How to Build an Ingenious 400-Year-Old Swedish Torch From a Single Log Laughing Squid
Climate/Environment
Over the next week –>
Arctic Blast 1.0 and Arctic Blast 2.0 merge
into Super Arctic Blast
that will entomb the Eastern U.S. into a frigid hellscape.Temperatures 35°F to 45°F below normal will cripple 🇺🇸 east of the Mississippi.
This is all-time historic vintage cold. pic.twitter.com/zNugF2QAqo
— Ryan Maue (@RyanMaue) January 22, 2026
US Calls on Data Centers to Prepare Backup Power Ahead of Storm Bloomberg
Saw these winter storm preparation tips on another site.
Thought they would be good to post.See the entire thread.
Before the Storm tips pic.twitter.com/OGXBBzyqn5
— Rae ❤️🔥 (@FiatLuxGenesis) January 22, 2026
The trillion dollar question about the climate repricing of homes Climate Change and Your Home
Pandemics
Solving Long COVID: How Decades of HIV Research Paved the Way UCSF
Why the WHO respirator revolt could reshape global health governance Business Upturn
The US Is In For Another Bad Year of Measles Cases Wired
Analyzing How Pandemics Spread Through Cities Respiratory Therapy
Japan
Mini-Post: Yen Keeps Weakening Despite Interest Rate Hikes Japan Economy Watch
China?
The New World’s Largest Subway System* Part 2 Jurbanenetwork
Learn to Love Engineers LA Review of Books
India
India’s exports to China grows 37% in first 9 months of 2025-26 as ties warm up Firstpost
US Is Quietly Courting Jamaat-E-Islami Ahead of Bangladesh Elections The Asian Age
Syraqistan
In case you’re distracted by the shiny buildings in Kushner’s vision for Gaza, their plan is keep Palestinians in hyper-surveilled prison camps where they’ll eventually provide cheap labor for the resorts/high rises they won’t be allowed to live in, all built atop a mass grave. https://t.co/UfO1f2tHI7
— Tariq Kenney-Shawa (@tksshawa) January 22, 2026
Kushner Reveals Dystopic Plan to Build Data Centers on Ruins of Gaza Genocide Truthout
This is how Trump is getting his “third term.” And even if this farce fizzles out, it’s to the eternal shame of Russia and China that they did not slam this down with their vetos when they had the chance. It should have been killed in the UNSC. https://t.co/rNWxJiP2PS
— Ali Abunimah (@AliAbunimah) January 22, 2026
How much aid has the US given Israel? Stephen Semler
***
Getting “Used” to the Israeli Drone in Lebanon Hauntologies by Elia Ayoub
U.S. Weighs Complete Military Withdrawal From Syria WSJ
Trump says ‘massive armada’ heading towards Iran as US military assets move TRT World
‘Hands on trigger’: IRGC chief warns US and Israel against any miscalculation Press TV
Scylla and Charybdis New Left Review
Old Blighty
Shabana Mahmood proposes AI ‘Panopticon’ system of state surveillance The National
How the UK government is trying to tackle juries who may acquit pro-Palestine activists on moral grounds Middle East Eye
The Lucky Country
An Australian Woman Accidentally Butt-Dialed Someone. They Arrested Her and Charged Her with Anti-Semitism Because the Woman She Butt-Dialed Was Jewish. I’m Dead Serious. The North Star with Shaun King
O Canada
The Monstrous Confessions Of Mark Carney Nate Bear
Trump says he’s withdrawing invitation for Carney to join his Gaza ‘Board of Peace’ CBC
European Disunion
NATO military planners ‘waiting for direction’ on Greenland framework deal Euronews
Belgian premier says Europe ‘not slaves’ of US following tensions over Greenland Anadolu Agency
New Not-So-Cold War
Witkoff and Kushner Spend Almost Four Hours with Putin, but No Diplomatic Breakthrough Larry Johnson
France intercepts sanctioned Russian oil tanker flying false flag in Mediterranean Indian Express
Shadow Fleet Tanker Seizure Operations Expand In The Face Of Russian Warnings The War Zone
The Crimean Tatar movement trying to ruin Russia’s army from within Al Jazeera
South of the Border
Venezuela’s Delcy Rodríguez assured US of cooperation before Maduro’s capture The Guardian
Venezuela Rejects The Guardian Report on Alleged Secret Talks TeleSUR
U.S. Threatens to Respond If Haiti Modifies Its Government TeleSUR
Trump 2.0
Hoodwinks and Hijinks: Trump ‘Nabs’ Greenland at Davos Simplicius
What Trump really wants with AI Blood in the Machine
Trump sues JPMorgan for $5 billion, alleges the bank closed his accounts for political reasons AP
Police State Watch
Independent Autopsy Provides ‘Strong Evidence’ Against ICE Agent Who Killed Renee Good Common Dreams
Minnesota Labor Leaders Talk Organizing Lessons as Strike Movement Goes National Payday Report
House Republicans Pass Another ICE Funding Increase Despite Popular Democratic Uprising Migrant Insider
Trump Has Made ICE the Largest Law Enforcement Agency in the Country Truthout. “With Congress-approved funding, ICE detention is expected to triple in size, mirroring the scale of Japanese internment.”
ICE Recruiters Are Using Neo-Nazi Memes and Seeking Out Extremists at Gun Shows Truthout
ICE Detained a 5-Year-Old Minnesota Boy and Used Him As “Bait” Mother Jones.
Video alleges that ICE, without a warrant, detained a kindergarten-aged girl with autism in an attempt to force her mother out of the home so they could arrest her.
“Give me my daughter back.”
“Nope, you’re going to have to come out here and get her.” pic.twitter.com/3OqNdB2bH7
— WarMonitor (@TheWarMonitor) January 22, 2026
FBI reveals how mistaken identity by ICE led to chase, shooting of Venezuelan immigrant Minneapolis Star Tribune
DHS lied. This guy was not on the loose in Minnesota when they raided a US citizen’s home without a warrant. He was in prison. DHS would know this info. https://t.co/sl39HAUlY8 pic.twitter.com/6sxdUFjddE
— David J. Bier (@David_J_Bier) January 22, 2026
AI
Why Are Two Of The Biggest AI Startups Hiring Chemical Weapons Experts? Upstarts
Job Applicants Sue to Open ‘Black Box’ of A.I. Hiring Decisions New York Times
AI hasn’t delivered the profits it was hyped for, says Deloitte The Register
Breaking: Yann LeCun, longtime critic of neurosymbolic approaches, changes teams Gary Marcus
Mamdani
Four Challenges for Mayor Mamdani Left Notes
Imperial Collapse Watch
The United States withdraws from the WHO with $260 million in unpaid dues TeleSUR
We ran high-level US civil war simulations. Minnesota is exactly how they start The Guardian
Watching A Superpower Die By Suicide Doomsday Scenario
Big Brother Is Watching You Watch
Controversial AI facial recognition biz gets a Pentagon champion Responsible Statecraft
Our Famously Free Press
Mainstream media helped build the myth of law enforcement Salon
She Criticized the Mayor’s Support for Israel on Facebook. Then the Cops Showed Up at Her Door. The Intercept
The Bezzle
How “Bitcoin Jesus” Avoided Prison, Thanks to One of the “Friends of Trump” ProPublica
Tesla stock pops as Elon Musk posts video claiming no safety monitor in Austin robotaxi Yahoo! Finance
Legislators Push to Make Companies Tell Customers When Their Products Will Die Wired
Class Warfare
A Tech Bro Think Tank Is Trying to Roll Back Evidence-Based Homelessness Policy Truthout
My eyes are very bad, I can’t drive due to it. Taking Uber/cabs to work, I’ve noticed something. Over time, Uber will raise the price if they reason that you *must* go to a place. That you rely on them. From $9.50avg to $23avg within 6 months.
