Spider monkeys pool their knowledge to find the best fruit Phys.org
Doomsday Clock moved closer to midnight than ever before: What does this indicate? Firstpost
Climate/Environment
The underground network Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. “Trillions of miles of tiny fungal tubes embedded in soil transport nutrients to crops and other plants and fight climate change by storing carbon. Scientists are racing to understand how these fungi—increasingly under threat—function.”
Tourism takes toll on ancient seagrass The Ecologist
Pandemics
Metrodora promised comprehensive treatment. But within two years, it abruptly closed. The Sick Times
China?
Can the “Super-Large Scale” of the Chinese Economy Reshape Globalization? Beijing Cultural Review
Davos Declared the Death of “Old World,” But Here is a Glimpse of the “New World” George Chen
Syraqistan
Israel prepares concentration camp in south Gaza amid efforts to expel Palestinians The Cradle
After Trump Declared Gaza War ‘Over,’ Media Lost Interest FAIR
Bari Weiss’ New CBS Hire List Is Full Of Zionists. The Dissident
***
Covering His Tracks? Trump Hard-Pivots Once More to Iran Simplicius
Three Scenarios for a US Attack on Iran Larry Johnson
Iran’s Strategic Decision to Restore Deterrence & Prevent Continued Military Pressure Conflicts Forum
France and Spain signal support to list Iran’s Revolutionary Guard as terrorist group Euronews
The Iran Insurgency Anti Empire Project
***
Al-Sharaa meets Putin as Russia seeks to secure military bases in Syria Al Jazeera
Africa
Africa’s data centre boom triggers shift in power investment priorities Intellinews
The UAE has likely turned to Ethiopia as its next front for the RSF in Sudan, especially with supply lines via Chad, Libya, & Somalia under pressure.
This is a recipe for disaster, given current Red Sea tensions, & could pull Egypt, Eritrea, & Saudi Arabia deeper into Sudan.🔗⬇️ pic.twitter.com/8ZYsICMaWd
— Liam Karr (@liam_karr) January 27, 2026
European Disunion
ICE agents’ role in Milan-Cortina Olympics sparks criticism in Italy Euronews
ICE is not welcome in Milan: even a government that calls itself sovereignist should protest. Il Fatto Quotidiano (machine translation)
Switzerland to raise VAT from 2028 to fund $40bn defense expansion Al Mayadeen
Old Blighty
Expensive gas still biggest driver of high UK electricity bills, says UKERC Carbon Brief
New Not-So-Cold War
Kremlin confirms second round of talks with US and Ukraine RT
Germany rules out 2027 as target date for Ukraine’s EU accession Anadolu Agency
Showbiz Hitlerians Events in Ukraine
Russia’s sanctioned oil firm Lukoil to sell foreign assets to Carlyle AFP
China and Russia Bolster Defence Ties Amid US Strategic Moves Devdiscourse
Eighty-Two Years After Leningrad: Memory, Endurance and the Weaponization of Hunger Kautilya the Contemplator
South of the Border
Machado announces imminent return to Venezuela Al Mayadeen
Venezuela’s oil reform fails to lure US majors despite push for private investment Intellinews
Will the CIA turn Venezuela into Ukraine 2.0? RT
China Urges Brazil to Stay ‘On the Right Side of History’ Orinoco Tribune
Trump 2.0
Search warrant FBI served at elections office near Atlanta seeks records tied to the 2020 elections AP
Sen. Mark Warner, top Dem on Senate Intel, on DNI Tulsi Gabbard being spotted at the Fulton County FBI raid
He says if there was a legit foreign intel nexus, the committee hasn’t been informed of that as required by law
Or it’s a “domestic political stunt” pic.twitter.com/tP0oxjxnaX
— Andrew Desiderio (@AndrewDesiderio) January 29, 2026
Can Trump Pivot on Economy and Immigration to Salvage the 2026 Midterms? Tanveer Bokhari
Trump starts midterms campaign tour in Iowa, focusing on economy instead of immigration Iowa Capital Dispatch
Trump’s Minnesota de-escalation lasts less than 48 hours Axios
Erika Kirk pledges Turning Point will match $1,000 government deposits in ‘Trump Accounts’ The Hill
Shutdown
House Republicans warn against Senate changing DHS funding bill The Hill
A shutdown won’t stop ICE — Congress built it that way Struggle-La Lucha
Democrats en déshabillé
Democrats Outline DHS Funding Demands. Republicans’ Gameplan is TBD. NOTUS
ICE Exposes Democratic Party Irrelevance Black Agenda Report
Police State Watch
Internal review contradicts White House narrative of Pretti’s death NPR
Yeah, they clearly targeted Alex Pretti for assassination in their Palantir ICEstapo database as soon as he went beast mode and kicked that tail light out with precision, just like *wham* https://t.co/EicdHEEDTJ pic.twitter.com/MUdnzuBr3I
— ParaPower Mapping (@KlonnyPin_Gosch) January 29, 2026
Former Border Patrol chief known for illegal coverups leads Pretti homicide investigation. Borderland Talk with Jenn Budd
Exclusive: ICE’s Secret Watchlists of Americans Ken Klippenstein
ICE Is Using Palantir’s AI Tools to Sort Through Tips Wired
ICE agent tries to enter Ecuadorean consulate in Minneapolis, sparking an international incident The Canary
The order is incredible. You have to read it. It’s not even three full pages and you feel the judicial fury. He says court orders are repeatedly being ignored and people who have done nothing wrong are remaining in detention despite judicial orders requiring them to be released. https://t.co/Tjo2wk4xTn pic.twitter.com/XhPtN6Wiey
— Aaron Reichlin-Melnick (@ReichlinMelnick) January 27, 2026
***
Administrative Warfare & The End of the Political Landmarks: A Journal of International Dialogue
Groves of Academe
Empire’s Ideology, with Free Pizza: How the Council on Foreign Relations Shapes Higher Education MR Online
PATRICK LAWRENCE: Trump’s War on the Future Has a Past Consortium News
Big Brother Is Watching You Watch
App for Quitting Porn Leaked Users’ Masturbation Habits 404 Media
Imperial Collapse Watch
Managing The Powerful. Aurelien
Guillotine Watch
The Wealth Concentration Engine: Rethinking America’s Financial Plumbing Scheerpost
Healthcare?
