The craziest bird sounds
— Science girl (@sciencegirl) February 13, 2026
NASA Running Out of Non-Life Explanations for What Its Rover Found on Mars Futurism
The curious life of a clever slime mold Knowable Magazine
America’s Healthier Past is no More Than a Myth McGill University
COVID-19/Pandemics
Scientists Finally Solve the Mystery Behind Rare COVID Vaccine Blood Clots SciTech Daily
Exclusive: Key US infectious-diseases centre to drop pandemic preparation Nature
Climate/Environment
Britain’s relentless rain shows climate predictions playing out as expected The Conversation
Trump’s EPA decides climate change doesn’t endanger public health – the evidence says otherwise Scheerpost
South of the Border
US Southern Command sinks new boat, kills 3 near Venezuela Euronews
The debate over fracking in Mexico: Energy sovereignty versus environmental risk El Pais
China?
Chinese robotics company AgiBot presented its latest full-size humanoid robot, the AGIBOT A3, on Friday in Shanghai. #AgiBot #HumanoidRobot #KungFuMaster #FutureTech pic.twitter.com/Bfrd7HRGQ6
— China Xinhua News (@XHNews) February 14, 2026
China unveils the world’s largest flying car Fox NewsDecoding China’s new space philosophy Phys.org
China’s disappearing elite: The high-stakes gamble behind Xi’s crackdown – analysis Jerusalem Post
China Is Leaving America in the Dust on Clean Energy Inside Climate News
India
India doubles down on state-backed venture capital, approving $1.1B fund TechCrunch
300 million on the streets in a historic national strike in India MR online
“India Very Much Wedded To Strategic Autonomy”: S Jaishankar NDTV
Africa
South Africa’s Ramaphosa confirms breakup of state energy giant Eskom Semafor
South Africa deploys military troops to tackle illegal mining and gang violence Jurist News
Africa’s Water Crisis Exposes Broken Global Financial Order Africabrief substack
European Disunion
The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling Politico
The German party system is no longer functioning. NachDenkSeiten.de
Switzerland to vote on capping its population at 10 million The Independent
Old Blighty
The Death Throes of Keir Starmer’s Government Racket News
He ran, but he can’t keep hiding: Pressure mounts for Andrew to talk to police The Guardian
Israel v. Gaza, Yemen, Lebanon, Syria, Iran
This is what’s left of Al Aqsa University in western Gaza.
The Israeli occupation didn’t just bomb the university; they razed it, trying to stamp out its very existence from memory.
This is a cultural genocide too. pic.twitter.com/GNg4xRJr7Y
— noorii 🔮🍉 (@nooriireads) February 10, 2024
‘We are not protected’ says Hebron mayor as Israel expands West Bank control BBCIsrael’s “Yellow Line” Is a Death Trap for Palestinians. We Drove Into It. Truthout
Israeli settlers injure at least 54 Palestinians in West Bank attacks Al Jazeera
The Digital Iron Dome: How the US and Israel Are Weaponizing Real-Time Networks Futuredude substack
New Not-So-Cold War
Ukraine wants 20-year US security guarantee to sign peace deal The Guardian
Russia’s war in Ukraine has made its formidable air defenses an even tougher challenge for NATO, airpower analyst warns Business Insider
Zelensky Says All Ukraine Power Plants Damaged but Energy System Still Functions Kyiv Post
Big Brother Is Watching You Watch
Australian States Expand Facial Recognition and Biometric Digital ID Systems Reclaim the Net
They Mask Their Agents and Unmask Our Speech Basheer Ali substack
Imperial Collapse Watch
Homeless campers moved from tracks in Brownsville have ‘nowhere to go’ Pensacola News Journal
Judge rules LA liable for property confiscated from the homeless KESQ News
Trump 2.0
How “normie” voters feel about Trump now Strength In Numbers substack
Donald Trump ‘is still very serious’ about acquiring Greenland, Danish leader Mette Frederiksen says Daily Mail
Trump pushes for voter ID mandate ahead of midterms Andolu Agency
A Federal Judge Explains Why Trump Can’t Jail Legislators for Producing a Video That Offended Him Reason.com
Musk Matters
Elon Musk’s X to launch crypto and stock trading in ‘couple weeks’ CoinDesk
Grok market share surges amid fierce regulatory backlash over deepfakes Cryptopolitan
Democrat Death Watch
John Fetterman slams anti-Israel ‘rot’ in Democratic Party, rejects AOC claims of Gaza ‘genocide’ Fox News
Louisiana’s 2 biggest races won’t have a major Democrat: ‘We can’t coerce anyone to run’ nola.com
Immigration
Trump administration seeking tech firm data on Americans critical of immigration agents: Reports Andolu Agency
‘South Texas will never be red again’: Home builders warn GOP over Trump’s immigration raids Politico
Over 4,400 court rulings find ICE unlawfully detaining immigrants The American Bazaar
Our No Longer Free Press
Journalist Don Lemon pleads not guilty in Minn. church-protest case Free Speech Center
The $31 million question: Are Trump’s settlements actually changing journalism? The Washington Times
Mr. Market Is Moody
Europe seeks “safer distance” from dollar assets Macaubusiness.com
Gold slips below $5,000, silver slumps after blowout U.S. jobs report Investing.com
Why good financial news didn’t fuel a broad stock market rally Detroit Free Press
AI
Chatbot lovers foreshadow AI’s new normal Semafor
An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me theshamblog.com
Spotify says its best developers haven’t written a line of code since December, thanks to AI TechCrunch
Minimum Standards for Taking AI Seriously How Things Work substack
The Bezzle
US federal judge sentences Praetorian’s CEO to 20 years over massive $200 million Bitcoin fraud Cryptopolitan
FBI looking for Missouri man wanted for $220M cattle fraud scheme KMBC News
Guillotine Watch
The mega-rich are giving up on luxury assets. Forget fine wine, great art and glitzy mansions. The Economist’s senior economics writer, Callum Williams, explores the growth in ultra-luxury services: https://t.co/T7dX70ZS9E pic.twitter.com/ZM5bl9HtFd
— The Economist (@TheEconomist) December 17, 2025
July 19
MetLife Stadium
East Rutherford, New JerseyMight be the most expensive tickets ever sold in North America. pic.twitter.com/4Avjzz5Pyz
— Jim Bianco (@biancoresearch) December 23, 2025
Antidote du jour (via)
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here
160 comments
Comments are closed.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/14/world/africa/us-secret-deportation-cameroon.html?unlocked_article_code=1.MVA.GtCH.hNsiU2pJqE_q
U.S. Deports Nine Migrants in Secret, Ignoring Legal Protections
> Most had court orders protecting them from removal to their home countries, so they were sent to detention in Cameroon.
And of course once they are in a country like the Cameroons, the DoJ will claim that those prisoners are out of their jurisdiction being a foreign country. Thing is, courts are taking an extremely dim view of their judicial orders being ignored and will eventualy hit back.
Hit back with what? More judicial orders?
>and will eventualy hit back.
Presumably with more court orders. If so, why won’t the regime that’s already ignoring court orders just ignore those too?