I wrote a small program to
– Create…— carter (@Carter_OW) January 20, 2026
🦔 More than half of Americans (51%) have stopped or reduced retirement savings in the past six months due to the economy, according to Allianz Life’s Q4 2025 survey. Two-thirds say they haven’t been able to contribute as much as they wanted. 47% have dipped into retirement… pic.twitter.com/Me4Jsn6Q0D
— Hedgie (@HedgieMarkets) January 22, 2026
Antidote du jour (via):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
125 comments
Comments are closed.
“Witkoff and Kushner Spend Almost Four Hours with Putin, but No Diplomatic Breakthrough”
I don’t think that the Russians regard Witkoff and Kushner as serious negotiators. It wasn’t long ago that Witkoff and Kushner were in negotitions with the Russians when suddenly out of the blue they brought up the subject of a few thousand acres owned by Blackrock which they were very concerned about. This is at best a peripheral topic and yet they wanted this sorted out on behalf of Blackrock and forget negotiating ending the war. Amateurs.
“No diplomatic breakthrough”? I’m shocked! Shocked! / ;)
I second that comment.
They send the bird of a business feather K. Dimitriv to talk with them.
Well, I went about piracy
The way I always do
How was I to know
It would piss off the Russians, too
I was gambling on taking over Havana
I took a little risk
Send lawyers, gunboats and hegemony
Cubans cried: ‘Daddy, get me out of this!’
I’m the innocent bystander
Somehow I got stuck
Between the rock and the hard place
And I’m down on my luck
And I’m down on my luck
And I’m down on my luck
Now I’m giving up on Greenland
I’m a desperate man
Send lawyers, gunboats and hegemony
The shit has hit the fan
Lawyers, Guns & Money, by Warren Zevon
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2HH7J-Sx80&list=RDF2HH7J-Sx80
When I landed at DFW last week I checked Lyft for the price of a ride home vs spending 3 hours on trains and busses….$56. When I checked 10 minutes later it was $87. No traffic, not a cloud in the sky.
Next time I’ll get dropped off on a different street and walk. Using a saved address seems to trigger price gouging.
It’s 2026 and…
I think I can hear Lambert Strether clearing his throat.
Storm tips: also fill the bathtub for washing and flushing toilet. Fill largest pots/teakettles etc with water for drinking.
Good tips. Also, if you kitchen or bathroom sinks are against an outside wall of your house keep a tiny thin stream of water running and open the under sink cabinet doors to let house heat warm the pipes. This keeps the those water pipes from freezing up and possibly bursting.
Don’t forget to stock up on supplies for any cats and dogs that you have. And if push comes to shove, they make great hot water bottles for your bed.
If you have a camp stove, but couldn’t get the standard green bottles of camp stove propane before it sold out, propane “torch” canisters work exactly the same and were, at least yesterday, still in stock in the Richmond, VA metro region at both big box hardware stores and small scale hardware stores.
She Criticized the Mayor’s Support for Israel on Facebook. Then the Cops Showed Up at Her Door. The Intercept
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Its so bad out there, the other day I was at a farmers market in Visalia and remarked to a seller in one of the booths that I didn’t really like Jerusalem Artichokes, and almost immediately out of nowhere was put in a choke hold by some goon using a yarmulke as an impromptu face mask and admonished that talk like that would not be tolerated anywhere in the land of the free and home of the brave.
You aren’t that far off of reality despite the jest, which is the astounding thing. Everywhere one cares to look across the “West” it’s censorship and suppression of speech, all in the service of the genocidal state. The latest news re:TikTok “””sale””” is case in point, where supposedly it was sold but the valuation makes it essentially stealing from the Chinese: TikTok’s long-running US saga ends with a deal that averts a ban
That’s some ‘deal’ right there…more like a NexPeria type heist, American-Israeli style. You will find the Western lamestream media stenographers keep dutifully claiming the sale was necessary for American national security, while the cabal behind the heist openly talk about why it was necessary for Israeli interests: (Dec 21 2025) Anti-Palestinian Billionaires Can Now Control What TikTok Users See
The Netanyahu video in question, as noted by r/China watchers on reddit: Wow, Netanyahu blatantly discusses buying Tiktok for propaganda
And an article on his comments to online ‘influencers’: TikTok sale could be ‘consequential’ for Israel, Jews, Netanyahu tells influencers
Its so weird at present, that I expect gentiles will soon be required to wear a Star of David on their clothes, in order to not be singled out as an anti-Semite.
Have things really changed? I remember visiting my sister in NYC almost 15 years ago when I said to her that Israel is an apartheid state. We were having lunch at the time in a restaurant and my sister reacted with almost panic. She looked around hurriedly, leaned over and said in an urgent whisper that I couldn’t say such things in NYC. She is not at all political but having lived there for a few years was already well versed in right speak.
> We ran high-level US civil war simulations. Minnesota is exactly how they start The Guardian
>> Minnesota may be the first test of whether constitutional limits on domestic military force still hold – or whether the United States is about to cross a line from which it cannot easily return.
From The emergence of categorical norms:
> Why do incursions on a territory of little strategic or economic significance (e.g., the Falkland Islands,
or the disputed islands in the South China Sea) invite full-scale retaliation and risk war? Why do nations
not retaliate only when the incursion is sufficiently meaningful? If retaliation is modeled as punishment in a
repeated game, then punishment is incentivized by the need to deter similar transgressions, which involves
coordination, namely on what counts as similar and what type of transgression will incur retaliation. Under
these assumptions, it is not possible for retaliation to be triggered by the significance of the incursion–a
continuous variable–but only by the presence of an incursion–a categorical variable.
ICE has added a new harassment for violence observers:
https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/ice-making-list-of-anyone-who-films
just curious if any of y’all wonder the same thing – is this fascist push in Minnesota to actually incur an armed response to ICE in order to use the insurrection act and throw a wet blanket over 2026 elections???
re: The Monstrous Confessions Of Mark Carney – Nate Bear
Thanks for that link. Very good. I’m left thinking of this old nursery rhyme:
There was a crooked man, and he walked a crooked mile.
He found a crooked sixpence upon a crooked stile.
He bought a crooked cat, which caught a crooked mouse,
And they all lived together in a little crooked house.
agree with Nate and thankful for the succinct observation – i make it a point to keep my blood pressure down for medical reasons and do not listen to “leaders” speeches – a very close Chicago friend who is from Belgium and who disagrees often with me mentioned i should listen or at least read a text of his speech – i read a text and found it beyond disturbing at the admission of the criminal hegemony participated in and profited from – and that this mea culpa meant forgiveness? – there was no suggestion of solutions, just different partnerships as the good ship hegemony continues on its course – may Carney rot in a hell – although that’s a pipe dream, which reminds me i should pour some cognac and light a pipefull, sometimes it feels like the only way to stop shaking my head in disgust and disbelief – when my Belgian friend ask what i thought I asked her how the weather was in Chicago –
Carney just another judas goat for the masses –
https://www.agweb.com/news/livestock/beef/judas-goats-agricultures-bizarre-drug-addicted-masters-deceit-once-ruled-killing-floor
The blood pressure thing is real; I find myself having to take a break from the news sometimes because it, and our so-called “elite” leaders, are simply rage-inducing, quite literally for me. The sheer criminality, and the increasingly dysfunctional natures of western society as it degrades and they don’t even bother to hide things anymore…it’s quite something.
Take care out there.
YESSSSSS – had an aortic valve replacement and take lisinopril to keep pressure under control
I’ve never heard the word “historic” used to mean “what used to happen all the time” before.
“This is all-time historic vintage cold”
Meh. I remember January 1977 ,,, I was just a kid, but Buffalo went the entire month without getting above freezing, and the cold air pushed so far south that it snowed on Miami Beach.
All-time would technically include pre-history, when humans weren’t around to record events, so yeah, that’s some bad headlining that needed an editor.
Oh I’ve seen it all over the place, journalists being the parrots that they are. I honestly don’t get the mentality since they are surely aware and many presumably remember that such storms happened a lot more often 10 or 20 years ago. I remember in VA an icicle as thick as my head blocking the entire front door from opening. When I first moved to NYC a decade ago I remember multi foot snow, nothing remotely like that happens any more. I guess they just reflexively use such language to sell clicks but its irritating.