After Donations, Trump Administration Revoked Rule Requiring More Nursing Home Staff New York Times
AI
US cyber defense chief accidentally uploaded secret government info to ChatGPT Ars Technica
Investors punish Big Tech AI spending that delivers slower growth Reuters
The Bezzle
How Winter Storm Fern Slowed Down the Bitcoin Network Gizmodo
Class Warfare
THE MEANS-TESTING INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX LPE Project
Imagining the End of Capitalism Counterpunch
Grass Always Greener Hickman’s Hinterlands
Antidote du jour (via):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
81 comments
Comments are closed.
Taibbi’s latest, public excerpt:
The Politics of Neither
Polls are increasingly clear: both Republicans and Democrats are rapidly losing the public’s confidence. Do more people want to end the culture war than win it?
https://www.racket.news/p/the-politics-of-neither
From the longer article:
Lost amid furious coverage of Minnesota this month was publication of a Gallup survey showing that the share of Americans who identify as Independent is skyrocketing compared to traditional affiliation:….
…
Dennis Kucinich, who became Mayor of Cleveland running as an outsider and twice ran for higher office as an Independent, put it this way: “When you look at Israel, the differences [between the parties] are non-existent. When you look at the financial world and the lack of regulation, the differences and the advocacy are non-existent. When you look at where the money’s coming from, there are certain interest groups financing both parties.”
The Kucinich quotes are so good I forwarded the post to a Democrat acquaintance who is a long-time fan of Kucinich. He refused to read it because it was written by Matt Taibbi, “a Republican.”
Not an isolated incident: Democrats are still shunning their heretics, i.e. most of their base.
I find the boom in stories about how Trump’s blowing the midterms to be remarkably clueless.
1) This far out no serious people call elections.
2) Lawfare can only stop the DOJ for so long, this is the year Democrats go on trial and it won’t be pretty.
3) Democrats still think you beat Trump by calling him names while giving voters no affirmative reasons to vote for Democrats. Trump not on the ballot this fall, TDS not a winning strategy.
Taibbi’s logic in that piece is very good. The Uniparty exists for itself and itself alone. This has always been the tendency, but since the Clinton Catastrophe it has been an iron law. This is something my PMC peeps simply cannot understand. It is also why Trump has a Teflon overcoat. I have been a Taibbi reader forever (going back to Rolling Stone and all of his books) and subscriber since he went independent. He is no Republican. But the first comment in response to his piece this morning is completely off-topic (with the responses to that comment in agreement as far as I had the willingness to skim) and lessens Taibbi’s authority, not that this matters to his current business model that includes a large role for Walter Kirn.
FWIW most of my oldest friends are completely on board with an unaccountable masked paramilitary arm of the federal government running wild in ICE-cold Minneapolis. They vote, all of them. A Republican running for US Senate in Georgia wants the same for Atlanta. That would lead to a whirlwind that would sink his candidacy, but he believes he needs the president’s endorsement. If the goal were really mass deportation of The Other Who Don’t Belong in Stephen Miller’s fever dreams, ICE would have started in Texas, Florida, and Georgia. That they are targeting “blue” cities is all you really need to know. And that is all you really need to know about the DOGE Rampage of 2025. They never went where their “yield” would make a significant dent in the federal budget. It was all an act for their intended audience, who loved the performance.
I don’t know, but I always hear from the media its impossible for the party in charge to maintain majorities in Congress for the midterms. That’s what they say when Democrats are in charge, does it apply to Republicans as well?
Some of it is to find how many more civil liberties they can take away and yes like doge going into social security its a brazen tech bro dystopian power grab that won’t be rolled back any more than the patriot act and section 702 have been with full bipartisan support. When I come across histrionic dems I can only ask”What did you think would happen?”
Tegnost, you are as always, right on target. Thank you for insightful comments!
I guess I would ask my Democratic friends —- what has happened in the past 5-10 years or so that makes someone evil or a “Republican” for hosting a show with the other person being a counterpoint? Are we that adverse to having our ideas challenged? What do you think the vast number of voters out in the country think when they see what appears to be total intellectual cowardice?
I spent my life watching weekend political shows where there was actual confrontation and questions. That is one of the big problems with the Democratic media right now – there is no confrontation. I listen to Taibbi for this – and I literally have to go to clips from Fox for actual back and forth – the CNN moderator cannot seem to moderate and the Sunday AM shows have turned into a total joke. MSNBC long ago banned any and all disagreement. This lack of confrontation is readily seen in the politicians who get to the general election and literally melt when asked hard questions, looking right at Kamala – and unfortunately I see it all the time in students from our universities – they have never been confronted about their ideas in their lives….
It seems to me that this is a big problem with the party and its media. Everything is so “holy” in their political thought structure that it cannot be confronted.
