae in children and adolescents after SARS-CoV-2: a scoping review Springer Nature
Water
Drinking water in Tehran could run dry in two weeks, Iranian official says Al Jazeera
China?
I was actually wrong in my post below on the new tariffs on China after the Trump-Xi deal, because it looks like Trump lied with his “47% overall tariffs” figure.
The White House factsheet that was just released confirms that the “reciprocal tariff” (i.e. meaning the “Liberation… https://t.co/o1azmli7oW pic.twitter.com/DCmLoCbTl3
— Arnaud Bertrand (@RnaudBertrand) November 2, 2025
Beyond the Hype: The Fragile Theater of US–China Power Politics India Narrative
Trump bars Nvidia’s top AI chips from China Al Mayadeen
China to exempt Nexperia chips from semiconductor export ban DW
Wow, the Dutch have successfully de-risked themselves from China. How did they do that? By effectively handing over their lucrative multi-billion semiconductor fabrication business to China.
Nexperia China is taking over supply contracts and will fulfill them directly, bypassing… https://t.co/ZgsmeEQ8DG
— Chebureki Man (@CheburekiMan) November 2, 2025
***
The Tortoise and the Hare in AI Warwick Powell
Conservative and Religious: Filipino Evangelicals Go MAGA Fulcrum
India
How India-US Defence Pact Ushers in New Security Era India Narrative
Unrest in the Himalayas Consortium News
Syraqistan
Over 3 million life-years lost in Gaza The Lancet
US issues ‘final warning’ to Baghdad over Iraqi resistance factions The Cradle
India 1919 and Gaza 2023 The Anti-Empire Project
Old Blighty
Cambridgeshire train stabbings: ‘heroic’ rail staff member fighting for life after tackling attacker The Guardian
European Disunion
US accused of threatening EU diplomats during bid to kill green shipping rules Politico
CIA chief quietly meets EU officials to soothe US intel-sharing fears Politico
German MOD backs $1bn drone deals after ‘disastrous’ tests – media RT
Trump says Orbán requested exemption from Russian oil sanctions – Here’s how Washington responded Daily News Hungary
THE DUTCH ELECTIONS AND THE LONELY GRAVE OF SPINOZA Foreign Policy in Focus
New Not-So-Cold War
Ukraine’s Suicide Helicopter Missions… Why? Larry Johnson
The German government rejects Lavrov’s proposal for a non-aggression pact between Russia and EU-NATO states NachDenkSeiten. (Machine translation)
Ukraine receives promised Patriot air defense systems from Germany, Zelensky says Kyiv Independent
Russia Launches Secretive Nuclear Powered ‘Mothership’ For Its Poseidon Underwater Attack Drones Military Watch
Neo-Nazi-Led Think Tank Gets Warm Welcome in Washington Azov Lobby Blog
Africa
More African Countries Are Embracing the Yuan Financial Fortune
Nigeria rejects claims of Christian genocide as Trump mulls military action Al Jazeera
Alleged Coup: Details of some detained officers emerge Premium Times. Useful map (Nigeria checks in at number 10):
Jihadists have blockaded Mali’s capital. What’s at stake The Conversation
Inside the UAE’s secret Sudan war operation at Somalia’s Bosaso Middle East Eye
South of the Border
Another US ‘Strike’ on Small Boat Leaves Three Dead in the Caribbean Orinoco Tribune
These are the U.S. ships and aircraft massing off Venezuela WaPo
Venezuelan Su-30MK2 Fighters with Mach 3+ Anti-Ship Missiles Escalate Deterrence Patrols Against U.S. Military Watch
How will the invasion of Venezuela end? Top War. A view from a former Russian diplomat in Caracas.
***
China’s new gateway into South America: the Port of Chancay Asia Times
Peru’s political establishment lines up behind unelected far-right government WSWS
Trump 2.0
Tulsi Gabbard’s Speech at the Manama Dialogue Karl Sanchez
FBI Ousts Leader as Patel Fumes Over Attention to Agency Jet Use Bloomberg
Trump’s Corporate Colluders More Perfect Union. Useful database of donors to White House ballroom and what they’re getting in return.
“Liberation Day”
Trump says his tariffs will help American businesses. So why are they suing? USA Today
GOP Funhouse
Candace Owens x Norman Finkelstein Candace Owens (Video)
The rage against Tucker, the barely-concealed calls for his murder by pigs like Levin and Fine, is ostensibly because he had a conversation w/a controversial public figure, but is really just a reaction to him exposing conservatives, often for the first time, to the violent… https://t.co/9FR3O8qnga
— Martyr Made (@martyrmade) November 2, 2025
Police State Watch
U.S. citizen shot from behind as he warned ICE agents about children gathering at bus stop, lawyers say Los Angeles Times
Could ICE have ‘lost’ 3,000 immigrant arrestees in Chicago? NBC Chicago
ICE PLANS CASH REWARDS FOR PRIVATE BOUNTY HUNTERS TO LOCATE AND TRACK IMMIGRANTS The Intercept
ICE Watch Slate. “One morning before dawn, I traveled to a dark parking lot to meet the people doing what the courts, politicians, and the police have failed to do: give ICE a run for its money.”
Wars Come Home
The AI Drones Used In Gaza Now Surveilling American Cities Do Not Panic!
SCOOP: DHS Unleashes Historic Surveillance Dragnet on Migrants and Citizens Migrant Insider. As noted by Bleeding Edge, this was pioneered by Marines in Fallujah.
Mamdani
“Mamdani and his (our) enemies.” Patrick Lawrence, The Floutist
Infernal Affairs The Baffler
This AI slop is beyond humiliating (for the Cuomo campaign), but separately, did we suddenly culturally normalize the use of fake AI videos depicting actual living people in campaign advertisements? Do people realize how dangerous this can become & so quickly? https://t.co/Vi8kIvrY9H
— Adam Gaffney (@awgaffney) November 1, 2025
Accelerationists
There’s one thing EVERY government can do to shrink Big Tech Cory Doctorow
TESLA MAY HAVE SOLD A MILLION FEWER CARS BECAUSE OF ELON MUSK’S TOXIC POLITICS Rolling Stone (resilc)
Antitrust
Monopoly Round-Up: Voters May Be About to Terrify Corporate America BIG by Matt Stoller
It feels hopeless. We started doing stuff and immediately crypto and AI bros funneled millions into the opposition.
