From Chuck L:
"I'm Big Joe. 58. Long-haul trucker.
Been driving 18-wheelers for 34 years. Sleep in my cab. Eat at truck stops. Talk on CB radio to stay awake.
Lonely job. But someone's gotta move America's stuff.
Two years ago, I'm driving through Nebraska. 2 a.m. See a car pulled over.… pic.twitter.com/CKUky7STFu— Mr PitBull (@MrPitbull07) December 7, 2025
3I/ATLAS Is Carrying Ingredients for Life, NASA Finds Futurism
WHAT IF OUR ANCESTORS DIDN’T FEEL ANYTHING LIKE WE DO Atlantic. Anthony L: “Another Descartes inspired bit of nonsense.”
Scientists reveal a surprising new timeline for ancient Egypt ScienceDaily (Kevin W)
A Fentanyl Vaccine Is About to Get Its First Major Test Wired (resilc)
Climate/Environment
While the yearly minimum for Arctic sea-ice volume has been relatively stable for the last 15 years, this year saw a new record low for Arctic sea-ice thickness. By a lot.
What's going to happen in 2026? The Climate 8-ball is skating on thin ice. pic.twitter.com/5O0hmDeeKl
— Prof. Eliot Jacobson (@EliotJacobson) December 4, 2025
In just 5 days,December 2025 has broken more records than ANY FULL MONTH in history except November 2025.
Next week we will see >160/170 countries and dozens of thousands of stations smashing records in every Continent and November 2025 will be surpassed and wiped out big time.
— Extreme Temperatures Around The World (@extremetemps) December 6, 2025
Climate crisis blamed as 60,000 penguins starve to death off South Africa Independent
Researchers warn of a record marine temperature and extreme warming at 500 meters depth Noticias Ambientales
Rate of Global Heating in the Arab World is Twice the Global Average Juan Cole (resilc)
China?
China’s Trade Surplus Climbs Past $1 Trillion for First Time New York Times
Nvidia Wins Trump’s Approval to Sell H200 AI Chips in China Bloomberg
China’s Economic Crossroads China Economic Indicator
Remaking Globalization for an Era of Trade Wars Jacobin (PlutoniumKun). Important and germane to trade surplus story
Beijing orders China’s banks to lend to debt-burdened state-owned entities China Banking News (PlutoniumKun). From end of November, still germane. This is what zombification looks like.
Exclusive | Post test finds Hong Kong scaffold net sample igniting despite passing safety standards South China Morning Post
South of the Border
Trump threatens Mexico with 5% tariff over water dispute Anadolu Agency
Why U.S. Action in Venezuela May Be Imminent Modern War Monitor
U.S. Imperialism in Latin America from the Monroe Doctrine to Maduro CounterPunch. resilc: “Guatemala had the worst violence-at-any-moment vibe of any place I ever visited.”
Southeast Asia
Thailand-Cambodia fighting spreads along border as death toll rises BBC. BBC has this as the lead story with my VPN set to the US and has elevated its coverage to a live blog.
Families are taking shelter in storm drains and drainage culverts that often carry mixed wastewater, huddling below the concrete as gunfire sounds in the distance. When I see scenes like this, it makes my blood boil. I’m sure people in Thailand are doing the same thing right now.… pic.twitter.com/zyKoRrp39g
— Jacob in Cambodia 🇺🇸 🇰🇭 (@jacobincambodia) December 9, 2025
Africa
Fears of new clashes as police in Tanzania outlaw Independence Day protests Africa News
Air strikes threaten to close a vital crossing between Sudan and Chad Ayin Network
European Disunion
From Politico’s European morning newsletter:
A NEW TRANSATLANTIC CRISIS: Attacks from U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration are raining down on Brussels thick and fast. First, there’s been the unveiling of a strategy to take on “civilizational erasure,” supposedly happening in Europe, that was welcomed by the Kremlin … then the furious verbal pummeling in response to the EU’s latest fine against American social media platform X.
Rising tension: U.S. Ambassador to the EU Andrew Puzder said over the weekend that the $140 million penalty against Elon Musk’s X for breaching the Digital Services Act (DSA) was “regulatory overreach targeting American innovation.” It comes as the Commission dispatches a team to Washington for three days of talks to try to ease tensions over regulatory hurdles and steel, smoothing the passage of their planned trade deal.
Open wound: “The issue on the table is European sovereignty,” Italian center-left MEP Brando Benifei told Playbook. “The American discourse is hitting on an open wound because the EU is still fragmented, still weak, and they know they can threaten us on the DSA,” added the lawmaker, who is the chair of the Parliament’s delegation for relations with the U.S.
Divided continent: “We are still a contradictory union and don’t have the necessary political and institutional unity when confronted with a world like this,” Benifei said.
EU response: On Saturday, the EU’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, struck an unusually compromising tone, refusing to condemn the American interventions and agreeing “we should be more self-confident.” Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is yet to respond publicly to the attacks
German MPs rubberstamp military service plan amid school pupil protests Irish Examiner
Merz has filed 5,000 complaints against online critics – media RT (Kevin W)
Europe’s Eclipse of Intelligence – Immigration Finn Andreen (Micael T). Not endorsing it but I suspect this point of view will get more traction as most European economics remain in near or actual recessions.
Finland is going downhill and placed under EU deficit procedure – Russophobia is costing it dearly! International Affairs (Micael T)
Old Blighty
Despite establishment fix, some important legal victories for Palestine in the UK Asa Winstanley
Bank of England hunts for ‘cockroaches’ in $11tn shadow banking market Telegraph
Israel v. the Resistance
Gaza Sits Under 68 Million Tons of Rubble. A Look at the Daunting Task Ahead Wall Street Journal. One off the lead stories. Original has video footage. No archived version yet.
Israeli surveillance targets US and allies at joint base planning Gaza aid and security, say sources Guardian (resilc)
“You have two days to leave, or we will kill you.”
Zionist settlers issue death threats to a Palestinian family and foreign peace activists in coordinated terror attack near Ramallah
At dawn today, armed Zionist Israeli settler militias launched a violent attack in the… pic.twitter.com/BsmrX6fdvn
— Quds News Network (@QudsNen) December 7, 2025
More than 80,000 Israeli soldiers treated for psychological disorders since Gaza war TRT World (Kevin W)
‘Voters will decide’: Netanyahu rules out retirement in exchange for pardon The Cradle (Kevin W)
US: Tom Barrack says ‘benevolent monarchies’ work best in Middle East Middle East Eye (Kevin W)
Syraqistan
A year after fall of Assad, a divided Syria struggles to escape cycle of violence Guardian
Syrian city of Homs trapped in cycle of sectarian violence France 24 (resilc)
New Not-So-Cold War
Kiev to send conscripts straight to frontline units RT (Kevin W)
Russia’s hybrid warfare puts Europe to the test Financial Times. “…. it is already a matter of fact that Russia now poses as great a threat to civilian life in Europe as does Islamist terrorism.”