As for the election – people lambasted me before in previous years – this is not going to be the cakewalk for Dems as they are imagining now. They may very well win given the midterm nature – but I am seeing all kinds of things out here in blue country flyover that should really give them pause. The current strategy is really not working. And there is almost a whole year of as you say what promises to be very challenging stuff. And I think we should all have real pause about any kind of polling. My wife is yet again on some kind of monthly polling inventory. Not really candidates, yet. But they ask her – Do you think ICE should be abolished – she responds “Yes absolutely” when her actual position is much more nuanced…..”I just do not want to end up on some list somewhere.” Unfortunately, the Dems, way more than the GOP, have earned every bit of this opaqueness and inability to gauge public opinion. The large number of scolds among them really do punish the evildoers who have a more nuanced opinion than their narrative allows. I, a Dem leaning voter, for one am sick and tired of this crap.
As a life long liberal, I gave up long ago on the Democratic Party having any kind of coherence. It is much too much to ask.
I am sorry but Fox was this way a hell of a long time before that. So why is this a Democrat issue?
I am loath to be so blunt, but your hatred of Democrats has warped your perspective.
I can actually look at modern Fox news clips from their modern shows – very selected of course – and get some kind of back and forth. I do not do it often – but it is there.
And my hatred of Democrats – although I would not use that word – has been years in the making – it has been one betrayal after the other. Waffling on abortion, single payer, doing nothing as millions were removed from their homes, handing over billions to banks and other corporations, making things possible to destroy the underpinnings of my profession. I can go on and on and on and on.
I cannot stand the GOP – but, really, how am I supposed to behave with Dems. Oh well, they meant well. Sorry, that is bull crap and a warped persepective. As I have gotten older – it has become clear to me that the GOP tells you exactly where they stand and they mean it. The Dems tell you what you want to hear – and then stab you in the back. I have spent too much time in my life working for their campaigns and then be totally betrayed. I am by no means alone – Trump is the living proof of how so many Americans feel about them.
All of this plays in to the “accelerationist” position. I know a MAGA supporter who personally HATES Trump (sees him as a rich Yankee schemer with horrible treatment towards his wives) but voted for him, as he simply stated, “because it would be like throwing a hand grenade in to capitol…” He is happy as can be, even though he realizes the discord will ultimately harm him and his family. He believes it is a necessary step in the Phoenix like rebirth of America and feels that the sooner it happens, the sooner a recovery happens.
Personally, I think people need to all step back and take a “chill pill.”
I have to agree with you IM DOC, I have known both times that Trump would win, people now either openly despise them or are completely ambivalent. I’m at the point of also becoming an independent as I have remained a registered Democrat but rarely vote as, it just doesn’t matter anymore.
Please vote, just never for a Dem or Rep.
I switched to Pubs just so I can vote in the primary.
When the Pubs win, they govern. So my vote could actually count.
When the Dems win, they do nothing.
amen, IMdoc.
i was leery of dems from clinton, on(22 when he was elected, so a political newbie…so pretty obvious,lol)
abandoned them entirely after 2 weeks of obamas 1st term.
voted for Bernie in both his stolen primaries, and will likely just never vote again.
no one to vote For…its not allowed, i guess.
I also hesitate to respond, because as someone who has been criticizing Dems and liberals for their Trump derangement and demonization of “deplorables” for a long time now I understand IM Doc’s reaction. But unlike the Doc, I grew up in the Red Heartland (that’s Republican Red, of course). I had friends whose fathers were Birchers, one was in Posse Comitatus. I had racist relatives. I’ve heard the most vile and violent language directed toward various “others” my entire life. This was not the majority of people who were good and decent (as were my parents, fortunately). But such language and belief was possible in a context of ignorance and class and regional biases. Later I became a close observer of politics and the media (and their interaction) both as an academic and as an interested lay observer. Fox was indeed a pioneer in this sort of one-sided partisan propaganda. All those articles about how “I lost My Father to Fox News” had a real basis, as I can attest first hand. But as NC readers are well aware, the Democrats were crucial enablers (among Clinton’s many other key contributions was the Telecommunications Act). And as Taibbi himself discussed well in the book Hate Inc., it did not take long for the “liberal” media to evolve toward the new business model; instead of dominance by one “centrist” voice (like Uncle Walter Cronkite) providing the main Establishment narrative, we would now be fragmented into various tribal information bubbles that kept us at each others’ throats, making “divide and rule” the main dynamic. And “liberal” academics did their part as well.
So yes, there are some nasty and counter-productive liberals and Democrats. But there are voices just as nasty, perhaps more so, on the “other side.” I think IM Doc would agree, though, that this mutual hatred and disdain is a political tool to keep most of us divided. Those at the top mainly share an interest in keeping this conflict going.
Media got bought off, by owners and advertisers, reinforcing the polarization.
Many decry their biases and narrative management, where they ignore what is patently obvious to sentient beings. Then they say not to believe our lyin’ eyes and ears.
Without social media outlets and independent sleuthing imagine where we’d be now.
yeah. i grew up in far exurbia north of houston. still Klan all underneath everything, just well hidden. that whole area was one of the main spawning grounds of what would become the Right Wing Counterrevolution.
all the steeplejacking and church planting and antiabortion craziness and even satanic cult scares at my high school.
and all cultivated by wealthy dickheads who hated women and the poor and werent shy about it.
5th grade math teacher wheeled in a tv and a betamax so we could watch the carter/reagan debate…and she provided commentary, and threw erasers at anybody not paying sufficient homage to the gipper(!!).(this turned me off of politics entirely, but sowed the seed of my antiauthoritarianism, as well as my eventual journey to the far left)
i dont see anything new, today, really…except the masks are off, and the euphemisms are gone.
it’s the dems who are the great betrayers.
i may hate the right…but theyve always been this way.
the dems pretended…and are still pretending…to be in opposition to all that.