Lina Khan was a threat at the FTC and I don’t think negotiations with lobbyists in Congress were going well so they pushed for a new government.
— Shyam Oza (@ShyamOza) November 2, 2025
Economy
Risky Loan From Housing-Bust Era Is Making a Comeback WSJ
Debt and the cockroaches Michael Roberts Blog
AI
Too big to fail? Gary Marcus
The end of the rip-off economy The Economist. Commentary:
Libertarians citing the feels of other libertarians and a billionaire in support of the thesis that we no longer need consumer protection regulations. pic.twitter.com/9bfQ9dE3Ao
— Hal Singer (@HalSinger) November 2, 2025
The Bezzle
I think Substrate is a $1 Billion Fraud: Part 1 Fox Chapel Research
Guillotine Watch
Dancers at Trump’s Halloween party as people begin losing food stamps under his administration pic.twitter.com/LWknoEktw6
— PatriotTakes 🇺🇸 (@patriottakes) November 1, 2025
Antidote du jour (via):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
“300 million tourists just visited China’s stunning Xinjiang region. There’s a side they didn’t see”
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8x1rnnd5gjo
Either Xinjiang is the greatest Potemkin project in the history of such projects for 300 million tourists with phones and cameras to not find any “crimes against humanity”, or perhaps the photos (some AI generated) of actual regular prisons for criminals or my personal favourite of BDSM photos with fake captions as “genocide” was fake all along.
Insane they are still willing to push this narrative when everyone can see what is happening in Gaza.
I spent hours and hours reviewing testimony of Kasakh-Chinese dual nationals who had been finally let out to Kasakhstan by China after the pressure of their relatives in Kaskhstan had gotten to great. It was horror unto horror unto horror and these are the only people who got out of Xinjiang. No Uighur made it. It is like Cambodia unter Pol Pot or the USSR under Stalin. Nobody believed it (among them famously Noam Chomsky) until it was all over. It is the same now.
For whoever reads Russian (or gets the English translation) here an article in the Russian journal “Russki Reporter” (sort of Russian LIFE) from 2019 about Xinjiang: https://les.media/articles/863622-zavodnoy-mandarin. Once you read it you understand why there was no tourism for many years and why they let in tourists in again. Evidently the Potemkin facade has been finished by now.
While I think something certainly happened in Xinjiang, it’s hard to know what exactly it was due to western propaganda and exaggeration. A lot of money went into disinformation campaigns. What we were told in the west was not true, even if the things that happened may have been quite bad. There’s no evidence of a genocide, though the west repeatedly stated that there was one. And there has been no attempt in the west to explain the Islamic extremism (including nasty terrorist attacks in both China, and outside China) that led up to it. Or of course the ways in which western sources were funding/abetting local separatist movements (which seem to have been fairly extreme).
My guess is that there was a very clumsy and harsh response to (pretty bad) Xinjiang terrorism and also growing local resentment towards modernization and Sinocization, and growing attempts by the US to make that worse. It was probably run by Chinese officials with little connection to Xinjiang, with an eye on promotion. Many of the people running it may not have spoken the local language. But of course its impossible to know, because our sources are either Chinese (censored), or western (dubious).
I did see a source that I think was fairly reliable, which simply translated accounts of refugees. What they described was detention, which was fairly arbitrary, involved some kind of reeducation (seemed clumsy) and not particularly pleasant living conditions (though better than US prisons, TBF). There was no mention of torture. They were desperately sad, but no more so than you would see (unfortunately) in a lot of countries, and nowhere close to the kinds of repression you’ll see in Kashmir, of Uzbekistan. Neither of which get remotely the same coverage.
There were many reports of Uyghurs fighting with the US backed head choppers in Syria earlier this year – https://foreignpolicy.com/2025/04/04/uyghurs-tpd-syria-fighters/
When news of Uyghur repression came out several years ago, China claimed there was a Muslim “terrorist” problem with the Uyghurs, which at the time I tended to discount, just as I discounted Western claims that there was a genocide going on for reasons that were never made clear. I assumed repression was due to calls for rights that China did not want to grant, similar to what’s happened in the past in Tibet.
Given US proclivity for financing radical Islamists as muscle for regime change, I’m starting to think that China might have been telling the truth, and that maybe the US had a hand in fomenting problems in Xinjiang. It sure wouldn’t be the first time that the US sponsored violent groups to cause trouble for China.
The Uyghur acts of terrorism were real and documented (even in the west) – and they had been going on for a long time (if memory serves – back to the late 90s). They were carried out by a small minority, but they were undeniably murderous, even if there’s no evidence that more than a tiny minority of Uyghurs share that ideology.
One of the reasons I’ve never trusted western reporting, is that they’ve deliberately ignored the context for what was happening. And the groups they’ve focused on have largely been those with connections to the terrorist groups, or ex-pats who left China long ago.
Arguably, there has been constant violence in the area going back at least to the Kumul Rebellion and Xinjiang War in the 1930’s, and the various wars in the region between muslim warlords, the KMT, the Soviets and the PLA in subsequent years with various local tribal factions either rebelling or switching sides between the Soviets and Chinese. I’m not sure the current round of attacks go back as long as the 90’s, although a contact of mine (English guy who moved there with his Han wife) who lived in Urumqi in around 2005-2007 said things were very tense and he predicted very bad things were going to happen. The main outbreak of violence occurred around 10 years ago – mostly haphazard attacks with crude weaponry. The crack down was rapid and extremely ruthless.
I don’t think anyone is ignoring the context – its more a case that there are very few people with any real depth of knowledge of the area writing about it, and the amount of reliable information coming out is minimal. Elements of the Western media and polity of course is exaggerating for its own ends, but the constant misinformation from Beijing is a real thing – I’ve had Chinese friends in western Universities complain about the constant pressure to ‘say the right things’ about Xinjiang and Tibet – its often not subtle at all.
