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Links 11/5/2025

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Golf’s cruelest moment: The physics behind the ‘lip out’ phenomenon PhysOrg. An IgNobel prize contender?

2.7-million-year-old tools reveal humanity’s first great innovation ScienceDaily (Kevin W)

Canterbury Cathedral: the idea of a sacred building still matters Hilary White (Micael T)

“Good Heavens what insect can suck it?” Brian Klaas (Micael T)

Retire statistical significance! Lars P. Syll

#COVID-19/Pandemics

COVID-19 is spreading again — how serious is it and what are the symptoms? Nature

Climate/Environment

Six radical ways to cool the planet The Times

Antarctic Glacier Saw the Fastest Retreat In Modern History CNN

Deadly Rivers in the Sky Washington Post. We’ve had a very wet and long rainy season here. And it’s been weirdly cool.

Storm warning in Brazil and Paraguay: gusts of wind and hail cause massive damage Global Vision

How a warmer world is making pregnancy riskier Financial Times

Water

Continental Drying: A Threat to Our Common Future World Bank

India’s digital thirst: Data centres are rising in water-scarce regions — and locals are paying the price Down to Earth

Iraq facing ‘worst drought season’ since its establishment: MP New Region

Only three to five years left to save Gorgan Gulf, watchdog warns Iran International

China?

China Fields World’s First Stealth Fighters Equipped For Air Defence Suppression Military Watch

Why climate change now threatens China’s future Economist

Indonesia’s China-backed bullet train derailed by mounting debt Financial Times

Koreas

US issues new North Korea sanctions, pressures UNSC to follow suit The Cradle (Kevin W)

Africa

Hundreds feared dead in days of protests after disputed Tanzanian elections Sky

Starvation as a weapon of war: how Ethiopia created a famine in Tigray The Conversation

O Canada

TMX Opens Asia Route As Canadian Crude Discounts Narrow OilPrice (resilc)

European Disunion

Germany is arming itself to the teeth to transform Europe again Telegraph

FT: How Friedrich Merz is testing Germany’s patience International Affairs (Micael T)

Paris’s futile efforts: why is French military-technical cooperation with its allies failing? NEO (Micael T)

Old Blighty

Anxious Aston residents prepare for Villa’s match against Maccabi Tel Aviv Guardian

Israel v. The Resistance

Gaza Ceasefire Illusion: The Art of Turning Truces into Tactical Pauses 21st Century Wire

Money, mercenaries and mayhem: How Israel and UAE are investing in regional chaos Middle East Eye (resilc)

.

New Not-So-Cold War

American nazis in Kyiv Events in Ukraine

Pentagon Concedes Russian Threat as Trump-Era Policy Shop Faces Revolt in Senate Hearing Kyiv Post

Imperial Collapse Watch

The New Reality of War – Russian Think Tank Analysis Simplicius. A must read. Implications way beyond the Ukraine conflict.

How Many More Cloud Scares Does Europe Need? Project Syndicate

Our $100,000 GMC is Total Garbage YouTube (resilc)

Running it back with better standards! These companies have some explaining to do! YouTube (resilc)

Trump 2.0

An Anarchist’s Conviction Offers a Grim Foreshadowing of Trump’s War on the ‘Left’ Wired (resilc)

Why the Hell Did JD Vance and Erika Kirk Hug Like That? New Republic

Dick Cheney, Good Riddance

Cheney, architect of endless war, helped kill our faith in leaders Responsible Statecraft (resilc)

Dick Cheney Proves Old Proverb is True Larry Johnson

Shutdown

Army charity offers grants to soldiers missing SNAP payments Task & Purpose. resilc: “When does the fragging start?”

Democrat Death Wish

Zohran Mamdani wins New York as Democratic US electoral sweep deals blow to Donald Trump Financial Times. Lead story. No archived version yet. Trump is managing to rescue the Democrats from themselves, at least so far. Given Trump’s propensity to violence to reassert his manhood, this result pretty much guarantees more domestic thuggery and increases the odds of some sort of action versus Venezuela.

Democrats Dent Trump’s Coalition With Three Big Election Wins Wall Street Journal. Lead story. No archived version yet.

Trump blames shutdown for Republicans’ election losses to Democrats Axios

The Democratic Establishment’s Scam: Pretend Populism Corbin Trent (resilc)

Bernie Sanders: ‘There Ain’t Much of a Democratic Party’ New York Times (resilc)

Democrats brace for Nancy Pelosi’s possible retirement NBC

California voters approve new US House map to boost Democrats in 2026 Associated Press (Kevin W). A rare and effective show of muscle.

Hakeem Jeffries Says Trump Is Running “Pedophile Protection Program” New Republic. resilc: “we will see how Hakeem sings when Billy Clinton is on the list…..”

Mamdani. Key is that he got 50.3% of the vote. Even though a bare majority, it is a majority, so he can’t be depicted as not really representing the will of NYC voters. And this despite billionaire and Zionist opposition and the Democrats ranging from not supporting him to opposing him. Please be sure to check out today’s Coffee Break, since I am highly confident that Nat will cover it, having been just about alone in highlighting the importance of the NYC mayor’s race before Mamdani became a serious contender.

Mamdani seals remarkable victory – but real challenges await BBC. Dependence on New York State and Federal funding, which can be used to jerk Mamdani around, is one:

Zohran Mamdani is elected NYC mayor, defeating Andrew Cuomo in historic win Gothamist

Mamdani wins: How a democratic socialist toppled the Empire State machine Salon

Mamdani’s victory is a rebuke to the failed strategies of the Democratic party Guardian (Kevin W)

Our No Longer Free Press

A low-stakes critical thinking exercise for online media Libre Solutions Network (Micael T)

The War Party Is Out of Ideological Ammunition Antiwar (resilc). More on the Zionists hating on Tucker

A Journalist Asked Why Israel Isn’t Paying to Rebuild Gaza. It Cost Him His Job. Intercept

Mr. Market is Moody

Tech and chip stocks tumble across Asia as investors rethink the AI boom Business Insider

Repo Market Liquidity Pressures Made Worse by Government Shutdown, but the Fed’s SRF Did its Job and Went Back to Sleep Wolf Richter

Banking System Vulnerability: 2025 Update Liberty Street Economics

Economy

Why the Administration Is Happy Not to See the October Employment Numbers Menzie Chinn

Mapped: GDP Growth by U.S. State (1990-2024) Visual Capitalist (resilc)

AI

Here’s How the AI Crash Happens The Atlantic (Paul R)

‘Godfather of AI’ says tech giants can’t profit from their astronomical investments unless human labor is replaced Fortune (resilc)

The police’s new tool: AI-generated child porn Aftonbladet via machine translation (Micael T)

Amazon sues Perplexity over ‘agentic’ shopping tool Reuters

Coca-Cola’s New AI Holiday Ad Is a Sloppy Eyesore The Verge

The Bezzle

They survived the hurricane. Their insurance company didn’t. Grist

Waymo To Expand Robotaxi Service To Las Vegas, San Diego and Detroit Next Year Reuters

Class Warfare

Top 10 US billionaires’ collective wealth grew by $698bn in past year – report Guardian (resilc)

Private equity firms are snapping up mobile home parks − and driving out the residents who can least afford to lose them The Conversation

Kraft Heinz Says Consumers CUTTING Staples From Grocery Cart Breaking Points. We posted on Kraft Heinz’s woes before. It’s not just rising consumer stress but also those who have the budget room choosing healthier options. But this segment has other factoids that demonstrate how widespread belt-tightening is.

Antidote du jour (via):

And a bonus:

A second bonus:

And a third:

See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here

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149 comments

  1. Wukchumni

    That feeding fawns video reminded me of an encounter around the turn of the century on a backpack trip from Jerkey Meadow in the Golden Trout Wilderness to Crescent Meadow in Sequoia NP.

    We had come over Farewell Gap into Mineral King, and being the border of Sequoia NP, it’s tantamount to ‘Animal Switzerland’, whereas hunting is allowed at certain times on the other side of Farewell Gap in the GTW, it’s strictly forbidden on the SNP side, and the animals seemed to know, as they were much more plentiful in the Canton.