If you still listen to Taibbi might I suggest…just about any other political commentator? The guy’s descended into outright hackery ever since Musk played him like Stradivarius with the Twitter files.
And as much as it pains me to extend some credit to a creature of the establishment, Abby Phillip’s Newsnight does have multiple opposing voices for debate – far more than the one token lib on Fox, Jessica Tarlov. Not that any of the dialectic is actually informative. It’s usually a milquetoast dem vs. clinically insane maga rep, but both sides are fairly (and usually unflatteringly) represented.
I really can’t see how you can look at at Fox, NewsMax, or any other republican mouthpiece and not see the most insular propaganda this side of the Ministry of Communications The Dems certainly have their fair share of groupthink and have fallen prey to baseless conspiracy in the past (see: Russiagate), but I challenge you to find anything nearly as disgusting as the recent cries of “she was trying to run him over” or “he was assaulting the CBP agent” on that side of the aisle.
It’s the cackle that really makes the viciousness sublime.
I don’t care whether Taibbi is republican or not but he shouldn’t have any credibility whatsoever after his silence on Gaza and zionist censorship. You can’t just go from “their censoring twitter” to complete silence as people get deported just for criticism of Israel.
No one should be listening to that sell out.
And I used to be a big fan!
I don´t follow as closely as others here but on January 15th Lee Fang and Leighton Woodhouse talked.
Maybe of interest.
Podcast: Minneapocalypse
The dangerous escalation in Minnesota and the end of the western liberal order.
48 min.
https://www.leefang.com/p/podcast-minneapocalypse
In the middle section they get off a bit on the civil-war-threat (which I just don´t share) but as a whole I think it´s instructive to get their POV.
(On the other hand my personal position in all this is way off the charts as for instance I wouldn´t give a damn about the Constitution which was written by a bunch of millionaires 250 years ago and upheld by courts since whose judges are millionaires as well. But that´s a view I cannot expect from those who are closer than me. I already experienced this during events by German BSW two years ago where in general more restrictive policies on immigration are voiced than a more traditional West German style left would have it.)
You are probably wrong about TDS being a winning strategy, at least in the mid-terms. Hate is a powerful motivator and as feckless as the Dems are voting for them will be viewed by many as a vote against Trump, while the soft Trump voter will most likely sit out the election. The Dems also have a structural advantage here as Trump has driven more of the college educated to the Dems and that is a group that punches above their weight class especially in lower turn out mid-terms and special elections. Assuming an election is held the Dems will win the House it’s more a question of by how much do they pick up 20ish seats or 40 plus. If the the former the GOP probably hangs on to the Senate if the latter then the GOP Senate majority is in real trouble.
The pitfall of the TDS strategy for Dems is that if they don’t actually halt and reverse the stupidity (his and the oligarchs) they become the problem and those the hate makes their feckless opponents the winner the next time around.
Biden was also going to lose. But hey they can pretend that was because they couldn’t hide the dementia rather than the fact that people deeply dislike the effect of oligarchy determined governance on their lives, and reject those who make these detrimental actions possible – no matter what cute name the playbook has. Like Biden…
If looking for a historical antecedent this strikes my a lot like the years between Jackson and Lincoln where no one could win consecutive terms. Until someone goes Rooseveltian and provides concrete material benefits for most Americans the electorate will flit from one flavor of the billionaires’ uni-party to other.
So in other words the nonpartisan majority is increasingly sidelined by election laws that insist that they vote for the duopoly.
BINGO! Carolinian – reading through all these astute and well reasoned comments i kept thinking where is choice when none is allowed – although not believing our vote really matters because of all the excellent comments about worthless back-stabbing Dems and evil repukelicans i stood on my porch numerous times during the last POTUS election with Dem door knockers asking them why vote for a party that endorsed genocide and criminalized homelessness while giving away money and arms to corrupt Ukrainian puppets, Israeli terrorists, MIC and all the other hogs at the trough – their response was ‘do you want tRump?’ – so i decided to vote anyway and i voted for Jill Stein because she stood with the Columbia University students protesting the genocide – i lost friends who said they could never forgive me – explaining the degradation of the Dems going back to FDR was worthless and fell on deaf ears and closed minds – the hobbling of any attempt at a third party of substance is built into the system – i did vote for Bernie in primaries only to watch him get kneecapped and turn into a lapdog – imho we are (family blogged) – at my age (76) and watching the geometrically expanding degradation of our environment fueled by the capitalistic greed, glad to be at the tail end of my performance on this stage and worry about what my daughter will experience beyond my existence – but i will always donate and tune into NC because y’all care – i’ve lived on both sides of the law and what i’ve seen on one side makes believing the other side a feckless illusion –
According the the Federal Register there are ~258 million U.S. citizens of voting age. About 150 million bothered to cast votes in the last presidential election, with about half the total going to each of the duopolists. That’s a lot of power left lying in the street.
“We didn’t vote because it won’t make a difference!”
I can’t understand why people don’t get it how dangerous it is to:
1. use a phone for anything finance related
2. use a cloud service to store passwords
3. use a cloud service to store backups of personal data, unencrypted
3a. think that’s good enough as the only backup
4. expect dating (and other sites with ‘lifestyle’ info) sites not to leak data
5. expect any cell phone, even a bare iphone, not to leak data
6. post or text very personal pics under any circumstance. A GF/BF/spouse can become a disgruntled ex, for example
Some of it is exhaustion, I suppose. Trying to do any kind of business without websites and bots is effectively impossible – except for the very wealthy and then not always.