Sorry I was away and missed all the replies, but I largely agree that repression absolutely happened there, but has been misreported and amplified for a western audience. I suspect it was also due to western counties poor sentiment for Muslims in general which made the west go a bit overboard to sell a message (some witness testimonials do have some financial incentives behind them).
What I don’t get is why the BBC has ran these in 2 days. It’s jarring when you see how they covered Palestine, which until recently was very pro-Israel. And their Sudan coverage is bare minimum at best. Most other news outlets have at least mentioned the RSF atrocities. And not long ago the BBC had a massive one on Chinese espionage (again targeting students). Do they have a quota for these articles?
I don’t really pay much attention to the BBC these days, but given how incoherent and poorly written those stories are, I’d be more inclined to think that this is down to space filling and searching for clicks more than any particular ideological change.
That said, the UK establishment is deeply split on China. The University Sector is now very heavily dependent on Chinese students (they generate something like £5billion in fees per annum), so they can’t afford to give any excuse for the Chinese government to use this as a weapon in the ongoing trade wars/disputes.
There were acts of terrorism specifically, committed outside the region (including one during the Olympics, and oddly another in Thailand).
I don’t trust Beijing either – there is very real evidence that repression happened, just not at the scale claimed by western media. I just don’t trust western sources (ditto on Tibet. Little mention in the west of the godawful feudal regime that preceded the invasion by China – outside some academic histories).
A mate of mine is Uighur, but he spent loads of time in Aus over the years. Lives in another part of China these days but goes home regularly, and still has family in Xinjiang. I’d call him mildly patriotic…he’s no nationalist but he gets proud when China achieves some new engineering milestone.
I know anecdotes aren’t data but he says things are pretty rough but it’s mostly police harassment. When I asked him to benchmark vs. treatment of Muslims in the west in the early 00s, he said that’s probably the right mental model. YMMV but I think this feels close to a general truth. If you extend this story to population scale it triangulates the falsehoods on both sides
Also, FWIW, a prisoner population of 1 million (as that article suggests) would require 50-200,000 guards. That’s excluding anyone doing interrogation, reeducation, police, etc.
Obviously China is a big place, but that kind of staffing would be hard to hide. Particularly if they weren’t local (as a good number of them presumably wouldn’t be). Police states require extraordinary levels of man power.
Whatever the truth of the allegations, that sort of manpower is well within the capacity of China – there are multiple estimates, but there seems to be around 3-4 million full time employees in the various levels of national policing in the country (and many more at various lower governmental levels). There are something like 1.7 million regular prisoners, which presumably means a lot of prison officers. And that’s not including the regular army, which in my experience (from some years ago travelling in Tibet and western and northern border areas), is by far the most visible element in non-Han dominated lands.
Xinjiang itself is a vast land area – not far off the area of Texas, New Mexico and Arizona combined, with most of it almost entirely uninhabited. You could hide almost anything there.
I had for years and still have an – although much reduced – outdoors business in Central Asia. Besides I was sidelining as a journalist. From tour guides but also from Turkologists I knew that something terrible was happening in Xinjiang. I saw the testimony that went into the above Russian article and ever since I have raised my voice when anybody wanted to belittle what happened in Xinjiang. One month ago I happened upon a Uighur restaurant that opened in my neck of woods in Germany. I told the owner that people in the neighboring countries know about their plight and that I – as I lived there then – knew about it as well. He started crying and then I also cried and we hugged.
Many thousand escaped before the above happenings (read the Russian article) but got no refuge in neighboring countries because China. They went to the only country that didn´t evict them and that was Turkey. Turkey (and the US) then used these young men without a hope and without a homeland to fight in the Syrian civil war. Yes, sure they are brutalised and sure they are betrayed and sure they became head choppers themselves. Still I feel a duty to speak up about what happened and is still happening to the Uighurs.
My point was not that it is outside the capacity of China. Merely that such an operation of that size would be very visible. Even in the Soviet Union there were signs, and China is a pretty open country. There were laws passed about these detention and reeducation camps, there is documentation of their construction and there are even Chinese governmental studies on their alleged effectiveness. But nothing at the scale alleged in the west.
Ironically if the west had simply focused on what was actually happening they probably could have caused serious embarrassment for China. Instead, by massively exaggerating it – they largely nullified its effectiveness.
Yes, I get the point – but while China is fairly open (sort of), Xinjiang is, even for Chinese people, very remote and inaccessible (yes, you can hop the train to one of the big cities easily enough, but those are tiny drops in the vastness of the region). And even then, there is a very intense level of monitoring of any visitor. The only way of knowing if there are very large scale camps in the region is through satellite images, and we know where they originate, so everyone puts their own interpretation on the images that have been released.
So, there are huge unknowns. From my minimal contacts, I think some very, very bad things have happened there, and probably continue to happen. Whether it’s on the scale claimed by some western sources, I’ve no idea.
“we know where they originate, so everyone puts their own interpretation on the images that have been released”
Where do they originate?
> The only way of knowing if there are very large scale camps in the region is through satellite images, and we know where they originate,
Right, but there was quite a lot of ‘analysis’ based upon those satellite images, and the reason I discounted it was that there was no mention of all the support infrastructure you would require for the kind of police state/genocide they were alleging. And I think if that stuff did exist, we would have seen reporting based upon it.
And also if there were a lot of people being deployed/employed in large numbers in Xinjiang, people would be aware of it – in the same way people are aware when there are lots of employment/migration possibilities anywhere. It’s impossible to hide that stuff. Everyone has a brother, uncle, friend who knows someone who ended up there.
I did notice this article and wondered at the timing.
They have this one running now:
The word genocide has been decidedly dropped from it though.
I don’t get the UK. Do they or don’t they want Chinese students to come here?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cq50j5vwny6o
JayBird: I don’t get the UK. Do they or don’t they want Chinese students to come here?