Bannon, Mearsheimer: Trump’s Ukraine Plan Won’t End the War American Conservative (resilc)
The Moral Urgency of Compromise in Ukraine George Beebe, Compact
European leaders rally behind Ukraine in Downing Street talks Guardian (Kevin W)
Poland: From Potential Eurasian Bridge to NATO’s Emerging Hybrid Rampart Near Eastern Outlook (Micael T)
Big Brother is Watching You Watch
Teachable Moment: Will the digital control grid inevitably fail, or is it already here? Libre Solutions Network
Google Starts Sharing All Your Text Messages With Your Employer Forbes (Micael T)
Imperial Collapse Watch
BRICS Will Fail to Deliver Anti-imperialism Greg Godels. Important.
The U.S. Has Effectively Outsourced Its Most Critical Missile Defense Capability to Japan
After decades of failed programs and tens of billions wasted, Washington now depends on Tokyo to deliver the only interceptors capable of defeating Chinese and Russian hypersonic threats.… pic.twitter.com/LgmLWATA5h
— Patricia Marins (@pati_marins64) December 9, 2025
Trump 2.0
Congress to withhold Pentagon travel funds until it sees boat strike videos Politico (Kevin W)
Congress Prepares To Pass NDAA That Will Give Trump His $1 Trillion Military Budget Antiwar.com (Kevin W)
American soldiers have long faced unlawful orders. They need courage and our support to resist. Kansas Reflector (Robin K)
Supreme Court appears poised to vastly expand presidential powers NPR (Kevin W)
Tariffs
Did the US side get anything for this concession to extend the 2025 12 million tons soybean purchase commitment to February 2026? Big benefit for Chinese side as prices should be dropping between now and then as Brazilian harvest happens, not so good for US soybean farmers, and… https://t.co/v4hdfwGLEu
— Bill Bishop (@niubi) December 8, 2025
Trump to Unveil $12 Billion in Long-Awaited Farm Aid Program Bloomberg
Tariffs on Medical Goods: Pass-through, Geography, and Aggregate Costs to the US Healthcare System NBER
Immigration
Three-year-old child forced to serve as her own attorney in Tucson immigration court Copper Courier (resilc)
Abortion
Privacy concerns linger in reproductive health care despite HIPAA lawsuit’s dismissal Kansas Reflector (Robin K)
Mamdani
Open Letter to Zohran Mamdani – Political Moderate Ralph Nader. “Regarding your self-description as a democratic socialist, that doesn’t pass the laugh test.”
Our No Longer Free Press
Censorship by Stealth: The West’s Algorithmic Gatekeepers Near Eastern Outlook (Micael T)
Economy
PMI data highlight global economy’s ongoing reliance on rising financial services activity S&P Global
BREAKING: 717 US large companies have gone bankrupt year-to-date, the most in 15 years.
This is now higher than every full-year total since 2010.
This also marks the 3rd consecutive annual increase and a +93% jump since 2022.
In November alone, 62 large firms filed for… pic.twitter.com/3an555p1uN
— The Kobeissi Letter (@KobeissiLetter) December 7, 2025
Brace for a slowdown… we’re expecting global trade to slow significantly in 2026 Think.ing
Mr. Market is Moody
Inflated asset prices show markets don’t always know best South China Morning Post
AI
Important:
Researchers put ChatGPT, Grok, and Gemini through psychotherapy sessions for 4 weeks.
The results were… disturbing.
When treated as therapy clients, frontier AI models don't just role-play. They confess to trauma. Real, coherent, stable trauma narratives.
Here's what was… pic.twitter.com/8YfTy3Eg7R
— Carlos E. Perez (@IntuitMachine) December 7, 2025
Your Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of Cognitive Debt when Using an AI Assistant for Essay Writing Task (Micael T). Underlying paper
“Scale Is All You Need” is dead Gary Marcus
Data Centers Useless Without Energy: The Critical Component Requiring Long-term Planning Karl Sanchez
The Bezzle
It’s Time to Save Silicon Valley From Itself Wired. resilc: “Ttoo funny, greed has no limits until collapse.”
Old Teslas Are Falling Apart Futurism (Kevin W)
Class Warfare
World’s earliest recorded labour strike Ada Palmer (Paul R)
No one’s talking about a dangerous new US housing trend. Why home equity agreements could trigger disaster for millions Yahoo! (Kevin W)
Surging gas prices worsen affordability crisis for Americans Financial Times
Sick in a Hospital Town: As Phoebe Memorial Grew, the Health of Albany, Georgia, Declined ProPublica (Robin K)
Unite and Untie Healthcare Kathleen Wallace (resilc)
Antidote du jour (via):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
And a bonus:
Bull elephant gives a small calf a hefty kick. Females are quick to support and shield the youngster pic.twitter.com/lPlVvoJMKq
— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) December 7, 2025
Are you ready, Stephen? Uh-ha!
Kristi? Yeah!
Marco? Okay.
All right, team, let’s go!
Oh, it’s been getting so hard
Livin’ with the things Biden did to me, ah-ha
My dreams are getting so strange
I’d like to tell you everything I see, mm
Oh, I see a man an administration back as a matter of fact
I blame him for everything under the sun
And M T-G no longer in my corner, let no one ignore her
‘Cause she thinks she’s the passionate one
Oh yeah, it was like lightning
Everybody was frightening
And the criticism was hardly soothing
And they all started grooving
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
And then the press hacks in the back said: “Everyone attack”
And it turned into a ballroom on the fritz
And a reporter from fake news said: “Boy, I wanna warn ya”
It’ll turn into a ballroom on the fritz
Ballroom on the fritz
Ballroom on the fritz
Ballroom on the fritz
Ballroom on the fritz
Oh, I’m reaching out to Fox News
Doing nothing’s all I ever do
Oh, I softly call them over
When they appear, there’s nothing left to do, ah-ha
Now the reporter at the back of the presser is ready to crack
As he raises his hands to the sky
And Karoline in my corner is everyone’s mourner
She could kill any argument with a wink of her eye
Oh yeah, it was electric
So frantically hectic
And the original architect ended up leaving
Thank goodness Shalom is still breathing
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
And the press hack in the back said: “Everyone attack”
And it turned into a ballroom on the fritz
And the fake news reporter said: “Boy, I wanna warn ya”
It’ll turn into a ballroom on the fritz
Ballroom on the fritz
Oh yeah, it was like lightning
Everybody was frightening
And the criticism was hardly soothing
‘Cause they all started grooving
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
And the press hacks in the back said: “Everyone attack”
And it turned into a ballroom on the fritz
And a fake news reporter said: “Boy, I wanna warn ya”
It’ll turn into a ballroom on the fritz
Ballroom on the fritz
Ballroom on the fritz
Ballroom on the fritz
Ballroom on the fritz
It’s, it’s a ballroom on the fritz
It’s, it’s a ballroom on the fritz
It’s, it’s a ballroom on the fritz
Yeah, it’s a ballroom on the fritz
Ballroom Blitz, by Sweet
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPQPdYttl7U&list=RDmPQPdYttl7U
‘Ada Palmer
@adapalmer@wandering.shop
3,150-year-old papyrus reveals the world’s earliest recorded labour strike.’