Even on point 6, every doctor or lab I’ve been to in the last few years makes an image of the front of my picture ID.
Point 2, though, allowing anything other than paper in your possession for passwords is bananas.
I have a not uncommon Anglo man’s name that is also my gmail address (I’m old enough to have one of those). I get emails with erm, intimate, photos every couple months. Not spam. People really don’t know what the heck they’re doing.
On the internet, nobody knows they’re dogs. ;p
One may as well assume the likes of these apps are tools of intelligence to recruit the vulnerable for everything from protest fodder to drug muling to Ukraine sign-ups. One step up from gambling apps and increasingly social media.
Regulation Commeth for the new Internet.
with the reappearance of interest in the gooberment making watchlists, i am thinkin along those lines, too, Balan…and wondering when do i pull the plug.
first, itll be back to lurking, i suppose.
not that it really matters…i have already been on a nofly list(per the travel agent), 24 years ago…assume due to yelling at my employees(all of congress)…also assume im still on it.
and i always keep in mind just where this system of tubes comes from,lol.
and when i think about all of this, i am cast back 45 or so years ago, when dad and brother and i were on a dad’s weekend, heading to the matagorda house to fish. stopped at aburger joint in rosenburg, texas, eating in the jeep, and dad had one of his very rare bouts of disclosure madness, and told us about his time at the DIA.
towards the end of his soliloquy, he looked at both of us and said, “they have a dossier on both of you, too…”…and then we were back on the road and he would say no more,lol.
i am proud to be on The List, dammit.
and proud that i got myself on at least one, too.
knowing that ive never been an actual criminal(never even did a gas drive off), just incessantly portrayed as one by evil shitbirds with power, i figger that being on a list means ive done some things right.
my flag has a middle finger on it.
still…i am too old and broken to join the revolution…so i will go dark at some point..whether because they go really, really crazy, and such craziness enjoys a level of support far beyond what i expect…or due to the final enshittification and paywalling of the web, making it unusable.
consider my fondest farewell to always be pending, and read.
And they talk about former DDR or Romania as places with high levels of people profiling…
I have rooted and installed new images on phones in the past, but I have not done it recently so as you recommend above, I tend to restrict what I do on my phone. But I recently did some experimenting with removing and replacing Windows 11, and that’s much easier than rooting and re-imaging a phone.
I bought an inexpensive Windows laptop (on sale for $450) for a friend as a Xmas gift. Theirs had broken months earlier, and they had not had the funds to get it fixed or replace it. They needed one since they are right in the middle of union contract negotiations for a new union so I bought them an inexpensive Windows laptop running Windows 11 Home in S mode. First time I’ve heard of S mode, but essentially it restricts one to only installing applications from the Windows Store. Here’s how to fix that:
Got a new laptop with Windows 11 in S Mode? Let’s break down what that means (and how to switch it off if it’s not for you)
https://www.techradar.com/computing/windows/got-a-new-laptop-with-windows-11-in-s-mode-lets-break-down-what-that-means-and-how-to-switch-it-off-if-its-not-for-you
So if stuck with Windows 11 in S mode (pretty much means MS has decided the laptop doesn’t have the horse power to do the Copilot AI version of Windows), I would definitely turn off S mode and install software like Firefox, LibreOffice, etc, to get away from the MS software.
I haven’t had a laptop in a while (never felt the need, I had been avoiding it at work – had an engineering workstation – until they forced me to take a workstation laptop over ten years ago, a big heavy thing to lug around), but I was getting tired of watching all the ads on YT when watching from my wife’s Mac Air so I bought the exact same laptop that I had bought as a Xmas present with the intention of installing Linux on it to see how hard that was to do, and how well it worked.
So it took less than an afternoon* to make a bootable flash drive image of CachyOS, and re-image the laptop, and now we’re watching YT with no ads. Everything tested so far works just fine. Here’s CachyOS:
Blazingly Fast & Customizable Linux distribution https://cachyos.org/
I never even allowed the laptop to boot into Windoze. I turned off secure boot in the BIOS, and rebooted while pressing the key to show all the boot options, and booted from the flash drive. A half hour later Windoze was gone, and I was customizing CachyOS the way I wanted. Everything pretty much just works.
Having used Linux for a long time, I’m able to pretty quickly find my way around, but I think switching away from Windows is a pretty big jump for most people so I would recommend something like Linux Mint:
Linux Mint 22.3 https://www.linuxmint.com/
I installed Linux Mint as a VM, and I’m going to install Windows as a VM too. I’ll report back on that if people are interested.
* Fast internet connect helps for all the downloading!
I’ve completed the installation of a Windows 10 VM. Everything running very well. I was able to download the Windows 10 iso directly from Microsoft.
I’m using KVM, QEMU, libvirt and virt-manager for installing and running the VMs. It’s all done through a GUI, no command line stuff required.
This laptop runs very nice with Linux, everything starts and runs fast. Even the VMs run fast. I did end up turning off Hibernate, it doesn’t work.
Hibernate now working too. This is a very nice laptop with one exception – the resolution and color gamut of the display is horrible (6 bpc IPS panel), but I’ve since looked at the specs for a lot of laptops, and I have yet to find a new laptop with a good display for much less than about $1200 unless you get a Mac.