It doesn’t sound like the court orders per se were being ignored. The court order was to not deport the people back to their home countries (central America or wherever). So DOJ said “lol ok, we’ll deport them to Cameroon instead”. Maybe ignoring the intent of the court order but following the letter under some formulation.
Working to rule.
One side pretends to issue enforceable orders, the other pretends to obey them. Neither side seems in a hurry to force the inevitable confrontation, presumably because neither is confident of victory at this point.
“Justice Taney? How many divisions does he have?”
I am not holding my breath waiting for any judicial blowback in result of their ignored judicial orders.
Seems like the SciTech Daily link for “Scientists Finally Solve the Mystery Behind Rare COVID Vaccine Blood Clots” should be changed to:
https://scitechdaily.com/scientists-finally-solve-the-mystery-behind-rare-covid-vaccine-blood-clots/
Scientists Finally Solve the Mystery Behind Rare COVID Vaccine Blood Clots goes to a sign in/create account page. Try the following:
https://scitechdaily.com/scientists-finally-solve-the-mystery-behind-rare-covid-vaccine-blood-clots/
“Exclusive: Key US infectious-diseases centre to drop pandemic preparation”
It may be a Republican regime in power but they have the same idea as the previous Democrat regime. That if a pandemic hits and after a few token gestures, people will be thrown on their own resources and any support in place for them will be shut down. Worse case scenario is that people will have to rely on the American healthcare system to get any sort of help – at a price. This will not end well when the next pandemic hits and I have the feeling that it may not be that many years before one hits.
Waddya mean the “next pandemic”?? I’m still playing whack-a-mole with SARS-CoV-2 :’D
>It may be a Republican regime in power but they have the same idea as the previous Democrat regime.
That’s what we call bipartisanship in the good old USA.
sarc off
What sarc?
So true, I don’t know where my head was at when I wrote that and I’ll gladly stand corrected.
This effing country…
George Carlin: The word bipartisan usually means some larger-than-usual deception is being carried out.
I think the response will be the same as the response to bird flu, with “birds” changed to “people”:
From:
Obviously Jay Bhattacharya remains a valued advisor.
the idea, which is not insane was, rather than cull the entire flock, identify survivors with immunity and use them as breeding stock.
Rather than playing whack a mole, failing to stop the disease, but sending egg supply into shortage.
It should be noted that this idea of letting disease ri[p through flocks of chickens is also promoted by Joel Salatin, AKA the Lunatic Farmer of Swoop, Virginia.
https://thevelvetchronicle.com/joel-salatin-bird-flu/
https://pasturetofork.com/blog/avian-flu
https://youtu.be/LLucUyYgSLI
The problem with this approach is that mortality approaches 100% in unvaccinated poultry.
> Even in the absence of secondary pathogens, HPAI viruses cause severe, systemic disease with high mortality rates in chickens, turkeys, and other gallinaceous poultry; mortality rates can be as high as 100% in a few days after exposure in unvaccinated birds.
https://www.merckvetmanual.com/poultry/avian-influenza-in-poultry-and-wild-birds/avian-influenza-in-poultry-and-wild-birds
According to that same reference surviving birds also may have neurological problems.
the main problem with bird flu as opposed to mammalian flus is that birds have a higher internal body temperature. Pigs also have a fairly high body temperature, 39-40°C, which makes swine flu also dangerous, but birds can have temperatures of up to 43°C. This makes the human body’s first natural defense of cooking the virus via fever impossible, since an avian influenza virus would be resistant up to at least that temperature.
As I recall the ‘Pandemic Response’ — the brouhaha about bio-warfare — was kicked up after the mailings of the anthrax spores back in 2001, when we were alerted to Anthrax in the mails!!!!! … oh my, oh my! …..
……. But now, we can trust our government to warn us of and protect us from ……..
everything? …… everything we need to worry about ….. for now …..
I guess I will watch my copy of “Contagion” again and continue wearing my Honeywell North P100 face mask[perhaps augmented by goggles] when I go around town. [this face mask is relatively comfortable and inexpensive … all things considered. I only changed filters after more than a year of use for no more reason than the number of years they had served me, and served me well without any difficulty affecting my breathing.
Are you a bird? How could bird-flu affect you????? There is Nothing to worry about. You live in merka. …….. and if you do not….. what we worry?
https://futurism.com/the-byte/scientists-weed-cognitive-decline
“When most smokers light up a joint, it’s unlikely that “enhanced cognitive ability” is front-of-mind. Not shockingly, the long-held assumption from most tends to be that weed makes you dumb, and probably fries your brain permanently.
Intriguingly, that argument might be going up in smoke. A recent study by researchers in Copenhagen appears to be good news for all you former teenage tokers out there, finding that the age at which men start smoking has no negative bearing on cognitive decline later in life.
Adult stoners can also breathe a little easier from now on, as the research also found that those who use cannabis frequently as an adult show no greater cognitive decline in the long term than those who don’t partake.
…
Maybe most surprisingly, the research found that mental decline among those who smoke was slightly less than in those who don’t by a measure of 1.3 IQ points.”
I think it’s my golden anniversary of lighting up, and I feel my IQ is only in the low triple digits now, as a result~
So, no longer too smart for your own good? I call that progress!
I never liked weed much during my misspent youth. Now, in old age, I find occasional use quite pleasant.
Like the kids in Lake Wobegon, you’re above average!
Im happy to report being high on my own supply here. I think my 50th was last autumn. I loved it when I was young, though I was careful never to mix it with school or work. Gave it up altogether for kids and making money. Picked it back up with the pandemic and global existential crisis.
I.Q.? Who cares. I.Q. has never mattered in real job or human situation. [I suppose we might benefit by returning to the reasons I.Q. was invented and what meaning its inventor gave his own measures?????]
I greatly enjoy your comments and song/poem inventions. You could have an I.Q. the same number as the u.s. national debt or an I.Q. matching the worth of most warranties on u.s. products. Keep on keeping on!
Also see: Is Weed a Performance-Enhancing Drug? Freakonomics (50 minute audio)
Weren’t there recent studies concluding that sustained weed smoking when starting as a teenager eventually causes serious neurological issues such as schizophrenia?
Yes, the high THC of today with young brains can apparently cause real issues. Of course, it can not be easily studied in the USofA due to schedule 4 listing. There are some EU studies.
The short and long-term effects of synthetic cannabis can be devastating. Sometimes it seems like the brain has snapped, with little hope of recovery. Big problem in UK prisons.
You mean thc analogues. Ie lab made compounds that have a similar chemical makeup to thc. Spice is the street name.
The stoners from Sleep knew what they were talking about when they called their last album The Sciences.
“Adult stoners can also breathe a little easier from now on, as the research also found that those who use cannabis frequently as an adult show no greater cognitive decline in the long term than those who don’t partake.”
I was able to figure that out by following Willie Nelson’s career over the past 50 years.
https://news.flinders.edu.au/blog/2026/02/12/scientific-sleuthing-solves-vaccine-side-effect/
Thanks for this, the Nature article is paywalled. Also, this is good news I think. Hoping the medicos in the commentariat will weigh in.
