Those of you in the Northeast, feel free to tell your blizzard stories! I loved blizzards but I was either a kid or working at home and didn’t have to deal with a car or shoveling out a driveway.
The BBC just released a new adaptation of Lord of the Flies, the classic novel by William Golding. It's beautifully made, but it's still telling the wrong story.
A few years ago, I went looking for the *real* Lord of the Flies. I wanted to know: has it ever actually happened?… pic.twitter.com/xdjqHfO2e6
— Rutger Bregman (@rcbregman) February 21, 2026
Schrödinger’s color theory finally completed after 100 years Science Daily (Kevin W)
Ticks as biological weapons Multipolar via machine translation (Micael T)
Frozen for 5,000 years, this ice cave bacterium resists modern antibiotics Science Daily (Kevin W)
Climate/Environment
What an absolutely amazing achievement! It’s long been known that legumes work with bacteria to « fix » nitrogen from the air. But Dr. Mariangela Hungarian has selected elite strains that basically allows Brazilian soybean farms to grow with no nitrogen fertilizers! This is not… https://t.co/LrvADuZhsf
— Angelica 🌐⚛️🇹🇼🇨🇳🇺🇸 (@AngelicaOung) February 21, 2026
Plastic Pollution Is Reaching Sharks Before They Hatch Forbes
Scientists have found another alarming pattern in wildfires Grist
Toxic lead pigment is exported on a large scale to poor countries Anna Nyquist via machine translation (Micael T)
China?
China imposes export controls on 20 Japanese entities to curb ‘remilitarization’ Asahi Shimbun
China eyes Hong Kong as gold-trading hub in bid for market dominance Nikkei
Empty shops, falling rents: commercial property takes a hit in China retail slump South China Morning Post
Japan
Japan did not fix the bond doom loop, it simply moved the goalposts FX Street
Koreas
North Korea touts nuclear advances as Kim re-chosen to lead ruling party France24
Southeast Asia
Thai Navy Seizes Cambodian Fishing Boat in Disputed Waters The Diplomat
Africa
Eastern DR Congo situation ‘catastrophic’, says visiting EU commissioner Africa News
Ethiopia’s Tigray region is caught between past conflict and fears of another Independent
‘Affront to humanity’: Sudan slams Uganda for hosting RSF paramilitary boss BBC
South of the Border
Analysis: What does the US really want of Cuba? Orinoco Tribune (Robin K)
Trump’s total blockade buries Cuba in rubbish Telegraph
In defence of Cuba against the neocolonial blockade and starvation imposed by Trump International Viewpoint (Robin K)
European Disunion
9% of the European chemical capacity has been announced to be closed in 2025…! Most capacities will be closed in Germany and the Netherlands.
Why? Energy costs are too high. The wind & solar utopia starts to bite in Germany and the Netherlands. As does the carbon tax that… https://t.co/FoFETEtNmn pic.twitter.com/8ad3z2nH22
— Alexander Stahel 🌻 (@BurggrabenH) February 21, 2026
France blocks US ambassador’s access to ministers after he fails to show for meeting Guardian (Kevin W)
Greece eyes central role in Europe’s post-Russia gas market Financial Times
Are you worthy, little friend? Nyhetsbyran Jarva via machine translation (Micael T). On the cultural shift towards conditional belonging.
Old Blighty
Peter Mandelson arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office Guardian (Kevin W)
Bank to business lending growth to halve amid global tensions City AM
Israel versus The Resistance
‘We Returned From Hell’: CPJ Details Torture of Palestinian Journalists in Israel Palestine Chronicle (Robin K)
Strikes push Lebanon’s ceasefire toward collapse Middle East Monitor
Yemen: Houthis Launch Attack on Northern Outskirts of Hays, 6 Soldiers Killed Yemen Online
* * * In an interview featured in Sunday’s Links, former US Ranger Greg Stoker warned of maintenance as a risk to US operations in Iran. He depicted it as so serious that it might affect some flights. He said it was due to the armed forces outsourcing most maintenance (!!!), the contractors doing a lousy job (one might say piss poor) and there being no ready way for the military to handle it again.
THE PLANNED U.S. ATTACK ON IRAN has a hitch: most of the missile-targeting crew are queuing for toilets on the lead vessel, the USS Gerald R Ford.
This is not a joke. A set of emails was obtained by NPR, a US public broadcasting group, revealing that toilet wars have broken out… pic.twitter.com/2rbq7d5CK2
— Nury Vittachi (@NuryVittachi) February 23, 2026
Missed funerals and blocked toilets: Iran deployment takes a toll on US sailors Wall Street Journal (Kevin W)
The Strategic Dilemma At the Heart of Iran’s Struggle Simplicius (Kevin W). Nearly all of the ex-military, ex-CIA independent commentators disagree with a key claim by Simplicius: that a delay in the US attack works to the US advantage by allowing them to get military assets into an optimal position. The US skeptics point out that it gives Russia and China more time to provide defensive assets (and give Iran more time to integrate them with existing systems) and perhaps also get more little green men in place.
The Iran Files I – The Revolutionary State the West Keeps Saving Kautilya
Syraqistan
Pakistan launches deadly strikes on Afghanistan BBC
Five terrorists killed during operation in Balochistan’s Pishin Geo News
New Not-So-Cold War
The Russian economy is eating its own muscle to survive as Putin’s war on Ukraine destroys future capacity, former central bank adviser says Fortune. Was she an adviser during the Yeltsin days? A quick search did not turn up a bio with clarity on dates.
Russian Foreign Affairs Ministry Issues Its 24 February 2022 Reminder Karl Sanchez
Russia’s cucumber crisis as a crisis of German journalism Nachdenkseiten via machine translation (Micael T)
Imperial Collapse Watch
The dangerous endgame of US-led capitalism – and the global system alternative, Part 1 Nachdenkseiten via machine translation
Cataclysmic Superfecta Constantine Passaris
China’s newest air force jets have next-generation radars. New USAF F-35’s have no radars at all Kevin Walmsley
Trump 2.0
Judge blocks release of special counsel Smith’s report Associated Press. resilc: “Alito’s replacement.”
White House taunts Canada after hockey loss RT. Kevin W: “Don’t forget to watch the video.”
Tariffs
China warns of retaliation as Trump unveils new tariff plan Asia Times (Kevin W)
Part II: IEEPA Tariff Ruling’s Losers Barry Ritholtz
ICE Rampage
Trump, ICE, and the Imperialist Boomerang: The Empire Comes Home Fiorella Isabell
BLOOD MOON over Minneapolis: 3/3/2026 Dale O’Brien. This is a big departure from our normal programming. However, many many traders on Wall Street use astrology to inform the timing of their trading, much in the same way that investors who profess not to believe in technical trading still make some use of it because so many traders do that it does have a price effect. I infer that this March 3 lunar eclipse looks to be a doozy and wonder is some investors might try to get out of its way.
L’affaire Epstein
The Epstein Files Should Never Have Been Released New York Times. Christopher F: “Ooh, this is a doozy, a tool from the deepstate promoting Israel protection.” Moi: Nary a mention that the release came about due to Congress passing legislation that passed 99 to 0 in the Senate, got only one opposing vote in the House, and was signed by the President. So much for prosecutors believing in the law.
Economy
Global trade trapped between US tantrums and China’s bravado Asia Times (Kevin W)
BREAKING: The Cass Freight Index fell -7.1% YoY in January, to 0.89 points, now down to its lowest level since April 2009.
This index tracks freight volumes across North America and is viewed as a gauge of US economic momentum.
This also marks the 36th consecutive monthly… pic.twitter.com/lMKfuMbHGS
— The Kobeissi Letter (@KobeissiLetter) February 21, 2026
Mr. Market is Edgy
Private Equity’s Dry Spell Now Worse Than 2008 Crisis, Bain Says Bloomberg
Why private credit’s new cockroach moment has GFC echoes Australia Financial Review
Cracks are beginning to appear in the murky world of private credit Telegraph
How the AI debt binge shattered hyperscalers’ ‘unspoken contract’ with investors CNBC
Off-Balance Sheet AI Financing Stirs Tech Bubble Fears OilPrice
AI
Turns out Generative AI was a scam Gary Marcus
Against sloppification Duncan Reyburn (Stephen V)
Anthropic clashes again with the Pentagon on AI use and ethics Observer
Sam Altman Fumes That It Takes Longer to Train a Human Than an AI, Plus They Eat All That Wasteful Food Futurism. Why has no one declared Altman to be a traitor to his species?
Sam Altman: Know What Else Used a Lot of Energy? Human Civilization Gizmodo (Kevin W). The arrogance, it burns.
Antidote du jour (via):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here
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Comments are closed.
Regarding Iran. Yesterday there was a link to some Kurdish fools that joined forces to over-throw the Iranian regime? Are they dead yet? If not, I fear Iran doesn’t have the resolve to defend itself. Maybe the elites are bought off, just like in Venezuela.
They could easily kill these Kurds without any back-lash. Nobody likes the Kurds and they are over and over again just used as useful idiots.
Love the Neo Noir feline antidote.
Is that Schrödinger’s cat, alive and well?
I thought that the S-Cat theme was for Boxing Day celebrations.