“Three Scenarios for a US Attack on Iran”
I suppose that Trump is counting on a big, flashy victory and probably is reckoning with a two week political deadline to get it wrapped up. But Iran has said that if they are attacked, that they will shut down the Strait of Hormuz for a three month period. This is a direct threat to Trump. M. Market will definitely have a sad if this happens and the blame will fall on only one person for this happening – Trump. In addition, this suggests at least three months fighting and last time around, Israel could only last two weeks before crying Uncle Sam. Also, three months means that you are talking about April and this could have a damaging effect on the upcoming midterms. A reasonable deal could be made but Trump is demanding that Iran get rid of its ballistic missile program. For Iran, that would men that they would be completely helpless against Israel and the US so that is not going to happen. In short, Trump is pushing them into a corner that they cannot back out of so will go to war if attacked.
Missiles raining down on Israel for three months might focus a few minds.
When the 12 day war ended, it was reckoned that Israel only had enough anti-air missiles for another fortnight. After that they would have been reduced to trying to shoot them down with rifle fire. They can’t last for three months.
I think Alastair Crooke said that on the third or fourth day of Iran’s retaliation, they were already crying out to Trump for a ceasefire. I suppose there has been some resupply of western air defense interceptors but I seem to recall that they did not perform very well.
Round 2 is unlikely to go well especially since Iran is not going to be obliged to play kabuki theatre with Trump again and will hit back very hard. Trump’s perfidy has not been forgotten and the build up in the region means he’s probably going for it again…
seems like i remember that iran also didnt really break into the cupboard where all the new fancy stuff is, and instead just lobbed all the old stuff en masse…with a few hypersonics for effect.
dont think theyll hold back this time.
desalination, power, ports and every single idf, et alia hovel and hole.
and wherever the nukes are kept, of course(would be my first target)…and remember a few eeks ago iran made a lot of noise and released a bunch of israhell intel, showing pretty clearly that two could play the infiltration game(iirc, none of that last bit ever made it into western media)
and ive seen folks talking about how iran has pretty much rolled up Isr’s subversion networks…
so we’ll see.
funny how trump’s minneapolis gestapo larping exercise goes sour, and suddenly we’re back to iran.
its a different “focus”(idiotic halfassed blunder) every week.
and none of it is ever resolved in any way, save in blustering rhetoric.
This is probably some other destructiveness that had been sketched out or discussed before Trump took office (like Project 2025) and, indeed, politicos are trying to spin it into having some popular support.
“How the Council on Foreign Relations Shapes Higher Education”: This link sparked a personal recollection that the CFR has an active partnership with the primary high school speech and debate NGO: The National Speech and Debate Association. The CFR has banner ads and sponsorship of major tournaments and it supplies a significant number of research resources (i.e., CFR papers) to high school students competing in debate and speech. I’ve linked the seven page list of papers the CFR makes available to these students on the NSDA web-site
I have never encountered the CFR directly (that I am aware of) but I occasionally stress test my sanity by listening to the ECFR (the European branch) podcast “Mark Leonard’s World in 30 Minutes.” It’s hard to imagine a more reliably gag-inducing litany of global (neo)liberal pieties …🙄
One more on “Big Brother Is Watching You Watch” from Edward Hasbrouck’s excellent Papers Please site on the SPEXS national REAL-ID database operated by the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators (AAMVA).
https://papersplease.org/wp/2026/01/28/ok-legislators-sue-to-block-upload-of-state-residents-data-to-aamvas-national-real-id-database/
Thanks.
I have to renew soon and fly once in a while but I’m not to keen about this latest erosive action.
If one doesn’t comply I’m sure all the data will just be scraped up by ai and you’ll be on a list of non compliant consumers. It’s a private operation after all so there will be buying and selling going on.
“ICE agents’ role in Milan-Cortina Olympics sparks criticism in Italy’
Trying to work out what jurisdiction ICE has in a foreign country like Italy. They are supposed to be on protection duty but the US already has the Diplomatic Security Service as well as the Secret Service for that. I can only surmise that the Trump regime is trying to stage a deliberate provocation. Maybe the hope is that Meloni will ban them whereupon Trump can announce 25% tariffs unless he gets something from Meloni. I think that the Italians are too sophisticated for such a trap and it will be the Mayor of Milan giving those ICE agents the cold shoulder but why the need for such a deliberate provocation in the first place.
Maybe someone will point out that they are aliens in Italy, and the traveling murder-goons can pepper-spray each other?
I wonder if they will they be wearing masks and carrying guns in Italy?
Was it the bobsledders? Or the biathletes? /s
I assumed it was just another boondoggle. A few people at ICE wanted to go to the Olympics and faked up this “security” thing. I would trust the Carabinieri to provide the real security, while the U.S. officers are enjoying a vacation. What the heck do they know about what’s going on in Italy?
re: aftermath of the war on terror
LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS has a series of podcasts on the war on terror
I am not through. It is however a bit odd so far.
Secondary but I cant´stand the author´s voice – Daniel Soar – and kind of exaggerated way of speaking.
Anyhow.
So far latest installement is a panel with Patrick Cockburn, Laleh Khalili and Tom Stevenson
Episode 6: Aftershock ‘Live’
Daniel Soar
26 January 2026
34 min.
https://www.lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and-videos/podcasts/aftershock-the-war-on-terror/episode-6-aftershock-live
What I found fascinating:
Almost no mention of the Ukraine War. And what they do say is not surprising considering this is the LRB…
So while Khalili addresses openly the genocide – and they seem to at least agree on that – Cockburn seems to have been around war zones too long and gotten used to it all since he kinda forgot the 6 Million dead due to the “War on Terror” which is after all the show´s topic. Something Stevenson points out.
