How a Dog Mistaken for a Wolf Ended Up Running With Cross-Country Skiers at the 2026 Winter Olympics Laughing Squid
Home Really Is Where the Heart Is Nautilus
The Coastal Elites Are Right, Actually Hickman’s Hinterlands
Climate/Environment
The Macroeconomic Impact of Climate Change: Global Versus Local Temperature The Quarterly Journal of Economics
Chronic ocean heating fuels ‘staggering’ loss of marine life, study finds The Guardian
Will Your State Bird Disappear? Earth Island Journal
These data center developers asked Trump for an exemption from pollution rules Grist
Pandemics
As measles cases climb, these 9 diseases threaten comebacks WaPo
Japan
Japan’s Minister of Defense, Shinjiro Koizumi, reaffirmed plans yesterday to deploy a Type 03 Chū-SAM missile battery on Yonaguni, its westernmost island near Taiwan, by March 2031. The planned deployment is part of Japan’s broader effort to expand its facilities in the Ryukyu… pic.twitter.com/9YWkwprlh9
— Taiwan Security Monitor (台灣安全觀測站) (@TaiwanMonitor) February 25, 2026
China sanctions hit back hard at Japan’s remilitarization drive Asia Times
What lessons can be learned from Japan’s critical minerals strategy? Brookings
China?
China has not yet received any Nvidia H200 chips, US official says Reuters
China’s DeepSeek trained AI model on Nvidia’s best chip despite US ban, official says Taipei Times
DeepSeek withholds latest AI model V4 from US chipmakers including Nvidia Business Standard
***
Xi-Merz Meeting Inside China
***
Assessing Xi’s Unprecedented Purges of China’s Military: Key Developments and Potential Implications Center for Strategic & International Studies. Big grain of salt but provides the DC think tank land POV.
Former US Air Force pilot arrested for allegedly training Chinese military pilots Interesting Engineering
China pivoting toward antisemitism, driven by geopolitics, report finds Times of Israel
India
Prime Minister Modi Humiliated India During His Visit to Israel The Wire
India and Israel’s Military Partnership is Ever-Expanding and Strikingly Opaque The Wire
The Antipodes
Security threat prompting PM evacuation linked to intimidation of Chinese dancers ABC
Contesting Self-Governance in the South Pacific The Asia Cable
Syraqistan
Record 129 press members killed in 2025; Israel responsible for 2/3 of deaths Committee to Protect Journalists
With foreign backing, Israel’s solar energy boom is powering apartheid +972 Magazine
***
The Hybrid War against Iran and Lebanon under attack for its resistance against the Zionist bloc Vanessa Beeley
Limited US strikes on Iran would not trigger Hezbollah intervention, official says Türkiye Today
Iran to Consider Even ‘Limited Strike’ by US as Act of Aggression – Foreign Ministry Orinoco Tribune
CIA posted a video in Farsi encouraging Iranians to contact the Agency and offering instructions for using Tor and other encrypted/anonymized methods to do so. pic.twitter.com/7XorVTb90g
— jeremy scahill (@jeremyscahill) February 24, 2026
Africa
War in northern Ethiopia appears imminent.
As we outline in our latest piece and new report, war in Tigray would have a huge impact on the spiraling violence across the Horn of Africa and the Red Sea.