I wonder if the cat is named “Skinner’s Raisin Bran?”
Stay safe, or not.
Regarding the aircraft carrier toilet situation, can’t the men just do number 1 off the side? Is this forbidden? Also, adult diapers could work for a bit. /s
APPARENTLY, there’s a protocol for this:
https://x.com/i/status/2026234459767398757
Some high level snark.
The Coast Guard cutters often did not have heads and the crew had to use the “Seat if Ease” over the taffrail. That could present difficulties with a following sea. (Coast Guard crew are known to have been swept overboard in such situations.)
“Blowback” has an entirely different, literal, meaning in this scenario.
Edward Abbey once said in order to overthrow the system one should “brew your own beer; kick in your TV; kill your own beef; build your own cabin and piss off the front porch whenever you bloody well feel like it.” Maybe as an act of rebellion the sailors should just piss off the deck. I’m sure with the new Dept of “War” ethos, any complaints by female sailors could be ignored.
The stripes on the ship’s body caused by the urine could even make the ship stealthy…
Robert Maxwell, super Mossad agent and father of Epstein’s madame Ghislaine, was known for peeing over the side of his luxury yacht but then one day was found floating dead off the Canary Isles, having fallen, been pushed, jumped, over the side. He was also notorious for peeing onto the street from the top of the multistory Daily Mirror building in Holborn, central London. Adopting the habits of such a notorious thief and conman, would be no credit to US Navy personnel.
Just another aspect of “trickledown” theory.
He must have forgotten the rule of peeing off fantail…one hand for the ship, one hand for the johnson.
“Robert Maxwell”…
Yes, deserves the air quotes.
From: jeffrey E.
Sent: Thursday, March 15, 2018 1:22 PM
To:
Subject: he was passed away
Robert Maxwell “threatened Mossad. “H= told them that unless they gave him £400million to save his crumblin= empire, he would expose all he had done for
them. “In that time, he had free access to Margaret Thatcher’s Downing Street, t= Ronald Reagan’s White House, to the
Kremlin and to the corridors of power throughout Europe. “Maxwell passed on all the secrets he learned to Mossad in Tel Aviv. In turn, they tolerated his excesses, vanities and
insatiable appetite for a luxurious lifestyle and women. “He told his controllers who they should target and how they should do it. He appointed himself as Israel’s unofficial
ambassador to the Soviet Bloc.
=C2
please note The informat=on contained in this communication is confidential, may be attorney-cli=nt privileged, may constitute inside information, and is intended only =or the use of the addressee. It is the property of JEE Unauthoriz=d use, disclosure or copying of this communication or any part thereof =s strictly prohibited and may be unlawful. If you have
received this return e-mail o= by e-mail to j=evacation@gmail.com , and destroy this
communication and all copies =hereof, including all attachments. copyright -all rights reserved
–f4f5e8076de004531005677361a5– conversation-id 12648 date-last-viewed 0 date-received 1521120130 flags
8590195713 gmail-label-ids 7 remote-id 804567
Ever since the environmental mandates to process gray/black water it has been a problem. CHT (collection/holding/transfer) systems were backfit into 50s-70s vintage ships. These proved to have all sorts of problems. The typical fix was to have the boiler techs from the tenders use their hydro-blasting equipment (intended for cleaning boiler tubes) to blow out the CHT lines (which didn’t please them at all).
In the later 70s we went to fresh water/vacuum powered toilets/urinals. Since fresh water is a scarce commodity they were designed to use a minimal amount of water per flush. That led to constant clogging. Crew used to call them “turtles” as most often the crappers had been unbolted from the deck and flipped upside down so the hull techs could get at the internals in the mechanism.
So it sounds like little has changed since then. I suppose with so many women in ships these days the ratio of urinal to toilet is way down from what it was (urinals had much lower maintenance).
I don’t have any first-hand knowledge, but my guess is these systems are installed across ship classes, so no program office feels they have ownership (and thus funding). So probably just a single GS-12 or 13 engineer in NAVSEA to manage it with a meager contract budget. I doubt there’s even an in-service engineer budget.
BTW I’ll let you guess how the troops pronounce “CHT”.
‘Nury Vittachi
@NuryVittachi
THE PLANNED U.S. ATTACK ON IRAN has a hitch: most of the missile-targeting crew are queuing for toilets on the lead vessel, the USS Gerald R Ford.’
And to think that America was once renowned for their engineering expertise. Are there no more MacGyvers anymore? The way I see it, in the 19th century sailors use to go to the toilet in the front part of the ship – the head – but we are talking about a carrier here. So maybe those swabbies will have to crouch over the rear of the flight deck to do their business while attached to a safety harness. So maybe too the flight deck will be nicknamed the poopdeck or something. I feel sorry for all those pilots that will have to land on that carrier only to be greeted by a long link of bare buttocks as if mooning that pilot. Some sights once seen can never be unseen.
As I say in a post just launched, this is a terrible look but not as consequential as it appears. The Air Force is far and away the key strike component. Those ships are more targets than assets.
Hope the Iranians view it the same way you do.
The USS Netanyahu with the USS Epstein sailing full speed to the theater
That should be the IIN Netanyahu.
The USN Epstein is a well known garbage scow.
“I’m not saying it should be HAULING garbage; it should be hauled away AS garbage.”
Klingon Capt. Koloth.
ZOMG I remember that scene!!! The Klingon said it with such relish.
Cue up Scotty.
But Captain, he called the Enterprise a garbage scow!
Breaking news: USA to replace all humans with AI agents on their warships to solve toilet problems!
Sooo, what you are saying is that these AI agents will still be able to continue to spew out crap like they are doing at the moment.
Rev, you mistake the Ford class carriers for Warships, they were designed as profit centers, not fighting ships.
The same is true of the F35, these systems were designed to be extremely expensive to build and even more expensive to maintain, not to fly or sail and fight.
The good news is that these crappers will be updated with AI enabled fixtures
as soon as they return to dry dock.
A capitalist will sell you the rope…
There have been reasonable people with long, high level military experience saying things along the lines of : The Joint Chiefs will talk T down off this ladder he’s climbed.
Except, last year T fired most of the Joint Chiefs and replaced them with military men more to his liking. (A bloodless night of the long knives?)
From Politico, Feb. 2025.
Trump fires top military leaders in unprecedented shakeup
The Friday night terminations include Chair of the Joint Chiefs Gen. C.Q. Brown.
“President Donald Trump fired Chair of the Joint Chiefs Gen. C.Q. Brown on Friday night, and said he intends to dismiss the Navy’s top admiral and the Air Force’s second in command — an unprecedented shakeup of the Pentagon’s top brass that will trigger ripple effects throughout the military.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/02/21/cq-brown-trump-fired-joint-chiefs-general-00205593
T’s lately unhinged rants about loyalty to himself, not the Constitution or the country being the true test of patriotism makes me wonder if any of the new Chiefs will dare oppose his plans on even the most common sense military strategy and tactics grounds? L’État, c’est T?
Criticism from known-knowns (celebrities-musicians-sports stars) has more recently unleashed a furious response on Truth Social laden with complete words in capital letters in case you were to miss the emphasis in lower case letters, and it gives you an idea of how weak the egg-shell persona non grata must be?
When the 3rd Reich was in its death throes, Adolf blamed the German people, and just heard Trump blame the people for his weak polls. There is no evidence though that der Führer was a pedophile.
my fave world wr 2 movie is “das unterganger”(the downfall),which is german made and about the last days in the bunker.
dude who played hitler had to undergo lotsa therapy after playing that role with such over the top accuracy.
i rarely listen to trump…have never cared for the way he talks, finding it…irksome and unpleasant.
but i read his late night truth social(sic) offerings and think of this film more than i find comfortable
It was Bruno Ganz who played the mustache jerk. Best actor of his generation (well, co-equal with Klaus Kinski). He was a pro and I doubt that he suffered too much playing the role of a lifetime.
I rather like the more recent german production, “Look Who’s Back!”
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Look_Who%27s_Back_(film)
Everything that was old is new again.
However, Hitler did commit incest with his rather young niece, Gelli Raubal, who then was suicided.
Same Miss Mitford.
What a charmer he must have been!
Things could have been worse. it could have been the international Space Station.
You could, but then the enviros would be on you in a flash. From the “olden days” I remember a crusty old chief who said “Smith, I’ve passed more seawater under my sitting on the then you’ve seen in your life!”
On AI and Sam Altman. My favorite fantasy portrays Sam as King Louis in this Jungle Book video, trying to learn how to make fire from Mowgli. AI’s efforts will be as successful as King Louis.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ud5J7Ye332I&list=RDud5J7Ye332I&start_radio=1
Because you asked… it was quite the storm here in the NYC metro area. Being stubborn I decided I would shovel this one instead of paying my plow guy. We don’t have the largest driveway and it took two sessions to move the snow, plus about 15 minutes this morning to clear the end of the driveway of the pile from the snowplows. We got at least 20 inches.
Our saving grace is we didn’t lose power.
The biggest issue is there is basically nowhere to pile the snow as we still had big piles from the last big storm that had yet to melt.
Alas, while early the week ahead forecast has yet another major storm for early next week.