I remember this. There was going to be an orange juice shortage. Fifteen year old me was horrified at the thought of losing a major component of my food pyramid.
Stay warm, don’t leave your car under the canopy!
I remember January 1977, had airdrifts piled up all the way into the mesosphere in LA. oh the humanity!
I don’t think it was more than 10 years ago when we had a spell of winter weather where the temperature didn’t get out of the low single digits for a month, and below zero every night. I remember telling a friend about skiing in a 16 degree “heat wave” that practically felt like summer.
I was a high schooler in rochester then and we were blanketed good but not as bad as buffalo I think. Cross country skiing to school was fun, once in a while some skeeching but watch out for those manhole covers. I had a 6 kid toboggan and we’d go to cobbs hill and it was the greatest.
The funny thing I learned about that “blizzard” was that the actual snow fall total wasn’t that much… a few inches. The thing was Lake Erie was totally frozen over and the high winds picked up all that lite snow sitting on the ice and dropped it on western NY to accumulate there in feet!
Lol, I’m sure to be mulling this over while I’m trying to thaw the kitchen pipes with my blow-dryer.
@Amfortas, thinking you’re under this storm’s gun, don’t forget the rv antifreeze for the toilet.
There is money to be made in middle class anxiety. Its why I don’t watch local news anymore.
Probably one of the best movies about TV news (outside of Network) is Nightcrawler, starring Jake Gyllenhaal.
Chilling to the bone…
It’s what the world of Network has wrought.
If you guys are wondering where all the heat has gone, we have it parked over here-
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jan/23/intense-heat-across-south-east-australia-could-shatter-temperature-records-in-coming-days
For people who either weren’t around then or have really short memories, Winter of 1977-78 enters the chat. In Kentucky, we were slammed by relentless amounts of heavy wet snow from basically the end of December into early February. I was in high school at the time and we missed from Christmas Break to around Valentine’s Day before roads were clear enough to go back to school. The station whose signal we could pick up the best had a weather person who was showing real signs of mental distress at having to give daily reports of more heavy snow and bitter cold. My parents’ house was out in the county and trying to keep our fairly long driveway shoveled enough for my dad to get in and out to get to work felt like something Sisyphus would appreciate. The road crew guys trying to keep the roads plowed no doubt felt the same.
I remember other winters not quite this epic, but also very cold with lots of heavy snow through the 1980’s up to 2003 where we got insane amounts of ice instead of snow.
I think we had something like 20 snow days in Buffalo that year. We were doing make-up days into late June. As a kid it was fun having entire weeks off from school. No darn virtual schooling, thank God!
We also did make up days into mid to late June. Since I didn’t live in town, the remoteness was starting to wear thin by the time we got into February.
They are totally out of control with the hype, at least for some areas. I’m in Rochester, NY and they are saying it’s going to be “Dangerously Cold” today. The high is 14 degrees. That’s not an uncommon temperature for January here. We’re forecast to be well above zero for the next week. It’s bad when it’s below zero for days and that’s not in the forecast. It’s basically click bate weather these days.
I’ll give your weatherman a pass on this one because Rochester, NY has a world class university. There are probably many students, some of them freshmen, who are from milder or even tropical climates. They need the warning.
I remember seeing a car load of students apparently from a southern locale in my uni town whose car got stuck in the snow on a bitterly cold, sub-zero, January day. 3 of them got out of the car to push it, and not one was wearing anything warmer than what I’d call a light windbreaker. Not a winter coat or caps and gloves in sight.
I grew up in Michigan and moved to a warmer climate. It was years before I could leave the house without a jacket even on a nice day. It was in my bones that the weather could turn vicious with little notice.
Yep. I’m sure you’ve seen this old cartoon.
https://www.sikhu.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Weather-in-Michigan-Cartoon.jpg
The Weather Channel naming snowstorms as if they were hurricanes was a major step backward for me.
Locally, the models and actors posing as meteorologists on a local TV news outlet are collectively billed as “Stormwatch Team.” I thought, why not “Weather Watch Team”? Because we’re not supposed to be compelled by forecasts of nonviolent weather. This is weather porn.
For Central Virginia, we are looking at something that could indeed be catastrophic. Temps in the 60’s are not uncommon in Richmond in January. Once or twice a year, we get a day that doesn’t get above freezing.
What we have coming our way this weekend is on another level. It’s not the snow but the half inch to one inch of ice. That will put the power out for many, including my family, as a near certainty and make travel completely impossible between iced roads and fallen trees. But what is following the ice is what is so extraordinary. My local 7-10 day forecasts are not predicting a single day getting above freezing between now and next weekend. So a half inch of ice and power outages means thousands and thousands of homes with frozen pipes. For potentially a week.
I know northerners scoff at highs in the upper 20s, but my home is not insulated for a week with highs in the twenties and lows in the single digits for a week steady. We have a heat pump; not gas or a furnace. I am much better set up for those days when it’s 102* in the sun. Now those oak trees that shade my home in July are major threats to my house on Sunday. So, please do spare a thought for some of us. My family is looking at some very very hard days ahead of us, despite all the preparations I have tried to make.
A few things. If you expect the power out for several days charge up your phones. Buy some candles. But batterys for flashlights. Keep a weak stream of water running in all the faucets, if you’re a camper and have a portable tent (yes, this sounds silly but it works), set up the tent or improvise one out of blankets and clothes pins for sleeping quarters. Shared body heat is a real thing.
Cook some food ahead of time that can be stored in the fridge and eaten cold.
There’s one big Do Not. Do not use a kerosene or gas or bottled gas space heater. Carbon monoxide poisoning is a serious danger.
Best of luck.
To be clear: set up the tent inside your house, not outside. Use the living room for camping in the great indoors. / ;)
Yes, ice storms are a different matter.
Good luck with it. Prepare well.
“Armada”, hmm, history often rhymes.
In the headlines on the consumer electronics front (and a bit of a Japan economy watch) is that Sony is looking to offload the majority of its TV and home entertainment business to Chinese TCL: Sony is selling its home entertainment business to TCL – but what does this mean for future Bravia TVs?
Sony’s press site says they want to have the joint venture up and running in 2027. As this is an MOU nothing is set in stone yet, but if it goes through it will be historic for the Japanese consumer electronics industry that even the mighty Sony wants to throw in the towel on television manufacturing, a sector that was once considered something of a crown jewel in consumer electronics. This would be like the equivalent of Apple selling off its desktop and laptop division. I thought Sony would have kept it going somehow purely out of pride; they aren’t bleeding money on the TV division like in years past, when Samsung and LG came on the scene and LCD flatscreens price wars blew up the market, but they probably aren’t making all that much selling TVs anymore because prices on television sets have fallen astonishingly over the past 25 years: TV prices have fallen more than 90% since 2000, thanks to mass scale
Sony still makes some of the best tv’s you can buy (along with Panasonic, see Vincent’s 2025 shootout ) but it is an utterly cutthroat business with thin margins, as are most consumer electronics nowadays with hungry Chinese juggernauts coming up fast. Sony was #5 worldwide as of 2024 with a 5.4% market share, which actually is pretty decent given that they mostly sell premium TVs. Aside from Sony, there is still Panasonic and Sharp (and somewhat Toshiba?) left of the Japanese brands still making TVs, and even these are mostly outsourced to other companies now given the thin margins. Sharp (the entire company) was bought by Foxxcon a few years back because of heavy losses, and Toshiba has sold off it’s TV division as well as most of its appliance division to Chinese companies. They all have minuscule global marketshares in televisions, a far cry from their heydays when Japan dominated the industry. Bit of a shame really, as I’ve always had something of a soft spot for anything Panasonic (AKA Matsushita). Japan also had Mitsubishi, Hitachi, Pioneer, JVC, Sanyo, Fujitsu, and probably even more companies I’ve never heard of making TVs at one point or another, just to give an idea how dominant their industry once was. Crazy how rapidly the tech world changes!