    I’m a few hundred feet ahead of my long time backpacking partner when I come around a corner on the descent, and a baby fawn maybe half the size of the ones in the video and much more spotted was just off the trail and backed itself in a thicket-and it started crying out sounding very much like a human baby, i’ll never forget it.

    I wanted my buddy to experience it, so I kind of made sure the fawn couldn’t escape until he showed up and in the meantime-deer a few hundred feet away had formed a skirmish line of sorts, no doubt put on high alert by the baby’s wailing.

    Reply ↓
    1. Lee

      “…the animals seemed to know…”

      They might well do. I recall a conversation with a professional wolf watcher who contended that in wolf country elk and deer will tend to favor territorial boundary areas between wolf packs, where the wolves themselves tend not to go to avoid inter-pack conflict, which can be fatal.

      Reply ↓
      1. Wukchumni

        We were headed up to Franklin Lake on a backpack trip when it started raining on us in about the only flat spot to camp, luckily for us. We pitched our tent in a jiffy and it rained a bunch. Got up bright and early the next morning and a fellow with a backpack that had a bow sticking above his head behind him was walking up the trail.

        It was hunting season in the GTW limited to archers initially, and then only black powder, followed by anybody with a rifle late in the game.

        He had to gain almost 3,000 vertical feet to get over Farewell Gap into the GTW and then descend about 2,000 feet to where you can hunt-about 9 miles walk in. and related that if he was successful he’d have to cut it up & clean it there on the spot and would carry about 50 pounds of deer back up 2,000 feet and down 3,000.

        Me. I like to sneak up on the meat dept @ WinCo supermarket and ask for a pound of pastrami cut wafer thin~

        Reply ↓
    2. The Rev Kev

      “Why the Hell Did JD Vance and Erika Kirk Hug Like That”

      Haven’t really been following this story but Charlie Kirk’s widow has picked up a lot of criticism for wearing inappropriate outfits and acting like a Merry Widow. This public hug is just the latest of what she has been doing. Not the behaviour that you would expect from someone who violently lost her husband not long ago. Nothing about Charlie Kirk’s murder is simple and clear cut it seems.

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      1. Wukchumni

        It had everything but Barry White playing in the background…

        Me and the widow Kirk
        We got a thing going on
        We both know that it’s wrong
        But it’s much too strong to let it go now

        We meet at the Turning Points USA tour
        Six-thirty, and everyone knows she’ll be there
        Holding hands, making all kinds of plans
        While the jukebox plays our favorite Barry White song

        Me and Mrs., Mrs. Kirk
        Mrs. Kirk, Mrs. Kirk, Mrs. Kirk
        We got a thing going on
        We both know that it’s wrong
        But it’s much too strong to let it go now

        We got be extra careful
        That we don’t build our hopes up too high
        Cause she’s got her own obligation
        And so, and so do I

        Me and Mrs., Mrs. Kirk
        Mrs. Kirk, Mrs. Kirk, Mrs. Kirk
        We got a thing going on
        We both know that it’s wrong
        But it’s much too strong to let it go now

        Me and Mrs. Jones, by Billy Paul

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYOQDnWFXYI&list=RDNYOQDnWFXYI

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      2. Screwball

        Haven’t really been following this story but Charlie Kirk’s widow has picked up a lot of criticism for wearing inappropriate outfits

        This seems to be hot topic for the people who are not fans of Kirk. My PMC friends are all over this. They think JD and this lady have something going. She wore some tight leather pants and gave JD a hug. What’s going on?

        The story got more legs on social media when a guy named Kyle Kulinski, otherwise known as Mr. Krystal Ball of Breaking Points, posted a Halloween costume of Mrs. Kirk dressed in tight leather pants and fake tear drops. You can see his Tweet here —> https://x.com/KyleKulinski/status/1984390467073527915

        He was called out by quite a few then doubled down with a video titled MY RESPONSE TO THE HATERS AND LOSERS COMING AFTER ME FOR MY PERFECT ERIKA KIRK MEME which is a little over 4 minutes long. I didn’t bother to listen to it. Of course many others just loved his stuff.

        I don’t know what this guy does, other than post vile hate filled rants and meme’s on social media (528.2k followers), and do a partial show with his wife Krystal. If I were her, I would be embarrassed to be associated with this creep, little lone married to him.

        The world would be a better place if hate filled rich assholes like him didn’t have so much influence.

        Reply ↓
        2. Pat

          I am really on the outside of this, but to a certain extent you could switch Kirk with Kulinsky except Kulinsky is less of a Kardashian level grifter influencer than Charlie Kirk was. Vile, hateful and perhaps even destructive could easily describe so many of the players in this saga, including Erika Kirk.

          I might wish for the Kirks to disappear from public view and discussion, but widow shaming is not going to accomplish that. Unfortunately there is so little there left to the opposition destroying their positions is just too difficult so they focus on the presentation.

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          1. Yves Smith Post author

            I recall similar types of gossip about the wife of Russian dissident Navalny (who never had the following the Western press would have you believe) who never once visited him in prison, didn’t go to pick up his body but was doing lots of photo ops when the spooks and NGO types were trying to package her to take up his role. No doubt her being photogenic added to the aspiratoins.

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        3. Huey

          Kulinski was interesting. I was one of his earliest watchers on youtube when he had maybe just a few hundred viewers. It was pretty good to see how he gradually was able to improve his setup at the time, but then it became more and more evident that he was grifting and I stopped watching I think early 2016.

          Just adding this because my impression really was that he was barely getting by before 2017ish so he’s more noveau riche than anything. In a sense, like a lot of influencers, he kind of became what his audience seemed to want until his audience became exclusively those persons expecting more and more of his grift. Not to say he wasn’t ever inclined that way before then but it’s a weird kind of situation where people looking to hate, boost someone who can channel their grievances. I think it’s more that than, as a rich person he started posting his views and influenced large groups to follow him.

          It’s a complicated mix I think but unfortunately the end result is we do have another rich asshole promoting toxicity, albeit someone probably more desperate not to lose his fame than if he’d been born rich. Unless even the whole ‘too broke to afford good equipment’ was a masterful 4D chess con.

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        4. gf

          Get your facts straight. Kyle is not the hater in this little story.

          They are literally all on the right.

          I have followed him a long time and the only criticism i have is that he is a little naive.

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      4. malchats

        My prediction, made public here for the first time, is that she will announce in about six months that she has a book coming out. It will, of course, be an immediate best-seller (sufficient copies bought and paid for by various political organizations). During her media tour to promote the book, she will at some point announce that she has…wait for it…”found love again.” And, how fortunate for her, he new beau will be a billionaire! Because after all, a Hot Sexy Blondie Chick™ has needs…like a vacation home in Bermuda! After all, what is she going to do, wiggle around in that bikini on a public beach? One of those people might get to see her! So it goes.

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    3. Carolinian

      We have deer in town now and my friend in suburban Phoenix says a kit fox has been jumping into her back yard which is new and apparently the result of still more nearby desert being turned into a shopping center. They are losing habitat.

      The foxes are endangered while opposite for the deer but I do enjoy seeing them. They are graceful, beautiful animal.

      Reply ↓
  2. The Rev Kev

    “Canterbury Cathedral: the idea of a sacred building still matters”

    I have no idea those church authorities thought that they were doing. Those inner-city-style “graffiti” are ugly and wildly out of place in such a setting. A church should be a place of rest and meditation but having these in your face exhibits is not going to do it. I doubt that people want to see graffiti plastered in that church when they can see it on any building outside. This is just pander politics.

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    1. Louis Fyne

      The progressive embrace of avant-garde art has gotten ridiculous (see Obama’s concrete butt plug a/k/a his presidential library). Trump has a point when he says public buildings should generally be in the neo-classical style. Of course, Trump’s architecture comments can’t be seen as apolitical, and stirs up the waters…

      Ironically, the “progressive” mindset 130 years ago had an aspirational bent—that, as public spaces, public buildings should be aesthetically calming, pleasing, aspirational to elevate the hoi-polloi.