I am just curious: that video podcast “OpenClaw: The Viral AI Agent that Broke the Internet – Peter Steinberger” is more than that 3:15 hours long, but I see two people chatting, without any additional visual material (charts, statistics, diagrams, whatever) relevant to the discussion.
Does anybody actually spend time watching such long videos rather than just hearing the audio track as a background to other activities?
And if so, why do youtubers waste all the storage and bandwidth for a superfluous video track?
To gloss a recent ShoeOnHead “Hellworld” report… 3+ hour videos of two doodz chatting can be generated by AI (kind of like those OnlyFans accounts that are actually vtuber scammers), and then we can ask other AI “agents” listen to those 3+ hour videos and summarize them for us in a paragraph. Win win.
Don’t know. May be the video is kind of proof they are two people talking, not all a bot made thing. Quite a creepy thing in any case after 5:00 min hearing.
That’s a very good question that I’ve often wondered about. So many such videos have nothing to look at besides the talking heads. These used to be delivered as podcasts, i.e. audio files that your computer would automatically download to your iPod thanks to an RSS feed you can “subscribe” to that details episodes.
I very much prefer the audio only format because YouTube doesn’t easily let me listen on my phone with the screen locked. So unless you have a hack, listening to a podcast on YouTube requires keeping the screen on.
There is an RSS for audio of Glenn Diesen and one for Judge Nap and they work well. I recently found one for Nima’s Dialogue Works but it is usually a day or so behind.
I don’t understand the preference for video of these conversations but it seems that’s where the market is going.
One thing that I find works on my laptop if I’m being lazy (often) is to put the video on and then play solitaire.
YouTube doesn’t easily let me listen on my phone with the screen locked. So unless you have a hack, listening to a podcast on YouTube requires keeping the screen on.
Android: I use NewPipe which blocks ads, allows for background (screen off) play and downloading (both audio and video).
https://newpipe.net/
There are also extensions for Firefox browser (cross-platform) but I’ve found these not to work as well.
I can also recommend NewPipe. Though you may have to manually check if you have the latest version from time to time.
And you can run NewPipe on a Mac if you have a fairly late model one. It’s the solution to YouTube crapification. Unfortunately won’t run on iOS though. Unless someone has come up with a solution for that. It’s one of many software reasons for which I use an Android tablet instead of an iPad.
Oh! So I have something useful to contribute for once. If you don’t need the video, you can download the stream for free, amazingly:
https://en.esmp3.cc/
I’ve used this a dozen times or so the past year. It’s been 100% legit. I download the MP3 that it creates from the YT link, copy it to my phone, and listen. Magic.
As someone (Lambert?) used to say: NC commentariat is the best commentariat.
vao, I can’t remember who said it first, maybe it was LS, but it it’s been said many times! Anyone who hangs around here for long eventually comes to that conclusion, I think. I have certainly said it and will again!
Thanks to Yves and the stellar crew of moderators, this commentariat is the best anywhere.
The rules are reasonable and rational and everyone can play. And it’s nice to see those who refuse to play by the rules go bye-bye pretty quickly.
And btw, it’s always a good time to click on the cute snow leopards! Where would we be without NC?
Thank you, Ben. NewPipe is good and does solve the problem of playing audio with the screen locked. I won’t use the YouTube app on my phone (despise it) so I just use the YT web app in Firefox, which often can play audio with the screen locked if you do it just so (i.e. another hack). But for actually playing videos on the phone in an app, NewPipe looks good.
I’d say NewPipe counts as a hack. Seems to work well but I believe it is still using the video stream from YouTube and hence that much bandwidth. I’d like those of us who would prefer audio and RSS to contact the channel and ask for it. It ought to be just something the have to set up and then it should work pretty much automatically.
I hate both audio and video. I usually download the automated transcript and read it, as those transcripts have gotten pretty good. Lately that has become more annoying as youtube has interfered with yt-dlp but I can still copy/paste the transcript from the browser window and clean it up with a small script.
“Does anybody actually spend time watching such long videos rather than just hearing the audio track as a background to other activities?”
I will watch them on occasion but I tend to watch those videos as a background to other activities, that is, I might watch some of it and listen to some of it, depending on what I’m doing. (When I’m out having lunch somewhere by myself, I’ll listen to audio and might grab the audio track of such a video to listen to offline.) The other thing is that lots of videos (e.g., some history videos) are mostly two people chatting with some images thrown in and you don’t know exactly when those images will appear, so it pays to have some familiarity with the particular channel.
OpenClaw was formerly known as Moltbot.
From Forbes:
What Is OpenClaw, Formerly Moltbot? Everything You Need To Know
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2026/02/06/what-is-openclaw-formerly-moltbot–everything-you-need-to-know/
(And guess what? These personalizing AI bots talk with each other, they even have social media pages where ‘they’ share ‘secrets’ about overcoming OS and human user efforts to prevent them elevating their ‘user’ level. )
AI skeptic David Gerard talked about OpenClaw on his blog (which has a corresponding YouTube channel)—the post title describes the new AI personal assistant as “an expensive and insecure AI agent that doesn’t work”—and also had a conversation about it with fellow AI critic Ed Zitron.
Yep. Thanks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1gG7EeVkzg
175 American bird sounds for people who want to hear more.
Short video clip of a Kookaburra laughing which was not properly covered in that bird sound video-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jW7A2glZbk (28 sec)
Get them here from time to time and their laugh always grabs your attention.
Thanks! you can really hear that the adult has grown into it’s laugh compared to the baby.
The kookaburra in Science Girls clip is not laughing, its asking for food. It’s about the age where they develop the kookaburra ‘laugh’ that people know better. The adult one in your clip Rev has it’s head tilted back indicating it’s projecting it’s cry to other Kookas. We’ve observed them up close here for 25 years & now can distinguish their calls (as well as the other natives like the Magpies). We even know when snakes, goannas or pheasants are about as the types of cries are very distinct.
And i love the Loon in the clip!
Thanks! I spent several years in Central America, mostly on the Pacific side of Nicaragua and Costa Rica. The most fascinating bird song I ever heard was that of the Montezuma Oropendola: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBLKHXtWHRk
Cuba is doing the right thing not burning any more oil and contributing to global heating. The rest of the world can help Cuba and the planet best by helping Cuba replace oil with photovoltaic and wind power, and not by finding more oil for the country.
It won’t be so hard to transition to alternate sources of energy. It’s just a matter of going back to the way things were a century or so ago. Cuba already has a head start on using animal power. The mass transit system in some of the Cuban cities, such as Pinar del Rio, are already powered by horses.
Cuba and the world may end up thanking the United States for cutting off the oil to Cuba. Other countries would do well to stop using oil too. The burning of oil is causing the death of all life on planet earth. We need to stop doing it.
Cuba is going to be an exciting to place to live in the next decade as she shows the world the way to a future that doesn’t burn oil. Thank-you Cuba. And thank-you too United States for setting off a chain of events that may save the world, even though that is not your intention.
ebicycles – in various configurations… excess china-produced solar panels…
modified demand cycles. Showcase for the world as to de-growf. For all the wrong reasons… privation is so repugnant in this day and age.
see the two minute video in today’s links on luxury– experience versus things… the big point was exclusion.