Samsung is the largest maker of TVs globally today and has been for the past twenty years, but TCL will probably surpass them this year or next. Both Samsung and LG sold their last LCD panel factories to TCL (both the Korean makers kept their OLED panel factories), and Sharp wound down their last LCD panel factory in Sakai, Japan in 2024, meaning almost all large LCD TV panels (regardless of TV brand) today are made in China. Most companies source the actual display panels from third parties and build the rest of the TV themselves, even companies that made their own panels like Samsung and Sharp often source panels from others to target different sizes and tech display options.
It is rather remarkable how quickly some of these Chinese companies grow and come to dominate their industry, even against other tough competition in Asia. Although in the display panel business there is always lots of talk about state subsidies giving the Chinese majors a big boost.
Sony KDL-40EX720 here. Bought new in 2012, still using it, still looks great.
sound quality?
You don’t buy Sony tvs for sound quality, but the early 2010 models (I don’t know other years) could process all kinds of modern digital sound processes (DTS, etc.) so you could run the sound from a digital optical output in to an older receiver (i.e. one with digital optical BUT no HDMI) and it would sound incredible. I bought a similar model (EX line) in 2010 and it is still be used by my mother in her home as her daily watcher. We just run the sound through a Polk soundbar with subwoofer and it is decent.
The upper tier Panasonic and Sony tv’s have actually put quite a bit of thought behind their sound systems to cater to folks who don’t want to hook their tvs up to external sound systems. Panasonic has woofers and upward+side-firing speakers on the Z95B and the W95A models, something like 50W speaker power total if I remember correctly? Even has Dolby Atmos somehow with that setup. The upper tier Sony TV’s have woofers as well as an interesting technology Sony calls “Acoustic Surface Audio”, which uses the entire panel surface area itself as a speaker.
Not as good sounding as external units like yours will give you but pretty close!
For us, it is Toshiba (is this brand still around — it isn’t on your list?). Our largish flat-screen set is 20+years old and is still working great — perfectly in fact. When it finally dies, we are assuming that whatever we replace it with (even if Toshiba is still available?) will be a downgrade.
They made great laptops! I still have an old Toshiba Satellite somewhere here, that still worked last time I powered it up a few years ago.
Toshiba itself was doing OK but was sunk by it’s ownership/investments into the nuclear arm of US Westinghouse, which Toshiba bought in 2005, and which ended up bleeding them dry throught the mid-2010s through delays, cost overruns and penalties. Things got so bad that Westinghouse itself had to declare bankruptcy in 2017 in what is known as the Nukegate scandal. That lead Toshiba to selling off most of its consumer electronics and appliance divisions to raise money to cover some of the losses. There’s a list of Toshiba’s business groups that were spun off on their website :
You can see some of the carnage in all the corporate spinoffs (although Toshiba today is still huge, they make mostly commercial products now). The TV unit was bought by Hisense and they still seem to operate it as a separate unit to Hisense (“Toshiba Visual Solutions”), although Toshiba TVs today are built by Hisense in their own factories.
And is it know which segments have kept old quality levels?
p.s. I bought a new hand mixer and learned that only KRUPS – which has become part of a French consortium in the 2000s – has an older model still produced where the inside and the mountings for the egg whips are made of metal instead of plastic. It´s quite heavy to hold in your hand. But when the lady told me and immediately recommended only this particular one among a dozen other companies I bought it without looking further. KRUPS has a newer model but that has switched to all plastic too. So for now they got two different models. She pensively articulated hope that KRUPS would keep producing the older version.
Well, buying the old (really old) models, if they are still in production, is often one of the easiest ways as you have found :) Being heavy is another one. Something built on an old production line can be not worth ‘updating’ so the bean counters that run everything don’t bother changing processes. You have to remember that modern companies are run under a relentless cost-cutting regime, they will move heaven and earth to save a few pennies per unit. If you ever watch engineering tear-downs by folks like Munro and associates (a fun video from them: German Engineering At Its Best: Tearing Down the New Volkswagen APP550 Electric Motor ), they will critique every single screw or fastener a company uses because it represents extra costs of production. Every extra bend, every extra casting piece, anything part that is three pieces but might have been able to do in one piece? Etc. Every dollar adds up when you’re building 200 000 units a year.
Trying to guess the quality levels is difficult, and that’s why brands have ‘value’ to them in the first place, as that takes the guesswork out for potential buyers if that company has consistently well made products or if they produce garbage. A lot depends on company culture, if they are run by engineers versus finance people – I find American companies are the worst in this respect, epitomized by the Wall Street style bankster private equity types that will burn a company to the ground to raise profits. If you have people running things who care about the company’s or product’s reputation (like a lot of family owned German Mittelstand?), then the chances are better that the engineers will get more freedom to build it without taking a chainsaw to production costs. I think that is often times why Apple’s products were so good under Steve Jobs, because he was such a fussy leader and the bean counters, finance and investment people probably feared for their lives around him, haha.
The best way to know is find someone that knows his stuff and does a tear down to analyze it. Youtubers like JerryRigEverything are good for this (for phones in his case). There are other channels that test things to failure (Project Farm) or test specs on things like tools (Torque Test Channel), so if you’re lucky the thing you want to buy might be on one of their channels being reviewed.
Thanks!
I have a TCL TV and it looks fine to me. It may be ten years old and didn’t cost much. My serious video watching is always via computer output where I have far more control.
Sony reigned back during a pre digital age when the finer points of analog tube TVs mattered. Of course those DVD and earlier era TVs would seem quite primitive next to a 4k panel of today.
Sony also pioneered with something called the Walkman. I doubt many younger people have even heard of it.
That’s the interesting bit, Sony itself was amazingly innovative, even until fairly recently, and pioneered a lot of the technology we take for granted now (like first with lithium ion batteries – a division they later sold off in 2017). They were slow with LCD technology but were pioneers with OLED panels, releasing the worlds first OLED tv in 2007(!), but never seemed to be able to capitalize on their inventions like other companies managed to (LG and Samsung pushed OLED displays into the mainstream). Similarly with the cellphone, they bought Ericson’s cellphone division and just let it seemingly wither away (although I see that they are still making Xperia phones to this day, but they are hardly sold anywhere?).
Sony was the model that Steve Jobs admired and wanted Apple to emulate at one point. A lot of similar shady business practices from the both of them, too! lol
I never understood the LG logic. I found their surfaces and interfaces very complicated and overstuffed.
I grew up on SONY. But at some point started to assume that that was a huge load of PR compensating for lack of real quality by the early 2000s. Don´t know if that was a correct assessment. But I started to look either in lower price segments or pricier ones depending on what I needed.
And yes they were serious mafiosi as business practices are concerned. Ever since I understood that part of business success I started to doubt almost all of them.
Their older stuff was definitely better put together. I think that is true for most Japanese electronics, the golden age was the mid 1970s until the bubble bursting in 1991, and China really taking over manufacturing in the latter 1990s. I have my dad’s old JVC stereo system from 1979 that still works perfectly, and a few other Panasonic, Toshiba, and Yamaha gizmos around the house that still work. Lots of it older than me, just incredible longevity. My university housemate had a Sony Trinitron TV his dad bought in the 1980s for the basement, and it was so well made it actually survived a flood! They found the thing so submerged it was practically floating in water; they took it upstairs and dried it out over two or three weeks, and much to their surprise it fired right up. Was disgustingly heavy too, bloody thing must have weighed at least 200 pounds haha. Not fun moving it 6 storeys up!
Sony Trinitron TV
I believe that was bought two or three times in our family.
At one point I had to explain Dad that they are not being sold any more.
But it was used so extensively that it broke after a decade every time.
Am not sure if there weren´t theories that those very models had less longevity.
Anyway that image quality has never been achieved since.
