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Links 12/23/2025

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Great White Sharks Were Scared Out of Their Habitat by Just 2 Predators ScienceAlert (Chuck L)

The Return of the Weirdo Ted Gioia

Were classical statues painted horribly? Works in Progress (Anthony L)

This remarkable book about a ‘wild boy’ reveals what makes us human Washington Post (Anthony L)

What makes you human? Julian Macfarlane

Editing is Only Good If the Editing is Good and a Lot of Editing is Not Good Freddie deBoer. The editor of my book had recently come out of marketing and sent e-mails like “It detracts the reader from the flow”. Dealing with her enabled me to get over my WASP inhibitions and have screaming rages to my agent, who had to intercede too often. The straw that broke the camel’s back was after repeatedly asking if they cared about format for footnotes, and after I had turned in half the chapters, they said they had to have Chicago Style. I said I was not fixing that on the completed chapters (I was also, uncharacteristic for a book, being held to a very tight and rigid publication deadline), that that was their task. It turns out that there is self-censorship among book authors. Many report, but it seems only to a fellow book writer, that they were subjected to lousy editors. By contrast, I have had very good editors when writing for magazines and big online venues like Bloomberg.

Ancient sewers expose a hidden health crisis in Roman Britain ScienceDaily (Kevin W)

Vaccinating Boys Against HPV Could Eliminate Cervical Cancer ScienceAlert (Chuck L)

The FDA’s Leucovorin Approval—A Departure From Evidentiary Standards JAMA. Important. More RFK, Jr. corruption. JJ: “Weird. In fact no science.”

#COVID-19/Pandemics

The Wall Street Journal seems to have figured out how to prevent archiving, so I must report on rather than link to a finding from a recent story, on what are passengers to do if they are worried about toxic fumes. N95 respirators will only stop particles, not gases, BUT P100s will. So if you are seriously germ-paranoid, you can now use toxic fumes as a justification to wear a Darth Vader looking half-face respirator.

China vows city-specific fixes to clear housing glut, stabilise property sector South China Morning Post

Climate/Environment

Organ-tuning books in English churches provide notes on a warming climate Guardian

Germany news: Every 3rd food bank beneficiary is a child DW

Here’s the Bad Climate News You Missed This Year Bloomberg

China?

China turns on a vast experimental network it says is an heir to ARPANET The Register (Chuck L)

China’s Sprint for Tech Dominance Can’t Hide an Economy Full of Holes Wall Street Journal. Lead story. No archived version yet. While it makes valid observations about overproduction, weak consumption, not great social safety nets, and Xi’s determination to continue to boost exports, the piece has a cursory feel, as if the writers thought it was so obvious that an American audience would buy what they were selling that the support for the arguments seem dialed in rather than well-substantiated.

India

Why the US-led Pax Silica tech alliance snubbed India Asia Times (Kevin W)

Africa

Tens of thousands flee DR Congo to Burundi amid rebel takeover of key city Aljazeera. resilc: “I thought Trump brought peace.”

South of the Border

Experts at oil & weapons-funded think tank: ‘Go big’ in Venezuela Responsible Statecraft (resilc)

Russia Urges US Not to Commit ‘a Fatal Mistake’ by Invading Venezuela (+UN Security Council) Orinoco Tribune (Robin K)

Bari Weiss Praised El Salvador’s Dictator Before Spiking ’60 Minutes’ Story on His Torture Prison Zeteo

European Disunion

What the EU sanctions against Jacques Baud and their justification reveal about the state of the EU Anti-Spiegel via machine translation (Micael T)

Macron reaffirms France’s support for sovereignty of Denmark, Greenland Anadolu Agency

Israel v. The Resistance

Bondi after the bullets Independent Australia (John Helmer). A must read.

Tucker Carlson named ‘Antisemite of the Year’ for opposing Israel’s genocide in Gaza Middle East Eye (Kevin W)

* * *

The true meaning of intifada Asa Winstanley

Israel’s Ben Gvir proposes prison ‘encircled by crocodiles’ for Palestinians Middle East Eye (resilc)

New Not-So-Cold War

Another Failure: EUCO Summit Conditions New Ukrainian “Loan” Repayment on Total Victory Over Russia Simplicius

Brief Frontline Report – December 22nd, 2025 Marat Khairullin, Mikhail Popov.