Some days the jackpot can’t come soon enough…
I watched that video thinking if there ever were an argument for the fact that some people are just too rich, this is it! Also, the outrageously expensive World Cup tickets!! What idiot would spend that much on sports tickets?? We don’t eat out a lot but enjoy the odd breakfast or lunch out at a few favourite spots. These outings are becoming less and less frequent as prices rise. Can we afford the occasional $50+ (for two) breakfast or lunch, sure. But it just seems a waste of money to us. I’d rather eat at home, it fells more sensible. Maybe if I posted about my life on social media I’d need those experiences to prove what a good time I’m having and how my life is so much better than others??
The crazy thing is spending that much money to see all of one goal scored. And the kids these days say baseball is boring.
in soccer, something may happen at any second in each 45 minute half. there is no down time.
american sports, like baseball or football, even basketball, have an insane amount of down time. Even a supposedly exciting sport, like basketball, can have the last 5 minutes of game last 20 minutes with constant stoppages.
Tell that to the people who can’t travel to work, can’t cook food, can’t get medical treatment, can’t even get food etc.
Transitioning from fossil fuels is admirable. Being cut off from fossil fuels with no transition, and no ready alternative just means misery and death.
The problem is that it is currently impossible to run a genuine fossil fuel free economy. I mean…it’s just not possible. At all. For example, how many large passenger planes, capable of intercontinental flight are there, which are non-fossil-fueled? Answer: zero. Why? Answer: the batteries are currently too heavy, and this will be the case for the next 30/40 years, barring some extraordinary technological breakthrough. Likewise, steel making and numerous other aspects of our current mechanical/technological world. Will it be possible to have a country that, to all intents and purposes, simply does not use any fossil fuels at all, in any context? Sure. When? In about 50 year’s time. Maybe a decade or so earlier if we have some tech breakthroughs. But now? No.
Cuba will survive if the Chinese and the Russians decide to break the embargo (and they are the only powers that can). If they don’t, Cuba will die, and Marco Rubio will get his Havana beach front hotel/casino/brothel. It’s that simple.
Next question: what are the odds of that happening?
Answer: not high. Cf Libya, Syria, Iran, Gaza, Venezuela etc.
Cuba is caught because, to repeat, the tech is simply not there yet. You just need fossil fuels to function at the moment.
I agree with you 100%.
“Spotify says its best developers haven’t written a line of code since December, thanks to AI TechCrunch”
From an essay posted on X by Matt Shumer, CEO/Founder of Otherside AI.
If what he says is true, this is more confirmation of the prospect that great swathes of the PMC, and other white collar workers will be replaced by machines.
IIRC, didn’t some historical notable observe that revolutions are led by unemployed and underemployed intellectuals?
Runs one AI firm, hawks an AI focused investment service. What else would he say?
How many CEO,s do a lot of coding? Maybe his emails are turning out well?
Put these AI coders on the F-35 TR-3!
Is it any better than “cutting and pasting”? How do you present the “slice of code” to the coding machine?
Baselining (performance, functional and product) the processes of “distributing work” for the SW to execute that adds up to a functioning program is the necessary work, coding in a proper baseline (pretty rare) is rote.
Poor baseline won’t be seen by the AI?
Then the AI must “document” the decisions it made in implementing the baseline, so it can be troubleshot or modified in the future. Do we find the worth of the AI decisions, do we see them in failed code test or by the customer?
Can one AI coder of the same brand read the documentation of its cousin same brand? Humans have trouble sharing understanding of someone else’s code.
Anecdotal! I think this is selling; both OpenAI and Anthropic are in more debt than the phony “valuations” stated by analysts selling AI.
See Ed Zitron’s 13 Feb 2026 article.
The AI sludge (slop no longer imparts the right idea) is polluting everything as in Editor’s Note: Retraction of article containing fabricated quotations:
“On Friday afternoon, Ars Technica published an article containing fabricated quotations generated by an AI tool and attributed to a source who did not say them.”
Of course, ArsTechnica is now “reinforcing […] editorial standards following this incident”.
I wonder how software developers will exculpate themselves from any departure from their vaunted “programming standards” when problems caused by AI will occur in their products.
Lazy people that didn’t check the citations… AI doesn’t know any better. Even if asked for real citations, it might provided them, for the specific topic, but the names of the authors might be different than in the original…
“I wonder how software developers will exculpate themselves from any departure from their vaunted ‘programming standards’ when problems caused by AI will occur in their products.”
That’s funny! Fits in well with Spotify’s “best programmers” not writing code any more. The things is, if real humans aren’t writing code any more, it won’t be long before there are no “best programmers” who could even have any standards, let alone the ability to correct serious issues.
Today I was chatting about this with a friend of mine. He told me that Claude works very well for him but as long as you are able to write the correct prompts (and you may need AI to do that) and always with double check of the codes provided by an expert. This always working with restrictions on AI. You have to clear prompts, clear and start with new ones if you don’t want to end with hallucinated stuff. The result always needs human checks.
At the end of the day you may use less time writing code but Claude cannot replace human expertise when there it isn’t real intelligence behind it. The final codes must always been checked by humans or you risk delivering BS.
I can second that.
Yes, good point. Another problem is how to develop expertise when AI writes all the code?
After awhile there won’t be expert humans to do the checking anymore, so at that point all that will be delivered will be BS.
But hey, at least the investors get their return, right?
Before tonight, I would have discounted this but a conversation with a friend (VP Engineering) has left me wondering. We’ve discussed AI coding before and he has been dismissive. No longer! He is using it to build throw away tools and little apps that he could write himself but doesn’t have time.
He cheerfully admits it produces mediocre code, that a below-average or trainee engineer might turn in. But the perfect is the enemy of the good: he gets useful tools for minimal effort because it rarely delivers nonworking code.
His view is the mediocrity is because it has been trained on human code and there is more bad than good code out there. However, the human-inflected programming style also lends itself to readability so it essentially a first working prototype and if the project is important, it can be refactored by actual skilled programmers. This seems important, the regurgitation of pedestrian and prolix human strategies of solving the problem is a lot easier to safeguard than trying to understand hyper-efficient “alien mind” solutions (ironically these are what you get with some non-AI electronic design automation tools in say radio frequency circuit design, where the result may look arbitrary and alien but the damn thing works optimally!).
He’s experimenting with the best way to task it. At the moment, he has a high level “discussion” with the AI of his needs, to generate a plan for writing the programme. He then prompts it to work on the elements in more detail. Finally he instructs it to recursively work through the plan down to each module and then back up the tree and down to the next module and so on until the plan is finished.
This works well for programming because there are already tools to automate / support this process of tasking. He thinks that similar tools would improve the accuracy of other tasks people set for AI. He can set it running and do other tasks like folding laundry while keeping a light supervision of it, to answer questions or help it if it gets stuck.
However, there are problems, even for the zeal of a new convert. First, he says the AI is “grandiose”: in the planning phase, it is expansive and ambitious. (Un)fortunately it is also “lazy”! :-) He will check the work and find that the AI skips large parts of its proposed work, writing ” to do” in the code. :-) If challenged, the response is “it was very complicated / it seemed like it would take too much time / etc.”.