The storm was dying down in late afternoon and we ventured out to walk the dogs and then shovel. While I was clearing the front steps and sidewalk my neighbor engaged me in conversation with smiles and chit chat. She had cleared enough to park two cars on the street and then moved on to shovel the road. When I had finished I went to help Ms. .Tom excavate the car, parked a couple of blocks away. She was nearly done as someone from across that street had come to help her.
Bostonians are typically grumpy and ratty after snow, defending the space they clear, so finding this friendly and helpful spirit in the town was a nice surprise. The media made it a SNOWMAGEDDON with saturation coverage but it seemed rather less than that and was less than the last storm. Maybe it was that, plus that nearly everyone got a snow day, and the timing of the end of the storm and end to the strong wind that allowed everyone to get outdoors to toboggan in the park, walk dogs and shovel in daylight all around the same time that brought a collective sense of relief.
Conditions this morning are sunny, blue sky and very icy underfoot. Yesterday the temp was around freezing, the snow was wet and later trampled underfoot and frozen overnight. It’s -4C now.
My daughter and I have been quite busy shoveling snow this winter in western MA. Not being very tall, we may soon confront piles of snow taller than we are.
We live at the edge of a state forest, so I have been trying to identify animal tracks of the various woodland critters in the snow. I have noticed that the squirrels, who are always active, will use the paths I have shoveled when they can, but are content to cross the fields of snow when necessary. (Cute little footprints along the freshly shoveled paths.)
Our mailbox at the end of the driveway, which is propped up after being attacked by a snow plow, is barely visible at this point.
Not too bad in Maine. The big problem was the high winds. We only got maybe 2-3″ of snow – hard to tell because of all the wind blowing things around. Despite the low snowfall, I still had to shovel three foot drifts out of my driveway that were a lot higher than what the city plow guy left. Odd thing was that between the berm left by the plow and the large drifts, large parts of the driveway were also scoured bare by the wind.
Not my favorite storm – too much work for too little snow.
You can have some of mine :-)
18″ on my ridgetop in North central Connecticut. One bare spot on the drive at the apex where the wind just whorled it around to drifts against the barn, now more than 3′ due to previous accumulation. I’ve cleared a path to one door, but won’t be using the large doors till Spring.
Firewood is holding up, but I’ve had to shovel the courtyard twice for each storm as snow slides off the metal shed roof onto the woodpile and brickwalk. Gotta install snowbirds this year!
Prokopenko is listed as being an advisor to the Central Bank of Russia and the Higher School of Economics from 2017 to 2022. Earned a (first?) degree in 2006. Education seems varied, Master’s in Sociology, something in Journalism plus others. Seems to have divided her time between journalism and business politics. Searching hasn’t turned up anything in terms of published policy.
From Carnegie’s website: “Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center focuses on major policy challenges across the entire region in the wake of Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.”
The institute may once have been more balanced in terms of West vs East, but calling Russia’s invasion “unprovoked” tells one about all that is needed about the Russia Eurasia Center, as to where it stands on issues regarding the New Cold War. One that seems to morphing perilously close to a hot one now, what with the Flamingo attack, and the (on hold for now) impending Iran War. Prokopenko seems to be a Neo-Con aligned Russian “Liberal” whose paycheck depends on ignoring the obvious in favor of the party line.
I vaguely remember reading at the beginning of SMO of a “defector” from the Russian Central Bank, a lady…
Early in the conflict, Prokopenko was one of the few anti-Putin observers to say that the Russian economy was doing just fine, and that the early sanctions were having no impact, but the reports were usually in the German press. Her judgement of the situation seems to have changed, along with here organizational affiliations here in the West.
“Sam Altman Fumes That It Takes Longer to Train a Human Than an AI, Plus They Eat All That Wasteful Food ”
My thought when hearing this horror role out of that psychopath’s mouth was that the energy that will be needed for AI and all the robots Musk wants to build will be in direct competition with the energy and water humans need to live.
Regardless, they are using all that energy and they are no where close to human intelligence so I do not think AGI will ever happen because they do not understand how the human brain functions. IMHO, the reason the human brain is so so so much more efficient than any AI we have today is because the human brain is not intelligent at all, it only forms an opinion of the world which it then shares with other humans. And it is the combination of all those humans that creates intelligence for the human species. Intelligence is a group trait. This is why we have human or chimpanzee or whale or ant intelligence. There is not single intelligence, there is only intelligence for a species that helps it survive. Human intelligence is not better, it is only different. So basically we have 5 or 6 AI agents right now that are not sharing with each other so I am not worried at all.
That’s why these POS don’t see a problem with buying up farmland to put up BS data centers.
It’s to the point that not cooperating with them is a matter of self-defense.
Altman reminds us again that we are the carbon that he wants to replace.
The more I learn about “AI” of the LLM variety, the more I wonder why any of these clowns thought this could work. Yes, language does have rules, but I would not call it logical. Computers are designed to process things logically – the same input will produce the same output. Not so with language – for example, here is a short list of words that also mean their opposites. Language changes over time, people play with it, neologisms pop up. I fail to see how a system designed on logic can compensate for any of that to the point it could be consistently accurate. Without constant new human input, the system will stagnate and fall into a negative feedback loop. How long before all these things are just muttering nonsense to themselves like some old drunk?
And if you need constant human input to keep these things running, why not just use the human input to begin with, get it as right as possible the first time, and skip the clankers altogether?
If it could do all the things they claim, they wouldn’t be doing all the marketing hype to keep trying to get more people to interact with it. People do all the adapting and they claim how smart the algorithms or technologies are…same as it ever was. And the theft they call “training” will never be able to end.
Chinese commercial real estate issues and Germany’s industrial decline–
Nate Hagens has begun a new series called “Wide Boundary News.” The idea is to take the day’s headlines and view them from a “wide boundary,” systems approach.
One example is the much-heralded news that China’s CO2 emissions have been close to flat for the past 18 months. While there’s no denying this is good news, Hagens uses a “wide boundary” system analysis to demonstrate that it’s too early to celebrate.
Similarly, Germany has been touting how solar has become the top source of electrical generation, but Hagens looks behind this headline number to find the “cost” that Europe, especially Germany, is paying for this achievement.
Thanks – it looks a useful website.
Its interesting that systems thinking seems to be coming back into vogue after many decades out of fashion. I suspect some people identify it as an area where human thinking can be a step ahead of AI.
Sometimes, unfortunately – that type of analysis can be used to excessively complicate issues that aren’t at heart too difficult – in energy discussions there is always the smarty pants who raises his hand to give an ‘ah, but…’ interjection. Sometimes this is useful, sometimes its just used to obfuscate. Energy and environment is one of those topics where there are so many overlapping areas of expertise it can be very hard to focus in on the core realities.
The point that Hagens and those who share his wide-boundary approach make is that there have been way too few “ah, buts.” Our current systems dance to the narrow-boundary tune of quarterly profit, stock price, the cost of a company’s credit. Most importantly, the biosphere is regarded as resources embedded in the economy rather than the fundamentally more accurate picture that the economy is embedded in the living biosphere. Mechanizing the loom disrupted a lot of lives, Maybe somebody have taken a wide boundary approach, and at least have considered slowing the process down a bit because of the effects on household “businesses”. Adding lead to gasoline is another example where someone needed to say, ah, but,” rather than spreading lead all over through leaded gasoline and paint and injuring the brains of an estimated 151 million kids in the U. S. alone suffering psychiatric disorders. (Duke study) When you’re in an oligarchy like ours, a tiny one comprised of fewer individuals than the Dunbar number, and that minuscule cohort seems incapable of considering the welfare of any beyond close family, if even them, then we are truly waist deep in the Big Muddy. A lot of people need to say, “ah, but.”
The Twitter/X message regarding the doldrums of the European chemical industry is baffling:
“9% of the European chemical capacity has been announced to be closed in 2025…! Most capacities will be closed in Germany and the Netherlands.”
Netherlands and Germany are indeed the countries most affected, the Netherlands disproportionally so (as the accompanying chart shows).
Now for the explanation:
“Why? Energy costs are too high. The wind & solar utopia starts to bite in Germany and the Netherlands. As does the carbon tax that basically makes China win market share with cheap exports into Europe, free of tariffs or Carbon Tax.”
The carbon tax may be an issue, but I keep reading that it is too low and that carbon markets in the EU do not really work for the lack of interest.
As for the move to solar panels and wind turbines being the problem? I thought that the chemical industry depended on gas both for energy and as a raw material in chemical transformation processes.
Which country was heavily dependent on abundant, affordable natural gas from Russia, repudiated its commercial relations with Russia, and must now import vastly more expensive LNG from a variety of places? Germany.
Which country was a large producer of abundant, affordable natural gas from the North Sea, but had to close a significant part of its offshore gas fields because they were depleted, or because further extraction caused severe geological problems on its coastal cities? The Netherlands.
I remain unconvinced that the “green transition” — for all its numerous, severe faults — is the reason for the specific problems of the European chemical industry, but I am ready to be proven wrong.