      Now the intelligentsia might as well be saying, Give me Boston City Hall or give me death—-lmao

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        1. ambrit

          Want to bet that the top of that edifice is home to a NSA “listening” facility?
          It puts the “brutal” back in Brutalist Architecture.

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          1. ambrit

            “Look upon my works ye deplorables and despair!”
            “I was there and I was square.”
            Around the remains of that colossal Edifice Wreck,
            The plundered Midwest stretches far and wide.
            Of Pandora’s final gift, Hope,
            Only spare change remains.

            Burma Shave.

            Reply ↓
            1. Jack Dunn

              Wonderful! – from someone who actually remembers the Burma Shave signs – welcome distractions on the endless country roads of the fifties and sixties.

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      2. Vicky Cookies

        There’s a pretty good article in this week’s Economist on what the author calls the “Dictator style” of Trump, but you have to read between the lines a bit. All the gold roccoco flourishes added to the interior of the White House offend the sensibilities of the PMC and their benefactors, who prefer subtlety, thank you.

        The neo-classical obsession reflects, as it did when many buildings were erected in the Federal style, a lack of any new ideas: Ancient Rome! That’s the imagined better past we’ll look to! I don’t go easily in for the Trump-Hitler talk, but in this sense, stylistically, there’s some overlap.

        Interestingly, one reason our cities are such an ugly mismatched mish-mash of styles is because many in the architecture world who would have considered themselves progressives, albeit in the neo-liberal fashion, thought urban planning was for suckers and Soviets, and that there was a beauty in what they called “non-design” or “non-planning”. Ideologically, it fit nicely over the whims of the various wealthy developers, providing an intellectual excuse for them to get along well with our Trumps and those who lent them the money for their buildings.

        Personally, I do prefer buildings pre-modern and pre-post-modern. Its my most reactionary tendency.

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        1. Camelotkidd

          Back when James Howard Kunstler wasn’t a kook, he wrote a book entitled the “Geography of Nowhere”, decrying modern architecture

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      3. Carolinian

        He also likes designer lettuce. Our downtown library is being renovated and made more modern arty. I’m not sure who is the target of this aesthetic trend other than the local wealthy who do give the library money. We the peasants are simply grateful to have a library.

        Reply ↓
    2. DJG, Reality Czar

      Rev Kev:
      Hilary White on the doings at Canterbury Cathedral is tart but not on the mark.

      I wouldn’t trust anyone whose biog states “the Renaissance is Bad.” Given that the Renaissance in Italy started somewhere around 1300 with Cimabue and Giotto, and given that Dante was the last hurrah of medieval Italy and a forerunner of the Renaissance, I tend to doubt her judgment. The Renaissance went on in Italy for another two hundred fifty years till around the death of Michelangelo in 1564.

      Meanwhile, as she admits in the piece, Henry VIII looted Canterbury Cathedral. The Reformation in England and the Netherlands included looting the churches.

      Which was in bad taste, that’s for sure. Just as the current show that she is complaining about is in bad taste.

      [And, meanwhile, the Franciscans were busy creating the sacred mountain of Varallo here in the Undisclosed Region — a masterpiece of high&low pop/sacred Catholic art.]

      And there’s this driveby observation: “In the Latin Church, the use of church buildings for concerts, art exhibitions, public meetings, performative charitable events, shows us that the entire concept of a space and building set apart exclusively for the liturgical worship of God and prayer has been hollowed out.”

      Well, no. Many of the concerts that I attend here include both sacred and secular music. Many are in churches. On the other hand, I attended a glorious performance of Puccini’s Messa di Gloria at the RAI Auditorium. With so much art in so many churches in Italy, they open regularly as “art galleries” — in fact, they want you to look at the art and leave during mass if you’re not a regular. And I won’t mention the many churches that contain burials — bishops in the walls, knights and their ladies in the floor.

      I understand her misgivings, but I don’t understand her puritanism. Exclusive? Well, maybe. Papa Francesco kept stressing that the Catholic Church is for everyone. And I’m such a bad Catholic and bad Buddhist.

      PS: J.D. Vance and Catholicism. J.D. Vance, when he speaks about religion, is speaking about power. I will wait for him to start quoting the Fioretti of Saint Francis — you know, kissing lepers, levitating, praying all night, wearing sackcloth and a rope, sleeping with a rock for a pillow. Otherwise, he’s part of the Francisco Franco fan club for Jesus.

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        1. ambrit

          Wait, did you get in touch with Ronnie Raygun through the planchette?
          When we “talked” to him he said that he was comfortable because it was a dry heat.

          Reply ↓
      2. Lee

        “Many of the concerts that I attend here include both sacred and secular music.”

        On of my peak experiences during a too brief sojourn in Italy was listening to a Russian violinist play Bach in Dante’s chapel. We learned of the event by way of a leafleteer in the street.

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        1. Wukchumni

          When I first visited Prague in the mid 90’s, there would be people out in the streets kinda dressed up Mozart-like with handbills for classical concerts in amazing buildings for a few bucks, I remember feeling so underdressed for the building in one of them.

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      3. Alex Cox

        I proposed in the original article’s comments that the cathedral be converted into an olympic size swimming pool, for the benefit of the inhabitants of an otherwise sad and depressed town. The author was kind enough to reply and say my idea was cool!

        I have often thought, enjoying magnificent religious buildings around the world, how much more magnificent they would be if we could swim lengths in them. This would in no way defeat their original purpose, and would greatly benefit the community.

        Reply ↓
  3. MicaT

    Water treadmills are primarily used for rehab work.
    If a dog can’t support their own weight the water is used at different heights to create more or less weight on the ground. IE less weight on a bad joint or other injury or recovery from an injury which allows for range of motion work and strengthening exercises without damaging anything.
    Very cool tech

    Reply ↓
  4. Alice X

    Private equity firms are snapping up mobile home parks − and driving out the residents who can least afford to lose them

    I’ve long thought that mobile home parks should be nationalized. The residents can own their homes and rent the land from the government, in a parallel to social housing. If they need to relocate they can sell them to the government which can either rent them or resell them.

    Reply ↓
      1. JMH

        What will private equity do when everything has been “snapped up”, monetized, employees cut to the bone and beyond, prices raised beyond the limits of profitability? Capitalist gotta accumulate. No limits. Never enough. Not being addicted to money, I find them insane.

        Reply ↓
    3. ChrisFromGA

      I know there aren’t likely many mobile home parks in the five boroughs, but one thing Mayor-elect Mandani could do is use eminent domain to seize any PE-owned parks and declare them city property for “the good of the public.”

      Thanks to Kelo, there would be very little these PE robber barons could do about it. As long as the taking is in the public interest, even if that includes redevelopment.

      Reply ↓
    4. Louis Fyne

      irony alert: slap Scandanavian or Edo Japan facades onto mobile homes, and the NYT would be fawning over a “revolutionary” new choice in housing.

      double irony: from my small sample, mobile parks have more community and Gemütlichkeit than a random McMansion subdivision or Hudson Yards residential tower

      Reply ↓
    5. Socal Rhino

      There’s a mobile home development not far from me where the residents own the lots. On the plus side, you won’t get thrown out by PE. The trade-off is the price, considerably lower than the smallest homes around here but not exactly cheap. Roughly comparable to townhome prices.

      Reply ↓
      1. Alice X

        Manufactured housing can be very efficient and if high quality standards are maintained, very effective. I had such in the mid eighties forward ten years. I’m a rags to rags story so it was the only real option. It was, of course, private management, not overly burdensome then, but they have become more exploitative as held forth in the link above. Whether the community owns the land or the government (we the people?) owns it, there is administrative and maintenance overhead. The government can have an advantage; like public housing in general of yore (but languished in this neo-liberal land), if you can’t pay rent, you don’t pay, you are not thrown out. That is socialism. That’s what I am about.