Come on. It’s very obvious what’s happening in the UK. One group here sees that the US empire is ending and advantages exist to getting on board with China. Another faction has relied on getting US money and is fighting all out for that to continue as long as possible, as they may simply have no hope of getting anything else going for themselves (i.e. talentless Tory ‘dead-enders’) or be just too brain-dead to realize the world has changed.
And so from the BBC article: –
‘Prof Murphy told the BBC she has received funding over the course of her career from the US National Endowment for Humanities for work on slave narratives, the US Department of Justice for work on human trafficking in New Orleans, and more recently from USAID, the US State Department…’
‘…She had taken a career break in late 2023 to work for the US Department of Homeland Security, helping it with the implementation of their Uyghur Forced Labour Prevention Act.
‘…In her absence, and amid the pressure from China and the lawsuit, Sheffield Hallam decided her unit would close in early 2025. “Despite significant offers of continued funding we have decided it is in our best interests to terminate the research,” an email of August 2024 said.
‘But failing to publish the report was a breach of the terms agreed with the external (US) groups who had agreed to fund the research. So the university decided to close the unit and not use any outstanding funds. When Prof Murphy returned from her career break in early 2025, the university told her of its “decision not to continue with her research into supply chains….”
…Seeking to continue her work, Prof Murphy began her legal action … “What about the duty of care to me and the duty of care to the rest of my research team?,” Prof Murphy told the BBC. “They laid off my entire research team. Sent them away. They sent back all of our research funding, and they shuttered the entire programme…”
leaf: Someone is seriously fudging these figures. Which keep getting reported without question.
Xinjiang has a population of 21 million. Italy has a population of 59 million. In 2023 and 2024, Italy received 130 million individual visitors — for a presence (nights / stays) of 480 million in 2024.
Maybe, maybe, although I doubt that Xinjiang has the tourist structure that Italy has, maybe, Xinjiang had 300 million nights/stays by visitors.
But I doubt it.
Yes, those figures are bizarre. They’ve been repeated all over Chinese and China adjacent media (clearly, this BBC story is a journalist just lazily picking up a story by scouring other online sources). If the figure is true, then more than a quarter of the Chinese population visited last year. That, obviously, didn’t happen. Even the 5 million figure for foreign tourists looks unlikely too as Xinjiang is way off the normal tourist path for foreigners and domestic. The data sets that I know of don’t give much granular figures for internal Chinese tourism.
My guess is that someone in a local government office in Urumqi was tasked with getting some eye-catching figures to impress Beijing, and just added up all known flight and railway movements and decided they were all tourists. In the last year or so there has been a very big push from Beijing to provide ‘good news’ about Xinjiang and other peripheral provinces, mostly for domestic purposes, but sometimes these stories get spread by journalists too lazy to do any double checking.
It could also just be a translation issue. I’ve seen quite a few stories appear in the media, only later to be debunked by people who can actually read Chinese. Western coverage of China does not seem to be terribly good.
Those figures have been reported uncritically (of course) in official Chinese media.
In my experience, the usual source for stories like this is from local governments, keen to put a spin on how successful they are in hitting some target or another. As tourism figures are notoriously malleable they are particularly prone to hyperbole, in pretty much every country.
‘ As tourism figures are notoriously malleable they are particularly prone to hyperbole ‘
Yes, every tourist to our area spends a kingly sum daily(according to the visitors bureau). Unreal amounts are reported, and repeated here in middle of North Carolina as well..
“Ukraine receives promised Patriot air defense systems from Germany, Zelensky says”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9yAfQ3CTnc
Germans may see that defense is less than worth the money.
As Japan now wants about 400 tomahawk land attack missiles (TLAM) to displace SM 3 interceptors on their already too few missile defense destroyers!
Japan also demurred (saved a couple billion bucks) on building two Lockheed long range defense radars!
Japan thinks it more productive to be able to “go downtown” to Pyongyang! If US gives the nav links!
Footage of the delivered Patriot air defense systems
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsx2vdn7gpY
Well, Candace Owens x Norman Finkelstein 2:44:52 – I’ll be back in a couple of hours if I make through.
I paused about forty minutes in, it’s well traveled fare with NF (for me at least, I’ve followed him for years). Interesting that some right wingers are just catching up to the grim foundational history (I’ve known about for years), better late than never. NF is as good a place to start as any. The video has 1,436,286 views, she has 5.51 million subscribers. I hope the message spreads far and wide. There is also the possibility of latent actual anti-Jewish sentiment in that realm, but there is a genocide being perpetrated so it may be a knock-on effect. I hope not, viewing Arabs and Muslims as our fellow brothers and sisters is goal enough.
I should watch the entire video. NF will maintain, I would certainly learn more about Candace and her human heart.
Oh Randy, you’re so Fine
You’re so Fine, but you have no neckline, hey Randy, hey Randy
Oh Randy, you’re so Fine
You’re so Fine, you blow my mind, hey Randy, hey Randy
Oh Randy, you’re so Fine
You’re so Fine, you blow my mind, hey Randy, hey Randy
Oh Randy, you’re so Fine
You’re so Fine, you toe the AIPAC line, hey Randy
Hey Randy
You’ve been talking smack all night and that’s a little long
You think you’ve got the right, but I think you’ve got it wrong
Why can’t you say Tucker’s right? So you can defend genocide Randy?
‘Cause when you say Israelis have the will, it always means fresh kills
You’re givin’ me the chills, Bibi, please, Bibi don’t
Every night you claim they have the right Randy
Oh Randy, what a pity, you don’t understand
You played your part when AIPAC took you by the hand
Oh Randy, you’re so petty, can’t you understand
It’s guys like you, Randy
Oh what you do Randy, do Randy
Do play your part, Randy
Hey Randy
Now when the devil in the details has hooves, who’s ever gonna know
And every time you claim he’s an anti-Semite by putting on a show
There’s something AIPAC can use, so don’t say no Randy
So come on and give it to me anyway you can
Anyway you want to do it, I’ll take it like a man
But please baby, please don’t herd me into the pro-Israel camp Randy
Oh Randy, what a pity, you don’t understand
You played your part when AIPAC took you by the hand
Oh Randy, you’re so petty, can’t you understand
It’s guys like you, Randy
Oh what you do Randy, do Randy
Do play your part, Randy
Mickey, by Toni Basil
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3E-Zrg9CB_Q&list=RD3E-Zrg9CB_Q
“Trump says Orbán requested exemption from Russian oil sanctions – Here’s how Washington responded”
‘Analysts note that Washington’s refusal carries both economic and political weight, signalling that the United States will not make exceptions for any ally as long as they remain dependent on Russian energy.’