Yes, that argument, if you can call it that, in the tweet is axe-grinding. It is the high cost of gas which is damaging Europe’s chemical industry (along with the rising Euro, possibly a bigger issue) along with structural changes in the chemical market. This was an identified problem from before the Ukraine War – it just accelerated ongoing issues. And the taxes on imported fuel he refers to only just came into force, so they can’t be having that impact yet. The biggest drop in Europe’s share of the chemical industry occurred between around 2008 to 2014, when fracking was at its height.
What has been happening for quite a few years is that Europe is losing its bulk/commodity chemical industry (mostly in the petrochem sector due to competition from the US and China, especially the former due to ‘cheap’ fracked gas), while it is growing in more specialised niches, the latter of which are generally more profitable. There has also been an issue with a drop in demand driven by austerity and other issues – the chemical industry has always been notoriously cyclical. So the overall situation is far more complex.
Wait a minute.
Europe is supposedly bolstering its armament manufacturing capacity. One of the sore points is the production of ammunition — which the Ukraine war showed to be woefully insufficient for a full-scale, “peer-to-peer” conflict.
Ammunition — of all types — requires propellant, and for larger calibres, explosives. Which are chemicals. Which therefore require a chemical industry of a certain scale to provide the bulk chemicals as inputs, and to transform them into the final weapons-grade components.
How will the demise of the European chemical industry affect those ambitious rearmament schemes? Or is the production of propellants and explosives, even on a large scale, a niche industry? Not to mention such things as lubricants required for all those new fancy fighting vehicles.
Were I a politician, I would have a queasy feeling about the whole affair and its impact on European Kriegstüchtigkeit, and would promptly demand to see the industrial production figures and supply chain organigrams to assess the situation.
First off, the demise of the EU’s chemical industry is, as they say, a little exaggerated. Its actually expanding in overall terms (notwithstanding this years bad figures), its just proportionately losing its market share to other blocs that are expanding more rapidly. The chemicals industry in general is still a huge business in the EU.
The explosives component is just a very small percentage of the overall market, but its difficult to expand for regulatory reasons – although most explosives demand is for civil, not military purposes – in a previous work life I dealt with a company that manufacturing mining explosives and they spent around 20 years getting all the consents required for a new plant (it was their fault for trying to establish outside an existing industrial zone). From what I understand, Poland is the core manufacturer of TNT, while Germany and Belgium does a lot of highly specialised explosives and propellants. As its often seen as strategically vital, there are a lot of smaller manufacturers scattered around Europe. As a sector, its been expanding rapidly for the last 5 years for obvious reasons. Most countries have accelerated consent processes for factories seen as necessary for defence purposes, so the expansion plans don’t always appear in the stats until they are built and the precise nature of the materials is often exempt from regulatory reporting requirements, so data isn’t always easy to obtain.
‘Angelica 🌐⚛️🇹🇼🇨🇳🇺🇸
@AngelicaOung
What an absolutely amazing achievement! It’s long been known that legumes work with bacteria to « fix » nitrogen from the air. But Dr. Mariangela Hungarian has selected elite strains that basically allows Brazilian soybean farms to grow with no nitrogen fertilizers!’
This is an amazing development if it holds true. Yeah, it might be a nasty knock for the fertilizer industry but it would certainly make growing plants more efficient. I mean, plants are swimming in nitrogen and now it seems that plants can be modified to feed into all that nitrogen. Much fewer nitrogen factories, much less industrial process and much less spent on fuel transporting it around the world. It would certainly be making it easier on farmers and their bottom line. Crops that can do this will have an edge on crops that need fertilizers. Still, I expect a fight back from the fertilizer industry.
I don’t understand this story. Sent it to my farmer brother and he reminded me that soybeans are in crop rotation precisely because they ADD nitrogen to the soil (and then the subsequent corn planting uses that nitrogen).
No one puts nitrogen on their soybean fields. Soybeans already know how to extract nitrogen from the atmosphere.
Good catch, I’d forgotten that soybeans are a legume.
A quick search reveals that while they are nitrogen fixers, they still have very high N requirements, so usually either soil inoculation or additional N may be needed. I would guess that tropical soils would be lower in N.
I think stories like this are often hyped as they make for a good narrative – in reality, science is slow and collaborative. I’m sure she’s a good scientist, but there is nothing that I can see thats particularly new in the breakthrough, I would guess she has just found a more efficient combination of bacteria suitable for use by smaller farmers.
My farm background is not typical. The glaciers dumped a lot of top soil on Iowa (thank you Minnesota!) so our problem wasn’t getting crops to grow, it was trying to stop other plants from invading cropland.
Then again, it’s possible that Iowa’s atmosphere is blessed with above average nitrogen content.
The deal is that soybeans have a symbiotic relationship with nitrogen-fixing bacteria that colonize their roots, forming nodules that release digestible nitrogen compounds.
The Brazil development was in finding strains of bacteria that are better at fixing nitrogen. For very high yields, some additional nitrogen is likely still needed.
https://www.cropscience.bayer.us/articles/channel/high-yield-soybeans-additional-nitrogen
Fritz Haber will turn in his grave.
It´s like a symbol for the downfall of German chemical industries 😂🤣🙃🥊💣
The scientists surname is ‘Hungria’, not ‘Hungarian. An autocorrect error I assume.
Her work is very impressive, but its part of decades of ongoing research (sadly very underfunded for obvious reasons) worldwide on the use of nitrogenous plants. The use of clover as a cover crop has increasingly been adopted for agricultural grasslands in Europe, a generally cheaper method than inoculating crops. But its complicated by highly varying solutions needed for different crops/soil types/climates. Sometimes the use of synthetic fertilisers and herbicides reflects nothing more than laziness. Many farmers have essentially been de-skilled from decades of the application of standardized chemical inputs.
yeah legumes are awesome,lol.
2 years ago, i planted a green bean variety that mom had in her ‘old seed’ cache…dont remember name…here at the pergola over the cowboy pool. 3 plants and it went crazy….covered the entire structure in no time. but the green beans themselves turned out to be those that have not only strings, but the hard plate like structures in them. so that, unless you can pick them rapidly and early, they aint all that good eating(dry they were pretty good, tho).
so i saved seed, and tossed some in the wild area that the ‘east bar’ overlooks…and without supplemental water, they went crazy again.
so saved seed, again…lots of it…and strew it in both pastures…its a surefire soil builder….abundant green manure, etc.
i just hope the pastures still have a wild inoculating microcritter in em.
chickens love the beans, green or dried.
and the geese and sheeps seem to dig the leaves.
i saved a whole lot of that seed.
I planted an unfamiliar variety of pole beans last summer–the same! They were ‘armored’ and had such strings I couldn’t eat them. Never saw anything like that!
Hungria is even better!
Or as I used to say when visiting the US: “My parents left Hungary coz they were starving.” Believe it or not, turned out to be a popular joke. Back then.
crickey, scientism people who normally say “trust the science” are all agog over “blood moon,” lmao
saying that it’s a vanilla lunar eclipse doesn’t have the ominous imagery as a dark 2th-century Druid forest.
Ahem, a ton of Wall Street follow astrology w/o professing to believe in it (I have no idea how many really do). it is the Keynes beauty contest theory: you don’t pick the prettiest girl. You pick the girl you think most people will find the prettiest.
And I have to add that astrology seems no less logical than economics.
Just cause I listened to this panel yesterday which was about the CIA and the Frankfurt School:
Who Paid the Pipers of Western Marxism? Lecture and Panel Discussion
https://www.youtube.com/live/V99paWsa8vY
TC: 46:50 – Farhang Erfani (American University) mentions Adorno´s book “The Stars Down to Earth” and an essay there about Astrology.
Adorno went to the LA TIMES for a month and analyzed the horoscopes and – quote from transcript “(…)showed in a very meticulous, wonderful, devastating analysis how astrology is used in order to let everyone alienated by capitalist labor to feel slightly better, to have a illusion of a future. A midweek boost by Wednesdays usually about some good things are happening. So you keep going for the rest of the week.(…)”
ps. I enjoyed most Daniel Tutt´s lecture. Rockhill is much more compelling when he speaks freely to the audience instead of “lecturing”. Needless to say that Erfani has different views on Iran vs. the world today than Rockhill.
Is the NYT Opinion really trying to say people are better off kept in the dark? I do agree that, more than just releasing the documents, we should see actual investigations being done.
However, being aware of the extent of misconduct around you is something to generally appreciate. Ignorance is not bliss. Not to mention, more obfuscations means more opportunities to bury the truth. This is why the massive distrust of officials, that the author is railing against, became this bad in the first place. Release everything. Outside of active investigations, there shouldn’t be a need to hide what you found and what you did with it, from the people who could be voting for you.
“Ticks as biological weapons”
Frankly I am surprised that there is no mention of the Korean war where the US conducted biological warfare against the North Koreans. The North Koreans have the receipts for what happened and were able to cope on the ground – but it actually happened. But you do a simple Google search and it is polluted with the word “allegations” and articles claiming that it never happened. I am willing to bet that the North Koreans still have the containers that were used to drop infected fleas and the like.
Look up Unit 731. The Japanese did a lot of the early research on spirochetes prior to WWII and then did extensive bioweapons research on them and other disease-causing microbes during WWII. The Japanese bioweapons group was “Unit 731.”