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        1. Alice X

          And of course the government could manufacture the housing itself, all types. Take the profit motive out so people can survive.

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          1. ambrit

            I can attest that the Katrina Cottages, heavy duty “mobile homes” built after Hurricane Katrina to house many of the displaced, we being one such social unit, were very well built. Take the wheels off and anchor them properly and they were as good as a stick built small house. Alas, they were too good for the profit motive to accept, and they were sold off for cheap to “connected” persons after the disaster faded from immediate memory. (I know this from personal experience.) They are still considered very desirable items even twenty something years after the time that they were built.
            After the hurricane, the New Orleans French quarter which weathered the storm much better than the rest of the Parish, instituted a free wifi internet system for the neigbhourhood. This was later taken offline at the urgings, and a bit of bribery, of the local cable companies.
            A regional housing Syndicate would do the trick.
            Stay safe.

            Reply ↓
  5. timotheus

    It’s remarkable how few reports on Mamdani’s say anything about his army of enthusiastic volunteers (latest estimates 100,000) and their (our) impact on voter choice through patient, months-long, in-person persuasion. I guess horse-race politics has more glitter than the drudgery of organizing. Also notoriously absent–mention of the key role of DSA and its monster electoral apparatus or the important contribution of Jewish Voice for Peace, The videos were very cool, sure, but the Dems who think they can win by just imitating them are dreaming.

    Reply ↓
    1. pjay

      Tireless organizing by enthusiastic volunteers who actually believe in the candidate and his policies triumphs over entrenched power and money. Sounds familiar. Reminds me of some other recent campaigns: by AOC and Bernie – not to mention one Barack H. Obama. Here’s hoping the results are better this time. The problem is that after voters and campaign workers go home the entrenched power and money remains in place to either co-opt or sabotage the newbie. Good luck Zohran!

      Reply ↓
    2. Afro

      At the same time, Abigail Spanberger won on Virginia, and she describes herself as a “moderate”. The Democratic party may just be able to do well by waiting out for Trump to keep underperforming.

      Separately, I feel like there was some sort of scandal with Spanberger a few years ago, does anyone remember what it was?

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    3. Dr. John Carpenter

      I don’t find that at all surprising. Why would TPTB want to shine a light on any of those things you mentioned? That might inspire others in other places to emulate those actions, and we can’t have that.

      Reply ↓
  6. begob

    Anyone else caught the wave of AI-Mearsheimer vids on youtube? He’s presented as a talking head perfectly synched to a stream of his views on US foreign policy, interrupted occasionally by the utterance of “wibble!”, or other brief gobbledygook. Apart from those blips, the only indicators of the fabrication are the relentlessness of the delivery and the odd repetition of points.

    Reply ↓
    1. Henry Moon Pie

      I have noticed this too, and my thought is that this is a way to cut viewership for the original content creator, Now that’s not going to bother Mearsheimer much because he’s a tenured prof at U. of Chicago, but it’s being done to interview shows like Nima’s and Napolitano.

      Reply ↓
      1. ambrit

        Such counteractions were to be expected. There is now so much AI Slop on YouTube that I have begun to try and block the worst offenders on my YouTube stream.
        I click on the three vertical dots to the right of the thumbnail on the right side of the screen, or to the right of the text heading under the picture. That opens up a short list of options. One of those options is “Don’t recommend channel.”
        So far it’s too early to gauge the results.

        Reply ↓
          1. albrt

            Bad video drove me out out of the market around the time of BJ and the Bear and Three’s Company. Haven’t watched video longer than the antidote snow leopard since then.

            If anybody says anything important on a video I’m sure somebody will eventually write it down.

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            1. Wukchumni

              I was a pretty faithful once a fortnight movie patron, and kinda called it quits when CGI came calling, causing stuntmen and stuntwomen to have to learn how to code.

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      2. Carolinian

        Sounds like hasbara to me. The late Robert Fisk got the same treatment when some writers grew fond of the term “fisking” as a way of showing disrespect. For supporters of a certain ME country revenge is a dish best eaten hot or cold.

        Or maybe I’m being paranoid about these behind the scenes phenomena. Dunno what could cause one to become that way.

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      3. begob

        There have always been screen-within-screen rips from shows like that, but these latest releases are just uncanny. As far as I can tell, the expressions do belong to him, it’s just that they’re all sausage-linked together. An AI interview between Mearsheimer and Napolitano would be an interesting item. And I wonder when AI does it to Mercouris will it speed up his voice?

        Reply ↓
  7. DJG, Reality Czar

    Let’s see: Dick Cheney shuffles off this mortal coil, which he made even worse. Let’s hope that they deny his mourners their pierogi at the funeral luncheon (de rigueur in Chicago).

    Now I read that Nancy Pelosi, age 85, may not run again. The many anonymous quotes are a mix of blather, bloviation, and fan-club boohoohooing.

    I don’t gamble. But my sainted mother always said that these things come in threes. Cheney out of commission, Pelosi decommissioned. Who is the third?

    How are Biden’s last couple of synapses holding up?

    Reply ↓
    1. ambrit

      I can hear the cerebral cortex telling the rest of the corpus; “Don’t forget the ten percent for the Big Guy!”

      Reply ↓
    2. Screwball

      There was a clip circulation not long ago of Mitch McConnell falling down. He’s a candidate. According to a quick AI search, about 107 members of Congress are over 70.

      Reply ↓
    3. steppenwolf fetchit

      I hope Biden stays just alive enough and ambulatory enough for just long enough to outlive Trump, be transported to Trump’s grave after the burial, and be videoed dancing ( or maybe haltingly shuffling) on it, just for the natural fun of it.

      Reply ↓
  8. Jason Boxman

    Gotta wonder what kind of air filtration and other protections on Colbert. I’d never come across anything on Twitter where a stage employee tells-all about the kinds of protections that are afforded to those on shows or movies. Are there any, anymore? What about at elite events, like the Met?

    I’m personally of the opinion that many of the elite are content with repeat COVID infections happening to themselves as well. Would be curious to learn if this is otherwise, and it really is a Pandemic of dull normals only.

    Reply ↓
    1. t

      As far as I know, Tom Hanks is still heavily invested in his public image. I don’t know if he’s actually riding the subway, but if he’s on TV shows saying he wears a mask to avoid sharing air in crowded public spaces, most likely he and his people believe this will help his image. Which is encouraging.

      (It’s also possible he’s deathly afraid of Covid or has some other personal reason.)

      Reply ↓
    2. Wukchumni

      I dunno, I was shit scared of Covid in 2020-21, and then got it the first time with Omicron in early 2022 along with 7 out of 10 Dartful Codgers, and then typhoid Mom gave it to my sisters and I in 2023, followed by another repeat performance @ Burning Man in 2024.

      Probably not all that different than Tom Hanks’s episodes.

      After I got it the first time, I really didn’t use any preventative measures, and losing my taste for awhile (coffee tastes utterly horrible sans taste buds) was about the worst of it, and that only lasted a month or so after the first bout.

      Reply ↓
      1. Jason Boxman

        No one can afford to get infected with a level 3 biohazard that volumes of research indicate causes immune disregulation, vascular damage, brain damage, and the prospect of disabling long COVID, and for which there is no durable immunity. We’ll find out in the coming years where after some certain threshold of repeat infections, people start dying in exciting ways. Only time will tell.

        Stay safe out there!

        Reply ↓
        1. Futility

          Correct, but the comments under the tweet (is ist still called like that?) are very frustrating. A lot of ignorance regarding mask efficacy (in both directions, protecting yourself as well as others) as well as of the vaccines (waning after a relatively short time) Not encouraging.

          Reply ↓
  9. pjay

    – ‘Cheney, architect of endless war, helped kill our faith in leaders’ – Responsible Statecraft (resilc)

    This is a pretty decent obit, given that it appears in a mainstream-adjacent foreign policy source. As it points out, Cheney’s contribution to Global Evil didn’t start with 9/11. He was there at the creation; that is, at the beginning of the neocon take-over of the Republican party (and eventually both parties) during the Ford administration. He continued to work toward that end ever after. We usually ignore the brief tenure of Ford, but a hell of a lot happened during those years. Cheney (along with his mentor Rumsfeld) was in the middle of it.