NY Times Weirdly Publishing a Bizarre Propaganda Piece About Putin Larry Johnson

Big Brother is Watching You Watch

Flock Exposed Its AI-Powered Cameras to the Internet. We Tracked Ourselves. 404 Media

Flock and Cyble Inc. Weaponize “Cybercrime” Takedowns to Silence Critics Have I Been Flocked? (Paul R)

Imperial Collapse Watch

US Diplomacy Incapability & Russia Preparing for Attack by NATO Mark Sleboda

Leave Greenland Alone Daniel Larison

David Betz: The West on Irreversible Path to Civil War Glenn Diesen, YouTube

Trump 2.0

Democrats renew government shutdown threat as tensions flare with Trump The Hill

The Trump Administration Protects U.S. National Security by Pausing Offshore Wind Leases Department of the Interior

Fentanyl Free America DEA. resilc: “Not the Onion.”

Trump Administration Live Updates: President Announces Plans for New ‘Trump Class’ Battleships New York Times

Kash Patel’s New Armored BMW Sparks New Controversy Over Alleged Job Perks Forbes (resilc)

In Defense of “The Trump Center for the Performing Arts” Sam Husseini

US farmers say Trump’s $12bn package not enough to undo damage from tariffs Guardian (resilc)

Immigration

Number of people in ICE detention hits record high Guardian (resilc)

Long Haul Trucking Was a Refuge for Sikh Immigrants. Until Now. New York Times (resilc)

Judge extends order barring Abrego Garcia re-detainment The Hill

Supremes

Progressive Judicial Institutionalism Steve Vladeck

GOP Clown Car

Turning Point: How the GOP consensus on Israel cracked Harpers (guurst)

JD Vance: Nick Fuentes ‘can eat shit’ Unherd

Vance refuses to set red lines over bigotry as conservatives feud at Turning Point Associated Press

Top Heritage Officials Flee to Mike Pence’s Nonprofit as Think Tank Fractures Wall Street Journal (resilc). No archived version yet.

L’affaire Epstein

Epstein, Israel, and the CIA: How The Iran–Contra Planes Landed at Les Wexner’s Base American Conservative

Epstein seen kissing, cuddling little girls in stomach-turning new photos released by DOJ New York Post. This ought to be in the price….

Bill Clinton spokesperson says they don’t need ‘protection,’ asks for release of all Epstein files The Hill

Exclusive: One ‘Jane Doe’ tells CNN she is mortified that her name is unredacted multiple times in the Epstein files CNN (Kevin W)

The Epstein Files represent a once in a lifetime opportunity to clear out politics Council Estate Media (resilc)

Economy

Trump says small cars can bring down big prices. Here’s why that’s unlikely CNN

AI

Boys at her school shared AI-generated, nude images of her. After a fight, she was the one expelled Associated Press (resilc)

AI and crypto data centers straining power grids worldwide – satellite image RT (Kevin W)

The Bezzle

Uber Cleared Violent Felons to Drive. Passengers Accused Them of Rape. New York Times (Kevin W)

SPOTIFY MUSIC LIBRARY SCRAPED BY PIRATE ACTIVIST GROUP Billboard

Class Warfare

The GOP War on Nurses Washington Monthly

What happens when disaster recovery becomes a luxury good Grist

See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.

Antidote du jour (via):

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13 comments

  1. none

    USGS called it a kablooey (sudden, dramatic, often messy explosion) Great word!pic.twitter.com/QkzpPAjZpS

    There’s a kids’ book about an especially high viscosity eruption like that. “Hamster Huey and the Gooey Kablooey”.

    Reply ↓
  2. Louis Fyne

    >>>
    Were classical statues painted horribly?

    thing to remember….until the 1800’s German chemists showed up, pigments were *extremely* expensive in real terms….beyond brown (even urea/pee-derived woad colors).

    Any color would have been mesmerizing in Ancient Greece.

    Bonus nugget: roughly around the same period (100 BC), random Chinese hinterlanders discovered and mass produced synthetic dyes from rocks (versus pee or mollusk juice)—one of the pillars of industrial chemistery.

    alas Confucian bureaucrats and scholars found such color decadent (true) and disruptive; and when they came to power, they went 100% Oliver Cromwell and banned color.

    thus quashing artificial dyes for another 2000 years.