The Unit 731 scientists were given immunity from prosecution for war crimes. Much like the German scientists who developed the V-1 and V-2 “Vengeance weapons” used against the allies in WWII they were absorbed into U.S. research. During the Korean War some of the Unit 731 scientists were undoubtedly involved with U.S. bioweapons attacks against North Korea. The usage of U.S. bioweapons against N. Korea is well documented and not disputed except in the popular press.
Haven’t driven since COVID but I still shovel the driveway with an old aluminum grain shovel. Only mentioning this in case anyone ever wondered where I get my surplus of character from.
I have one of those. Front end is slightly curled from use, just like the one my family used to use in the dairy barn. A friend who lives north of here and prefers the rural environment likes to joke about “all the city people with their plastic shovels” so I keep the metal one in current use just in case he ever comes to visit during the winter. Metal shovelers represent!
Lol! You win the comment section today. :)
i have a metal snow shovel, but i use it for cleaning out the chicken houses.
i havent asked, but the feedstore carries them on the regular…and i doubt anyone has ever shoveled snow here,lol(snow, here, is something we just endure…rarely lasts, and its even more rare to have it pile up)…so i expect that my usage is typical.
‘Rutger Bregman
@rcbregman
The BBC just released a new adaptation of Lord of the Flies, the classic novel by William Golding. It’s beautifully made, but it’s still telling the wrong story.
A few years ago, I went looking for the *real* Lord of the Flies. I wanted to know: has it ever actually happened? Have kids ever been shipwrecked on a deserted island?’
There seems to be a need for a dark fantasy about survival on an island but decades after those boy’s experience, people will cooperate when stuck on an island lest they be socially banished. A few years ago they did this British survival challenge on an island with one team of men and one of women. The men thought it a lark and seemed to have a great time. They quickly got a fire started and set up camp. When exploring they came across a crocodile so they crash tackled it and then you had crocodile meat on the menu for the next coupla days. They also went big time into fishing as well. Note that these guys were strangers to each other until they hit the island. So a lot of it is attitude and wanted respect from your fellows.
Well in the novel it was British children who became monsters while in the true life story it was Tongan youth who worked together to survive.
Make of it what you will
Lord of the Flies was originally written as a ‘response’ to R.M Ballentine’s very popular children’s book The Coral Island (a book I adored as a child). Many similar books followed The Coral Island (most famously, Treasure Island). I believe Golding said he wrote it as a repost to the generally sunny view those books took of childhood and human nature.
This true story actually reflects how nations live when there is no ruling class – people protect and take care of each other as a normal way of life. Ruling classes sabotage solidarity in countless ways, and may people trapped in these nations with a ruling class commonly believe superficiality, greed, low integrity, and selfishness are just normal or inevitable in human societies. Then they’re pleasantly surprised when they hear stories like this.
These qualities are only common in unfree societies. Healthy nations in traditional times (native or indigenous societies in traditional times, or free nations) live or lived as the kids lived – integrity, bravery, generosity are just normal and baseline expectations, as are many others. When everyone is expected to confront injustice as
needed, then justice becomes normal.
In unfree societies, we are forbidden from confronting injustice (because upholding our law is illegal, as only the police can enforce the law and they have to follow orders). Thus injustice is normal.
I wrote a free book called The Deepest Revolution and produced a video series that illustrate this beautiful way of life and how we’re stuck in our current way of life with a ruling class, and what it would take to create a new healthy nation.
What these kids created isn’t rare – it’s actually how humans evolved to live over eons. And if we’re ever going to free ourselves by creating a new healthy nation, we’ve got to learn what it would take to build that way of life.
Maybe this explains that lack of interest of ordinary Americans in the murder of that United Healthcare CEO who’s life work was hurting other people for profit. In an ethical system, profiting off intentional immiseration of others would not be tolerated. Our for-profit “healthcare” system would be abolished.
The freest I’ve ever been is the wilderness, where money means nothing, nor does the pursuit of power count for much, and pee wherever you’d like-but dig a cat hole at least 100 feet away from a water source, and cover it up after doody calls.
If you were hurt in the back of beyond, complete strangers will come to your assistance in a way you’d never see in what passes for polite society. Its kind of ideal.
For fun I was watching a Youtube on how to climb Mt. Whitney. Awesome scenery. It said if you get in trouble it might take a day for the chopper to arrive.
Or under Trump maybe a week?
Anyway I doff my cap to you Sierrans.
Certainly beautiful and well trodden, so word would get out pretty quick if you were in distress, and in this day and age of communications anywhere, it would boil down to the urgency of the helicopter in need elsewhere to get extraction.
SPOT devices and the like are the bane of NPS Seach & Rescue operations here, as every summer somebody tries to outstupid previous attempts, one time it was a couple of fellows who drank unfiltered water and hit the emergency button on their device, and I think you can text now, but back in the day not so long ago, all they knew was somebody was in distress.
A client told me recently about a book which tells these stories and much more,
HumanKind by Rutger Bregman. From a review: “This book demolishes the cynical view that humans are inherently nasty and selfish, and paints a portrait of human nature that’s not only more uplifting—it’s also more accurate… by taking us on a guided tour of the past, he reveals how we can build a world with more givers than takers in the future.” ―Adam Grant, New York Times bestselling author of Give and Take and Originals “Some books challenge our ideas. But Humankind challenges the very premises on which those ideas are based.
ticks
I’m speaking as someone who’s recovered from lyme and spent a lot of time learning about it from my Doc, history, treatments etc.
The actual history shows lyme to be at least 6500 years old and others having data showing it close to 65000 yrs. It was discovered in the ice man many recovered in europe years ago. It has also been indentified in europe from the late 1800’s through symptoms.
Here is a link to Igenx which is one of the best testing companies in the US. It’s much more accurate than the CDC testing. If you dig in you’ll see there are many co-infections associated with ticks which can be gotten without lyme or with lyme. And it also shows the range around the US of where they are most likely found which are much more accurate than the CDC graphics shown.
Treatment according to the CDC is completely out of date, and they don’t have any protocols for dealing with long duration lyme. They only have a single round of antibiotics.
Lyme has 3 stages once in the body, with stage one being blood borne is easily to kill off with usually a single round of antibiotics. Stage 2, meaning more time in the body, it gets into the joints where there is limited blood flow and the amount, duration, type of antibiotics are different. Stage 3 is cyst, which is extremely difficult to get rid of. In my case I was on 10 week+ course of antibiotics that started with 1 anti, then added one, then added another, then back to 2 and back to 1. I was lucky in that my body could handle taking oral antibiotics, often people have to do IV for such long courses. I find myself lyme free.
I can’t speak to the theories that lyme has been weaponized, but lyme long predates the cold war.
https://igenex.com/tick-talk/the-history-of-lyme-disease/
I remember reading articles on the surge in Lyme disease, and it correlates with recovering and changing forests (boom in Japanese barberry, multifloral rose, etc.), as well as the boom in white tailed deer. The invasive species tend to thrive at forest boundaries and in disturbed areas, so that could be just a coincidence.
Thank you LV.
In the Southern U.S. I have seen one mention in a paper, plus instances of anecdotal evidence, that Lyme disease ticks are also associated with the invasive species of ligustrum shrubs, which also tend to grow along margins of forests or along fence lines before dominating the understory of fragmented forests. Similar to the story of invasive barberry…
For the best fairly recent overview of the ecology of Lyme disease, I recommend “Lyme Disease: The Ecology of a Complex System” by Richard Ostfeld. It’s interesting that Lyme disease risk in an area seems to increase the year or two following a mast year for acorns.
ive never seen a tick, here, in the northwest texas hill country. lotsa large post oaks and live oaks, so i expected them.
turns out others in this county have them(non-lyme, so far, but they carry other things)…the difference, i suspise, is my policy of extreme tolerance of opossums.
they are well known tick vacuums.
skunks are, too…or so ive read…but are less conducive to close quarters.
iv had possums under my house since i built it.
micaT, sorry to hear of your troubles.
Do keep a lookout for future autoimmune diseases, particularly if any run in your family. The multiple complex immune system evasion techniques of borrelia spirochetes that cause the disease can trigger immune system responses to the bacteria that also attack healthy tissues. These responses may not show up until a few years have passed since the discontinuation of antibiotics.
It’s interesting to note, although it’s probably a coincidence, that Lou Gehrig didn’t get sick until after he bought a summer home in Old Lyme, Connecticut.
The CDC maps of disease risk are systematically wrong. In concert with the restrictive definition of the disease and by faulty “diagnosis by geography” they automatically rule out cases that occur in locations that are not on their risk map. They perpetuate the ignorance of geographic distribution of the disease by circular logic –> “The map of your geographic area shows you are not at risk for the disease, therefore you can not have the disease, therefore there will be no cases of the disease shown on the map for your geographic area.” IIRC, it was in 2013 that the CDC admitted that they were underestimating cases by a factor of at least 4. Others say they underestimate by a factor of as much as 10.
The book “Lab257” by Michael Carroll gives a general overview of the U.S. facility that studied bioweapons for many decades, and details the possible accidental releases of more than one pathogen. Specifically for borellia, Kris Newby’s book “Bitten” raises some interesting questions based on Willy Burgdorfer’s papers and interviews. Last time I checked, “Lab257” could be downloaded for free from archive.org and from the empirestatelymedisease website.