    Johnson’s anecdote on Cheney’s beginnings is also interesting, in that it shows how arbitrary history can be in placing apparently unremarkable people in just the “right” place at just the right time. Hindsight is 20/20, but if only…

    Reply ↓
  10. Wukchumni

    Our $100,000 GMC is Total Garbage YouTube (resilc)
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    I follow a few of the mechanic influencer types, who have decades of experience working on all types of cars-and their opinions of given makes and models, and it seems all newer American made cars are pretty crappy, one of them has such disdain for any Ford with an Eco-Boost engine-amazing.

    This is of course reflected in the price of used Toyotas being so high-being so reliable.

    Reply ↓
    1. Louis Fyne

      Death by 1000 cuts.

      One of which….to squeeze every ounce of efficiency from a 100% petrol engine means **lots** of ICE complexity. Complexity (while putting a ceiling on the cost) = less >80,000-mile reliability. Then throw in barebones maintenance by some first owners, who have no incentive to baby the car for the 3rd owner.

      Why the entire US truck line-up hasn’t been hybrid-ized like Toyota’s….someone ask Mary Barra. Probably a matter of profitability/margins.

      Reply ↓
      1. Screwball

        Here’s another. GM Colorado. 2016. Temperature gauge started acting strange. It would go to the high side, but not quite in the red, then come back down. It would do this sporadically. Took it to the original dealer who had been the only place to work on it. They replaced thermostat, censor, and a coolant flush. $850 bucks – didn’t fix it.

        I’ll save you gory details about that, so I went to another dealer. $650 and 3 days later – still not fixed. What? Service bulletin from GM (which I have a copy) says; situation deemed normal by engineering at this time. Really? Seriously?

        They told me too watch the gauge and don’t let it get into the red. How exactly am I suppose to do that? Pull over if it does? And I’m suppose to drive this for 3 hours and not worry? Really?

        I tried with no success with parent GM to get some help or restitution. Forgetaboutit!

        Bad design, GM doesn’t want the cost of a recall, so let non-existent customer service solve it by not allowing the customer to get anywhere with real people at a real company.

        They asked me for my PIN number. They being the GM rep. You work for GM, you have my records, why don’t you have my PIN. We don’t have that….

        Useless.

        Reply ↓
        1. Louis Fyne

          you were a victim of “the parts cannon”

          Mechanics who actually spend the time and effort to properly diagnose the underlying cause, before changing a thing, are a dying breed—-especially at a dealer, where the economics-incentives of mechanics’ pay discourage certain pro-customer behaviors (diagnostics)

          Lots of parallels between MDs and mechanics…..the medical equivalent is “the scrip cannon”—here is a ream of scrips, come back in 3 weeks

          Reply ↓
          1. JMH

            Use thicker oil … I remember a passage in Remarque’s Drei Kameraden in which the three veterans of the Great War have set up as auto mechanics and sellers of used cars. This would be in the early 1920s. None to scrupulously they sell a clunker by adding heavy oil and sawdust to the crankcase. They can spend the money before the engine seizes. There is a cousin once or more removed resemblance to the Denali.

            Reply ↓
          2. Screwball

            One of my best buddies is a retired Mercedes Benz mechanic. The horror stories he can tell about how all that stuff works. Oh brother – it’s worse than we think.

            Reply ↓
          3. Polar Socialist

            Some years back the clutch in my car’s air conditioning compressor started acting up (as in “randomly” disconnecting and not reconnecting). While I was visiting the shop to replace the windscreen washer fluid sensor, I mentioned about the air conditioning, and the men said it’s a typical issue with my car as they get older.

            He also said his way of fixing is it to change the compressor with a new one, but the other fellow there actually liked to fix old parts and would probably just change the worn down washer in the clutch. New compressor would be 350€ and a washer around 0.3 €. Plus an hour of work. I thanked him for his honesty and asked when the other fellow was available…

            Reply ↓
        2. GrimUpNorth

          I had the same symptoms on my Ford. My friend diagnosed it straight away. Temperature sensor lead was too close to HT leads and picking interference. He has been trying to retire for many years, but is unable to find a replacement mechanic despite offering a very high full time wage

          Reply ↓
  11. Jason Boxman

    The horrors of war continue

    A Harrowing Escape From the Drone-Infested Hellscape of Ukraine’s Front Lines (NY Times Mag via archive.ph, 20 minute read)

    In Ukraine, unmanned weapons hunt the wounded and medics alike. Moving injured soldiers to safety has never been more difficult.

    Washington fighting to the last Ukrainian; like with Cheney, there will be no accountability on this ethereal plan for the multi-decade long architects of this unnecessary conflict with Russia that’s killing countless people on both sides while destroying much of an entire country. A waste of lives and resources.

    What a stupid timeline.

    Reply ↓
    1. jobs

      I posit that for a plurality of USians, the US government killing or supporting the killing of innocent people in their name is not a red line. They don’t care; it’s far away and it’s not their problem. Witness the last election.

      And so it continues, because there’s money to be made and power to be retained or grabbed with impunity.

      Reply ↓
  12. eg

    “Amazon sues Perplexity over ‘agentic’ shopping tool”

    I don’t give a toss about Perplexity, but my immediate suspicion about Amazon’s suit is that what it REALLY fears is any technology which could circumvent its ability to use information asymmetry against its customers to ensure endless enshittification at their expense.

    Reply ↓
    1. ChrisFromGA

      I can picture an AI arms race – agentic code that scours the airlines’ websites, looking for the best prices, armed with algorithms to defeat the airlines’ “dynamic pricing,” perhaps by booking a flight for you at 2:23 am through a VPN that makes it look like the traffic is coming from Mongolia, rather than your actual location.

      For a small fee, of course. Shall we call it “de-enshittification?”

      Spy vs. spy stuff.

      Reply ↓
        1. ChrisFromGA

          “Hey Alexa, book me a ticket to Kathmandu, one-way, please”

          Alexa: “I’m on it. Do you want to me to use super-stealth mode to trick the airlines into thinking you’re a poor Mongolian beet farmer?

          “Yes, please”

          Alexa: “Amazon agentic screw-the-airlines mode is an additional $4.99/month. Shall I sign you up?”

          “I guess … how much will I save?”

          Alexa: “I just saved you $500 .. minus legal defense fund costs to be billed later … “

          Reply ↓
            1. ChrisFromGA

              Well, now you’ve done it, Wuk, no doubt some AI agent is scraping this conversation and will send your suggestion to Spirit-in-the-ChapterEleven-Sky, Airtrash, and Southwurst airlines. Oxygen is now a “premium” cabin item.

              Reply ↓
      2. ilsm

        Amazon has taken a multi year multi (38?) billion $$ relationship to provide “compute” to OpenAI. Amazon would buy GPU chips from NVIDIA?

        They likely need to keep down anyone (AI arms race) from competing with OpenAI who is dependent on a line of credit from NVIDIA.

        Another arc in the circular relations that keep the AI bubble inflated.

        AI is hype, not a revolution and none of the “tech leaders” enjoy competition free high returns!

        While China is forced to make chips that likely are better lower energy and cheaper…. eventually bc restriction (US protections).

        NVIDIA CEO selling!

        Reply ↓
        1. Irritable

          Believe it or not, a few years ago we were on an August vacation staying in Grindelwald and happened to be gazing at a glacier on a peak high over the town just at the exact moment a genormous chunk fell off.

          So big, eg slow, that it gave me time to get the phone set to video and film it.

          Awe inspiring, and in light of the fact of global warming, scary & sad at the same time.