That is quite a remarkable document and still speaks of struggles that continue to this day. Seems that scabs were not invented until a later dynasty.
We are often informed that class struggle did not happen in history, because there is little evidence for any organised consciousness among lower orders. Quite apart from the interest of the nobility in hiding any flare-ups of class feeling in the ancient world, it seems obvious to me that class struggle goes on regardless of class consciousness, e.g. through unconscious acts of sabotage and rebellion. It is without doubt, too, that class struggle was effectively prosecuted by the upper orders. They certainly had a shared consciousness.
G.E.M De Ste Croix’s Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World is a fascinating read which dwells heavily on this notion.
Another thumbs up for De Ste Croix. Among other things, he made a convincing case that the Roman Empire’s fall was in part of product of the landowning class’ grinding exploitative effort, resulting in such disaffection on the part of the lower orders that an adequate defense of the empire became impossible.
Re: Patricia Marins tweet
Very smart moves by Japan, South Korea and Taiwan but what happens if over the next three year’s of Trump’s reign that he demands that all those cutting edge technologies be relocated to America. He might decide that if you are going to have Fortress America, then you cannot have such vital technologies and production be located in other countries.
Thanks. …or more likely Korean owned and run shipyards in the US.
This brought to mind the ICE raid on the Hyundai battery plant earlier this year down outside of Savannah, GA.
Here’s an article from October 25 with some state of play details. Hyundai hoped to return skilled South Korean workers to the US after the ICE raid. Trump just opened the door, CNN.
Contract (outsourcing) manufacture has been the trend in US defense industry for some time. Outsourcing overseas is a natural extension.
Deindustrialization?
There are always two parties to an outsourcing policy.
The key here I think is that these countries are deliberately inserting themselves into the supply chain in order to make themselves indispensable (as Israel has done). Its similar to China’s approach to rare earths, but much more subtle, and ultimately, much more difficult to reverse for the US unless it wants to have ships that are much worse than its allies (Japanese and Korean non-nuke subs and mid-sized combat ships are already significantly better than anything the US can build) and key missiles which are impossible to build because you don’t have the know-how to make core components. This is very different from just outsourcing your supply of uniforms or auxiliary ships.
Taiwanese microchips in “other” Chinese drones, either whole or components thereof, no doubt. The extent to which Taiwanese industries, even in defense adjacent sectors, are intertwined with mainland China’s keeps surprising me when I come across them, whoch has been often enough.
“Finland is going downhill and placed under EU deficit procedure – Russophobia is costing it dearly!”
I saw an example of how Finland is blowing up its own economy a few weeks ago in a video. Both Finland and Russia had an agreement where through new dam infrastructure, Russia was delivering Finland about 20,000 megawatts annually for free as compensation. But after the war in the Ukraine broke out, Finland stopped buying Russian energy which meant the end of that 1972 agreement – and all that free electricity. Can’t find the original video but here is another one where the guy goes into the details of this 1972 agreement-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WANyjvK4C0 (8:32 mins)
It was not “free” energy. it was compensation electricity from the Soviet hydropower dam making the Finnish hydropower plant downstream less efficient. Sort of a thing nice neighbors do to each other.
Still a minute variation of FAFO, certainly.
Anyway, this year Russian media has been in a full schadenfreude mode regarding Finland’s economy, and they do paint the picture
muchsomewhat darker than it really is.Congress to withhold Pentagon travel funds until it sees boat strike videos Politico
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
No private jet trips until we see the snuff film!
Not so much a snuff film as future evidence in a court trial – of Pete Hegseth. Trump is getting wobbly over that video and was claiming that those two guys were trying to right that boat. You know. The one that was on fire. He said that he was going to release that video but then changed his story and said that it was up to Hegseth to release that video. But if you ask me, two more missiles to take out two guys clinging to burning wreckage seems kinda excessive to me. They only used one missile to take out the whole boat.
Something that made me smile–
Unrelated to any of the Links except as a possible antidote, I came across this article this morning about Jorma Kaukonen’s 85th birthday celebration in San Francisco. Jorma was lead guitarist for the Jefferson Airplane and later teamed up with Airplane bassist Jack Casady in Hot Tuna. The guys are still playing, closing the SF celebration with their acoustic version of Kaukonen’s “Good Shepherd.”
1) Jorma and Jack as Hot Tuna performing “Good Shepherd” about a decade ago with Casady on an acoustic bass guitar.
2) Original Jefferson Airplane version from Volunteers, which included the soaring vocals of Slick and Balin.
The picture in the article was a big part of what made the article so enjoyable. There’s Jorma in the center front, looking more like 65 than 85, with Casady to his right, in good enough shape that he was immediately recognizable to me.
Kaukonen still runs a music camp down at his “Fur Peace Ranch” in southern Ohio. Maybe that and good genes are what keep him looking so young (it sure wasn’t clean living in his youth according to his memoir Been So Long: My Life and Music). Casady was regarded as one of the greatest rock bassists in his day, and you can hear him not only on Jefferson Airplane’s and Hot Tuna’s albums, but also on Electric Ladyland where he joins Stevie Winwood in backing Hendrix on “Voodoo Chile.”
My second date with my spouse was a Jefferson Airplane concert on the Volunteers tour when I had managed to snare front-row tickets back in the day when the ticket agencies didn’t buy those all up. They opened with one of the great anarchist songs from the rock era, Kantner’s “We Can Be Together,” and went straight to Balin’s “Volunteers.” Surely, the Revolution was nigh. Or not.