You or others may be interested in a previous comment I made here recently: https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2026/02/health-and-wellbeing-in-the-age-of-diagnosis.html#comment-4378480
Thx.
The issue with Lyme disease is there is not an accurate test to inform a doc when to stop treatment.
So what happens is that people don’t take a long enough or correct course of treatment meaning they remove the symptoms but didn’t cure it. The cyst forms are really hard to remove.
Autoimmune type symptoms are common with long term untreated or undertreated Lyme which is often called the great imatator. It’s not actually autoimmune, it doesn’t respond to the usual treatments but it’s so similar that docs are often fooled. And Lyme can have any number of symptoms that mimic all sorts of diseases making it difficult to diagnose. Usually the give away is the disease isn’t responding normally to the usual treatments. I’ve recommended to numerous people to get a Lyme test who had odd symptoms the docs couldn’t figure out and many indeed had Lyme that once treated did fix their symptoms.
Only some people get the bullseye rash which is really the only visible symptom from early stage Lyme. One odd early symptom is a rash like poison oak but the usual treatments just don’t work, creams, steroids etc.
Yes rhe cdc maps of Lyme are wrong. Basically if you have ticks you have the potential for Lyme in your area. Only those places without ticks are safe.
There used to be a human vaccine, but it was removed. My old vet told me when I had to give my dog antibiotics for Lyme. Because he mentioned the dog vaccine is basically the human one. He said the success rate was 80%+.
Stay safe out there
The Russian economy is eating its own muscle — Fortune
These varying flavors of RUSSIA IS DOOMED articles come and go in waves. The recent trend (which I’ve spotted daily across various MSM outlets for a week now) is that the Russian economy is in its death throes. I suppose next month’s flavor will be massive Russian military deaths caused by their human wave tactics and corrupt generals, followed in another month by ‘man in the street’ interviews with all the (anonymous) interviewees confirming how awful life in Russia is, followed in another month by the latest rumors of Putin’s imminent death by cancer, followed in another month by how plucky Ukraine’s daily drone attacks are devastating giant swathes of Russian infrastructure, etc. Then eventually in a few months they’ll dust off the ‘dying Russian economy stories’, change the dates, and publish them anew. Wash, rinse, repeat.
I’m winding up my two month stay in Moscow (back to Italy in a few days), and I’ve certainly seen no signs of economic hardship or societal decay. It’s been very nice, actually, although way too much snow this winter (which doesn’t deter the maniac drivers, unfortunately). Offspring no.1 pays regular visits to St Pete (love interest) and offspring no.2 pays regular visits to Smolensk (ditto), and they haven’t noticed anything amiss in those regions either. Oh well, perhaps Jason Ma and Alexandra Prokopenko are better informed than I am.
Prokopenko was born in 1986, so she never had anything to do with the Yeltsin era. But she has impeccable anti-Putin credentials, fled Russia shortly after 24-2-22, is on the government’s ‘foreign agent’ blacklist, and now works for the Carnegie center in Berlin.
Hal Freeman’s most recent posting at “Between Two Worlds” indicates he and his young daughter will be returning to Russia soon. His descriptions of life in Russia contrast greatly with the “Russia is Doomed” literature.
You can’t help but notice the recent anti-Russian slant, and we are so susceptible to it, being hard-wired into a good many of us already in the Cold War.
This was a Wendy’s tv commercial from 1985, and a so said Soviet drag queen is MC’ing the event, which showcases a stereotype of a fat Russian woman. Luckily none of this would apply to present day America.
Wendy’s – Soviet Fashion Show (1985, USA)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpypTXccG2I
When all the oh so hawt Russian women want to marry you proposals came around in the early 90’s, who knew there were actually Russian women without 4 chins?
And the “Russian Cucumber Crisis” link fits nicely in with this Fortune piece. It’s exhausting reading the constant doom-saying from even left-leaning news sources — in fact today’s Democracy Now! has a headline, “Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine Reaches Four-Year Anniversary” where its only citation for total casualties comes from The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), who estimate Ukrainian losses at less than half of Russian (I guess that’s still an improvement than the oft-cited “ten Russians for every Ukranian” tossed around for the first year of the war). Democracy Now! should know better needing only Wikipedia (or history?) to demonstrate CSIS bias, yet…
Even my quick search to confirm my immediate incredulousness found this fun-read FAIR article on CSIS from 2016, “NYT Reveals Think Tank It’s Cited for Years to Be Corrupt Arms Booster” ( https://fair.org/home/nyt-reveals-think-tank-its-cited-for-years-to-be-corrupt-arms-booster/ ) but maybe DemNow! no longer reads it’s peers.
DemNow! piece: https://www.democracynow.org/2026/2/24/headlines/russia_s_invasion_of_ukraine_reaches_four_year_anniversary
MoonOfAlabama has nice collection of this particular genre of article:
“Anthropic clashes again with the Pentagon on AI use and ethics”
Super warrior Pete Hegseth hit the roof with that Anthropic over their refusal to remove the guard rails and safety measures on their AI. The ones that put restrictions on mass surveillance of Americans and development of fully autonomous weapons. You know, the little stuff. Hegseth demands that they be gone and no restriction put on how he wants to use any AI. I heard too that Musk wants to jump into the AI for the Pentagon game promising no restrictions because of course he would.
re: nukes for Ukraine
This is cute.
So German BERLINER ZEITUNG actually reports this story (wow) even though it is Russian secret service stating this!
machine-translation
Accusation from Russia: Are Paris and London secretly planning to arm Ukraine with nuclear weapons?
The Russian foreign intelligence service accuses Britain and France of working on the covert transfer of nuclear weapons technology to Ukraine. France denies this.
https://archive.is/hxr2I
However we have known for some time even via NYT that the US government was thinking about this step before. Of course the NYT version suggests the Biden administration opted against it (although does not say it definitely decided against!):
“(…)Several officials even suggested that Mr. Biden could return nuclear weapons to Ukraine that were taken from it after the fall of the Soviet Union. That would be an instant and enormous deterrent. But such a step would be complicated and have serious implications.(…)”
Trump’s Vow to End the War Could Leave Ukraine With Few Options
Nov. 21, 2024
https://archive.is/4G56L
I still am willing to believe that the first Oreshnik attack destroyed a construction sight for such devices.
The day in 2022 when Zelensky previously broached the topic of nuclear weapons for Ukraine was the day before Russia went into Ukraine.
tbh, back when Geoffrey Roberts stressed this point in his summary of the reasons for invasion I discarded it as unrealistic, assuming, oh-so-naively, that Dr. Z was reffering to building back a genuine WMD sector in Ukraine which would take ages and with the rest of the world noticing.
Childishly I did not imagine NATO would smuggle in those devices or in fact start building them in Yuzmash. I never shared the sea-change redderick used by Chancellor Scholz in Febr. 2022. But looking at the larger picture – which he did not address of course – eventually I accepted this was nothing short of a cesura.
Its profoundness however rather more to how people stopped talking to each other about world politics less the global ramifications which so far have had limited affect on everday life on the existential level.
In that way history shows very different faces depending on the vantage point you choose to look at it. This of course being an illusion to some part. Once we step onto the slippery slope the vantage points get awfully distorted and turn useless.
Meanwhile some controversy over Palestine, er, Canaan.
https://scheerpost.com/2026/02/24/the-british-museum-cannot-erase-palestine/
——————–
“The lobby group regards Canaan, as most Zionists do, as synonymous with the kingdoms of Israel and Judea and subscribes to the mythology that the people living in those regions were Jewish and that the Zionists are their descendants.
There was no state of Israel and no Jewish people at the time. A Hebraic tribe existed alongside other groups that formed kingdoms such as Israel and Judea.
From the inception of the Zionist project, archaeologists collaborated with the movement and later the Israeli state in interpreting the Old Testament as a historical document. They reinterpreted names of these ancient tribal kingdoms, such as the kingdom of Israel, as the name of the country, not of a long-vanished tribal entity.”
————————–
For awhile our PBS here had a show called Walking the Bible that tried to prove that various current sites proved Old Testament stories were real. Water is for drinking and history is for fighting? Orwell had some thoughts on this.
I really wish I could put my finger on it because my memory is likely faulty, but I read an article many years ago about the historical Israel, from Harper’s I think, and it showed how there was extremely little archaeological evidence for older biblical claims about Hebrew origins and history.
There is a lot of archaeological evidence for systemic collapse of Mediterranean societies around 1200 BC or so. After the collapse, refugees from the various failed states started showing up among the Canaanites. Those would be your “12 tribes of Israel”. The current Jewish identity wasn’t formed until the Babylonian captivity in the 6th century BC, when Jewish scribes created the “history” found in the Torah/Pentateuch after the fact, as a way of dealing with their slavery and captivity.