    Reply ↓
  3. The Rev Kev

    ‘SARS‑CoV‑2 (COVID-19)
    @COVID19_disease
    ⚠️ BREAKING:
    Super Flu Spreads Across UK as Hospitals Lose Nearly 13,000 Beds to ‘Bed-Blocking’ Patients
    Schools battling flu outbreaks have closed; officials urge the sick to skip Christmas, MPs call for emergency vaccines.’

    So I take it that the government’s idea to just let it sweep through the population to get it over with and done for and just taking it on the chin is not working out so well. Geez, that approach worked the first time around, didn’t it?

    Reply ↓
  4. Wukchumni

    For a good many cities in Central and Northern California, the Xmas floods of 1955 were the flood of record for a century, and history looks to be repeating itself, but this time the SoCalist Movement is involved in the proceedings as something liquid this way comes…

    Reply ↓
  6. Louis Fyne

    >Trump says small cars can bring down big prices.

    If I was an autocrat, an “easy” solution would be to allow each automaker to sell 1 model of 2005-era midsize car/SUV that is exempt from current auto safety, MPG standards and sell them with a black box warning re. the exemptions (The GM Death Box!).

    But the stamping have long been recycled and the supply chain/parts base and institutional knowledge gone.

    Used EV cars are cheap. But (IMO) the long-tail of EV repairs means that those cars should only be bought by homes with the means to repair a (eg) $3000 out-of-warranty steering rack repair (Tesla) or motor failure.

    $15,000 used EV v. $15,000 gasoline Toyota, the Toyota has much lower variance for >100,000-mile repair costs

    Reply ↓
  7. Wukchumni

    The Epstein Files represent a once in a lifetime opportunity to clear out politics Council Estate Media
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    That would be my forlorn hope, but can you get there from here?

    I don’t really get it though, find out some regular Joe is watching kiddie porn and hells bells-he’s an outcast from society instantly, and of all those who do time in the all-bar motel, the only criminals a city and it’s citizenry are made aware publicly of where they are living are pedophiles who have served their time and are released, in a community near you.

    They don’t do that with murderers, you know.

    Reply ↓
  8. The Rev Kev

    ‘Joshua Hall
    @JoshHall2024
    🚨🚨 BREAKING: The Trump administration is in talks with former intelligence analyst Edward Snowden for a TOTAL AND COMPLETE PARDON as well as Snowden’s return to The United States.’

    For the love of god, Edward, don’t do it. Think of your wife and kids. Time and time again this year has proven that Trump is a liar and treacherous as well. It just came out that he was never serious about negotiations with Iran but was only helping set up an Israeli attack on that country. If Snowden lands in the US he will be arrested straight away and find himself charged with some obscure 18th or 19th century law that will mean many years in prison. You don’t see Tara Reade, who also just recently got Russian citizenship, trusting in the good graces of the US government and coming back to make a visit. As Admiral Akbar would say, “It’s a trap!”

    Reply ↓
  10. The Rev Kev

    “Organ-tuning books in English churches provide notes on a warming climate”

    Climate change data can appear in the most unlikely of places. As an example there are ship’s logbooks. For many decades you had 19th century logbooks gathering dust in archives of interest to only the odd historian. Then somebody worked out that though there are a lot of records for the weather on land, this was not the case with the oceans which cover much of the planet. In the 19th century you had thousands of ships sailing those oceans each and every year and they recorded winds, temperatures and other meteorological data. I’ve seen examples printed in 19th century newspapers after a ship arrives in port. And for a decade or more you have had volunteers digging through those old logbooks to record all that data to add to our understanding of past weather-

    https://www.arctictoday.com/how-the-secrets-of-19th-century-ships-logbooks-are-helping-scientists-understand-arctic-climate-change-today/

    How cool is that.

    Reply ↓
  11. bassmule

    re: American distaste for small cars. The U.S. has one of the highest levels of obesity when looking at the global picture, says Dr. Odegaard, adding, “My thoughts echo most others who treat or study this disease: The levels are problematic for the population on many fronts.”

    According to the WHO’s most recent data on worldwide obesity rates, 16% of adults aged 18 years and over were living with obesity in 2022.[3]
    Currently, adult obesity prevalence in the U.S. is 40.3%, with no significant difference between women (41.3%) and men (39.2%).

    https://www.forbes.com/health/weight-loss/obesity-statistics/

    Reply ↓

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