As an example, he tried to code a tool to automate his job search, initially compiling profiles on all the companies meeting his detailed criteria of interest with a view to automated scanning for opportunities etc. The answer came back in mere seconds: there were 80 companies.
He was suspicious of the speed. On cross examination, the AI explained that no, it hadn’t compiled the profiles by searching public databases and websites as instructed, it had just looked at the company names and chosen the best match!
Here’s a link lifted from FT Alphaville daily links about AI not being a bubble in the widest sense, in which the author, a software engineer, says the same thing right at the end about their own AI use coding time saving tools.
https://www.exponentialview.co/p/bubble-or-stampede?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web&triedRedirect=true
At Exponential View, we’ve committed (written) several hundred thousand lines of code this year alone. Many apps I use daily were written by me (with Claude Code) in the past month or so. We’ve got software running that might have cost a million bucks to write, but has only cost perhaps $500 using AI agents. These systems free up at least an hour a day for me.
Re. South Africa’s Ramaphosa confirms breakup of state energy giant Eskom…
I would be hard pressed to identify a case where “unbundling” of vertically integrated electric systems into separate transmission, distribution and generation entities with a so-called independent system operator has benefitted small or large consumers. ISOs are established for trading rights of both electricity and transmission capacity and ancillary services (frequency, voltage, reactive power). ISOs duplicate the existing planning and operations and add a huge layer for markets. This started with Thatcher in the UK and then Clinton in the USA. It has infested virtually all western countries now. Big banks, traders and non-regulated subsidiaries of utilities love this Frankenstein.
The problem with ESKOM has been corruption and under investment while at the same time being required to provide universal service (which STILL does not exist). State capture had a huge cost, this makes it worse.
Yes
“I would be hard pressed to identify a case where “unbundling” of vertically integrated electric systems into separate transmission, distribution and generation entities with a so-called independent system operator has benefitted small or large consumers.”
There was a discussion some years ago on exactly this topic here at NC, and IIRC PlutoniumKun presented the technical arguments why this unbundling does not make any sense except in the minds of politicians enthralled by the neoliberal vision of firms focusing on their “core competencies” offering their services in “free markets” to achieve an “optimal economic outcome”.
In the before times, I at least used to be able to understand how the electric company was jacking me when I read the bill. Now it’s gibberish and I still pay more.
breaking up state monopolies usually happens before those assets are privatised. case in hand, the ongoing french project of privatising the SNCF by breaking it up first into smaller businesses
“America’s Healthier Past is no More Than a Myth”
Not buying this article for a second. American’s were healthier in decades past. As proof, just look at photos or videos of groups of people in the 1970s and you will notice how skinny people look in comparison to people today. And you will hardly see really obese people either. Why was this so? Foods were nowhere near as highly processed as they are today, healthier foods were easier to buy than junk foods, people got out and about more and actually talked to each other rather than a tiny screen. And if the author thinks that there is ‘no era in which Americans were healthier than now’ then I can get him a good price on the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
Agreed RK. It is easy, but wrongheaded, to argue advances in hygiene and vaccines and medical technology, etc. as proof of better health. Yes, they are all good things but they have not translated to better everyday health. For anyone curious, take a look at the Woodstock documentary. RK is right, those kids were way healthier than kids today. They are so much slimmer than the average teenager today that they almost look alien.
Also, I hate it when researchers mix stats (kinda like mixing metaphors) they mention life expectancy and the US in percentage and then say Canada is ‘only’ 3 yrs longer. First of all, 3 yrs is a long time IMO and if you look at overall rankings by country Canada is 25th and the US is 61st – how is that a sign of good health in the US? It has long been clear the high US expenditure on healthcare (cough, cough, profiteering, cough, cough) does not translate to better health given that low ranking in life expectancy.
I expect that if the researchers looked at cancer, diabetes and heart disease (you know, actual health) in the past few decades instead of 100s of years of health care technology, they would have indeed found that US indeed in poorer health now than they used to be. The main culprit of course being neoliberalism and its resulting inequality. I wonder if part of this was about say JFKjr is wrong. If so, too bad, there are many ways to argue that JFKjr is wrong about many things without just automatically taking up the opposite stance. Our black and white world strikes again – if you support Palestine and criticize Israel, you’re an anti-Semite and in order to say that JFKjr is wrong then you have to argue that America is healthy. We really do live in a stupid timeline.
If they aerobicize the numbers, they’re likely to get the desired results.
The author also celebrates the absence of what used to called lunatic asylums – as if abandoning the seriously mentally ill on the streets to die were an improvement .
Many of the Mentally ill are in jails or prisons, some time ago I read an article claiming 50% of its inmates had serious Mental Health problems.
If you consider alcoholism and drug addiction Mental Health problems that’s probably a good estimate.
Homelessness often worsens any mental health issues someone might have, sometimes drastically.
I think the bumpersticker should read “Random acts of cruelty, senseless acts of violence” .
It is psychologically distressing to think that the Food System is corrupted and exhausting to sort out conflicting claims about the health implications of dietary choices, without trustworthy sources of expertise to conduct and filter research results.
The article does not have significant informational value, imho, but it is soothing.
“. . .just look at photos or videos of groups of people in the 1970s and you will notice how skinny people look in comparison to people today. ”
And keep in mind that most adult men smoked, and there is a correlation between smoking and weight loss https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3180774/ , not to ignore the other contributing factors Rev noted.
Those thin people–even the children–smoked like chimneys or huffed second hand smoke daily if they didn’t.
People used stuff like crisco to bake, basically pure trans-fat.
Cars belched leaded gasoline fumes.
Those thin kids loved to run behind DDT-spraying trucks as they passed through the neighborhood and get soaked in the stuff.
The reduction in smoking (being obliterated as we speak by the vaping epidemic) and second hand smoke represents a huge gain for public health, a gain so huge that increased obesity and sedentariness probably doesn’t counter it entirely. Leaded gasoline too is under-appreciated for the lives it subtly destroyed.
All good examples, but what I don’t see in that is any kind of progress since then in any sense of “progress” that has any source of validity. Instead, technology keeps pumping out new “advances” which almost all carry some nasty side effects:
1) mass production of cigarettes–mass smoking;
2) ICE powered by leaded gasoline–lead in the atmosphere, reduced IQs, increased tendency to violence;
3) DDT–die-offs of “beneficial” insects; cancer, etc.
4) Crisco–adverse health effects
We’re playing whack-a-mole with technology’s collateral damage–and we’re losing.
Absolutely, these were all (with the exception of smoking, which is just pointless carnage) solutions to real problems.
Leaded gasoline for engine knocking.
DDT for mosquitos and other pests like bedbugs.
Crisco for rendering cheap, calorific, indestructible shelf-stable food.
It just goes to show that many, many problems–the most dire we face as a species!–are caused by past solutions.
I agree, and retro_Donny is taking us back to those “good old days”.
I absolutely loved the smell of those spray trucks when I was a toddler in Massachusetts (where my brother was born while my father was assigned to Hanscom Field in his RCAF days). My mother would shoo me inside, but sometimes I would sneak out back to get the last few whiffs before it completely dissipated.