Friend or not, I suspect that Trump is going to shake down Hungary for some big money or something. But if Trump tells Orban that he will not allow him to be dependent on Russian energy. I wonder if Orban will ask him when the US will stop importing Russian refined uranium so that the US is not reliant on Russian energy. Probably won’t though as Trump would chuck his toys out his pram and start threatening sanctions.
.File under Antitrust. utube. ~13 minutes.
Billionaires Owning Everything Just Got Worse…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VSvaiXeNI8
I’m in a bit of an internal struggle over home insurance, which just went up to almost $10k a year. I’m seriously giving some thought to dropping my coverage-and having no mortgage, it’d be a piece of cake to do-going nekkid-skinny stripping if you will.
Flooding isn’t a risk, nor hurricanes or tornadoes~
…its all about wildfires
If my insurance carrier (with the charismatic black spokesman who for some reason is friends with NFL players) was to exclude wildfires from my coverage, it’d be the easiest no brainier in the world to drop them.
I supposed that if you banked that ten odd grand a year, it would only take a few years to have enough put aside to build a new place if a wildfire swept tiny town and your own home away.
I’d pay Julio and his merry band of tree monkeys the 10 grandidos to ascend into the apogees of trees on the many splendored acres of the all cats and no cattle ranch to remove all the dead limbs I couldn’t reach with a 14 foot pole saw, is the first thing I’d do with the windfall.
We have a modest house almost 50 years old that could be rebuilt toot suite if something wickedly hot were to expunge it~
Another factor for dropping insurance is the idea that no home has ever been lost to a wildfire here, as we are in an oak savanna, nothing like Paradise which was full of ready to burn pine trees.
Saw this listing the other day, and it’s my favorite home in Tiny Town that i’ve oft admired from a distance when driving to the Ladybug trailhead in Sequoia NP. Its about a mile from William Shatner’s ranch~
Love the swimming hole, of Fallingwater revisited
Got $2 riding on the next lotto~
https://www.redfin.com/CA/Three-Rivers/48250-S-Fork-Dr-93271/home/190338475
Yeah, I see what you mean, Definitely some Fallingwater inspiration going on there. I suppose that it is high up the hillside in case of flash floods going through that river. Beautiful views and the interiors look great too.
You’d be fine, except on Christmas Eve 1867, when a wall of water about 100 feet tall came ripping down South Fork canyon, after nearly a month of snow accumulation ran into a pineapple express, initially starting a snowslide that turned into a landslide, taking out the entire lower Garfield Grove of around 1,500 Giant Sequoias-all mature trees 15-20 feet wide at chest height, a few hundred feet high and 1,500 years old, and then created an earthen dam with boulders and Sequoias fusing it together, and water flow on the Kaweah stopped for a day as the dam filled up and then let loose…
On Christmas Day down in Visalia, 5 foot wide sections of Sequoias were seen floating in the streets there.
It remains the largest landslide to have ever happened in what is now a National Park in living time since Americans have been watching such things.
The potential impacts of such a policy if enacted in California are boggling. I’m anxious to see what happens in our great neighbor to the east. Some things off the top of my head….
– Home values drop as wildfire insurance becomes scarce and/or unaffordable.
– Mortgage issuers “fill the gap” with extremely expensive wildfire coverage
– property values drop, leading to municipal funding shortfalls
– local jurisdictions increase taxes to substantially increase firefighting resources
I mean, it could go in all sorts of directions.
How long before the residential real estate market is primarily brokered by PE? Private Equity, a one stop home buying experience, where inventory, financing, insurance, and a white picket fence are provided.
Little Pink Houses.
John Mellencamp
obviously dunno your area….
worth looking into dropping insurance and putting that money into fire suppression, and clear-cutting trees around your house. and/or a metal roof
Fire assurance has a better return on investment than fire insurance.
Do all the smart stuff to assure that the fire doesn’t get to your house. I just helped a friend re-side a 90 year old stick frame house with Hardie Board (concrete siding that looks like wood) and fake stone. It already has a metal roof – no fire from the outside will touch it now. Looks great, too.
The only way to know if you’re insured is to make a claim. Sounds like gambling to me.
$10k is not chump change. It’s definitely something to consider. Insurance should be viewed as providing you coverage for a risk you can’t afford on your own. But at $10k it might even be more realistic to self insure (just deal with a disaster if it happens). To me the $10k expense only makes sense if you knew your home would burn down in the next year or two – that’s the biggest risk I’d think.
@Wukchumni at 7:49 am
Yikes! 10k annually for insurance! Last time you mentioned you were closing in on that amount I checked mine to compare – 1700 CAD for a 4 bedroom house, 2600 sq ft. And I live right beside a flood zone up in Quebec.
It’s all about risk I guess… or insurance company profits.
Good luck with your lotto ticket alluded to below. Lovely looking place but you might want to check out its insurance costs…
So envious of your insurance rate, my abode is a touch smaller than yours, and when you figure the exchange rate of the C$, it comes out to US$1200~
Billionaire Charlie Munger pointed out that self-insurance for those who can afford it is a more efficient alternative to traditional homeowner’s insurance policies. Both he and Warren Buffett took this approach, preferring to bypass the “claims process and all kinds of things” by simply writing a check to rebuild if needed. I’d consider banking the premium against the likelihood of fire burning my house down in any given year, but the juice ain’t worth the squeeze. And I imagine HOAs compound even in disaster. Good for you though if you can manage it Wuk
I could pull it off, but methinks i’d be property non grata as far as ever being insured again-they obviously aren’t happy with my surroundings. Yeah-a quarter of a million acres have burned above me in 3 separate wildfires in the past 5 years, so there’s that.