Excellent synopsis of the history. To add a useful gloss about the religions of the area, Ugarit, a Canaanite city, was polytheistic with gods representing natural entities and forces like the sea and thunderstorms. The Ba’al cycle, an Ugaritic text (in stone tablets), recounts the adventures of the storm god Ba’al as he interacts with his brothers, Yam (Sea) and Mot (Death, East Wind). The language is virtually identical to the Hebrew of the time with an alphabetic text unlike Akkadian cuneiform, a contemporary Semitic language.
Other nations were henotheistic. They worshiped only one, national god. Babylon worshiped Marduk. Assyria worshiped Ashur. Apparently, those gods had already picked their nations when it came to YHWH’s turn. All that was left were these Hebrew tribes. Henotheists did not believe that their national god was the only god as monotheists believe. They merely believed that they had a special connection to their national god and should worship him.
While there is scant if any archaeological evidence of Kings David and Solomon or textual evidence of either outside the Hebrew bible, even though the Hebrew bible recounts them, especially Solomon, as having renown throughout the Levant, there was some sort of city at Jerusalem and some kind of temple. When Nebuchadnezzar conquered Jerusalem in 587 BCE, the city’s walls and temple were destroyed and the political and religious elites taken into exile in Babylon. Two of those exiles, Ezekiel and one called “second Isaiah,” issued prophecies that sought to keep worship of the defeated and homeless YHWH alive. Ezekiel had a vision of YHWH’s “Shekinah” departing the temple before the temple was destroyed, and Second Isaiah doubled down, claiming that not only was YHWH not down for the count, but he was also the only God, the creator of the universe. Thus monotheism was born out of the defeat of a henotheistic god.
So when Cyrus and the Persians conquered the Babylonians, and Cyrus issued his decree that the Jews could return to Jerusalem, the project to rebuild the temple and YHWHism began. Things were not going well until Ezra and his scribes were sent by Persian authority to get things moving, and being scribes, they figured what was needed was a book. Taking bits and pieces, simplified into the J, E, P and D sources, they stitched together the Torah, sometimes leaving older material intact that betrayed a henotheistic outlook or a connection between YHWH and Ba’al. Ezra was a strict constructionist of sorts, and retained the “chosen tribe” status of the Hebrews, more particularly the “pure” returned exiles as opposed to the “people of the land” descended from those left behind by the Babylonians. Dissenting from this move, which, in effect elevated this band of returned exiles into the universe’s most important people, was Third Isaiah, a returning exile who argued that a universal god required that all peoples, even eunuchs, be considered as His children. It was Ezra’s view that prevailed in Judaism.
This was a great summary Henry, thank you!
Chefs Kiss ….
Yet today we have the situation where, some in the past, only dug down X far, then wrap themselves authoritatively in the everlasting truth[tm]. I mean I thought the physical anthro on the early clay alters with its iconography depictions over a long time were telling.
Made all more absurd as the Israelite’s had their son of YHWH moment which totally imploded only for him to become a pet of the victor, otherwise he could not write about it and the future informed. Then comes J who was not down with the heraldic religious authority or divine king thingy, not to mention any middle man – between heaven and commerce – aka merchants/money exchangers. Yet still down with slavery.
Yet for all this death and destruction it still revolves around in the first case – son of arriving 1.0 or 2.0. Alternatively had the ME not had Oil w/a side of trade routes none of this would be going on, yet here we all are ….
Re: Sam Altman double feature
I realize transhumanism is not monolithic, but somehow it always sells itself to the world as: People aren’t smart enough, aren’t well-enough adapted to space travel, and don’t live forever. (A kind of reverse Stuart Smalley, if you will.) It would be interesting to know how much pushback there is to this, among transhumanists, without having to wade through all their half-baked profundities.
It’s probably just me, but one of my biggest problems with Silicon Valley misanthropy is that it pushes out genuine skepticism regarding the human species and its future. (For instance, the knee-jerk reaction to Peter Thiel’s recent ambivalence on the survival of the human species.)
– ‘The Epstein Files Should Never Have Been Released’ – New York Times
From the article:
“In the not-too-distant past, most people probably would have at least grudgingly accepted a regime in which prosecutors and law-enforcement agents sorted through materials from a sprawling investigation and made public only those portions needed to properly handle a case… Federal prosecutors could generally be trusted to focus on their narrow criminal enforcement mission and to not abuse the tools given them for that limited purpose. No longer.”
I was wondering how far into the past we had to go to find this “grudging acceptance.” Did it exist after the official “Investigation” into 9/11? Or after the perhaps even more egregious “investigation” into the subsequent anthrax attack? How about the various scandals of the Clinton administration (the Epstein saga has a few commentators remembering “Chinagate”)? Or the Iran-Contra “investigation”? Perhaps the last time much of the general public actually accepted the official “investigations” of such major occurrences was during Watergate and the related Congressional inquiries about the CIA and the assassinations of the 1960s. Subsequent information has shown these to be limited hangouts at best and therefore undeserving of such public trust – unless we simply assume that the public “can’t handle the truth” and that it should be left to our regime leaders to decide what stories to tell us. We could keep going. The Warren Commission? I’m not sure the majority of the public have ever felt our officials provided all the information we “needed” to know in that case.
So, how far back do we go to find this grudging public trust? I don’t know, but our *distrust* has been a long time coming. It certainly did start with the Trump administration, as this opinion writer seems to be suggesting.
didnt i think you meant.
well said.
increasingly feel like the NYT is just devolved into pure gaslighting
Fresno State students reject free New York Times subscriptions, citing news coverage. (Fresno Bee)
They’re hep in Fresno to what a laughing stock the NYT has become…
That’s a little scary~
Yep. I definitely meant to say it *didn’t* start with the Trump administration. Thanks.
For me it began with Walter Cronkite removing his glasses.
For me, the takeaway story here is that a scientist was enabled to spend 40 years on one project. It’s not hard to find human achievements that took the better part of a lifetime to bring to fruition. Unfortunately, there are increasingly few settings where this kind of thing is possible.
Academia used to be one of them, but now that academia is being turned into a research arm of the private sector and being populated by adjuncts, this is no longer the case. We are becoming increasingly reliant on some dude or dudette sitting in a parent’s basement working out a problem that has been bugging him or her his whole life. This is not a viable basis to advance society or build a better life for all.
Let’s try to figure out ways to do better.
From Breaking Points. utube, ~14+ minutes.
Big Tech FREAKS After Activists KILL Data Center
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ER8N9wbMBo
BREAKING NEWS–THIS JUST IN: Analysts at the US State Department have discovered that the world’s supply of free weights is manufactured in North Korea. As a result, United States F-35 fighter aircraft can no longer be manufactured as they are built today, and deliveries are expected to be pushed out by several years.
President Trump has allocated $75 billion dollars to re-shore the free weight industry, which was outsourced to North Korea in the 1980s at the behest of Gold’s Gym Incorporated. Unfortunately, free weights are very difficult to manufacture in the US’s degraded manufacturing environment, so this program will likely take a decade or more.
RE: “Turns out Generative AI was a scam”
The image of bit rot eating away at a Benjamin heading this link is great. I grabbed that to save for later. It nicely captures my impression of the ephemeral nature of digital money. I remain puzzled by the Magnificent Seven’s and others huge investments in AI and AI hardware with such small returns as I have read about supporting such large investments. I am also puzzled by the blithe regard given what to me appears a tremendous mis-match between the electric power AI requires compared to the present and likely future state of the u.s. electric Grid. I keep visualizing Willie Coyote standing on air over an abyss.
The first comment at this link was a veritable hand-grenade in the punch bowl. Considering that comment, I am puzzled by Gary Marcus’s assertion that AI is a good “use-case” [some much hated, by me, ‘object-oriented’ speak] for generative AI. I do not have any facts or experience ‘on-the-ground’, being long retired and put to pasture, but … how can AI be so bad at everything else as Gary Marcus describes and somehow achieve particular utility in software design. That just seems incongruous.
There is one area of software engineering where “AI”, probably NOT LLM AI, could provide some particular utility. I suspect that sifting through software to locate potential zero-day exploits might provide great utility to hackers, thereby off-loading a particularly onerous and tedious mining-type of activity. I recall a program, human designed and implemented, from several years ago, that found a number of zero-day exploits in implementations of the SNMP [Simple Network Management Protocol] protocol [beware the many memory issues related to the memories of old retired guys] — or a protocol like that. As software continues to enshittify at alarming rates, imagine the zero-day exploits that are likely proliferating, probably aided and abetted by “use-cases” like AI coding.
The thing is, without denying that AI could be useful for generating rote bunches of code for known problems, you don’t need AI to do this. Many times in my career I wrote code to generate code with no AI involved, like just write a program that you can give a SQL table name to and it looks up the DDL and generates triggers and views and other assorted related code specimens that can become part of the database without each being hand-coded. Programmers have been doing that kind of stuff forever, even if it hasn’t been part of the job most entry-level ones get into. Tooling and instrumentation of databases and applications have always been susceptible to software automation without requiring a “model” to be “trained” how to do it. AI seems like an energy-inefficient and less than reliable solution for problems that we already knew how to solve at lower cost. If management weren’t always looking for a “silver bullet” rather than trusting humans to solve them, that is, which is often where the corner office faddism about shiny new tech comes from.