          Reply ↓
      2. Ken Murphy

        Yeah, I’ve never been particularly fond of what I term ‘smacking a little ball around the countryside for a couple hours’. Used to do it occasionally for bank functions but never really enjoyed it.
        Interestingly I do enjoy frisbee golf and -walking- around for an hour or two. Favorite course so far was in Tyler, TX, a nice challenging course in the woods, but there was a fun one in Fort Worth also.

        Reply ↓
  17. AG

    re: Cheney

    MOON OF ALABAMA

    Dick ‘Darth Vader’ Cheney Is Dead
    https://www.moonofalabama.org/2025/11/dick-darth-vader-cheney-is-dead.html#comments

    “I am not in the mood to write about the death of former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney. Alan has caught the gist of what needs to be said of it.

    Alan MacLeod @AlanRMacLeod – 12:20 utc · Nov 4, 2025

    The only thing sad about Dick Cheney’s death is that it did not happen inside an Iraqi prison.

    Over the years there have been a few MoA post on Cheney:”

    Reply ↓
  18. Michaelmas

    So I read the Atlantic’s Here’s How the AI Crash Happens piece linked to today and it seems broadly right — in the sense of presenting a plausible set of scenarios regarding how things will likely play out (given that prediction is always hard, especially about the future). But it misses the major point about what this all may mean in terms of where a crash would ultimately lead society — us — as a whole.

    [1] The piece’s writers do understand AI is a bubble and that’s the business model, as they note that: –

    “…canals, railroads, and the fiber-optic cables laid during the dot-com bubble all created frenzies of hype, investment, and financial speculation that crashed markets. Of course, all of these build-outs did transform the world; generative AI, bubble or not, may do the same. This is why OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta are willing to spend as much as possible, as rapidly as possible, to eke out the tiniest advantage. Even if a bubble pops, there will be winners.”

    Bolding mine. They also note that the entire US economy, stock market, etc. is now increasingly founded on AI and the crash will potentially destabilize all of it: –

    ‘If tech stocks fall … the highly leveraged hedge funds … invested in these companies could be forced into fire sales. This could create a vicious cycle, causing the financial damage to spread to pension funds, mutual funds, insurance companies, and everyday investors. As capital flees the market, non-tech stocks will also plummet: bad news for anyone who thought to play it safe and invest in, for instance, real estate. If the damage were to knock down private-equity firms (which are invested in these data centers) themselves—which manage trillions and trillions of dollars in assets and constitute what is basically a global shadow-banking system—that could produce another major crash.’

    [2] But the point the piece’s writers fail to make is that when the general US economy crashes, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta and certain others will all likely be still standing afterwards. Sure, their share prices and stores of fictitious capital may be diminished. In terms, though, of their share of real capital and power in a post-crash society where conventional finance and the populace is devastated to a lesser or greater extent, they would loom far, far larger — and larger, too, than they already loom.

    And the people at the top of these big tech corporations are lived through the internet bubble and know that the dominance of Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta today is precisely because they were the ones left standing after that earlier bubble. Hence, they may well understand the AI bubble and consequent crash as an opportunity to replay that earlier scenario on a far larger scale (and not incidentally supplant Wall Street and conventional finance as the power in the land, as currencies increasingly become digital etc.)

    [3] Arguably, therefore, for Big Tech the AI bubble and crash looks like a case of heads they win, tails the rest of us lose however bad the crash is.

    (I’m leaving China out of the frame, of course.)

    Reply ↓
    1. curlydan

      Thank God we never busted these monopolies/oligopolies. If we had, they wouldn’t have the excess and crazy profits to plow into AI. They might actually have to borrow all the money and write a business case and come up with some justification for lighting piles of Ben Franklins on fire.

      Reply ↓
    2. tegnost

      Hubris meet nemesis.
      The current innovations are not fiber infra or easy shopping, it’s getting rid of copyrights, pimping digital assistants so you’ll be followed around by a robotic personal assistant that will answer your questions rather than google. I don’t see how that works as after crash leftovers.
      Anecdote: I went orange big box to see if they had an item in stock. AI says I’m in seattle, and won’t let me change stores, grumbling about how stupid and time consuming this crap is, I look up the phone number to the store, call, and have a trigger event with an agentic ai that cant understand my simple question. I offered a couple of choice words and hung up, just made a new plan entirely and scrapped the one that sent me to big box where I would have gotten a sub par product anyway so where’s the loss? None to me, one less customer for thee, and dear mr/miss mba, no I will not be trying again later. My unfounded hope is that the concentration will become so great that like with a monopoly or risk game in my youth, it’s 3 am and two people are still playing but everyone else has left. The world may move away without them, and no great loss. Oh and waymo to detroit, looks like they’ve figured out that snow thing! Sadly, popcorn breaks my old teeth.
      To the contrary, zero interest rates for 15 years stuffed corporate coffers with filfthy lucre so the big boys can just buy their way out of trouble like always, and be too big to fail. It’s worked before, we’ll see I guess…

      Reply ↓
      1. Michaelmas

        tegnost: The current innovations are … getting rid of copyrights, pimping digital assistants so you’ll be followed around by a robotic personal assistant that will answer your questions rather than google.

        Oh, it’s more than that. It’s also potentially what Naked Capitalism said here, for instance —
        Larry Ellison’s Dark Vision for OUR Future
        https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2025/02/larry-ellisons-dark-designs-for-the-united-states-and-the-united-kingdom.html

        Other possibilities, also. For instance ….

        tegnost: … stuffed corporate coffers with filfthy lucre the big boys can just buy their way out of trouble like always … It’s worked before, we’ll see…

        The idea this time may not be to use their money to buy their way out of trouble but to be the money, the issuers of currency, going forward. But sure, if all you see from where you are is the regular guy on the street’s POV and that’s all you want to see, then, yes, that’s what you’ll see. Like Paul Krugman in 1997….

        “The Internet’s impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine’s….ten years from now, the phrase “information economy” will sound silly.”
        ― Paul Krugman (1997)

        Reply ↓
      2. ilsm

        I was looking into the UPS cargo MD 11crash in Louisville, Ky, and how it differs from DC-10 which I was somewhat near in my USAF career.

        Took three different worded queries to get google to a simple answer. Then to add insult they had a button to go to AI!

        I suspect the “tools” (Mag 7 or so) that sell AI are dumbing down regular searches!

        Reply ↓
      3. ChrisFromGA

        The whole approach seems destined to fail. Massive buildouts of energy-hungry datacenters, with no “killer” app or product like the iPhone. Based on the Atlantic piece, Microsoft/Google/Meta all figured out that they don’t want to be the bagholders of those data centers when the inevitable crash comes, so they devised financial engineering similar to 2008 to transfer the risk to investors.

        From the Atlantic:

        Meta recently did just this: Blue Owl Capital raised money for a massive Meta data center in Louisiana by, in essence, issuing bonds backed by Meta’s rent.

        So what happens when Meta stops paying rent? Which they can easily do, contracts are made to be broken, when you have deep pockets and an army of lawyers.

        Those bondholders get familiar with the term “haircuts.” See you in court. Hope you like being a data center owner.

        So the FAANG lords handed the flaming bag of doo-doo to someone else …congrats, now you’ve burned the economy down.

        The other big problem is that all hardware is obsolete by 2-3 years after it is produced. All those Nvidia GPUs being ordered like hot-cakes will be Kmart blue-light specials in 2027. Yet none of these companies are depreciating them on a 2-3 year schedule, more like 6-10 years. So, accounting problems. And competitors in 2027 will outperform the big tech datacenters with cheaper, faster AI that isn’t so resource hungry.

        It’s all setting up for an epic fail.

        Reply ↓
  19. ProNewerDeal

    I am hopeful on the Mayor Mamdani news. It seems Mamdani has the charisma of the center-right Faker Sellout 0bama, with a true belief & willingness to fight hard for center-left social democratic policies like Bernie Sanders.

    My dream scenario is that Mamdani gets 3 of his big 5 policies implemented as Mayor, maintains high popularity, & is a “king maker” on endorsing a similar social democratic 2028 Pres candidate.