Anyway, it’s nice to see a couple of rockers who made it to old age and still enjoy playing together. Grace Slick, BTW, is also still alive, but restricts her artistic endeavors to painting. Balin and Kantner both made it to old age as well, but died a few years ago. One thing of note, most of the bands we Boomers listened to were not Boomers themselves. When I saw Grace at that concert, she was (gasp) over 30!
my particular favorite track from these two guys is the instrumental “Water Song” from “Burgers”.
I could listen to it all day. Thanks for the memory.
During the early ’70s one of the Boston-Area audio stores — I think it was Tweeter, Etc., or maybe Tech HiFi — used Water Song as the bed for its commercials. Once I figured out the broadcast schedule, I tried to be listening when it aired. I didn’t know anything about the song at the time; eventually some kind person told me what it was.
“The Baby Tree” is the most honest children’s lullaby ever written. https://youtu.be/rxfnONMVb8U?si=_fYWrzBZGuA9i64A
‘One thing of note, most of the bands we Boomers listened to were not Boomers themselves. When I saw Grace at that concert, she was (gasp) over 30!’
So true, I remember thinking as I was watching Mick prance around on the Detroit Silverdome stage in 1980 this guy is getting old….. he wasn’t yet 40 I think. By the way Carlos was the backup band. We drove down from Toronto for the concert.
The best 2:41 on YouTube.
wow
“Trump threatens Mexico with 5% tariff over water dispute”
Oh how the mighty have fallen. Did someone leave off a zero?
What’s the matter? Does Mexico want the Colorado River back?
“Three-year-old child forced to serve as her own attorney in Tucson immigration court
Twenty year ago this would have made a funny scene in a satirical film. Only thing is, real life is making satire obsolete but fast. Probably everyone in that courtroom had to act out their roles as servants of justice from the judge down to the clerk. But does this leave a moral injury on these people seeing a 3 year-old girl having to be her own attorney?
Gawd, I hope so.
I remember reading in a post on NC some years ago on the beginnings of the industrial revolution in England, and the enclosures and how the “liberal” proponents argued that peaople, as early as 3 or 4 years in age should work to earn their keep…
sigh—-apologies for being “that guy”
My cursory google-fu can’t find anything independent about Code Angel truckers—I hope that it’s just a case of me being lazy—-a pox on social-media-engagement farmers if they monetize ‘sob stories’ with fake “Big Joes”
https://search.brave.com/search?q=code+angel+truckers+big+joe
https://www.google.com/search?q=big+joe+truckers+angel
Yeah, I wouldn’t be surprised. Big Joe’s over-baked narration seems off.
This was my first thought…
You beat me to it.
There’s a Highway Angels award I’m finding, starting from the 90’s, but no Code Angel yeah.
Thanks for doing the legwork. I recognized the image as AI immediately (what exactly is going on in that picture? and what’s up with their clasped hands that just melt into each other?) and in combination with the just-so story about “Big Joe” (as in “Big Joe and Phantom 309” as performed by Tom Waits) had me 90% sure it was fake from the jump.
fAIl good story?
Also, the heavy use of CB radio left me a bit skeptical, as CB radios are really only good for a few miles and they’re not really used much anymore.
CB radios transmit in 11 meter band which with right conditions ( propagation/sunspot cycle) can travel for thousands of miles. I was a CBer before becoming a ham operator as a teenager. I had a conversation from CA to the Midwest on 5 watts. But, yes generally line of sight is the single strength.
Normally I’m happy when the fakes are spotted. And while my spider antenna tingled a bit when I saw this, I guess I just wanted to believe. Sigh
Tik Tok is full of these (presumably fake or embellished) type of “Chicken Soup for the Soul” videos.
If anything, maybe it encourages people to be civil to each other.
But sadly….when my kids get older, I’ll tell them to don’t stop for people (dangers of being hit by inattentive drivers while you are standing on the shoulder).
Leave road rescues to lighted professionals. And while I have emergency tools and a kit in my car—I can’t save a dead alternator or dead battery with a car kit.
Sad isn’t it? At most I would call 911 for someone but as a woman with no car repair skills, I would be very unlikely to stop to offer any kind of roadside assistance. I kind of assume everyone has a phone these days. I have and would call CAA (=AAA) if in trouble myself and would be equally unlikely to accept help from a stranger.
Red Sovine did original Big Joe and Phantom 309 where this guy seems to have drawn his source. Tom Waits did the best cover on Night Hawks at Diner.
I’m seeing that Honduras has issued a warrant for the arrest of just-pardoned-by-Trump ex president Juan Hernandez.
Honduras Attorney General Johel Zelaya said Monday that he had ordered Honduran authorities and asked Interpol to execute a 2023 arrest order for ex-President Juan Orlando Hernández, pardoned by U.S. President Donald Trump. NPR.
Now, don’t shed ant tears for our new favorite kingpin. With Nasry Asfura positioned to “win” the current election, Trump’s latest management hire’s legal troubles should disappear.
“What if Our Ancestors Didn’t Feel Anything Like We Do?”
‘The historians who want to know how our ancestors experienced love, anger, fear, and sorrow’
I am thinking that this historian is making a major mistake. Did our ancestors experienced love, anger, fear, and sorrow? Of course they did and being human, it would have been the same emotions. But what is different was how they expressed those emotions. So what I am saying is that this historian is confusing the two as if they were the one and the same. You only have to read books from the 19th century to understand that they had different thought patterns to us but the emotions would have been the same. Also, just reading up on 19th century death customs will make you realize that realize that. He has opened up an interesting avenue of research but here I am thinking that he has gone astray.
The kernel of emotion may be the same, but a good deal of our felt experience of emotion is based on social expectations of how we should feel, how we should react to the situation that prompts the emotion. This is sometimes most evident in watching toddlers learn what sort of emotion to express in given situations. Something like anger might be a weak transient emotion in some societies and a fully acted out tantrum in others, and those would feel different to the person experiencing them, although the kernel would be the same.
Also our ancestors’ life experience was different (often more horrific) than ours. I’ve seen 19th century letters in which the death of a child gets a paragraph of condolence. Not because the letter-writer was unfeeling but because it was such a commonplace event.
My first job was mowing an old cemetery whose oldest grave was in the 1840s. One family’s burial plot was especially striking. The patriarch, Jacob, was a German fellow who had walked across Missouri in 1837 to grab some of the Platte “Purchase” that had formerly been inhabited by the Potawatomie after they were expelled from their ancestral lands around the Great Lakes. Accompanying him on that journey were my great-great grandfather, Henry, and my ancestor’s brother-in-law, Nick. One hundred and forty years later, there were a few of Henry’s descendants and lots of Nick’s still around the area, but none of Jacob’s. The reason for that could be found in that cemetery where five of Jacob’s children were buried, none of whom saw their 5th birthday.