At least judging from the screens I rarely happen to see nowadays. And the flatter and younger the models the worse. The first gen JVC flat-screen was still the best one we had.
“Sony also pioneered with something called the Walkman. I doubt many younger people have even heard of it.”
The following video gives an idea how fast mainstream, familiar consumer technologies fade away and disappear from the universe of recognizable objets. It is in French (Canada), but it should nevertheless be quite understandable.
Notice that the video is already quite old (at least 15 years old). I reckon one of the objects presented was utterly foreign to me (I had never seen one before).
Haha, great video ty :)
In a similar vein to that, one of the more entertaining things on youtube is kids trying to figure out how to use old film cameras: KIDS REACT TO OLD CAMERAS
A Tech Bro Think Tank Is Trying to Roll Back Evidence-Based Homelessness Policy Truthout
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Drove by a proposed new Careless Consumers Camp (CCC) the other day on Highway 395 just before Independence along the flanks of the eastern Sierra. Most of the prior buildings dating from 1942 are gone, so it’d be easy to construct new 2×4 framed and tar papered living quarters for the careless.
re: Iran
DROP SITE NEWS
J. Scahill interview with Iranian photographer
Notes from the Ground: Reflections on a Month That Shook Iran
Kaveh Rostamkhani, a photographer and essayist, speaks to Drop Site about what he saw and felt over the past several weeks inside Iran
52 min.
https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/interview-tehran-iran-protests-internet-blackout-israel-trump-pahlavi-riots
Drop Site News seems to be trying to restore some balance in their coverage here, after Ryan Grim provided a platform for a very one-sided anti-regime narrative several days ago. Grim seemed genuinely taken aback by all the criticism these earlier appearances received, which threatened to tarnish the reputation Drop Site was building for its work on Gaza and Epstein.
On that subject, I found the New Left review article ‘Scylla and Charybdis’ posted in today’s Links as similarly dismaying. Written by a left-leaning Oxford educated Westerner, Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi, it emphasized the brutality, unpopularity, corruption, incompetence, and even the neoliberalism of the government – which of course fits right in with the Western narrative. Again, it’s not that there isn’t truth behind these charges, but the larger context, including the effects of tremendous economic pressures and external destabilization efforts, were greatly downplayed in this piece in favor of regime criticism. This author has written about the latter effectively before; for example:
https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/culmination
But this current piece exhibits many of the characteristics of left-leaning Western academics who let their own ideological preferences cloud their analysis. For example, given the reforms he (and many Iranians) favor, he could have mentioned how every time reformist politicians and policies have gained traction in Iran they have been sabotaged by the West. He is correct about the symbiotic relationship between Iranian hard-liners and Western regime-change neocons. Yet much of this discussion provides cover for the latter.
I was wondering what had happened – :-P
ok, was about to read NLR…
Apparently the Anarchist line of thinking in the left unfortunately makes many usually decent thinkers and commentators blind to harsh realities and they simply are unwilling to at least acknowledge that and learn to expand their horizon and include this new experience.
As it now turns out this is one of the main obstacles for organizing within the left.
Until 2022 I did not expect such a demise to take place.
And since this is systemic within the intellectual tradition which they seemingly follow like a law of nature no hope for any change soon.
So the rightwing march will go on without serious resistance at least from those quarters as usual in recent decades.
Not in all areas and not in the same way and not everywhere. But it sure is an ontologic crisis in Western Europe.
B on Moon of Alabama has picked up on NC and the NLR piece.
A ‘Left’ Cover-Up Of Regime Change Failure
Today’s daily Links page at Yves’ Naked Capitalism pointed to a piece about Iran published by Sidecar, the blog-site of the New Left Review.
Neither NLR nor Sidecar are on my daily reading list though I have linked to several Sidecar piece in my Week-In-Review collection.
According to its About page:
The criteria for publication on Sidecar will be saying something – about persons, processes, events, structures – that is not being said elsewhere, but deserves to be.
The Sidecar piece linked via Naked Capitalism, Scylla and Charybdis by Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi, certainly does NOT match that criteria.
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2026/01/a-left-cover-up-of-regime-change-failure.html
q.e.d.
How is this incompetence of “left” on geopolitics possible?
I remember well when I started shaking my head about NLR´s coverage of the War in early 2022.
Susan Watkins or Volodymyr Ishchenko and others. Not that everything was wrong but it was a striking lack of overall grasp due to ideology. Almost a helpless search for orientation.
Dunno if they have altered some views or recovered from the initial shock.
The way to a certain extent I dare speculate Craig Murray, for instance, has.
Thanks. I think the MoA take-down is spot on. Especially effective is the contrast between this view from the “left” and that of the decidedly non-leftist John Mearsheimer:
“[w]hat happened in Iran is an attempt by the Israeli & American tag team to overthrow the government in Tehran and break apart Iran, much the way the US, Turkey, and Israel fractured Syria…”
It’s not as if this routine is a new one. Charlie Brown, Lucy, and the football. Over and over.
Thank you AG. I have been reading NLR for decades, and have saved some valuable old issues, for example the issue-long essay on global economic turbulence Robert Brenner published in 1998. But these days with every new issue, I am finding fewer and fewer of the insights I am looking for in a “left” journal. I have been looking for an excuse to cancel my sub. I think I might have found it.
I think Iran will turn out to be a test-case for the Left (or what’s left of it) in that intellectual honesty is clearly in conflict, once again, with political ideology. But this isn’t Stalin’s purges in the 1930s, or the Khmer Rouge, this is 2026 and the media, especially the regional media, is all over the place recording what’s going on. The standard argument that it isn’t happening because Iran is a state disliked by the United States and Israel and can therefore do no wrong, cannot function under such circumstances. The argument that it’s all due to sanctions is refuted by experts on the Iranian economy (including real Iranians) who point out that the role of sanctions has been greatly exaggerated: mismanagement of water supplies, for example, cannot be attributed to sanctions. And yes, bellicose statements by hard-line westerners provide the regime with a rationale for cracking down, as they do for all governments everywhere.
But as always, the narcissistic self-licking ice-cream cone of the western comment industry cannot accept that the outside world has relatively little impact on the average disgruntled market trader in Tehran. For the Left, as for the Right, the level of likely ego-damage is too serious. As long as writers from the Notional Left begin by asking themselves “Am I being anti-American enough?” they will not be able to write anything useful. Ironically, the basic dynamics of the conflict (secular, democratic and leftist opposition linked to popular sentiment, against reactionary, repressive religious-dominated regime) should make it obvious which side the Left should be on. But as long as it adopts the approach that any enemy of the United States must be supported, it’s locked into a pattern of denial which will, in the end, do it a lot of damage, comparable perhaps to what happened to the Leftist groups that supported the repression of the Hungarian uprising in 1956. It’ll be their fault.
Ahem. Countries have a right to sovereignity. I don’t see how you attack the left for not being on board with regime changes operations. You want me to believe that 40,000 Starlinks walked in on little cat feet in all on their own? Or that a bunch of Iranians nicely asked Elon Musk? Do you think we are children?
It’s been reported that the US raided the currency and arm-twisted Iran’s allies not to intervene to try to support it. That produced the plunge that set off the protests by businessmen (and the government said those protestors had valid complaints) which then ramped up by foreign-paid agitators who, just like the Maidan coup, instigated violence. Video is coming out that supports that version of events.
Oh, and the right-wingers I know say the right wing social media supports the “son of Maidan” reading and many/most are not on board with the US wasting money and energy on regime change, so your take on political views, at least as far as the US is concerned, is blinkered.
“(A) secular, democratic and leftist opposition linked to popular sentiment, against reactionary, repressive religious-dominated regime) should make it obvious which side the Left should be on.”
Ah, were it so simple, but the opposition both within Iran, and most certainly in the diaspora, is much more complex than this, incorporating a very large, if not dominant, constituency of right-wing Neoliberal proponents of, not only regime change, but of crushing the historic socialist legacy of Iran’s revolution(s). Superficially, it is tempting to grant you your point, but consider that the Shaw-in-exile and his (and his dear dad’s) supporters await in the wings, and that the “Left” in Iran is perhaps also weighing its prospects against the Theocratic pot vs. the Neoliberal fire.