An uneven discussion but worth it, I think. Even if only to again witness British (progressive) left establishment´s awkwardness.
And: it´s way too short.
A fascinating read as always. I think that one of the (many) reasons there has been a decay in the quality of advice our leaders have these days apart from the ones outlined by Aurelien, is that since the 1980’s the rise of financialization and the various social media IT companies is that the public service no longer attracts the same calibre of intellect. In simple terms, in past decades, a career in the public service was very attractive for bright, ambitious and hard working young people who lacked the social/economic connections to go into the traditional professions or established business – in particular if you were from the non-professional classes. I was told a few years ago by a retired public servant that they had a huge problem attracting and retaining even moderately talented young staff – for most of them, a few years in administration in a public body was seen as a way to put some meat on their resume so they could get a job in banking or in some social media company. For professionally qualified staff, a few years in a public body was seen as a good way to get a much more lucrative consultancy job.
Makes sense to me. I may be hallucinating in my old age but I seem to recall that the thinking in the 1960s was that the Permanent Secretary of a Whitehall department should be paid on the same level as the CEO of an important public company. Now the difference is probably ten or twenty fold.
re: Trita Parsi and Iran 2012
Why is James Carden posting this now (Jan. 22nd)?
“The background of some of the most arrogant gatekeepers of the so-called ‘realist and restraint’ crowd here in Washington is surprising, to say the least….”
https://substack.com/@jameswcarden/note/c-203523221
I have no time to check the court´s ruling or the various statements from 14 years ago.
A ‘Moderately Intelligent Agent For the Iranian Regime’?
September 17, 2012
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/207421/a-moderately-intelligent-agent-for-the-iranian-regime/
What is more puzzling the allegation in court or Carden now coming back to this?
“Switzerland to raise VAT from 2028 to fund $40bln defense expansion”
I guess that the Swiss government needs the money because they are becoming aware of the true costs of those F-35 that they agreed to buy. They may as well be gold-plated.
Erika Kirk pledges Turning Point will match $1,000 government deposits in ‘Trump Accounts’ – The Hill
For the program to show that it produces gains or show quick results, will the kiddies be provided with a correction?
Or will they be thrown into the tippy-top?
it was all over twitter this early am that erica was a beauty pag chick when trump ran the show…so another honeypot?
and also all over twitx this am, is how melania was one of epstien’s girls,lol…so a honeypot.
there were pics and official writeups regarding erica’s days in that world, but the melania stuff, as yet unconfirmed, at least by me.
because i dont care anymore enough to go digging…having decided that trump, and likely everybody in any kind of position of power has a lurid tape somewheres under the temple mount of them doing horrible things.
someone asked the other day if there might be a snuff film, hence all the crazy swinging distractions.
blowing bill C. while hilldog cackles offscreen?
the mind reels.
we really need a new set of overlords…theseuns are starting to smell.
After Trump Declared Gaza War ‘Over,’ Media Lost Interest (FAIR)
After Biden Declared Pandemic ‘Over,’ Media Lost Interest (me)
Yes, the Lie Factories know who their sponsors are and where their orders come from.
Add to that the media’s ten second buzz headline business model and here we are. Seems to me Ukraine is in the same boat.
spain’s support of the palestinians is so performative, just like all of europe’s left (varoufakis, corbin, etc).
they’re outraged that israel is genociding the palestinians, but they want any obstacle to the final solution removed, in this case, Iran.
I remember Varoufakis celebrating the fall of Assad. I don’t think he had much to say about al-Jolani or the ongoing sectarian violence in Syria. The western “left” looks more and more like controlled opposition all the time. Purely cosmetic politics
What a lit timeline; one of the few people I talked two 18 months ago, from the Tinder, looking for (and failing) COVID-aware people. She’d had at least two infections when we talked. At the end of 2024 she posted about how sick she was again, who knows what with. I don’t follow Facebook much, but because the COVID groups are (sigh) all there, I saw her latest update
COVID damages the immune system, and it can cause autoimmune disorders.
What a tough way to learn. Not as bad as not wearing a mask one day and dying, but still tough.
Haitians Are Vital to U.S. Health Care. Many Are About to Lose Their Right to Work. (NY Times)
I remember IM Doc had said Democrats mandating the non-sterilizing shot was causing an exodus in healthcare. And here we are.
Like an ongoing Pandemic that’s also disabling health care workers?
Oops.
Because the work is physically and emotionally grueling, and most of these workers are extremely underpaid. Surprise.
Considering the intensity of European MSM reporting over Minnesota which after all is 10k miles away – what is the situation e.g. in France? How brutal (or not) is law enforcement there re: immigration?
I don’t live in France but there is an American couple live there (Baguette Bound) who have recently put out a video saying that they cannot understand what is happening in the US and that (hopefully) they do not believe such events would happen in France because it is such a rule-bound society.
Worth watching if only to see some decent people clearly deeply affected by what they see on French media about what is going on in the US.
I imagine some in France are hoping events in the US will put some people off voting for the RN next year.
not sure about France, other than the general European policy of letting immigrants drown in boats in the Mediterranean. Here in the Netherlands, the agencies and facilities for ‘asylumseekers’ are hugely underfunded and overcrowded. On purpose I’d say. It should then act as a deterrent. At busy times, families are forced to sleep outside of the main reception centre.
I don’t think I’ve read many, if any, stories about law enforcement tracking down or searching for illegal immigrants. I do know there are occasionally repatriations though.
Today’s kink for Blighty is an excellent example of Net Zero misdirection.