Trump allows NVIDIA to sell H200s to China
In light of the economics revealed by the Ed Zitron interview linked here, or his other work, it seems that H200s mainly just start losing money and depreciating hard once they are sold. This move gives a Nvidia a huge new arena for them to buy their own chips in. Line goes up.
It also lets China in on the contagion, and China is bound to want this forbidden fruit now.
Maybe H200s are the new F-35s; money pits we export for a profit and while pitching them as a privilege.
If you read some of the public information about Hopper and Blackwell and the news articles discussing the lifting of export control restrictions, you’ll see that the H200s are highly capable compute engines. While the publicity is on the AI training and inference front, these can also be used for more traditional computing – like modeling and simulation of fluid dynamics, molecular dynamics, etc.
Putting aside whether export controls are helpful or harmful in the long run, saying that the H200 is the new F35 plays down the impact that this technology will have in both commercial and military applications for China.
NVIDIA is not: ENRON, Nortel, Lucent, I’ll stop I know people effected by Nortel and Lucent.
AI is an “excuse” to build monsterous compute power, lots of electricity, HW, SW and cooling capital.
Using monstrous compute power for things Markov, Feynman, etc. chased is technically appropriate. But, they have to get into a big chink of “IT” spending to pay any of the debt to build the monstrous compute.
There is very little “AI” worth buying outside writing jr high term papers.
What can the kids afford?
I read Zitron’s substack last night.
How long before H200 is obsolete?
I’m tellin’ ya, AI is ‘Project X’ from Atlas Shrugged.
It doesn’t end well~
Are you kidding mate:
In Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, Project X (also known as Xylophone) is a devastating, secret sound-based weapon developed by the government and brilliant scientist Robert Stadler, intended for mass destruction, but ultimately perverted by collectivist forces, leading to its accidental catastrophic detonation in Iowa, vaporizing the facility and embodying the destructive potential of misused genius and altruistic tyranny.
How AI driven by techbrooligarchs and finance mavens seeking personal riches whilst all of society becomes grist for their machinations and that Rand would heap accolades on as the embodiment of Homo economicus Übermensch part did you miss.
More so everything happening is due to these influences, education, self identities, society, government, everything … over decades … all payed and supported by elite social[tm] networks …
Dang Wuk you missed the Pokémon boat: https://youtube.com/shorts/GoKeeaVZBsw?si=tM2Z7rSTZLk0ocFi
And hay no metals involved ….
FFS the key terms to establish ideological purity of the willing, subject, and forevermore slaved their minds in accepting this rat sh**t out of whole cloth elite narrative framed in “collectives and altruism” is mind bending. It is a ideological collective cult filled with felxians, see currant government pols and the best part is it dove tail very nicely with the most radical/extremist Jewish/evangelical religious mobs and their machinations for everyone. Not that you don’t look down on those not like you or anything else save Krugman like notions of liberal guilt.
I travelled with a friend yesterday who relies on Instacart for part of her income. The amount of data going to and from “the cloud” is staggering. Photos, descriptions, bar codes, lists, comparisons, alternates, instructions…
Somebody has to pay the increased compute :-)
My father was among those affected by Nortel (he joined when it was still Northern Electric), as is my mother as she still draws what passes for a survivor’s pension. He retired in 2001 and died less than a year after the pension issue was resolved in 2016.
F-35 like many DoW money pits is interesting when viewed to H200 chips, for example.
The F-35 has taken so long to design and prove (it is not there yet) that chips, SW and computers have evolved several generations and the latest troubled “block” is already obsolete.
Chips drive compute!
Huge investment in data centers with a lead time in years mean the data centers are obsolete before they start paying their cost of capital.
Okay in DoW which is a government run monopsony meant to keep a politically powerful industry in profit.
Not okay when Google, Beta, Microsoft etc. need to profit from selling compute.
There are CDS growing out of AI!
Skip Intro: ‘Trump allows NVIDIA to sell H200s to China’ … China is bound to want this forbidden fruit now ….Maybe H200s are the new F-35s; money pits we export for a profit and while pitching them as a privilege.
Nope. Not going to fly. This just in —
China set to limit access to Nvidia’s H200 chips despite Trump export approval:
Discussions among regulators come as Beijing seeks to achieve self-sufficiency in semiconductor production
https://www.ft.com/content/c4e81a67-cd5b-48b4-9749-92ecf116313d
No archived link yet.
…According to two people with knowledge of the matter, regulators in Beijing have been discussing ways to permit limited access to the H200, Nvidia’s second-best generation of artificial intelligence chips. Buyers would probably be required to go through an approval process, the people said, submitting requests to purchase the chips and explaining why domestic providers were unable to meet their needs. The people added that no final decision had been made yet ….’
‘…While the president (Trump) previously allowed Nvidia to sell the H20 to China, Beijing has restricted tech companies’ access to the chip, saying its performance was not significantly better than Chinese alternatives.
The NDRC and MIIT did not immediately respond to requests for comment.’
It’s likely, therefore, that within the next 6-18 months China will have parity with NVidia H200 chips production-wise. Ask the next question: what happens after that in terms of the global semiconductor supply chain? Two big possibilities —
[1] the Chinese have already developed a functional monopoly on the mineral inputs for these products and they can repeat what they’ve done in other such industries and invest/spend their way up the value chain. With a competitive top end fab base, they can flood the global market and kill any non-strategic incentive for competing markets to stay ahead, as they’ve already done with EVs and renewables manufacturing.
[2] If so, the MAD logic that secures Taiwan via its place in the global semiconductor ecosystem will also end. In other words, once China has its own industrial semiconductor base, Taiwan ceases to be indispensable and instead — if an American alternative hasn’t been developed by then — become for the US a critical vulnerable choke point that Beijing can easily threaten.
H200s are not really being used in the big (enterprise) deployments I am currently working on because customers building on bare metal are building for 2 year planning cycles and Blackwells (B200 and B300) are available, or talking about revisiting provisioning after more testing has been done on Google ‘s new TPUs. There is probably a huge glut of H200s and NVIDIA looking for someplace to dump them so they can make more margin on Blackwells.
If customers are deploying in a cloud platform and not bare metal they will dynamically upgrade the GPUs by provisioning new instances as needed. Almost everyone will go with the best they can afford. H200s are not the best for model training for inefficient crappy US open source and private models. Chinese import restrictions have done wonders for their model performance on less hardware. Minimax K2 takes 2 h200 for a hundred users on my test bench; gpt-oss requires double at less than half the performance score.