I’d be cutting the homebilical cord~
My sister down in San Diego was quoted something $inister for her home by her existing carrier, so she decided to go shopping around and found nobody would take her on at any price among retail insurance companies.
Would be curios to find out the price without wildfire coverage.
I inquired once about wildfire-only insurance and they kind of laughed awkwardly. And that was 10 years ago, before things got rolling.
In my corner of the country, my home insurance provided by Hartford, this year sent me a letter, requiring me to do some things to be fire safe. Clean the chimney yearly, even though I only use it during the arctic blasts and power outages. Cut the grass to 4 inches, including all the garden plants and bushes. Out to a radius of 30 feet from all covered buildings. Cut the trees so that there is no more than one tree every x feet, with 10 feet between the branches. When some branches are 15 ft long, that makes each tree 40 ft apart. Out to a radius of 60 ft. from all buildings.
I’m all for increasing my fire safety, but no garden, no fruit trees, and clearing some 80 ft tall trees along the power line, cost several thousand dollars, amounting to 5 times the annual rate. Oh and the rate will go up 40 percent anyways.
That map (Crude Oil Reserves in Billion Barrels) is much more than useful. My conclusion: Canada had better watch out!
It was Alex Christoforou that was pointing out that the countries that Trump has targeted lately – Iran Venezuela and Nigeria – all happen to be rich in oil. Just a coincidence I’m sure.
Looking at some of the global business relationships and there are also those that lobby for some US interventions.
I live in a sparsely populated mountainous area in New England. Yesterday I heard loud noise and knew it to be an airplane. Went out to take a look and saw 5 altogether. They were 4 prop military planes and they were flying very, very low. I’m guessing 300 ft or less.
I read that Venezuela is mountainous and maybe something like where I am. Could it have been an exercise to let the “guys” see something like Venezuela.
Yes probably familiarize to similar terrain.
During the Cold War and before USAF sidelined the A-10 you might see a pair flying down the valleys and off ridge lines in the Adirondacks.
Jet noise in woods the sound of war makingl
Hey, weird! I saw the same thing (around 5 WWII-era-looking propeller planes flying low and in formation) some weeks ago down here in North Carolina. We couldn’t find out any reason for it. We were excited that perhaps there was an airshow we weren’t aware of, but there wasn’t.
This one?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_C-130_Hercules
Re “The end of the rip-off economy”
Even for the Economist, this is egregious. On top of the tweeted commentary pointing out the thoughtless quoting of George Mason shills, we get this unquestioned howler:
“AI ‘will help people who didn’t have the privilege of great advice to get…pretty great advice,’ argues Bret Taylor, the chairman of OpenAI, creator of ChatGPT.”
Sure, and the fox will guard your henhouse 🙄
Finally, in the very last paragraph we get the admission that information asymmetry won’t go away, because Akerloff’s phishers for phools will weaponize the technology against consumers — yet inexplicably the very last sentence of the final paragraph contradicts this admission completely:
“providers and retailers are likely to fight back with their own AI tools. Amazon listings are already swamped with AI-generated product descriptions. Use ChatGPT with your plumber today, and you may be able to convince him to cut his price. Use ChatGPT with him in a year, and he may have his own model telling him to charge you even more. Companies are working on “generative engine optimisation”, which could result in chatbots putting out information favourable to their product or service. In time, many markets may require AI arbitrators, where both parties agree to abide by the ruling of an impartial third-party bot. What seems clear is that the days of the know-nothing consumer are well and truly over.” (emphasis mine)
Wat?
Epic drivel …
Impartial 3rd party bot? What in the bleeding hell
If I recall, I remember doctors were already fed up with people using the net for self-diagnosis.
And they are still trying to pass off the lie that their programmed code, that largely scrapes internet, is “thinking” and “reasoning”.
This may be the deadliest grift of all time – which is why they are trying to remove any remnants of laws that would put asses behind bars after the carnage.
LOL. My mom’s doctor teases her about trusting Dr. Google more than she trusts his advice.
Right?
A bull sh!t generator is going to end rip offs.
Plumbing.
I was fixing a leak and installing a shut off valve, and although I religiously scroll past the generated content, this time I looked at it, being in a rush and wanting to know do I leave the valve open or closed when I glue it on and it’d been a while, I kind of thought open but the generated comment said closed I scrolled down and the rest were web sites that said open. Don’t believe it.
Another, I installed an on demand water heater and was getting an e5 message, the generated comment suggested call a plumber, might be dangerous! Confusing!
Next youtube video, not ai….
reduce water flow problem solved.
AI: the Hare and the Tortoise.
US including but not limited to the AI/Big Tech is increasingly exemplar of Aesop’s hare!
The authors consideration of Chinese prowess in “analog” is interesting, around 1999 I worked with a fellow who followed extant “futurists”. He had been to a conference where the topic of “analog over or versus digital” was discussed and those futurists saw need to “keep after analog”.
I did not pay enough attention to the topic and soon moved on to more program management work.
The US in many areas is becoming the hare…..
Thanks for sharing.
re: film history interview Jonathan Rosenbaum
I didn´t know whether put it here or on the Sunday Movie post – a great interview about film and his book “Movie Mutations”
“Movie Mutations: The Changing Face of World Cinephilia”
https://www.amazon.de/Movie-Mutations-Changing-World-Cinephilia/dp/0851709834
with the one and only Jonathan Rosenbaum.
Conducted in Budapest in 2020, posted Oct. 28th 2025
From Movie Mutations to 1968: An Interview with Jonathan Rosenbaum in Budapest
The following interview took place in a hotel lobby in early February 2020.
https://jonathanrosenbaum.net/2025/10/from-movie-mutations-to-1968-an-interview-with-jonathan-rosenbaum-in-budapest/
“US issues ‘final warning’ to Baghdad over Iraqi resistance factions”
I have noticed a trend here. The US and Israel want Hamas to disarm. Not going to happen so now they are trying to find troops around the world as an occupation force that will do it for them. In Lebanon, the US is demanding that Hezbollah be disarmed by the Lebanese army. Again, not going to happen and Israel and the US don’t want to do that job. Now the US is demanding Iraq disarm the Iraqi resistance as they can’t do the job themselves either. Of course if that happened you might find that ISIS might come back and Iraq does not want that to happen. Always wanting other countries to do the lifting for them as they can’t do it themselves.