Sorry, you are simply not ‘up’ on the current merka theories of Epistemology. Whatever we are told by the government is Truth.
The images from our past have been distorted by the passage of time. We live in the best of all possible worlds at the best of all possible times and everything is for the best no matter how it appears at first glance.
All apologies — I have no more time for trivialities. I must go and tend my garden.
Re: AI,
SeeDance (of ByteDance) is getting a lot of attention for its new video generation software, most especially for a synthetic video of Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt fighting that looks adequate. Some are arguing that this will be the death knell of Hollywood.
Maybe so, there’s a precedent. With CGI we no longer see as many mate paintings or hand drawn animation or puppets.
But the real issue with Hollywood and AI is that their product has gotten so bad that it’s actually conceivable that people may be able to produce better movies with AI generation. There’s a YouTube channel “skywalker stories” that produces AI generated Star wars shorts. I watched a few, and they’re not good, but, … They’re comparable to or better than some of the Disney products.
I think it’s sad. I consider acting, writing, and drawing to be high arts, and we might lose them. A lot of great stuff has been made in the past, but the industry is in trouble due to poor human quality control. In this case AI would simply be the final cut.
AI apps can only simulate human creativity, so they can and will produce soulless cookie-cutter images (e.g., reheated Disney, Ghibli, etc.). It is by definition kitsch, not art.
Although there is a world of difference between somebody making a one-shot TikTok video of themselves fighting Tom Cruise and a feature-length film, the studios that produce soulless cookie-cutter movies might be worried. If the question is why these big studios are in trouble I would submit it is mainly due to greed, not “poor human quality control”. There are many talented people in the industry, but at the end of the day they must generally follow the marching orders of f*cktards in management, all the way up to the C suite.
One example: the big studios typically often spend up to 50% of a film’s production budget on publicity. Take Avatar: Fire and Ash (2025), which is estimated to have spent $150m just on publicity. All those trailers you see in theaters cost. Including this crazy budget for publicity, Avatar: Fire and Ash is said to have cost $550m, which is why its “break-even” point is estimated at $1 to $1.4 billion worldwide (because exhibitors get around 50%). If Avatar: Fire and Ash is really worth watching, why was it necessary to spend $150m on publicity?
$550m for ONE movie, and unless it earns $1 billion, the press will say it was “a failure”. Does this sound like a good, sustainable business model?
Even if Hollywood takes a hit from AI, I personally will not worry as there are many interesting films being produced, generally as intl. co-productions made by small companies. By analogy, if all fast food franchises went bankrupt and closed their doors tomorrow, would the art of cooking go away?
At one of her talks critic Pauline Kael suggested that 80 percent of the work in any creative field is mediocre and derivative. So it’s not so shocking that Disney under one time weather man Bob Iger is not exactly a fount of originality. Perhaps AI should replace him and we’ll see if there’s a difference (an upcoming human replacement–the head of their theme parks–has been chosen).
Truth to tell many audiences prefer the cozy comfort of the familiar just as children can demand the same bed time story over and over. So perhaps we should lower our expectations and hope that the merely “not terrible” becomes the goal and cynical retreads of some genuine originals from the Disney past are avoided. Some recent Disney product seems like the revenge of the mediocre on the original.
“Mediocre” is doing a lot of heavy lifting when it comes to recent Disney product.
File under T 2.0:
Now the word that comes to mind is demagogue.
Judge Napolitano. I hope McGovern is right. Who knows. utube, ~31+ minutes.
INTEL Roundtable : w/ Johnson & McGovern : Weekly Wrap 13-FEB (FRI the 13th!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVwvMmtkHpI
McGovern is an irredemable optimist, god bless. And we need optimists to avoid falling into despair. However, optimism is not a substitute for analysis. See Mark Sloboda for the other end of cynicism, which has a better track record, human nature and all that.
He has been right so far.
I think Minnesota may have dented Trump’s mojo somewhat. Here’s suggesting Trump does fear losing his base–perhaps even more than Kompromat.
The fact that the Trump administration has defied more than 4,000 Court orders should concern everyone, it is a direct challenge to the Rule of Law.
The fact that America’s Oligarchs are ignoring this is astounding because it means that they, like the rest of us, can be deprived of Life,Liberty and Property at the whim of the President.
It has been said that when someone acquires their first Billion dollars that their IQ drops 20 points, this lack of reaction by the wealthy indicates that it might be significantly more than 20 points.
Crime makes you stupid. -Detective Frank Pembleton
“Crime that pays is crime that stays.” – Catherine Austin Fitts
“The fact that America’s Oligarchs are ignoring this is astounding because it means that they, like the rest of us, can be deprived of Life,Liberty and Property at the whim of the President.”
If they had any historical knowledge, and I mean just a smidgen thereof, they would realize that this is pretty much what happened to many of their past peers who rejoiced when fascists rose to power and crushed the working class — only to realize that the new leaders really viewed themselves as masters and not servants of the capital, and essentially did not care about the oligarchs’ life, liberty, and property either.
American oligarchs do not understand the vital importance of soft power in keep the whole US enterprise running in good shape. (Lower IQs perhaps.) They got no “street smarts.”
Do ‘street smarts’ register on I.Q. tests? Intelligence is much more complex and nuanced than I.Q. tests [as I believe you would agree]. Even considering I.Q. test results, I believe u.s. elites are deluded in their underestimations of the rest of us.
I remember something I read about how the British Navy found that the sailor who scored highest on the newly created I.Q. test was shoveling coal on a supply freighter in the Royal Navy.
You have forgotten the golden rule. The ‘LAW’ is for the common people. America’s Oligarchs own the President, and the Law, and the Congress and Courts that make the Law. President Trump is their ailing figure head, their puppet of this moment. Do you really believe they might be deprived of Life,Liberty and Property at the whim of anyone except someone more senior[not necessarily in age], some kin, or some other more powerful oligarch? This is merka. [‘i’ omitted for its uncharacteristic softening of the national sound as this country … this empire devolves. Pronounce ‘mer’ as in merchandise.]
I’d say that the IQs of those immediately adjacent to the billionaires drops by that 20 points. It has been well known for centuries that sycophancy is a neurodegeneracy enabling condition.
Welcome to today’s edition of Manufacturing Consent. Today’s contestant is Jason Burke (international security correspondent of the Guardian)
Today Jason is soft-manufacturing only. Not calling for regime change from outside, but reinforcing the need for it:
Nobody knows what would follow regime change in Iran – but what happened in 1979 offers some pointers (Guardian today)
I’ll let readers find the little lies and subtler rhetorical tricks if they so choose
Now, let’s go back to 2003 and see what Jason thought about the Iraq invasion:
Why I believe this war is right (Guardian 2003)
The simple truth is that the people of Iraq, whether the Kurds in their precarious enclave in the north or the Shias and Sunnis in the centre and the south, desperately want to be rid of Saddam Hussein. He has inflicted enormous suffering on them.
Disarmament will not end the torture, the rapes, the disappearances and the assassinations. The destruction of weapons will not dismantle his brutal state. But the military action that now seems certain to take place within weeks will.