I am far from convinced that the Iranian Left is behind these “protests”.
Without even bringing in forces external to Iran, one should keep in mind that the “average disgruntled market trader in Tehran”, in other words a merchant or operator of the Tehran bazaar, is, and always was, about as “democratic and leftist” as a member of a traditional chamber of commerce in the Western world.
OK?
Is really there (around the World) a notional left asking themselves how much anti-American one has to be to be “true left” or something? If it exists their numbers must be very small. I tend to believe that any notional left might be allergic to interventionism which is a product of geostrategic interests and has no interest at all in the populaces at large. The protests in this occasion were aligned, almost certainly fed by and coincidental in time with foreign interests on regime change as a desired outcome. It is impossible to ignore how Trump was rising to the occasion to say he was going to bombard Iran in defence of the protestors. Obviously not because Trump’s humanitarian worries. Not possible to ignore the delivery of Starlink terminals to proceed and coordinate with the protests and aggressions. This is not to say there isn’t genuine and abundant discontent in Iran. Almost certainly. Abundant discontent is possibly the default in most if not all countries. At the end of the day we have more than 3000 thousand victims which no leftists should be happy about, but with serious doubts that things might have gotten that far without foreign intervention. If there is this secular struggle that you mention at the root and cause of protests, quite possibly it was the attempt by Israel and US to use it to their advantage what provided Iran government with a rationale to be more aggressive and expedite with the protests. OK, this is not to say that a social struggle cannot turn a bloodbath without external meddling. It can indeed. But here i suspect the gasoline and the spark were originated abroad.
Thank you, Ignacio, for this pertinent and pungent riposte. If there were a global temperature scale for disgust and fury, I feel sure that it would be hitting record highs.
Sigh …. for those not around long ago or even on NC the term left is a libertarian/Corp funded slur word. Socialists/Commies stealing stuff from hard working Capitalists aka vestiges of colonialism and the failed attempt in financial slavery by globalism. In the original classical meaning it denotes share of productivity and via that family formation e.g. the kids are the future.
The best part is the left has never been in control in the West, FDR was not a commie lol.
Not being a leftist I have no opinions on who the Left (to whatever extent it exists and is worth discussing) should or shouldn’t support there. I agree that Iran’s government seems like an unlikely target for them to side with, but then so do the supporters of Pahlevi.
I suspect that leftists weighing in on Iran are going to come off badly whichever side they take. Either they support “reactionary theocrats massacring their own people” or they support “American imperialists and their puppets”. Or else they are fence-sitting and “hiding behind false nuance”.
Iran is, somewhat more fundamentally, a problem for them because it challenges what appears to me to be common leftist assumptions: the supreme evil of non-leftist-controlled states, the inherent goodness (and leftwards tendency) of popular resistance, secularism over theocracy, etc. There are, in fact, good reasons to doubt the universal applicability of all of those premises in general and in this specific case (not to excuse Iran’s government, but if somehow it was overthrown by its enemies now I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect the result to be an even worse humanitarian catastrophe). But those reasons align poorly with the traditional leftist framework, which may be why this case causes such evident division and confusion among them – and why some non-leftists find it easier to navigate.
Didn’t many leftists think kinda the same thing when the Shah was overthrown back un 1979 (or wrt Egypt during Arab Spring. Maybe they’d have thought the same about Ataturk if they were around in 1920.) The idea that a right wing authoritarian government shoukd be replaced not by “liberal leftist” regime but by another flavor of right wing authoritarian regime really does offend their dichotomous view about how the world works.
Of course, people point out many original neocons started out as Tritskyite leftists who believed in inevitable triumph of the “left” in the struggle against (presumably monolithic) “authoritarian right” even when they were themselves yet another flavor of the authoritarian right themselves…
Well said. I consider myself a “leftist”, but I’m an *authentic* one (ha ha, yes that is sarcasm). Unlike the straw man described by Aurelien, I don’t support the current Iranian government because I’m “anti-American” or because they are our enemies. Like any “real” leftist (again, irony quotes here), I dislike theocratic rule of any kind. Indeed, the reforms supported by the NLR author would be desirable in my view. But I hate US policy with a passion because it is NOT in any way about “democracy” or “rule of law” or “freedom” or any of those nice words. Rather, it is about economic exploitation and geopolitical advantage for US interests (or in this case those of Israel as well, which are identical in the neocon view). Its policies kill people and destroy nations whose governments resist our efforts. Anyone or anything that enhances those efforts should be condemned, even if they are the words of a well-meaning “leftist” academic. I could write a long essay off the top of my head for Aurelien on how we have done this in the past, and on the many ways in which the US has interfered significantly to destabilize such nations, prey on their weaknesses, and leverage their internal divisions until they crack. But I fear it would be wasted breath; I’d just be considered an egotistical American who insists on ignoring the “agency” of these target countries.
I actually knew many Iranians during and after the revolution. All but one were Westernized “leftists” who hated Pahlavi but were certainly no fan of Khomeini. They had cautious hopes at first; these hopes were crushed as the Islamic Republic consolidated its control. No, I’m not a particular fan of the current government. But the balkanized chaos that will likely result from the US/Israeli will be worse. And though it is true that not *all* of Iran’s current problems are due to external pressures, certainly many of them are, or are exacerbated by them to a great degree. I’ll bet I could even find some “real Iranians” who would agree.
A recent interview by the only left paper in Germany left (how many lefts can one include into an English sentence?) with a leftist from Iran sums up the problem in the headline already:
“We want to confront the dictatorship and US imperialism.”
Causes, composition, and perspectives of the protest movement in Iran. A conversation with Navid Shomali”
https://archive.is/VE6GH
I was sitting over a response to your post from last week (re: UKR/RU) but found nothing I drafted adequate.
And yet here we are again. Same problem.
The nation-state in the age of superpower imperial conflict appears to become a Catch-22 for the left. However the idea of international, i.e. cross-border solidarity – is not off the table – relevant just as it was in the late 1800s.
British filmmaker Ken Loach in his (1995) “LAND AND FREEDOM” about the Spanish Civil War offered some wise scrutiny of this problem from the POV of the Anarchists who found themselves boxed in by the Fascists and the Stalinists.
Same issue now. (Kurds is more complex but it is tangent to these normative contradictions.)
re: “1956” (etc.) as mentioned by Aurelien above:
Co-founder of German NACHDENKSEITEN alternative news site and former bureau chief of Willy Brandt, Albrecht Müller, spoke about the day USSR invaded Czechoslovakia: The then head of his office, an old-style German SPD man said “Ok, that´s tragic but we will carry on with “Ostpolitik” and not boycott the Russians.”
That was a much more left SPD than anything that would follow.
p.s. I don´t know much about Prague/1968. However Budapest/1956 has become more complicated for me with growing age because more and more hints are showing up that there was some inteference by the CIA too – not just the British. The real repression having been established in the Hungarian CP purges of 1948. And as far as I know the West did not really use 1948 as any means to upset the consolidation of CP power in Hungary. So there is logic to the anecdote that Churchill congratulated Stalin for suppressing the Socialists in Greece in 1948.
“We want to confront the dictatorship and US imperialism.”
A sympathetic idea in theory, but an additional problem is: what would that amount to in practice? Weakening the Iranian government naturally serves US interests. Confronting US imperialism from within Iran is ridiculous – all one can really do there is fight the rest of the opposition… which of course serves the interests of “the dictatorship”.
It’s like how Makhno’s followers boasted of beating Whites until they’re red and Reds until they’re white. Sounds very brave and independent of them. In reality, despite occasionally skirmishing with the Reds, they mostly just repeatedly volunteered to be cannon fodder for the Reds and were then duly disposed of. If they hadn’t agreed to that, though, their actions still would’ve helped one side or the other more. They had no path to victory short of everyone else just collapsing or deciding to leave them alone.