    Reply ↓
    1. Louis Fyne

      for the all the movie stereotypes of the power of a NYC mayor, the NYC mayor’s powers are rather discrete and narrow.

      NYS, MTA, PANYNJ expect an alphabet soup of “legacy Democrats” roadblocking Mamdani from day 1.

      Reply ↓
  20. DanB

    I checked in on NewsMax last night to see how the right-wingers were reacting to the elections results. They were pearl clutching and repeating “a socialist won and election!” Rick Santorum was interviewed and, somewhat surprisingly, he told them to take it easy, not to overreact. Then Dick Morris, Clinton’s old triangulation advisor, suggested that Trump send Americans a $2,000.00 check because the tariffs had produced trillions in government revenue. I know Trump’s instinct is to do more damage and even incite violence, but Morris was attempting to tell him how to survive politically.

    Reply ↓
  21. Jason Boxman

    The US economy added 42,000 private-sector jobs last month, more than expected (CNN)

    but

    “The most concerning trend would be that drop in leisure and hospitality, because that points swiftly back to the consumer and how healthy and resilient the consumer will be,” [Nela Richardson, ADP’s chief economist] said. “In the last three months of the year, we’ve seen consumer resiliency push up employment in that sector, so this negative number is something to watch as we go into the holiday season.”

    Richardson also flagged that hiring softness among small businesses could be another concerning sign as to the health of the economy, noting smaller companies’ outsized share of employment.

    and

    Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said last week that the lack of government data is “clouding” the central bank’s view of economic activity and that a decision on a rate cut next month is not a “foregone conclusion.”

    “If you’re driving in the fog, you slow down,” Powell said at a press conference following the October rate-setting committee meeting. “We’re going to have to do our jobs one way or the other. I hope by the time of the December meeting, we’re getting a better flow of data.”

    The Fed implemented a quarter-point rate cut last week in order to shore up a softening labor market, but Fed Governor Lisa Cook this week said she sees more urgency for the central bank to focus on stubborn inflation rather than on unemployment.

    The latest Consumer Price Index report showed annual inflation reached 3% last month, the highest level since January. The most recent jobs report the BLS produced showed unemployment crept up to 4.3% in August and the economy added just 22,000 jobs that month. And, for the first time in several years, there are not enough jobs for everyone seeking employment, with roughly 7.2 million open roles but around 7.4 million unemployed people.

    America is going great!

    Reply ↓
  22. Wukchumni

    Three Chinese astronauts were due to depart the Tiangong space station, reenter the atmosphere, and land in the remote desert of Inner Mongolia on Wednesday. Instead, officials ordered the crew to remain at the station while engineers investigate a potential problem with their landing craft.

    The China Manned Space Agency, run by the country’s military, announced the change late Tuesday in a brief statement posted to Weibo, the Chinese social media platform.

    “The Shenzhou 20 manned spacecraft is suspected of being impacted by small space debris,” the statement said. “Impact analysis and risk assessment are underway. To ensure the safety and health of the astronauts and the complete success of the mission, it has been decided that the Shenzhou 20 return mission, originally scheduled for November 5, will be postponed.”

    https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/11/landing-postponed-for-chinese-astronauts-after-suspected-space-debris-strike/

    Reply ↓
  23. Airgap

    Our $100K GMC is Total Garbage!

    Its a pity the car owner didn’t specify which engine he had as GM is on the hook for billions? for a major recall of the 6.2L V8. The issue is discussed at length by Thecarguy during a tear down of a 6.2.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohGx0xIanNY

    A sad commentary on how bad decisions can ruin the reputation of a once great engine manufacturer.

    Even if you aren’t a car person the engine tear down videos are surprisingly interesting as its hard to stop watching as he delves deeper into the block to find the failure.

    Reply ↓
  24. XXYY

    Running it back with better standards! These companies have some explaining to do! YouTube

    I find this piece entertaining as hell. It illustrates the difficulty of building things to standard even when the standard is quite straightforward. This video shows about 1.5% discrepancy across various tape measures over a distance of 8 ft.

    I have no idea whether manufacturing measuring tapes is easy or hard. One can certainly argue that it’s pretty easy: Manufacture metal tapes, let them cool and stabilize, and then ink them with a well-calibrated paint applicator. The problem may be attaching the hook repeatably (notice they are on a sliding attachment). Compared to other things that come out of today’s manufacturing processes, I’m a bit surprised there is any visible discrepancy at all. Obviously the fundamental problem is that accuracy is never checked as part of the manufacturing process.

    Indeed, the fundamental takeaway is that if you want to manufacture something to a standard, you need to check your product against the standard. The fact that this obviously isn’t being done even in this straightforward case is the fascinating part of the story.

    Manufacturing is hard and requires an attitude of constant attention to detail. This can be very hard to summon for various reasons, usually including financial and schedule pressure.

    Reply ↓
    1. Screwball

      This was interesting. It should never happen. Where is the quality control at the plant? There are ways to prevent this and apparently they don’t care. I’m really surprised they were off that much.

      Reply ↓
    2. Glen

      Here’s a video on making tape measures so you can see what’s involved:

      Making a Tape Measure https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISDTK_jPNvo

      You can see that there is a sanity check (at about 2:01) after the scale is printed on the tape, but how often is that simple check gauge verified to be good?

      What you find out at most companies is QA has been cut way back, and company metrology labs that calibrate the gauges, temperature indicators, hardness checkers, measuring devices, everything used in the manufacturing process have been completely eliminated, or outsourced. And even these metrology services may not actually have traceability all the way back to the NIST, very few labs seem to do that anymore. It’s now considered expensive and time consuming so America’s management likes to just get rid of it (even though there’s a bunch of engineers that have told them – don’t do this!) But calibrated tape measure with calibration certificates are still available:

      Starrett Tape Measure with Calibration Certificate
      https://www.mcmaster.com/1936A41/

      But you’re going to pay a bit more for what was at one time just part of the normal manufacturing process.

      Now, imagine you’re upper level management at GM, and this is how your crankshafts are now made:

      NILES-SIMMONS N20 CM – Crankshaft Milling Center
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0ZpjjdOBAc

      But you’ve also cut your QA to the bone (maybe even done away with CMM checking), outsourced your metrology, outsourced your CNC maintenance so all the good stuff here (that should be done way more than people expect) is just not being done:

      Renishaw Machine calibration and optimisation
      https://www.renishaw.com/en/machine-calibration-and-optimisation–6330

      Well, next thing you know all that really cool automation has made a whole bunch of really expensive bad parts, and you may not even know it.

      Reply ↓
  25. Pat

    Since we are going to be inundated with undeserved accolades over the next few days (Dick Cheney’s last hit on society), I am going to “appreciate” Mike Bloomberg. There aren’t many of our billionaire class that are as open about buying democracy. Sure he didn’t succeed this time, and he spent far less then when he paid out the nose to be mayor of NY, but between direct contributions to Cuomo and even more to various PACs, including the odious and deceptively named Fix The City PAC of which he was the largest acknowledged funder, Mike Bloomberg spent 13 million dollars.
    Along with being the biggest spender we know about, Mike was one of the few people spending 100s of thousands of dollars to defeat a guy saying their taxes are too low to actually live in the city. I really wish I could DM most of them to give them the really really bad news that the majority of the public already know this to be true and eventually they won’t be able to bury it from being said out loud. It will take longer to be corrected but hope springs eternal.

    Reply ↓
  26. XXYY

    Tech and chip stocks tumble across Asia as investors rethink the AI boom Business Insider

    The cracks in the wall seem to be widening. 

    I’m thinking about how this is likely to proceed. Related stocks are certainly bound to crash, but will it happen slowly over time as people gradually forget about AI? Or will there be some kind of sudden reckoning as people stampede for the exits? 

    The problem seems to be similar to, but fundamentally worse than, for self-driving car technology. They both struggled with fundamental shortcomings that kept them from living up to their hype, but I think with self-driving cars it was easier to find bright spots and to make the argument that the technology could be fixed up in a smallish number of years to the point of at least being workable and/or profitable in certain niches.