Ethiopia would become increasingly intertwined with the Sudanese civil war,… https://t.co/4MiUugEeHj pic.twitter.com/TlsiaKylS7
— Liam Karr (@liam_karr) February 25, 2026
Old Blighty
European Disunion
“European Army”: A Thought Experiment Lutz Unterseher
New Not-So-Cold War
Thinking Backwards. Aurelien
Russia’s Setbacks Abroad Aren’t Due To The Special Operation Andrew Korybko
“I’m pro-Russian because I think Putin is a neoliberal europhile technocrat forced by the divine hand of fate into being a eurasianist autarkist third positionist destined to destroy NATO” https://t.co/4sO9HdYMWv
— Amerikanets 📉 (@ripplebrain) February 25, 2026
Putin invites BRICS to join ‘new phenomenon’ of global growth RT
South of the Border
CUBAN BORDER GUARDS ATTACKED BY FLORIDA SPEEDBOAT The Intercept
Cuba Identifies Participants Detained After Terrorist Incursion in National Waters TeleSur
L’affaire Epstein
the Times of Israel openly bragging about controlling Trump with Epstein files pic.twitter.com/rXeuikjIkO
— Chris Brunet (@chrisbrunet) February 25, 2026
Jeffrey Epstein’s tissue samples ignited a furor in the Harvard lab of George Church STAT
Spook Country
Trump Administration Moves to Allow Intelligence Agencies Easier Access to Law Enforcement Files ProPublica
The Pentagon’s UFO Psyop Ross Garber
This document is a total mask-off moment for the CIA literally proving they treated democracy like a scripted stage play. By 1964, the Agency wasn’t just nudging foreign elections, they were fully manufacturing them, even going as far as funding the “opposition” just to make the… pic.twitter.com/o2GqvybD3w
— Athan xanthis (@TheRealCurly5) February 25, 2026
The Big Secret Hidden in the “Designated Survivor” Doomsday Scenario
Trump 2.0
Trump Cheers Lethal Doxxing Ken klippenstein
Trump Administration Pauses $250 Million in Medicaid Funding to Minnesota Over Fraud Concerns NOTUS
Farmers Were Promised $400 Million in Drought Aid. Trump’s USDA Ghosted Them. Mother Jones
Democrats Suck
Funded by Anthropic, Super PAC Begins Ad Campaign to Support Rep. Valerie Foushee Durham Dispatch
The Crypto Chokehold Boston Review
The Uniparty
pretty creepy how tens of millions of Americans just had their health insurance premiums doubled or more last month, and it’s totally ignored by the elites—Trump, Dems, legacy media. Trump’s smugly bragging about all the money he’s throwing at every branch of the bloated military
— Mark Ames (@MarkAmesExiled) February 25, 2026
Police State Watch
We got hooked’: arrests on US army base spark fear of military coordination with ICE The Guardian
ICE Took Their Papers—and Won’t Give Them Back Mother Jones
Nearly blind refugee abandoned by US border patrol found dead in Buffalo The Guardian
Our Famously Free Press
To those who stupidly claimed the WikiLeaks prosecution would never affect “real” journalists:
DOJ cited the WikiLeaks case in court as to why they should have been allowed to raid a Washington Post reporter’s house without telling the judge about the Privacy Protection Act. pic.twitter.com/6CAleygOg6
— Trevor Timm (@trevortimm) February 24, 2026
Groves of Academe
FBI raids of LAUSD Supt. Alberto Carvalho’s home and office appear tied to AI chatbot probe Los Angeles Times. AI fraud and corruption at nation’s second-largest school system.
Imperial Collapse Watch
The Imperial Noble Lie: Translating Thermodynamic Collapse into Geopolitical War The Ultimate Avatar of Balance
For want of a battle, the kingdom was lost Julian MacFarlane
US tells diplomats to lobby against foreign data sovereignty laws TechCrunch
The Accelerationists
Abuse as the buisness model Citizens Reunited
IT’S OFFICIAL: THE CYBERTRUCK IS MORE EXPLOSIVE THAN THE FORD PINTO Fuel Arc
MAHA
Is “MAHA” Revenge for Theranos? Pandemic Accountability Index
AI
AIs can’t stop recommending nuclear strikes in war game simulations New Scientist. The full paper, “AI ARMS AND INFLUENCE: FRONTIER MODELS EXHIBIT SOPHISTICATED REASONING IN SIMULATED NUCLEAR CRISES”.
The 2026 Global Intelligence Crisis Citadel Securities. Market maker scrambles to rebut the Monday Substack post, “THE 2028 GLOBAL INTELLIGENCE CRISIS”, by Citrini Research, which must have struck a nerve.
THE 2028 CHINESE INTELLIGENCE CRISIS The East Is Read. A tongue-in-cheek China version.
Class Warfare
Delivery robots have his old job — and now they’ve created a new one for him Los Angeles Times
Canaries in the Coal Mine Working Class Storytelling
Antidote du jour (via):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
130 comments
Comments are closed.
re: These data center developers asked Trump for an exemption from pollution rules – Grist
And in other news:
Bill Gates is getting into the nuclear power business. From Reuters:
Bill Gates-backed TerraPower, Utah to explore nuclear reactor sites amid power demand surge
By Reuters
August 25, 20254:52 PM CDTUpdated August 25, 2025
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/bill-gates-backed-terrapower-utah-explore-nuclear-reactor-sites-amid-power-2025-08-25/
What could go wrong?