What makes this problem worse, from the movement cohesion standpoint, is that this dilemma – of really having to choose a side if you want to influence the outcome – is very obvious. And that collides with modern opposition movements’ typical moral and political absolutism (not just characateristic of the left, by the by). There can be no compromises with the absolute evil of the dictatorship or that of American imperialism. So if you’re clearly working to assist one and not the other, you are yourself compromised. In such conditions it also becomes tempting to pretend that it’s not evil after all. A lot of what’s left of Russian leftists and other activists are in this position too.
Frankly, I think the whole concept of a lesser evil gets a bad rap in some politically earnest circles. There shouldn’t be any shame in admitting that sometimes you do have to choose a bad option and try to make the best of it – mitigate damage, keep looking for better possibilities, lay groundwork for later improvements. But this is denounced as a form of moral cowardice – by people who don’t actually have any better ideas, other than being virtuously ineffectual or else choosing a side but lying desperately about it to themselves and others. If I am hard on the left, part of the reason is that it seems inherently particularly inclined to this kind of self-defeating maximalism – anyone who tries to break away from that faces an uphill fight.
(As for Prague, I’ll just add that the real work was done there around 1948 too. It’s also rather vexing that so many leftists broke with the USSR over that largely bloodless intervention against some liberal communists in a “civilised European country”. Bloodier events in less-civilised Hungary and far worse things still that happened in “semi-Asiatic” Russia did not bother them, apparently – but here they drew the line… I’d respect them more if they had not.)
On that note:
Maybe we should stop complaining in the West – or as anti-colonialist activist Nathalie Yamb said, as she has been sanctioned by the EU and the US for criticizing France in Africe – for Africans nothing of what is happening now is new. It is the Europeans and the rich and eduacted in the US who are shocked.
But on a global scale both spatially and temporal their experience horizon is tiny compared to what other “civilisations” had to endure – from the hands of those who are now bathing in “victimhood”.
And the Left in awe may well be in that category of “don´t take yourself too seriously”.
They have to learn to fight again – not on Berkeley campus but in the “jungle”.
re: Australia vs. free speech/Gaza
CONSORTIUMNEWS has 4 pieces about Australia´s new legislation on censoring speech:
Going Down, Down Under
The Australian Parliament has passed a new hate crimes law that could potentially throw critics of Israel in prison for years
by Joe Lauria
https://consortiumnews.com/2026/01/22/going-down-down-under/
Oppose Israel’s Abuses While You Can
The Israel lobby can cry about Jewish Australians feeling threatened by every pro-Palestine group and then ASIO will ban the group and cage anyone associating with it for up to 15 years.
by Caitlin Johnstone
https://consortiumnews.com/2026/01/22/caity-johnstone-oppose-israels-abuses-while-you-can/
Hate Crime Laws Can Chill Free Speech
What is the impact that the Albanese government’s Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism Act 2026 will have on the ability of ordinary Australians to protest? Anne Twomey examines the provisions.
By Anne Twomey
https://consortiumnews.com/2026/01/22/hate-crime-laws-can-chill-free-speech/
discussion:
GUESTS: Sen. David Shoebridge and Nasser Mashni, director of the Australian Palestinian Advocacy Network (APAN). INTERVIEWERS: Cathy Vogan and Joe Lauria.
76 min.
https://consortiumnews.com/2026/01/22/watch-cn-live-free-speech-in-the-dock/
How “Bitcoin Jesus” Avoided Prison, Thanks to One of the “Friends of Trump” ProPublica
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Just when you think you’re safe from cyberscamps, Bitcoin Jesus gets treasurerected.
If you are rich enough to own a $70m yacht, then you can bribe your way out of pretty much any legal trouble. Imagine that!
At least Trump didn’t pardon the dude (as Clinton did to Marc Rich, on his very last day in the White House). Who is sleazier, Clinton or Trump? Tough call, that one.
Pecunia non olet.
Spectacles-testicles-cyberwallet-watch
Where’s that dogwood tree when we need it?
“Kushner Reveals Dystopic Plan to Build Data Centers on Ruins of Gaza Genocide”
Kushner makes the intriguing discover that biomatter makes an excellent fuel to run those data centers with. After all, there is so much of it just lying around unused.
That camel looks like an Easter lamb sponge cake.
re: history Spain – nuclear Palomares Incident
German JUNGE WELT interview
machine-translation
60 Years Of The Palomares Incident
“The inhabitants were informed during wrong”
On the nuclear weapons accident of Palomares, symbolic decontamination actions and the lasting damage to people and the environment. A conversation with José Herrera Plaza
https://archive.is/meoxV
The Regist piece on AI fails is another case where the example of “AI” refers to a process which is in no way new.
There’s also mention of email templates.
We no longer have the built-in MS Outlook templates at work. Quietly disabled. I assume at least one bad thing happened. Maybe many bad things.
A commenter yesterday suggested the Board of Peace would be great big nothing. Hoping this is correct and the rest of the world sees it as a useless “job” to keep Trump out of the way – what they do with failsons and trophy wives. But where and how will we sideline Stephen Miller, Alex Karp, and that lot?
RE: South of the border- ” Project-Cuba next”
The homeland-less meandering corrupted lost souls of the no-nation not-Cubans of south Florida are clueless to the honor and dignity of the Cuban people’s history…
Putting a ‘Blond Frame’ (see Spanish translation) on the vile, venomous, and vindictive intentions that look to erase their dignified history, highlights the ignorance of the anti-imperial history of a people from which he pretends to descend.
Cuba has been on the receiving end of psychopathic imperial abuse of power for more than six decades, yet have remained steadfast in their conviction that without autonomous sovereignty, i.e., independent freedom within a clear context, there is no dignity, and without dignity, life is a meaningless empty existence…offering an example of refusal to being atomized and resistance to the colonizing psittacist programming…
There are higher purposes than being lulled into the atomized, corrupting and soul crushing comfort of consumer cages…Ponder the vile, venomous, vindictive, and psychopathic mentality that would ‘Frame’ their medical missions as “human rights” violations. Medical missions that have sent Doctors to the poorest regions of the hemisphere and beyond and have given Medical School scholarships to students from these regions with the condition that they return to their home and care for their people after graduating. All this despite their extreme resource limitations and conditions, effects of the more than six decades of the morally despicable and abhorrent “sanctions” and blockade. AND let’s not ignore the recent, even more morally despicable, and abhorrent “on the verge” gloating…
France intercepts sanctioned Russian oil tanker flying false flag in Mediterranean Indian Express
BS by Macron. There is nothing in the UN Convention on the Law of Sea on supposed “international sanctions” that can be applied to any ships and then enforced on the high seas with supposed “false flags” because someone wants to suppose this. First, the sanctions which the EU unilaterally applies are not internationally recognized, except by EU members, and do not affect maritime traffic in the high seas but commerce and exchanges with the EU. Beyond that France or the EU have no competence or regulation of traffic in the high seas. This is violation of UNCLOS by France with apparent cooperation from the UK. Interception could have been lawful only and exclusively in territorial waters of France.
Increasingly idiotic escalations. Wanting pretexts for war with Russia? One day they are going to find it and not to like it.
I have always found this “debate” to be one of the more depressing aspects of both the covid pandemic and human society in the 21st century in general. There is a deadly virus loose among the population, and despite that, sober regulatory and administrative bodies insist on sticking with ineffective measures when effective ones are well known and readily available. Consequently, lots of people are ill and dying for no reason at all.
BTW another aspect of this I haven’t seen discussed is that by requiring N95 masks to be used routinely, we will keep manufacturing lines for these masks open, and encourage continuous research on better masks. Consequently, we will be much less likely to be caught flat-footed when the next pandemic comes along as we were in 2020, when N95 masks were very hard to come by for a year or two.
I keep hoping human beings are going to get with it. I’m still hoping.