How is US going to sell the Abraham Accords’ coalition against Iran, if it does not disarm Shi’a in Iraq?
Those Iraqi resistance units were just fine when they shoved ISIS out of north Iraq! I seem to recall they were granted almost ‘national guard” status. These are largely Shi’a formations and killing Suleimani was aimed at them!
If these were the Falluja Sunni killers of US marines they would be okay! Or rehashed ISIS like in Damascus.
What is Hegseth proposing? TLAM to Baghdad?
An Israeli air base in Baghdad or even closer to the
Iranian border is my guess.
I think the US would reinsert ISIS to wage Jihad against Iraq and call it popular will of the center of Iraqi society being tired of the radical Shia. The US needs unrestricted access to that air space.
My guess is that, for the US military, Israel’s interests take priority over all these latest saber rattlings.
MAGA on the March
Democrats are more enthusiastic about the midterms as Trump’s approval hits a second-term low, CNN poll finds (CNN)
No need to offer any material benefits, mission accomplished
and
So much hand wringing on the left. Polls showing not much support from formally Dem strongholds. I think the simple fact is 30% of the registered voters sat out the last election because none of the above. The real battle is about who gets those potential votes off the bench. It will probably require an actual choice and the Dem party may not be capable of that. Ezra Klein gives this some discussion:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/02/opinion/democrats-liberalism-elections-crick.html#commentsContainer
“Ukraine’s Suicide Helicopter Missions… Why?”
‘I think the more likely explanation is that this was a joint-CIA-GUR operation to extract CIA paramilitary officers who were operating with Ukrainian forces in and around Pokrovsk.’
It might work out that the Russians may bag themselves a few high-ranking NATO officers as well as spooks. Who knows what they will find in Pokrovsk. Hate to be a merc in that city right now. Putin said that the captured Ukrainians will be held according to the Geneva Conventions. I don’t think that that applies to mercs though.
there are no NATO officers at the front. imo.
there is so much Ukraine money sloshing around, and plenty of retired, middle-aged ex-SpecOps/ex-vanilla military that there are plenty of people to hire off-the-books for plausible deniability.
And such “high-value” personnel would not be at a battle like Pokrovsk—unless Ukraine/Whitehall/Langley love throwing away such assets….which, of course, is not implausible given the comedy of errors of the past 11+ years
There are no AFU officers at the front, also. They are all commanding from the rear, as per testimonies of POWs.
In that they are following NATO doctrine where officers are too valuable to risk. Even earlier, during the Vietnam war American officers would command troops from helicopters flying over the battlefield. They would make all sorts of demands from the air which the troops on the ground could see was impossible. It got to the point that helicopters would return to base with bullet holes in them and it was noted that they weren’t from North Vietnamese weapons.
My Vietnam vet marine (officer/pilot) said marine officers were expected to be down on the ground. His medivac return home was the result of a forward air control assignment after he got after completed his 100 flying missions.
“Neo-Nazi-Led Think Tank Gets Warm Welcome in Washington”
When you read this article, the whole thing was a well-planned set up. Men in military uniforms. Check. Young photogenic chicks. Check. They had all the meeting laid out for them with the State Department, Capitol Hill, and the Atlantic Council. Then there is the connections with J.P Morgan, the American Enterprise Institute, Michael McFaul, Stanford University, Michael Flynn, the House Foreign Affairs and House Intelligence committees and many, many more organizations and people. The worse of it is they they are getting their hooks into the US military so may influence those young officers for decades to come.
This is why the entire state will have to be liquidated.
Even if it is not part of NATO they will come to the “Israel” model of proxy over time.
Undeclared nuc’s etc.
From ICE Watch
Spreading the COVID, make infectious disease great again!
Not necessarily COVID, but bad for individual and public health nonetheless.
Did no one think about the symbolism of using the Roaring 20s as the theme? Not exactly a good look, to put it mildly, and seems to be the very embodiment of hubris. Sometimes I feel like we’re in 1788 and the Estates General are about to be convened; it’s just a matter of time until it all falls apart.
Yup, that and the Cuomo video blew me away but at least with Cuomo I couldn’t help but laugh.
The Trump video made me sick. It was something like 10x shorter than the Cuomo vid and I could barely make myself sit through it.
Y, the Cuomo video is so comically bad it just shines a spotlight on the elite’s FUD as self serving nonsense. The Trump stuff is really happening (and much worse, skittering around under the covers, unseen.)
Donnie’s Halloween Party, the Sybarite’s Ball, … hey that reminds me of “The Predators Ball” all those many years ago … I do like NC’s juxtaposition of the anecdote, Elephant Seal, with the ball and its somewhat elephantine host, or do I exaggerate his corpulence?
The Greatest Gatsby
{golf clap}
“They were careless people, Don and Barbie….”
I don’t think Trump and his ilk are smashing up things and creatures because of their carelessness.
Worthwhile remembering the full quote-
‘They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.’
No matter what damage Trump does to America, nothing can be done to him after he leaves the Presidency. What are they going to do? Sue him? He has his billions to shield him.
Forget him, like Chile did to Pinochet. Let him rot in obscurity and dementia.
Trump’s party looks like a 21st century version of the Masque of Red Death.
Feather dance girls look like something that you might expect out of Vegas. The spirit of Sally Rand would be looking on smiling.
The Russian Diplomat’s take on Venezuela was very informative. Particularly:
“Russia could easily have supplied its overseas partners with the full package – from the Yars and Kinzhal to the Burevestnik and Oreshnik. And there’s even a Poseidon patrolling underwater somewhere nearby…”
My SWAG is that Trump will TACO because it is in Russia’s interest for a proxy (under attack) to sink many US naval vessels and heavily deplete dwindling A/D assets. And should the US become bogged down in Venezuela (as in Vietnam, slowly, but always escalating), it would lessen Russian and Chinese nuclear Thucydides concerns.