Blue screens of death?
Bill Gates is getting into the nuclear power business.
Any more breaking news, like Donald Trump enters the New York real estate business?
Because after twenty (20!) years, Gates is not ‘getting into the nuclear business’ as that’s how long he’s already been a TerraPower co-founder and investor.
Larry Summers resigned from Harvard over the Epstein scandal.
When is Gates going to get the memo and retire from public life? I hear there is a good shuffleboard game going on in Outer Mongolia.
Didn’t you see? Gates told his foundation that he’s vewy vewy sowy for having extramarital affairs, but he didn’t do anything bad with Epstein. They claim he “took responsibility” for his actions. Well, case closed then.
Elements of battery (from memory, First year torts)
1. The defendant acts intending to cause a harmful or offensive contact with the person of the other;
2.A harmful or offensive contact with the person of the other either directly or indirectly results.
Gates allegedly slipped antibiotics in his wife’s coffee after cavorting with Russian hookers, presumably to stop STDs from spreading. Should his ex care to press charges or sue for civil liability, she has a prima facie case.
Statutes of limitations notwithstanding, there is a DA out there too who could make a name for herself/himself.
Someday the USA will be told by an embarrassed elite that “I enjoyed what I did but I regret getting caught”.
Gates may have damaged his brand, but does he care?
Summers will suffer as his political/academic wings are clipped and he lacks the great wealth of Gates and others.
How is Michael Tracey, the obnoxious “Epstein conspiracy debunker/reporter”, holding up under all these arrests, revelations, and resignations?
His performance on Piers Morgan was impressive!
Obnoxious perhaps, but I have seen no credible reporting countering any of the number of extraordinary claims Tracey has made with his dogged reporting. I imagine he is “holding up” rather well lately, given that little has happened (or been reported) to challenge his fact-based assessments, and his Substack subscriber numbers have been steadily on the rise. Well-deserved $$$ for Mr. Tracey…
Tracey is an absolute disgrace. What he did on Epstein was not “reporting” but strained readings and cherry-picking of critics to defend a pedophile and depict his crimes as a nothingburger. Also seriously took the position that raping adult women was OK too (as if being of the age of consent = consent). Morally bankrupt and intellectually bogus.
If he has sickos that still read him, this is a commentary on what a crap society we have and not the merits of his work.
Here’s another one:
“Borge Brende, the chief executive and president of the World Economic Forum, said on Thursday that he would resign, after an independent investigation by the group into his ties to the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/26/business/world-economic-forum-davos-epstein-brende.html
Speaking of which, did we ever find out exactly why his predecessor Klaus Schwab abruptly quit?
“China pivoting toward antisemitism, driven by geopolitics, report finds”
I do believe that the Times of Israel is making a mistake here. It is not so much the Chinese are hating Jews and becoming antisemitic as the Chinese learning to hate Israel itself. Not the same thing at all. Not by a long shot. The past two years or more have shown the Chinese what the Israelis are all about and how it is protected by the Collective West no matter what atrocities they commit. But now that Modi – who is in Israel at the moment – is getting buddy buddy with Israel, it is only a matter of time until there are secret Israeli bases in India who will be aimed at China. You can see it coming and certainly the US will be helping them do so. That makes them an upcoming national security threat.
I worry about an escalation on all fronts if we get kinetic confirmation that China supplied Iran with weapons systems.
Interestingly it was the US who said that providing Ukraine with weapons, targeting information, ISR, strategic guidance, diplomatic support did not make them a party to the conflict with Russia. If China or Russia do the same for Iran, they can claim the same.
Yes. I laughed out loud when I saw this headline; the “antisemitism” card is just automatic now. And you beat me to the Modi observation as well. I’m sure that if Xi made a friendly visit to Israel like Modi’s, then the Jewish People Policy Institute would find a miraculous decline in the level of “antisemitism” in China.
Is it just me, or did propaganda actually have to be a lot more sophisticated back in the old days? It’s like they don’t even have to try anymore.