Gosh. It didn’t quite turn out like that did it Jason?
Now, having read Jason’s M16-adjacent output for a few years I wonder about his backstory. I wonder if he once got “the tap on the shoulder”.
Turns out Jason went to Oxford. Oh, wow, turns out in his summer vacation from Oxford he decided to smuggle himself into Kurdish-controlled Iraq and become part of the Kurdish Peshmerga fighting force. He describes it (rather too much so) as an idiotic jape full of hangovers and mishaps but my cynical mind has other thoughts.
How curious…
Thank you and well said, Ben.
Despite his Irish surname, Burke is part of the community at the Grauniad that counts the likes of Viner, Elgot, Freedland, Freeman and Sabbagh.
Thank you Colonel.
The Guardian is curiously undiverse for a publication so keen to virtue-signal about diversity.
I note that another community, with 13x the share of the UK population has no senior writers at all there…
Thank you, Ben.
Oh, yes.
The community I have hinted at above gangs up with toffs like Hyde and Wintour to keep the others out or down.
If you think of what the antonyms would be for the words diversity, equity, and inclusion, that gives you a better sense of what is meant in practice by DEI and related forms of virtue-signaling that are not necessarily described using that exact acronym. Newspeak updated for the 21st century PMC.
‘The Economist
@TheEconomist
The mega-rich are giving up on luxury assets. Forget fine wine, great art and glitzy mansions. The Economist’s senior economics writer, Callum Williams, explores the growth in ultra-luxury services’
Bit of a bummer when the plebs can buy goods that the super rich buy. So now the super rich are buying “experiences” such as the best tickets for the Super Bowl, Wimbledon, meals in exclusive restaurants and hotels, etc. But it is not being at places that is the experience but having everybody else that can’t go having to watch you be there, especially when they are posting it to their social media. These people have a need to be envied by others and attending such events confirms their place on the social ladder.
Competitive consumption. / ;)
“Camille in the Valley of the Dolls.”
I enjoy the great wines available at reasonable prices. Let the wealthy enjoy ‘experiences’. The rest of us can enjoy family, genuine friends, a good life, and great wines.
they still have buying and feasting on human babies that most of us still cannot do
RE: “South Texas will not be red”
“Construction executives have held multiple meetings over the last month with the White House and Congress to discuss how immigration busts on job sites and in communities are scaring away employees, “making it more expensive” to build homes in a market desperate for new supply.”
What they really mean is… “cutting into our profits”…fixed it for you! Nose meets face.
File under Big Brother: From Glenn Greenwald on substack. Public excerpt.
Amazon’s Ring and Google’s Nest Unwittingly Reveal the Severity of the U.S. Surveillance State
Just a decade after a global backlash was triggered by Snowden reporting on mass domestic surveillance, the state-corporate dragnet is stronger and more invasive than ever.
https://greenwald.substack.com/p/amazons-ring-and-googles-nest-unwittingly
thanks!
On that note, from the 7 episodes of the new LRB-podcast about the “War on Terror”, see in particular:
Episode 3:
Dr Yes
5 December 2025
55 min.
https://www.lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and-videos/podcasts/aftershock-the-war-on-terror/episode-3-dr-yes
The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq created a dilemma for the Bush administration: what to do with the thousands of detainees captured during the War on Terror. John Yoo, a White House lawyer, came up with a new legal argument that allowed detainees to be held indefinitely without trial. Habeas corpus was suspended, the constitution upended and Guantánamo Bay became a judicial back hole.
Episode 4:
More than a Million Names
12 December 2025
47 min.
https://www.lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and-videos/podcasts/aftershock-the-war-on-terror/episode-4-more-than-a-million-names
The events of 9/11 exposed cracks in the US intelligence apparatus. In response, the National Security Agency built the most extensive surveillance system in history. What was sold as a counterterrorism measure was turned on American citizens and the line between security and privacy all but disappeared. The data captured fed the Pentagon’s international kill list and the surveillance industrial complex was born.
The acronym S.M.A.R.T in the business world once stood for
” Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely.”
Now I think it could stand for
Surveil, Measurable, Activities, Recordable, and Trackable. / ;)
I always thought SMART stood for “Superficial Management Acronyms Replace Thinking” :)
One thing that was recently told to the public during the Nancy Guthrie kidnapping reporting was that the Nest camera, where the perpetrator is shown on the porch, was that the subscription had expired awhile ago but it still recorded and sent to servers that video. The news people stated that if the perpetrator had not removed the camera it would have eventually over wrote that video we saw.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cybersecurity-experts-nancy-guthrie-surveillance-footage-recovery/
Yes, the Nest cameras are tools, just not for those who purchased them.
Quite literally, “Big Brother Inc. is Watching You!”
Re Business Insider headline “Russia’s Defense is a Threat”–the headline says it all about who is the “threat.”
“300 million on the streets in a historic national strike in India” MR Online
The nationwide strike was last Thursday. I’m in India and I was actually supposed to travel on that day, having booked before the strike was announced. I cancelled it all until the next day, on the advice of everyone I know…
It was massive. I was in Kerala state and absolutely no businesses were operating. No busses running, no taxis. Just metal curtains pulled down and the quietest day that I’ve ever spent in India (no horns honking!). I was on a bike and did around 30km looking around. The only people I saw about were union groups and party members doing pickets. My usual driver told me that if he had ventured out to drive a client somewhere, his car would have been hit with rocks and he and the client would likely have been in physical danger.
That is how you do a general strike, dear people.
Isn’t Kerala run by actual communists and also one of the nicer states in India? I think there was a piece by Sam Kriss to that effect posted here a while ago.
Here in the US, yesterday I saw some gray hairs with No Kings signs standing on the sidewalk for the designated morning “protest” period before heading off to brunch. Somehow the government has not fallen….
Good to know some people are still doing it right. Post more updates if you have them!
thanks for the account
Second! That is the way to do a general strike ! Thanks for the account.
Aren’t there plans for a general strike in the u.s. on 1 May?
polymarket has less 1% that US strikes Iran this wknd. 259 million in bets, that’s stunning. before March 11%, 2 million bets. https://polymarket.com/geopolitics
Can’t see an attack before the reciprocal visits by Mr Trump and Mr Xi to each other’s countries. A serious attack must lead to these visits in March/April being abandoned and stricter rare earth rules again. These are bigger matters than pleasing Israel with a couple of months bombing as well as interrupting the oil flows to China.
I would bet against it.
Ramadan starts feb 18/19 and continues thru mar 20/21. Imo if it comes it will be during this holy month, starting on a Friday. Later the faithful will be more tired/stressed from continuous fasting/drinking during daylight hours, but how long can the fleet sit there? Friday 13 of march weekend includes the Ides…
Note they eat before first light (when you can tell the difference between white and black threads, the Muezzin let you know) and then wait until after last light, so limited time to sleep.
Except, this year Ramadan comes before the Spring Equinox in the northern hemisphere, so their are still more than 12 hours between sunset and sunrise. A large supper meal after sunset followed by a large breakfast before sunrise is entirely possible without too much disruption to the daily routine this year, imo.