    AI on the other hand seems like it’s being revealed as an empty shell and a bubble solely kept inflated by the massive hype emanating from a small number of stakeholders.  The very massiveness of the hype has perhaps inadvertently set the bar for AI impossibly high, to the point where a reasoned exploration of possible uses is out of the question.  The number and size of the rice bowls threatened by the fantasy version of AI has also created tremendous fear and hostility aimed towards it, which will not be helpful once the hype begins to lose its power.

    Another issue is that the whole world economy was never dependent on self-driving cars, but we have somehow reached the point where the world economy is in fact dependent on AI technology itself, and on a half dozen AI stakeholders, propping up stock markets around the world and also underlying the profitability plans for many companies who have been laying off like mad.

    We bought our tickets (whether we meant to or not); now we are taking the ride.

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  28. AG

    Matt Taibbi kinda going off rails?

    ““Democratic Socialism,” the actual left, is the only political movement on that side with any energy, and looks set to take over. What does that mean? Nothing good:”

    Or am I the naive one here?
    But then anyone be it Blumenthal, Maté&Helper, Hedges, Patrick Lawrence – they can´t all be wrong with not discarding Mamdani for now.

    What else is there? MAGA? Seriously?

    Instead of understanding Russian history better than others Matt appears to have walked away from his Moscow years with some serious lack of insight?

    I dunno…

    From the POV of a comedy/entertainment show I can very well understand that the host doesn´t want to align with a mainstream view. But then why not ignore the issue entirely instead than – as if by design – criticize it – whether or not the criticism makes sense.

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    1. Yves Smith Post author

      It is too early to tell with Mamdani. He is a young fellow with no experience in running a big bureaucracy, and NYC mayors are constrained by some long holdover rules from the fiscal crisis days and powerful stakeholders from Wall Street to unions. His success depends on how skilled he turns out to be. The “Democratic Socialist” part is germane only in that it commits him to a lot of ambitious goals.

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    3. anahuna

      Rather than going off the rails, Taibbi seems to have switched tracks a while ago — about the time he allied himself with Kirn?

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    4. flora

      The entire substack article is primarily an autopsy of the loss of control by the Clintonian-neoliberal here-to-fore ruling faction of the Dem party. It’s a pretty good take-down of the mistakes, the hubris, and the damage to working class voters (the nominal base of the party since FDR) the 3rd Way, neoliberal, Clinton era Dem party did. The Clinton era is over. / my 2 cents

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    5. gf

      Followed him on Useful Idiots pod with Katie Halper she tried to get him to go socialist but he just could not accept it. He has a certain fear or skepticism of it.

      Not unusual for people in the Anglo speaking world.

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      1. flora

        I knew 2 well-regarded Soviet scientists who spent a year at my US scientific research entity. This was back in the early 1980’s. They were here as part of an opening and scientific exchange program. Excellent scientists, wonderful people, but scared to death if you asked any naive question about Soviet politics. A look of terror – I’m not exaggerating – terror and embarrassment came into their eyes as they backed away. Apparently, the old USSR kept careful watch on everything their exchange scientists said and did. Even to the point of planting ‘friendly’ US citizens in their locations to spy on them. I only learned this much later. I felt very bad that I’d frightened them in my ignorance. One scientist, a women, did let drop that she was only allowed 1 new dress a year. Also that photocopy machines, ubiquitous in the US, were either forbidden or carefully guarded and required official paperwork approval to use.

        I knew a younger scientist who grew up in the Soviet system. He took his advanced degree just after the fall of the wall and immigrated to the US. He hated the old Soviet system with its endless snooping, bureaucracy, loyalty tests, corruption, etc.

        I think Taibbi knows what he’s writing about.

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    6. lyman alpha blob

      I’m starting to think Taibbi needs an intervention. He can crap all over the Democrat party leadership all he wants – they wholeheartedly deserve it. But now he’s going after the more lefty alternatives to the status quo without even giving them a chance. And he’s doing the punching down thing, looking for excuses to mock people who are at least trying to make things better. In Monday’s podcast, he outright ridiculed the notion that government should even try to make people’s lives better, saying no one would have ever thought that was government’s purpose in the past.

      NC is about the only place I read comments, but I dipped a toe in at Taibbi’s site a few days ago on an article where he was talking about all that was good with America, likely written in response to a bot comment in the first place. The ‘socialism has never been tried before’ in the comment seems almost designed to rile someone up – https://www.racket.news/p/life-imitates-art

      In the not well thought out post, he mentions hip hop as something beneficial the US invented, along with several other things most wouldn’t argue with. But there were several snide comments to the effect that they agreed with Taibbi, except on the hiphop – a racist dog whistle if there ever was one. These comments may be bots as well, and I don’t think Taibbi monitors the comments all that much, although he does participate sometimes.

      Maybe he should start. As someone who thinks highly of Bernie Sanders (or at least he did in the past), I’m pretty sure he really wouldn’t want to be associated with the type of person who posts that kind of comment, or creates the bots that do. He’s losing credibility fast by allowing that kind of stuff.

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  29. Huey

    Unrelated to today’s links but I thought I’d mention that Youtube is continuing to push for AI justification, now by putting AI almost fully in charge of some kind of auto-content moderation. The result is that multiple channels are being banned for no reason (the report will say their channels are linked with channels banned up to several years ago, without explaining what that means but banning them for it even when it’s clearly not the case). Of course, humans now have to go back and review all of these issues when people complain and manually reinstate them (most of them so far). It’s almost like it would’ve been more efficirnt to have humans making those decisions in the first place. But efficiency != cost-effevtiveness anymore, I guess?

    Also, people allegedly involved in and/or associated with the jewellery heist from The Louvre have been arrested. Supposedly DNA evidence linking them to the crime was found all over every inch of the Louvre or something, depending on what source you read. Naturally, they still haven’t found the missing jewels but, considering that the individuals basically used a truck to help them just walk in and break the displays with minimal equipment before driving away, the overall consensus is shaping up nicely to say that it was not part of an organized job, just a random scheme from inexperienced, unaffiliated criminals.

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  30. jo6pac

    I think nancy p. will step down now and newsome names her daughter to her seat. Then all the money she’ll receive wins and the nancy p. family contains to make money off insider trading.

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  33. Jason Boxman

    Starbucks union authorizes open-ended strike as busy holiday season begins (CNBC)

    Starbucks Workers United has authorized an open-ended strike that could begin on Red Cup Day, one of the coffee chain’s biggest sales days of the year, the union announced Wednesday.

    The union is preparing to strike in more than 25 cities if it doesn’t reach a collective bargaining agreement with Starbucks by Nov. 13, when Red Cup Day falls this year. The two parties have not been in active negotiations to reach a contract after talks between them fell apart late last year. Starbucks and the union entered into mediation in February, and hundreds of barista delegates voted down the economic package Starbucks proposed in April.

    The strike authorization won 92% of votes, according to Starbucks Workers United.

    The union is pushing for improved hours, higher wages and the resolution of hundreds of unfair labor practice charges levied against Starbucks.

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  34. Jason Boxman

    Key Justices Cast a Skeptical Eye on Trump’s Tariffs (NY Times via archive.ph)

    A majority of Supreme Court justices on Wednesday asked skeptical questions about President Trump’s use of emergency powers to impose tariffs on imports from nearly every U.S. trading partner, casting doubt on a centerpiece of the administration’s second-term agenda.

    The outcome of the case, which could be decided within weeks or months, has immense economic and political implications for U.S. businesses, consumers and the president’s trade policy.

    Several members of the court’s conservative majority, including Justice Amy Coney Barrett and Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, joined the liberal justices in sharply questioning the Trump administration’s assertion that it has the power to unilaterally impose tariffs without congressional approval.

    Should be interesting; Trump has plenty of other avenues for inflicting tariffs, even though they can’t be done on a whim. And if he violates those statutes, that’ll end up in court as well, while in the meantime, tariffs will continue to be collected regardless.

    What a scorched year, and I don’t even mean Climate.

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