“sober regulatory and administrative bodies insist on sticking with ineffective measures when effective ones are well known and readily available. Consequently, lots of people are ill and dying for no reason at all.”
I keep hoping, too. But nothing on this scale happens for no reason.
Trump Says He Bruised His Hand on a Table (NY Times)
I’m more worried about his brain.
Also, because the FDA won’t save you, you can try to save yourself
“A Godsend”: ProPublica’s Rx Inspector Tool Is Helping People Find Critical Safety Information on Generic Drugs (Pro Publica)
When was the last time T had his blood platelet count checked?
Sorry if this comes across as off but if a Canadian PM or a US Commerce Secr. announce the end of anything that to me means definitely it is not the end.
It´s if anything a repackaging of a brand.
Trump is not looking or sounding good, the letter to Norway and his speech at Davos lead me to believe that SOTU may provide us with Trump’s “Biden Moment” when it becomes inarguable that there is something seriously wrong with him cognitively.
The impact of that happening both domestically and overseas would be immense and immensely destabilizing.
It might not be a bad idea to lay in some smelling salts, along with the popcorn.
Trump, in ripping off the fig leaf, has been the best thing to happen to the inmates of the Empire in a very long time — may he not be lost to us before his time.
Johnson recalls this interesting bit of Cuban missile crisis history:
My recollection is that the RFK administration, composed of “the best and the brightest” the US had to offer, adamantly refused this proposal from the Soviets, presumably for the sin of advocating parity between the US and the Soviet Union, ie, dismantling forward-based missiles targeting the opposite country. Evidently, according to Kennedy, it was fine for the US to install such destabilizing missile batteries, but completely outrageous for the Soviets to do the same.
Fun times.
My recollection is that they accepted the deal.
I concur, the Turkish missiles were removed, but the USA did not mention for many years for appearance sake.
https://www.jfklibrary.org/learn/about-jfk/jfk-in-history/cuban-missile-crisis
“No one was sure how Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev would respond to the naval blockade and US demands. But the leaders of both superpowers recognized the devastating possibility of a nuclear war and publicly agreed to a deal in which the Soviets would dismantle the weapon sites in exchange for a pledge from the United States not to invade Cuba.
In a separate deal, which remained secret for more than twenty-five years, the United States also agreed to remove its nuclear missiles from Turkey. Although the Soviets removed their missiles from Cuba, they escalated the building of their military arsenal; the missile crisis was over, the arms race was not.”
I would add a theory of mine if I may:
The US by that time had already established the new standard for future nuclear deterrence, POLARIS class SSBNs which would rewrite the rule of nuclear deterrence.
So my critical 2 cents would be – knowing what would come anyway – trumping any RU old-fashioned ground-based missile threats with US seaborne missiles – the US Administration 1) did not give up any advantage with those Jupiters because SSBNs would replace those 2) the JUPITERS were out of date anyway and if I am correct they were scheduled to be replaced one way or another.
This corresponds with the huge military build-up under JFK.
Something conveniently omitted from history today while it is acknowledged with the legacy of such “warmongers” as Truman and Reagan the other two with huge defense budget increases.
Argent Provocateurs have got the grey mare over the hump, can’t believe spot is $101 an ounce…
Nearly 3.5x the spot price when doofus came back for a second round~
Nothing on the Hunt Brothers bubble though, they got it up to 6x the spot price in 9 months, whew!
Yes indeed. Plus the Hunt Brothers were dealing on “margin,” ie. leveraged positions. Today, the “rules” are a bit more stringent as to margins. There are a lot of reasons why today is not a replay of 1980. For instance, see the Shanghai Exchange trading that poor nag at over $110 per this morning. There they tend to be “cash and carry” on their commodities bourse.
There will be a shake-out if history is any guide, but the underlying fundamentals have changed from 1980.
It’s a Brave New World out there.
Stay safe, keep leverage to a minimum.
Historically, China was all about silver and not much in gold.
The push on silver is quite something, but still around 50-1 ratio, and the last time the silver/gold biblical ratio of 16-1 happened was at the height of the Hunt Brothers bubble in 1980.
We Asked 300 People About Health Care Costs. The Numbers Are Shocking. (NY Times oped)
Not to NC readers.
“It is the least they can do.”
The “least they can do” for whom?
One either serves the People or Mammon.
From what I have seen, Mammon is a fiercely jealous and hungry Ba’al.
With the People at least, you have a chance.
I don”t really know as I’m not a genius or anything but aren’t the subsidies to the insurance companies not people? When the subs went away the subsidy gets laid on the “consumer” so an honest description would be subsidies to corporations went away so average joe/sephine will have to cover it, o and ,gov has included a reasonable 10% increase per year because capitalism or some bs.
Eat good, don’t get run over…
Taibbi’s latest, public excerpt:
Forget Trump and Greenland. Howard Lutnick Gave the Davos Speech that Mattered
The death of globalization is the real headline from the international self-indulgence festival at Davos
https://www.racket.news/p/forget-trump-and-greenland-howard
2 para’s from the longer article:
“Globalization has been terrible for the United States. In addition to lost jobs and hollowed manufacturing towns, integration with countries like China has massively weakened worker bargaining power and put heavy downward pressure on civil liberties and democracy. Core Trump accusations that American voters have been asked to swallow shitty trade deals for decades and foot Europe’s security bills for even longer (while getting little in return) aren’t wrong. That globalization caused once-powerful countries to lose self-sufficiency — a security issue as well as an economic one — and prioritize global economic growth over the needs of their own citizens is no longer even denied, not that anyone wants to hear it.
Watch what happened when Lutnick articulated the traitorous idea that countries should take care of their own citizens first, saying this is the “job” of government. “I would suggest that policy is something for other countries to deeply consider,” he said, “to take care of their own, and then we will work out wonderful relationships between us.”
There was a hush and then the moderator asked, “Can I bring you back to Greenland?”
an aside: my fear is that Lutnick’s idea of countries ‘taking care of their own citizens’ has more to do with digital-IDs, CBDCs, and panopticon surveillance than with improvement in Main Street economics.
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Lutnick may say globalization has failed the West and United States of America. I’m not too sure about that, but American elite greed and stupidity has sure won the day.
And cracking down on your own citizens will only put America that much farther behind. But I fear greed and stupidity will win out here too.
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Seriously?
Honestly, doesn’t this sound like a short python script that a summer intern could crank out in a week or two (or an hour or two) and would not cost $20 billion dollars or suck down every watt in the Texas power grid?
If this is the kind of brain-dead value proposition this AI dude is relying on for sales, he will be one of the first to go.
I had a VBA macro that did this in coordination with outside vendors, 15 years ago.
RE: Trillion Dollar Question
What does this guy not understand about information, supply/demand, and classical economic theory?
First there is no such thing as perfect information so buying a long term asset (house) is a crap shoot. Insurance rates are going up because of catastrophic losses from floods and fires (mostly). But there are other elements that are needed for a home to be ‘valuable’, and that is utilities (water and sewer specifically). If your local sewage treatment plant gets swallowed by the sea your 5bed 3bath home becomes practically unlivable. If home values decline so does tax revenue to repair or relocate these utilities.
In my town expensive, vulnerable to disaster homes retain value because the scenic and cultural qualities of the populace are attractive to very wealthy newcomers who can readily rebuild after a catastrophic fire or other loss (including going standalone PV, and high-tech water/sewer treatment). There appears to be endless money chasing these homes.
But, in the end, it is the quality of the community (and jobs) that encourages folks to ignore the climate change risks.
Re: Learn to Love Engineers
Once again we get an article which tries to draw a comparison between Chinese and American society:
I have to say as an American I really don’t get “lawyerly society”. As an older American that can compare what America was like fifty years ago to today I would make the argument that we were maybe more a lawyerly society in the past, but much less of that today. I would have to say that the overriding vibe I get from our ruling elites today is we are a corrupt society. We have laws, but those with vast amounts of money or power routinely ignore them. Maybe that’s where the lawyers come in to the picture.
Just saying…