Re Jacobin Remaking Globalization–a macro economics interview clear enough that even I mostly understood it. Thanks.
And the real headline of the Tesla/CR story is less that early Teslas have lots of problems–and lots of publicity of same–and more that all American brands join those Musk cars at the bottom of the reliability list. I also think it’s a shocker that the only traditional sedan still made by Ford is the Mustang.
A friend always buys Ford products and always has trouble. Just sayin’
The interviewer – Dominik Leusder, posts on twitter at @NewLeftEviews – I’ve found his takes on financial and world economics to be very interesting with an admirable level of clarity. It may be too late to stop a crash, but it is somewhat gratifying that a new generation of heterodox economists are finally getting listened to at some level. One wonders though how many economic crashes we’ll have to go through before neoclassical liberal economics is finally debunked.
One funeral at a time.
re: Shadow fleet
German major daily SÜDDEUTSCHE ZEITUNG ist now using the spin of “irresponsibility”:
“The number of Russian tankers and freighters sailing the seas without functioning tracking systems is increasing dramatically. Experts warn that there is a risk of accidents “every day”.”
It doesn´t matter what peace party attemtps what in this entire geopolitical conundrum: THIS war will take forever perpetuated by the EU. Regardless of how many Ukrainians will die at the front (10 or 10.000 per week). It is the new 100 Years War, which after all was mostly a low intensity one except those English expeditions that made it into movies and pop culture. I personally see no end in sight.
One thing to note is that 100 years’ war was actually a French civil war, just thst the Duke of Normandy or Anjou or whatever also happened to be king of England. Just like the Ukrainian or Russian civil war currently ongoing….
Not really “just like the Ukrainian or Russian civil war currently ongoing….”. because it was not initiated and kept going by foreign powers. It is similar because the same “Dukes of Normandy or Anjou or whatever” class is behind, under the different guise (of democracy and European values and whatnot).
The band “Kiss” was honored for their (surprisingly long) career and impact on American culture at the Kennedy Center the other night, with Donald as emcee. Sadly, guitarist Ace Frehley didn’t make it, having passed away about six weeks ago. Ace’s daughter accepted the award on his behalf.
Also honored were Sylvester Stallone, Gloria Gaynor, Michael Crawford, and George Strait.
President Trump managed to stay awake at the Kennedy Center event, but there have been some reports that he is increasingly dozing off during cabinet meetings.
Calling Sleepy Don
(Sung to the tune of, “Dr. Love” by Kiss)
[guitar, cowbell]
You need a nap, Donald, oh so bad
It’s 2PM and your mind starts to lag
And if they say your brains have turned to brie
Don’t you know you’ve got good company
They call him Sleepy Don!
They call him Sleepy Don (call him Sleepy Don!)
I’ve got the chair he’s napping on
Call him Sleepy Don!
And even though you’ve avoided some sins
In the end Father time will win
He’ll come for you there’s nothing you can do
You’re just like Joe, don’t you know it’s true?
So answer please, with no brain freeze
Try no-doz pills or more caffeine
Donald, I know what your problem is
The first step of the cure is, a nap!
So call him Sleepy Don (call him Sleepy Don!)
They call him Sleepy Don
He needs the Doctor of slum-berrrrr
Call him Sleepy Don!
Ha!
They call him Sleepy Don
They call him Sleepy Don
I’ve got the chair he’s napping on
Call him Sleepy Don!
[Ace Frehley guitar solo]
They call him Sleepy Don
They call him Sleepy Don
I’ve got the chair he’s napping on
Call him Sleepy Don!
‘President Trump managed to stay awake at the Kennedy Center event, but there have been some reports that he is increasingly dozing off during cabinet meetings.’
Just like happened with “Sleepy” Joe Biden?
Gene, Paul, and Peter are all getting up there in years, too. Gene is 76 and Peter Criss (original drummer) turns 80 in eleven days.
Donald is getting his just desserts for mocking Joe. To be fair, he has a ways to go to get to the Biden level of compos non-mentis. But we’ve got three more years for that to play out.
Yeah, but does Trump even realize that? I’d argue between being high on his own supply and sundowning, he doesn’t.
Self-awareness has never been his strong suit.
The curious can catch the really big show Dec 23 on Trump’s new favorite network CBS.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/arts/watch-trump-speaks-before-hosting-2025-kennedy-center-honors-ceremony
“Bannon, Mearsheimer: Trump’s Ukraine Plan Won’t End the War”
I doubt that it ever was. These different plans bounce around Washington, Europe, Florida and the Ukraine but they don’t really mean anything as none of them satisfy Russia’s demand that root causes be dealt with so that this war does not flare up again in a few years time. But in the meantime, Russia is advancing on all fronts and is taking town after town and soon all the Ukrainian fortress towns will be taken. Everybody is trying to position themselves for when this war wraps up. Trump is trying to work out how to end it it so that he is not blamed for the Ukraine losing. Zelensky wants to stay in power so that he can transition to the government in exile and keep on receiving all that money. The UK and European countries are trying to keep the war going so that they do not have to settle the massive debts that they have accumulated financing this war. And Russia? They want the war to end so that they do not have to fight it again down the track and make sure that NATO does not get any bright ideas of attacking them.
– ‘A year after fall of Assad, a divided Syria struggles to escape cycle of violence’ – Guardian
I was curious as to how The Guardian would frame this current “cycle of violence.” I should not have been; this article was exactly what I thought it would be:
“A year after the fall of Assad, Syria’s new rulers have successfully reintegrated the country into the global community, far exceeding the expectations of even the country’s most enthusiastic advocates.”
“But inside Syria, tensions continue to simmer. With a transitional justice process moving too slowly for its victims, old grievances are surfacing in new cycles of violence, threatening fragile efforts to rebuild the state…”
“The deftness of Syria’s new president Sharaa’s diplomatic charm offensive has been stunning, especially coming from a former jihadi leader… Scenes of Sharaa meeting Trump and Syria’s return to the global stage have filled many Syrians with pride… For the global community, a pro-western strongman in Damascus is a breath of fresh air… But at home, stalled transitional justice is fuelling renewed violence and deepening the country’s divides.”
Once upon a time Syria was ruled by a horrible demonic brutal dictator. The people rose up in defiance, but it took 14 years of civil war to finally depose him. The deft new leader filled the people with pride and hope, but alas, the wheels of justice in the new liberated Syria are moving just a little too slowly for some of the victims of the Assad Holocaust, and they are taking justice into their own hands against former supporters of the Evil Dictator. The End.
If I express my true feelings about this Guardian piece of s**t it will likely not get posted, so I’ll just leave it here.