The biggest problem with calling LLMs artificial intelligence is that it assumes intelligence is all about words and verbalizations, similar to how the woke pseudo-left thinks reality is all about words and verbalizations. But words and verbalization are (one of the) end products of intelligence that need to be tested against reality if you’re going to rely on them for anything important, not the mechanism that creates intelligence. If there is such a thing as general intelligence, it exists at a layer deeper than words.
Code generators were in use before SQL came into common use in the late 1980s. Some very poor & a few excellent. They were generically referred to as CASE tools (Computer Aided Software Engineering). I consulted for a few years on one quite brilliant one created by a small , less than 6, team in the UK. They grew quickly , were purchased by US financiers & subsequently disappeared. I never met anyone who used it who didn’t think it was great but it was too advanced for most of the IT management in those days.
Based on a detailed database design tool hooked to an active data dictionary with more functionality than what is provided with SQL even today. It would generate SQL for all the database access if you wished or native code if you didn’t, just a config flag. It did a lot, lot more than a few triggers & views too. Complete programs end to end with detailed documentation.
In IT the best technology doesn’t always win. Usually the best marketing does.
Was able to get a parlay down on FanDuel* that Teetotalitarian Leader utters his first lie within 20 seconds of the SOTU, veers off-script on the teleprompter feed within 2 minutes, and the US Olympic Hockey team is acknowledged within 3 minutes, and the hardest parlay of all… one of the players places his Olympic gold medal on Donald Quixote, Sancho bring me a mirror!
*New FanDuel users can sign up, deposit $5+, and place a first real-money wager of at least $5 to get $100 to $250+ in bonus bets if their bet wins, depending on current offers. This promotion is available in select states for users 21+ (18+ in DC, KY, WY)
The only betting opportunity I’ve tried is Fanatics Sportsbook where you can bet $30 to get $300 in “Fan Cash”, i.e. money you can spend to buy their sports jerseys and other fan swag. I did it once in my name then used my wife’s info about a year later just to hoover up the FanCash. I then bought family members really high value sports jerseys. I lost most of my bets but basically got the jerseys practically for free. The main trick is to close the account and never bet again :)
I’m always amazed that Marcus, famous as a huge critic of AI, is always so tentative in his critiques.
When did AI become a practical tool for coding? I must have missed it, even though I spend every day writing software at a huge software company.
There is no way the current ”stochastic parrot” technology can do a good job of software engineering. Even a fairly minor job (“fix this bug”) requires: understanding the current software product; replicating the bug reported by users or the test team; developing the needed fixturing that will allow the bug to reliably happen; understandng the defect that is causing the problem; determining what changes to the current software need to be made (which could be changing one line of code, or could be discarding and rewriting a whole subsystem); merging your new software into the existing product without errors; and adding new release and regression testing to make sure that you’re fix has actually solved the problem. Then finally writing release notes explaining to other humans what you did and what the consequences are, and making a new product release incorporating the fix.
None of these steps can be done by a machine, and yet this scenario is at the very low end of the discipline of software engineering.
The only thing that gives this ridiculous claim (“AI can write code”) any traction is that most people are as ignorant about software as they are about AI, so fatuous claims about either aren’t immediately ludicrous to most people. I seriously doubt if AI cheerleaders could even write the above list, let alone carry it out themselves, which I think makes their trustworthiness on the subject zero.
Some of the comments at the end of his article had the same critique. You are far from alone.
And thus what an amusing situation, that IBM had one of its worst one day losses in history, over Anthropic’s COBOL migration analysis tool or whatever. Which is nonsense for all the reasons you describe.
I’m beginning to think all of this is just liquidity opportunities for smart money to get out ahead of a coming correction.
And IBM was tepid (IMO) in the rejection of the claims because it is also wrapped up to a degree in AI hype.
you say:
That is simply not true anymore. not with the latest models and techniques. Some might wish it to be true but its not.
There is plenty of external, alternative stories to gary marcus:
How we rebuilt Next.js with AI in one week
and I see it with my own eyes at work.
But the experience and success is very unevenly distributed. Those who were already great are stronger and faster. Those that take the time to learn how to get the best out of the tools are far ahead.
and the type of work matters. a low dependency front end react bug with closed loop can be iterated and fixed very quickly. Something with high dependency count, hard to get a test setup, lots of integration? much less impact.
and there are other non-chat ideas.
for example:
Browse code by meaning
– using AI to add semantic search to a codebase. This would help with the “understanding the current software product” of your comment.
and if your developer hardware is beefy enough you can experiment/run these techniques with local inference on your own machine.
The links above are just two of the more recent shares from our internal slack on ai. there are many other examples. and AGI (whatever that is) is NOT needed here. the tools are useful enough as they are.
grandad had a lakehouse on sam rayburn lake in east texas(i still have many of the doors and windows and screendoors, in use out here, 35 years after my aunt remodeled it)…and the retired couple that lived full time on the top of the hill had a mynah bird.
damned thing would go on and on with the slightest interaction.
but one thing i never heard it say was,” i am mechahitler!!!”
Trump’s Tariffs Are Adding Steel Mill Jobs, and Crushing American Factories (NY Times via archive.ph)
On Cape Cod, we got about 2 to 2.5 feet of snow, on top of what was still there from the last storm.
No power since 9 am yesterday morning. A total mess. Still stuck at home because who knows when the guy who plows for me will get here. No school for the kiddo yesterday, today or tomorrow.
I hope you have enough provisions and gas heat or a coal fired burner.
I think Simplicus is on the right track here in the sense that time ultimately favors the US, if it chooses to prolong the period of tension. Iran will not strike first, which means the US and Israel are free to menace and wait for opportunities as long as they please. This is expensive obviously, but is also for Iran too. Does this change a lot of the basic calculus of the conflict, no. But right now the US is far better off drawing this out that striking immediately.
The Israelis obviously want strikes yesterday. Ultimately they will prevail over any US patience or hesitancy. The Iranians understand that also.
Year after year, alone on Capitol hill
The man with the foolish grin is keeping perfectly still
But nobody wants to know him
They can see that he’s just a fool
And he never gives an honest answer
But the fool on Capitol hill
Sees the deal going down
And the lies in his head
Keep the world spinning ’round
Well on the way, head in a cloud
The man of a thousand voices talking perfectly loud
But nobody ever hears him
Or the sound he appears to make
And he never seems to notice
But the fool on Capitol hill
Sees the deal going down
And the lies in his head
Keep the world spinning ’round
And nobody seems to like him
They can tell what he wants to do
And he never shows his feelings
But the fool on Capitol hill
Sees the deal going down
And the lies in his head
Keep the world spinning ’round
He never listens to them
He knows that they’re the fools
They don’t like him
The fool on Capitol hill
Sees the deal going down
And the lies in his head
Keep the world spinning ’round
The Fool On The Hill, performed by Sergio Mendes & Brasil ’66
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_ekmGXwe0g&list=RDMNZp200emfY
State Of The Union Links Thread!!!
“ … like never before … “ is an emerging theme.
Someone carrying a “black people are not apes” sign was escorted out … ??? No doubt about the “Obama’s” post on #TruthSocial
GOP sycophants giving standing ovations for everything.
“Strongest and most secure border … in last 9 months, zero illegal immigrants”
“Inflation down to 1.7% ?!!!”
“Gasoline below $2/gallon?!!”
Just makin’ sh** up time … LOL
Commander in Chief “bone spurs” celebrating a 100 year old veteran … LOL
“Trump Accounts” … Trump:“I did not name that” LOL
Michael Dell donated to Trump accounts?!! Wasn’t he once on the “good billionaire” list?!!
DOW 50K … Finally!
Tariffs are “saving the country” … calls out the Supreme Court while they’re sitting right there.
US is apparently paying the lowest prices for drugs, y’all!!
“We will always protect, SS, Medicare, Medicaid” – Oh wow, someone read the polling … LOL
Members of congress cannot profit from insider trading … LOL Liz Warren and some other Dems stood up LOL … and Trump freaking called them out for doing that. He asks, ” … would Nancy Pelosi stand up, if she were here?!”
Bwaaaaahahahaha!
Someone just shouted at him, “It’s a lie!” after he prevaricated about ending *eight wars.”
It was a female voice … can we send her flowers?
LOL
I must’ve missed that because I myself started laughing immediately!
Probably Ilan and/or Rashida!
Kushner & Witkoff standing O for helping end eight wars … LMAO
“… and the man they report to: Marco Rubio” … Hahahahahahaaa!
All the generals sitting there have the look of Brutus on their faces … what an absolute abomination … the end of empire on TV for all to see … every day … it’s like the end of Hitchhiker;s Guide. LOL
SOTU about to begin … I wish Lambert were still around to give us a dedicated thread.
Can we get that Congressman who screamed “YOU LIE!” at President Obama on loan? I expect some whoppers.
Lots of crazy stuff on X, I should know better than to lumber into that cesspool without a Hazmat suit. Supposedly, the entire Epstein files unredacted got dumped on the dark web right before the SOTU. And Modi is in Israel to sign away his country to Israel. Buckle up!
“This is the golden age of America” WHOPPER #1!
I miss those live blogs too. Lambert we still salute you.
Maybe some commenter here will give us the Cliff Notes version.
Agreed. I miss that. I miss many things.