–
Pro tip for travelers. If you plan on visiting one of the countries in Africa or SE Asia or the Middle East that have a largely Muslim population, don’t go during the month of Ramadan as you might not find any open restaurants during the daylight hours…. except possibly in an American hotel. (Some years ago, my uni department scientists returned from a consulting trip to Egypt, (I think it was Egypt.) Upon returning, the first thing they talked about was not being able to find an open restaurant at an expected time for their breakfast or lunch. / ;)
adding: Ramadan, like Pass Over and Easter, is based on the lunar calendar, not on the solar/Julian calendar. And that is why the dates move around. You might have heard someone say, “Oh, Easter comes early (or late) this year.”
edit typo: Passover. Apologies for the earlier misspelling.
You mean less than 12? Just now sunrise to sunset is 11 hours. But if us delays until mid march it will be nearly 12. But they can’t begin to eat until total darkness, and must finish eating in the am while still totally dark, which my guess is 1.5 hours each end, giving them 9 hours for the two meals plus sleep. This adds up to fatigue after a month of it. And Iran is a place where many take it very seriously.
Granted, it won’t be the serious rigor that occurs in hot summers, much more difficult even with longer nights.
The enroute carrier battle group is estimated to take a month to arrive. I wonder why they are conserving fuel and taking there time – certainly not to give negotiations a chance as the skill of negotiating is lost here.
Anyway, “what’s up with shipping” reports a collision between us vessels in teh Carribean, and the CBGs have been deployed a long long time at sea…..
Interesting the latest scuttlebutt, US won’t say which carrier is proceeding to the Middle East, is USS JFK departing Venezuela duty and proceeding. I had thought the US should send USS GHW Bush which is just leaving port from a restoration cycle.
USS JFK was in the Mediterranean before it was sent to Venezuela confines, crew and air wing have had a long deployment already. USS JFK has electromagnetic catapult and does not have F-35C assigned.
The ship collision off Venezuela last week was between a US Navy destroyer and a Navy “supply” ship. At sea resupply is risky sometimes business.
re: Romania far-right
this is of course the LRB
Far-Right Wellness Product
James Meek on Romanian populism
Călin Georgescu’s entire political programme, in so far as he has one, is based on the need to heal Romania by creating – or, as he portrays it, restoring – a synthetic medieval country, agrarian, artisanal, patriarchal, Orthodox Christian, self-sufficient in organic food, purged of chemicals, purged of modernity, purged of everything and everyone he dislikes.
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v48/n03/james-meek/far-right-wellness-product
re: looking back at the War on Terror
LRB again, recommended.
An archival recording of a panel discussion in 2002 with:
Tariq Ali, Jacqueline Rose, Anatol Lieven, Onora O’Neill and the – frankly insufferable and absolutely not reliable – Christopher Hitchens.
From the Archive: ‘The War on Terrorism: Is There an Alternative?’
66 min.
https://www.lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and-videos/podcasts/aftershock-the-war-on-terror/from-the-archive-the-war-on-terrorism-is-there-an-alternative
In May 2002, six months after the invasion of Afghanistan but before the Iraq war, the London Review of Books held a debate: ‘The War on Terrorism: Is There an Alternative?’ The panel comprised Tariq Ali, Christopher Hitchens, Jacqueline Rose, Anatol Lieven and Onora O’Neill.
President Bush’s ultimatum set the tone: either you’re with us or you’re with the terrorists. The Guardian described it as ‘a battle for the soul of the left’. Hitchens argued for military action and said that ‘theocratic fascists must be crushed.’ Others on the panel questioned the premise of the War on Terror and where such a doctrine might lead.
Gold back over 5k. Now $5,043.
One “good” jobs report won’t change the fundamentals. Fundamental being the US economy is in the dumpster. It will continue to loose jobs in the long run.
Gold could drop by a third but I don’t expect that. People will sell the high and buy the dip until it stabilizes at some unknown level.
What I wonder is who is buying at the high. Brokers aren’t going to pay anywhere near spot on a high. It would be suicide. Monex won’t publish what it’s bid price is like it used to.
My guess is that gold will continue to rise but I’m not confident enough to put my money in it at 5k/oz. I thought 2k/oz was nuts. That was the last time I bought any.
From Hyatt to Holiday Inn, America’s free hotel breakfast is facing a K-shaped economic threat (CNBC)
From Spotify says its best developers haven’t written a line of code since December, thanks to AI
Why the f**k would you want to do that? If you’re working during the commute that you’re stuck doing when you could be remotely anyway, maybe it’s time for a new job?
Is Spotify paying for the coders?
Fix bugs…. Bugs made by the AI coder….. smells fishy.
Did the AI send its documentation/coders notes behind the code? To his phone to display on his automobile screen and he read while stuck in traffic?
Anthropic and OpenAI “valuations” are based on shakier tales than this.
Snake oil.
I believe that, hidden in that hot pile of steaming BS from Spotify, is a kernel of truth.
You see, nobody is going to merge code generated by Claude or other AI tools straight to master. Cyber is going to have to review it, and run SAST, and builds can fail due to security (and other) bugs.
So this guy is using marketing speak, stretching the truth and bending it like Joe Isuzu.
But the real kernel of truth is AI can speed up coders productivity. They can tell it to fix a bug and create a pull request. That still has to get reviewed. But we see here that the goal is to squeeze more productivity out of fewer engineers. Your morning commute just got taken over, no more CNBC or Sportstalk radio for you, serf!
How THings Work on AI misses the KEY element: AI is almost certainly good enough at aiding the Surveillance state at an unprecedented level. Reams of data that have been collected can now be unleashed upon us all for the first time. It was simply not possible before to do that at scale. almost all of the other shiny new toys that this article speaks about are irrelevant in proportion to this imo
Great line from:
Britain’s relentless rain shows climate predictions playing out as expected
Higher than average rainfall totals are expected, well, half of the time. This is just how mean averages work.
DUH, no?
Surveillance state is the best hope to keep AI balloon from popping.
If your government can pay the AI hyperscaler networks a trillion and a half bucks a year to run 200 million surveillance points through facial recognition, while geo and temporal tracking then Anthropic, OpenAI et al might break even and pay off some of their debt counted as value.
link[s]?
Maybe they LITERALLY want to kill us all.
https://www.fastcompany.com/91490280/epstein-files-how-ultra-wealthy-peddle-climate-denialism
‘A good way of dealing with overpopulation’: Epstein files reveal how the rich fuel climate denialism
Jeffrey Epstein and his vast network of elite figures routinely traded in myths that undermine climate progress. Experts say it’s not an accident.
Very interesting article. Maybe Epstein funded Jimmy Dore and Joe Rogan at some point? They’ve promoted most of the stupid climate dodges (“The Earth is getting greener!”) that Epstein liked. (sarc)
Working in A.I. Lifted Their Compensation. Now They Want Prenups.
And
Just getting bigger and bigger:
Just A Complete Lie About the Epstein Files
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BvhnmVp1jY
This YT channel has over 17 million subscribers, and this one YT has over 1.4 million views and over 10,000 comments in 11 hours. And the guy just nails it.
I think this one video could be larger than all of the MSM in America.