“Expensive gas still biggest driver of high UK electricity bills, says UKERC”. Well, only if you aren’t a natural cynic.
The biggest driver of the bill – not the increase in the bill – is its largest component. And that, dear friends, are non-power generation costs of network and green costs. By UKERC’s own report, these were 60% of a bill in 2023 and… 55% in 2026.
That slight reduction in proportion is admittedly driven by a greater increase in fuel costs than network and green costs. Nevertheless, the overall average electricity bill has jumped by 20%, from £750 to £900 and the biggest part of that £900 is network and green costs. (And the purely political reasons for high gas prices, the switch from Russian pipeline gas to USA LNG in Europe, are not even mentioned). A saving in network and green costs would help consumers far more than a saving in fuel costs.
NB: There is no clarity in the graph about which network costs are not also green costs, resulting from renewable generation (new transmission lines, storage, frequency stabilisation) and increased electrification (new kines, new substations, new generation thus more subsidies). So I have lumped them together for discussion.
https://ukerc.ac.uk/publications/review-of-energy-policy-2025/download
From Parents Navigate a Fracturing Vaccine Landscape (NY Times)
That’s pretty selfish; 70 years ago no one was taking their 6 month year old anywhere as I understand it from my mother. Certainly not vacations to Disney. And they certainly didn’t start pre-school at age 1.
Guess what doesn’t have herd immunity? COVID.
Flying with a 9 month old?
(bold mine)
Maybe try rational self interest?
re: history Mitford (private) life
LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS
One of the Worst Things
Rosemary Hill review of
Troublemaker: The Fierce, Unruly Life of Jessica Mitford
by Carla Kaplan.
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v48/n02/rosemary-hill/one-of-the-worst-things
Entrepreneurship in the UK is still alive.
Elderly lottery winner uses jackpot to build £288m drug empire making pills from his cottage
And from Bolton as well, following in the innovative footsteps of Samuel Crompton. Truly a role model for the younger generation of Boltonians seeking to once again turn the town into a vibrant hub of industrial and commercial activity.
Democrats will cave on DHS funding. They will use the excuse of “reform” to betray citizens again, like they always do.
It wasn’t just the Traitor 7 Dems who supported DHS funding. Dem leadership supported the 7 and no attempt was made to whip them into voting against it.
Dem playbook is to find enough Dems to torpedo a bill their paymasters don’t want. The 7 were part of this play. Dem leaders wanted DHS funded.
Dems betray citizens. It wasn’t just the Traitor 7 Dems who voted to fund DHS who are betrayers. Dem leaders made zero attempt to whip the 7 into voting against it. In fact they supported the 7 because “compromise”.
Now we are talking about a party that takes Israeli bribes to torture, starve and freeze kids to death. As long as Dems get their bribes, that’s all that counts. Nobody who kills kids for money GAF about you.
Now they talk “reform” but when have true Nazis ever been reformed?
Democrats will betray us again and DHS will live to persecute innocent people.
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2026/01/29/us/trump-news
We’ll see what kind of “guardrails” Democrats want and care to get. Literally a minimum should be “unmasking”. Masked law enforcement is for governments that commit atrocities against their own people.
re: Germany deindustrialization
German JUNGE WELT
machine-translation
Economic crisis
Drastic Job Decline
Analysis: Around 400,000 industry jobs within six years. Growth, in particular in the social field, IGM-criticised policy of “inadequate” industry
https://archive.is/wvuHf
With our gracious host’s permission, I have a field report from Minneapolis:
Today I visited the memorial at 26th and Nicollet. If you are within driving distance of Minneapolis, I encourage you to make the trip. I have been to vigils and memorials before and have interrupted bike rides for a moment of silence when I’ve encountered “ghost bikes” left at the spots where cyclists have been killed in car accidents and none of those can compare to what I just experienced.
Nicollet Avenue is still open to traffic (they’ve removed parking directly across the street from the memorial and have shifted the lanes over). Traffic is passing through at a crawl and very much resembles a funeral procession. I first joined the procession on my bike and then circled back to pay my respects.
I’d say there were about 50 or so people there and they were divided into two groups. All of the messages left at the memorial face outwards toward the street and a little more than half of the people were in the street like me paying their respects, reading the notes, lighting candles, leaving flowers, comforting each other. The other half were on the sidewalk and, even though they were all bundled up (air temp today is 9F/-12C), I got the distinct impression that they were all standing guard ready to quickly dispatch any right wing agitator foolish enough to try anything. Police presence there was minimal with just one SUV on each side the street with their cherries on.
I almost lost it twice. There was a sign left by someone that was partially buried by later offerings and all I could read was “From: The wife of a dying veteran”. In the center of the memorial, presumably on or very close to the spot where he was murdered was a sign with a couple of stethoscopes placed on it. It was a gut punch to see them left there.
I could only stay about 10 minutes before I could feel myself starting to be overwhelmed. I almost lost it a couple more times on the ride back home and a couple more times as I typed this.
Despite all of the talk about reducing the ICE/CBP presence here, Constituional Observers are still out in force. I saw people who were making it very obvious that they were observers (two on 28th and Lyndale, one a few blocks away on 28th and Grand, all wearing reflective vests) and people without vests on Lake Street milling about with their phones out (no one mills about outside in single digit temperatures in January in Minnesota) who I suspect were impromptu observers. Minnesotans are not backing down.
Thanks for the field report! It’s hard to get much street-level type of view like this, much appreciated. Riding in 9F, yikes!
Thanks for the update!
Boy, where is our Thomas Paine and Common Sense when we need them in Minneapolis!!!!?