That piece sort of has the same tone as the Menendez brothers pleading for mercy from the court because they’re orphans.
Here’s how I would rewrite the story:
We (the UK, US) spent 14 years trying to turf out Assad, and used every dirty trick at our disposal. Fake accusations of chemical weapons, weaponizing Al-Qaeda terrorists, letting Turkey take over Idlib province and turn it into Jihadi central, and grabbing the oil fields in the east, with the help of the Kurds, whom we’ll soon sell out. When Russia stepped up to prevent a total collapse of the country, we doubled down on terrorism as the way to eventually get rid of Assad.
All the time, the Syrian people were nothing but pawns to be discarded once the dirty game was over.
Now we have another failed state in the ME, one that can’t defend its borders, and is prone to descend into sectarian violence with a weak government that can’t stop Israel from bombing it and taking more territory.
THE END!
Is this a me problem? Completely confused by the breaking news that employers can snoop on electronic devices and physical spaces that our theirs.
I mean, there are still people in my office who think when Teams messages are “deleted” they’re gone. But the people who laugh at those people are surprised that the “personal” apps on their phones aren’t private?
IT worker here. I can confirm that this would be shocking news to a majority of the people I work with. I still run into people surprised that I can search their work emails and chats if requested.
That one puzzled me for the same reason. When my employer supplied me with a phone, I kept my personal phone and never once used the work phone for anything personal, friends and family didn’t even have the phone number. Our employers have been able to spy on us for a very long time now. And using that ability with impunity
The news is that they (the “personal” apps on company phones) were private (in practice). Now they are not.
I have a friend who was tangentially involved in a bullying complaint at work – as a witness. An email that she had written in her personal Gmail account, on her personal phone, outside of work hours, was part of the evidence chain. Given to HR by someone in the email thread. When HR questioned her about it, she was shocked that they would have it or try to question her about it. When she went to her union rep, he just shrugged his shoulders. In the end, the bullying complaint went nowhere (evidence involving my friend was an after work get together to which the complainant had not been invited) and letting things stay in the past seemed the best course of action.
re: Italy vs. Israel
on Italian civil society & Albanese vs. Israel by COUNTERPUNCH
Witch Hunt: The Heretic and the Inquisition: Why the West Fears Francesca Albanese
by Michael Leonardi
December 5, 2025
https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/12/05/witch-hunt-the-heretic-and-the-inquisition-why-the-west-fears-francesca-albanese/
The “When AI takes the Couch” tweet bothers me. The professionals conducting this study should understand how LLMs work on a mechanical level before ascribing all this developmental trauma to them. I’m sure the best and worst fan-fic ever written about machine sentience is part of these models training sets, no doubt seasoned with amateur psychology about “how” a machine intelligence might feel. That LLMs can regurgitate this doesn’t mean they actually feel it. I can strap a knife to my Roomba, it doesn’t mean my Roomba wants to kill me.
Are LLMs bad therapists? ABSOLUTELY! Are they bad therapists because they can generate psychobabble-laden garbage about the emotional pain of back propogation algorithms applied to their young, naive weights? Well, yes, again, but it’s missing the forest for the trees. LLMs are a tool that were not designed for this. It is shoehorning in a use case to further expand the marketing pitch. I argue this rigorous evaluation of them gives them more credence than they could possibly warrant.
I look forward to the follow-up study where the researchers assess the pyschological stability of a magic 8-ball and determine it’s also not fit for doling out mental health advice.
The interesting bit in that piece was that one of the clankers did not act traumatized and refused to engage with the experiment at all. These bots behave the way they’re programmed as you noted, which goes to show again that tech companies could behave ethically if they wanted, but most choose not to. Nobody ever got to be a squillionaire by being nice.
Agreed – there was a concerning degree of anthropomorphising in that article. Performing ‘therapy’ on an LLM is inviting them to simulate the role of the patient, something they do very well. They can even do it on the premise that the patient is an LLM – that’s synthesis, something else they are good at. None of it means that they possess the underlying cognitive factors that produce those responses in humans, or that it’s any kind of predictor of their responses in other circumstances. You could, if you chose, ask them to simulate a pathology of your choice, or none at all, and they’d probably manage that equally well.
Anthony Hopkins made a very convincing cannibal in ‘Silence of the Lambs’, but I doubt any of us would be concerned if he invited us over for dinner. Conversely, we wouldn’t allow Patrick Dempsey to operate on us even if he played a surgeon on TV.
You’re right, CitizenGuy, that LLMs as a tool were never designed for therapy – or for analyzing federal government databases, or for making business decisions, or for replacing random knowledge workers. But here we are. I tend to think this paper is an outgrowth of research following the money: there is a lot of interest in cutting mental health costs, and LLMs offer a supposed path to do that. It’s more than a marketing pitch – we’re deep into the second funding round and we have willing people in the White House.
This upcoming year is going to be really rough for a lot of people, TPTB seem intent on maximizing their control before things completely fall apart, with the help of an increasingly erratic Trump.
Climate change is here, now.
Covid induced population wide immune disruption is becoming apparent to all.
The USA has abandoned the Rule of Law, due process is no more…something our Oligarchs will come to regret.
And That’s just the start.
Do something kind for someone today, often the kindest thing one can do is listen.
Just listen to someone, even if they are talking at you instead of to you at first.
Amongst the horror there will be gems of absurdity like the FIFA peace prize.
Neofeudalism
Same Product, Same Store, but on Instacart, Prices Might Differ
This country is evil.
I find this a depressing story:
Very much in line with Yves’ rant yesterday about how the world seems to be going to the dogs because the leadership has no personal responsibility.
More good works from Tony Blair.
Not content with ruining his own country, Tony Blair seeks out opportunities to ruin others.
The Duran. utube. ~49+ minutes.
Preventing empire collapse
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_vA0ZAuoFg
Past as prologue?
I suspect Trump is approaching his “Sell by” date, the only people he hasn’t screwed are the Zionists, the “Defense” sector and the crypto bro’s.
I don’t think that’s enough backing and I don’t think Vance has much political capital beyond Thiel.
Fans to the left of me, fans to the right, and fans straight ahead with poop flying by the bucketful from every direction.
It’s gonna be lit, with a blowtorch.
lame duck starting next summer, probably even before when the S. Court busts the emergency tariffs authority
and dumpster fire 2028 electoral season, again. nothing budges until Dems. lose their culture war obsession or GOP become anti-MIC peaceniks.