Also, if there currently is an intel war (a reasonable supposition) between the US (attempts to corrupt) versus Russia, China, and Venezuelan intel, this will be another critical test of the declining empire (Ukraine being a failed test). TACO = intel battle loss.
‘A Big Positive’: How One Company Plans to Profit From Medicaid Cuts (NY Times via archive.ph)
Everyone’s favorite company, who’s executives did not go to jail after what was when one of the largest data breaches
I’m so happy for you
Another business that shouldn’t exist.
How will the invasion of Venezuela end? -Top War.
That former diplomat left Venezuela with some new, catchy phrases and a lot of cringe stereotypes.
He didn’t seem like much of a diplomat to me. If he was in Venezuela it was a long time ago.
Agree. Also with Alex below.
The idea that he will TACO out of this one is real, and the article actually starts rather well saying that there is a 50-50 chance of going as it went with North Korea in Trump1.
But then…
“[Maduro’s] typically Latin American habit of talking a lot”, from a guy that blabbers from beginning to end.
“That’s why the people here have all the Spanish mental charms and flaws. Venezuelans, like the Spanish, are very sensitive about matters of honor. They have a high sense of self-importance. They are extremely touchy. And at the same time, they are very theatrical.” Please, spare me the torero’s honor trope.
“But while sporadically settling their debts of honor, all Venezuelans unanimously hate Americans. This hatred is existential, metaphysical in nature.” WTF is he talking about? Has the guy ever spoken to a Venezuelan?
“The Spanish, unlike the Anglo-Saxons, were loyal to the local population, especially to women.” Yeah, right, and then came dating apps and changed that.
And then the Martianov line:
“Russia could easily have supplied its overseas partners with the full package – from the Yars and Kinzhal to the Burevestnik and Oreshnik. And there’s even a Poseidon patrolling underwater somewhere nearby…” So they let Assad fall because they were saving it all up for Maduro.
Even as a critical reading exercise it was sort of hard to take seriously…
I do not believe anyone outside the Russian General Staff and some Venezuelans know if they transferred a “Full Package.” And the CIA as a warning to the US. My point was that it clearly is in Russia’s interest to have a proxy sink US naval power (which is self-attriting due to rust and inability to recruit personnel). And Chinese interest.
WRT Assad, generalizing is always dangerous in history. My take from reading the news at the time was that the unpaid Syrian army was unwilling to fight for Assad/Syria, and Syria had refused Russian support as it was playing a nice-ness effort with the West. Very naive.
Agree on both points.
The issue is that we, the public, can only make informed guesses about what it is really going on, and the guy’s stereotyped views on things Venezuelan/Latino/Spanish are a drag on his credibility: when you are peddling views, rather than solid information (and, fair enough, that’s close to what most of us do and how we get an idea of most things), you need to be strict with your thinking, because you work in a dearth of facts, and there seem to be some issues with this guy’s thinking.
By early December we will be seeing the first of the new crop of ICE agents hitting the streets after 6 weeks of rigorous and comprehensive training.
Its worse than you know, ICE’s new crops’ disguise is Salvation Army BDU’s.
I’m looking forward to seeing them prance about in black leather outfits.
This ICE Street Goon crowd definitely give me a Leather Bondage vibe.
Stay safe, but not too safe.
There are reports floating around social media that Nancy Pelosi is not going to seek re-election. If true – The Good. The Bad – I can only imagine the swamp creature who replaces her. The Ugly – whoever it may be.
Time to stock up on ice cream futures and dentu-cream!
Too soon?
I was thinking today that she can actually pay all Congressional staffers during this whole shutdown she’s so rich. And that’s just Pelosi!
NYT:
Well, a half a loaf is better than sawdust.
This year is so lit. It’s a sight to behold. We have liberal Democrats, with Obamacare subsidies, a payoff to big Health, the only demand. Not rolling back the Big Shat Pile cuts. And Republicans, careless and unwilling to skip the filibuster and reopen the government. What a joke. They really are, both, unperturbed by the struggles of the little people.
Not sure in what universe this isn’t a completely failed experiment in so called democracy.
I doubt Jesus would recognize many Christian conservatives in the Republican party.
The video about corporate collusion via inauguration contributions was enlightening. Way back when in the days of the Spoils System before the Pendleton Act the grift was penny ante. Now, today, 2025, we have a major upgrade. No longer grift for jobs. Now we have major league, … heck,galactic league … grifting. Corporate donations because they love and admire and effusively praise our president while he smiles benevolently and sucks up the sincere(?), insincere(?), self-serving(?) verbal genuflections. To their surprise whole industries find that policy is bending in their direction. $240 million. Wow. Where did the leftovers go?
Inflation continues to show up, 10% more for a loaf of bread than last week and a 30% increase in my car insurance despite no claims.
I predict a disastrous Christmas for retailers.
Sounds like it’s been Christmas since July. Think it’s too late to invest in coal?
Since the Snow Leopard is the mascot animal of Naked Capitalism, here is a Snow Leopard video.
” 🔥 This Snow Leopard caught on a trail cam ”
https://www.reddit.com/r/NatureIsFuckingLit/comments/1onfidh/this_snow_leopard_caught_on_a_trail_cam/
re: ATW
Maybe I am exaggerating and even unfair – but is it possible that Matt and Walter lately like talking about geopolitics and share theoretical musings about political economy on a serious level which the show is not cut out for? It sometimes sounds like the cliché of USA we had in Europe – as soon as it´s about the rest of the world, some serious misconceptions.
ps: ATW
…followed by Russiagate reporting which is as usual invaluable…
for that my thanks to Matt and Walter.
Lex McMenamin: I was laid off from Teen Vogue today along with multiple other staffers, and today is my last day. certainly more to come from me when the dust has settled more, but to my knowledge, after today, there will be no politics staffers at Teen Vogue.