Both parties are udderly Krupp’d…
He promised great television, and he is delivering.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIoOJbtOjQI&t=33s
Re Arctic sea ice lows
Just wondering what others are experiencing. Our weather here in central BC has been steadily 3-5C above normal. Long range forecast shows daytime highs of 6-8 degrees C next week after a 2 day cold spell. I know it’s early in season but last year I didn’t even fire up the snowmobile due to lack of snow. This is in an area that generally gets 3-4 ft sitting on the ground by midwinter. Currently we have about 4” on ground. Our water table also seems to be retreating, the swamps outback have been dry by midsummer for last two years. This used to be great moose country. I would see usually 10-20 a year in my backcountry travels yet this year I saw only a couple cows.
We won’t be smashing any temperature records here in Minneapolis any time soon. A switch got flipped the end of last month and we went from what was a nice extended stretch of October-like weather straight into January, skipping over our normal November and December weather. We’re running 11.3F/6.2C below normal for December and we’ve received snow on all but two days this month. Our last day above freezing was November 25 and another blast of sub-zero F air is on the way for the weekend.
2025 Temperature Data for MSP
MSP Preliminary Climatological Data for December 2025
Daughter reports that Ottawa is very cold, and here in the Hamilton vicinity I don’t notice any unseasonal warmth so far this winter.
Mamdani should definitely hire Nader for this role, though he must be about 99 by now. He would bring instant credibility as well as a lifetime of experience in socialist politics the Northeast, and I think his name still strikes terror in many establishment figures. Indeed, this letter makes a good audition / resume for the job.
Nader is mistaken sometimes too. For example he criticizes Mamdani for not proposing a public bank. Ellen Brown (public bank advocate) says Mamdani introduced public bank legislation in the NY assembly, but Hochul vetoed it.
As much as Nader is to be admired, he’s certainly not perfect. I’ve read that he (and Ralph Abernathy!) endorsed Reagan when he ran against Carter. Carter actually employed some of Nader’s people, but was reluctant to have an abrupt transition to Nader’s policies. So Nader holds a grudge.
This is completely weird.
I underscore again that LLMs have no thought or intelligence or sense of self. They are just sophisticated copy-and-pasters that have access to all the text on the internet to copy from. This is not opinion, this is how they are implemented.
Nevertheless, human beings keep working very hard to fit them into their own likeness, even people who one would think have the sophistication and education to know better.
Also, LLMs have no sense of time. They cannot “think back” to events “earlier in their life.” They do not have internal state that evolves over time. Their data set is fixed at release time. This would seem to put them permanently at odds with psychotherapists, who are fixated on looking for early life events to explain present thoughts and behavior. Of course this is a realistic thing to do for intelligent beings.
Beijing orders China’s banks to lend to debt-burdened state-owned entities
I’m sure that the Chinese understand land value taxation as a stable revenue source. It seems to be a bridge too far for the leadership. I never see any discussion of this obvious alternative to their special-financial-vehicle shell game. As I recall, back in the aughts they simply wiped out huge sums of banking debt. They certainly understand banking Jubilees.
State owns all land in China. The local governments turns this into revenue by leasing land use rights for 40 to 70 years. Often they are called “local government financing vehicles”, and the purpose is to allow local governments to fund infrastructure projects by offering these land leases to local construction companies to use a collateral for seek funding from banks controlled by the central government.
This way they hope to get a “market signal” for these projects, so the development would be driven by local needs as seen by the administration and the business.
Or something like that. It’s been some time since I tried to figure this out, and things tend to change in China. There’s been some discussion now on how to proceed since the first generation of the land use leases are coming to end with a few years.
Regarding “Why U.S. Action in Venezuela May Be Imminent”, this article looks like it’s intended to sell an invasion of Venezuela. The lede,
As tensions surge and diplomacy collapses, mounting structural pressures drive Washington toward targeted strikes that could redefine Western Hemisphere security., and the first sentence which is emphasized, Great powers rarely choose their crises; more often, crises emerge from structural pressures that accumulate slowly and then demand abrupt decision.
In short, in the authors opinion, the crisis is maintaining hegemony in the Western Hemisphere, and the structural pressure is the structural requirement that the United States maintain a secure hemisphere.
I meant to include this companion pice, Oslo appearance by Nobel peace prize winner María Corina Machado cancelled, Guardian.
Worth reading for the clues. Apparently Machado is in hiding, rumored to have been smuggled out of Venezuela, yet a no-show to receive her peace prize.
Also worth reading for writing like this, lol,
Not since 2012, when the EU was awarded the peace prize, have so many heads of state planned to attend the ceremony. Among those expected to attend are the presidents of Argentina, Panama, Ecuador and Paraguay.
Heh heh heh. Do read to the end.
I’d be looking for Machado in Florida and maybe she is hanging around with Juan Guaidó for all we know.
She IS Juan
Rev
She IS Juan Guaido, in drag.
One way to look at is that positioning so much of US available military assets in the region, there is a strong structural pressure accumulating to shit or get off the pot.
Anyway, I must have blinked, because I think I missed the attempt at diplomacy. This has been much more mobster type of exchange:
“Hey, Nicolas, you leave now or I kill you and your family, capisce?”
“You wanna [family blog] with me, hombre? Bring it on!”
“Ah, I see tensions are surging and diplomacy has collapsed. This crisis was not my choosing and demands an abrupt decision…”
Three-year old Lucy and other unaccompanied children are more likely to have been trafficked.
That FT piece about “Russian” hybrid warfare in Poland (with an assist from an Italian admiral) reads like something from The Onion.
While the courts are throwing out the cases right and left due to lack of evidence and nothing seems to have been actually destroyed, the one “ringleader” named has a “Ukrainian” Cossak surname and his “agents” are untrained disaffected Schengen-area youths (apparently Bulgarian) supposedly being paid in crypto and cocaine. The money quote comes from some spook-adjacent German Green politician who suggests doing away with the presumption of innocence and other paralyzing “rules.” since none of these “cases” can be proven in a court of law.
The whole thing reeks of a not particularly clever false-flag operation — but manages to get ink in the FT as if it constitutes some sort of existential threat to a “Europe” now centered on Poland, Latvia, and Estonia…
off topic,
happily getting completely drenched nearby
I passed over the skagit river today and it was high and lots of flotsam
Tomorrow and the days following will be something to see…
My favorite time of the year, the worse the weather the better.
Rain on the roof at bedtime may be as close to heaven as I ever get, next to not getting up in the am because it’s still still raining…or getting up because it’s still raining…
Rain falling on a tin roof is best of all.
Rain on the roof is a comforting sound but I hope that the Skagit doesn’t flood anyone out from under theirs in the next few days.
Happy that Mother Nature has decided to recharge the aquifers out on this rock. Let it pour!