You can also see Israel still virtue signaling about Xinjiang from time to time while the horrors in Gaza continue which certainly isn’t helping thins either. It also doesn’t help when articles like this are published by Jewish media reminding everyone that certain Jewish families also benefitted grossly from looting China in the aftermath of the Opium Wars. How else are they expected to react when the Epstein class despises China so much?
https://forward.com/culture/442250/when-jews-were-kings-and-opium-lords-in-shanghai/
I agree, and read the article with the (knowingly) naive hope there would be some reference to that issue. Israel’s success at equating “antisemitism” with criticism of Israel should go down as one of the most successful public relations disinformation campaigns of our times.
In 1992 Joyce Nelson published an excellent (but perhaps poorly titled) book “Sultans of Sleeze: Public Relations and the Media” (Common Courage Press) to shine light on the often-invisible role the growing Public Relations industry has on public policy. It was her contention that while activists / dissenters have plenty of rage for politicians, corporations, and media, they (we) save too little rage to be directed at the multi-billion dollar industry that acts as the content go-between for the power elite,https://archive.org/details/sultansofsleazep0000nels_b1e9/page/n5/mode/2up
I own a copy of — of all publications — the TV Guide magazine from 1992 (I believe, I don’t have my hands on it now) that in a story about the public relations industry and “fake news” either broke or openly discussed the Kuwait government’s PR company using the daughter of Kuwait’s US Ambassador to give false, semi-anonymous testimony to the US Congressional Human Rights Caucus manufacturing the infamous “incubator babies” story. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_testimony
My memory is that between the WMD mythology and stories like this, it was the beginning of the usage “Fake News” in popular vernacular. A term, not unlike the “criticism of Israel=antisemitism” conflation, is now weaponized by the current administration and other purveyors of the product “fake news” was originally coined to detect.
funny-i read it twice also, so your first sentence really struck me.
this is what resonated with me:
If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it, and you will even come to believe it yourself.
Joseph Goebbels
Jews I have known in my life have demonstrated a wide range of things appreciated–even Irony
There is a long history of the use of antisemitic tropes in post-revolution China. The conflation of anti-capitalism with iconography borrowed from antisemitic artwork was not unknown in the early days of the revolution, although in the second half of the 20th Century the two countries had generally friendly, if somewhat distant relations. Its never been clear to me as to whether the use of such iconography was ‘consciously’ antisemitic or not, most likely most of it was just second hand borrowings. Its not uncommon in China to hear of specific ethnic groups (usually the Fujianese) referred to as ‘the Jews of China’ or some such, and its generally not stated in a complimentary manner. Even from the earliest days of social media in China some quite nasty antisemitic material was very common, although it was never clear to me as its meaning to Chinese people – I always assumed it came from a conflation of anti-westernism with the perception that Jewish bankers represented the worst of western capitalism. A few writers have stated that it has become much more common since around 2010, although its not clear to me if this is the case, or its just become more visible now due to the internet.
As so often, such material is rarely found in Chinese social media (rarely official media) without some positive or negative nudging from official sources – there was a noted surge of it a few years ago. The level of toleration of that material seems to ebb and flow with China’s relationship with Israel itself, and to some extent can be seen as an indicator of relationships – its always difficult to tell as China’s links with Israel have always been dominated by backroom dealing, especially when its come to Belt and Road investments and in particular, military technology links, of which there appear to have been many. I suspect that current loud statements from Tel Aviv about China has more to do with signalling to Washington than any real concerns.
Israel has spent decades weaponizing “anti-semitism”.
Anyone who is critical of Israel or of the Israeli government or of Israeli actions in the US (or, for that matter, pro-Palestinian) is now instantly labeled an “anti-semite.”
This has certain practical advantages since it can be used to bring the US legal system, college presidents, fundraisers, and other people into the fight against the supposed bad actor, but it also has, or at least had, a certain gut level effect on many people.
My suspicion is that for people below a certain age, the term has lost its meaning and may in fact now be a badge of honor.
Obligatory quote:
Formerly an anti-Semite was somebody who hated Jews because they were Jews and had a Jewish soul. But nowadays an anti-Semite is somebody who is hated by Jews.
Hajo Meyer
The Wikipedia page says enough about Meyer (a Jew), his life (Auschwitz survivor), and his opinion of zionism (staunch opponent).
Yeah, I looking forward for those bases in the high Hymalaya, see their balls freezing out, and their minds blanking at the austerity of the landscape. From the hot Negev desert to the cold Hymalaya desert is like moving between certein circles of Inferno…
Bolgia 5 (Hot): Barrators (Grafters) in boiling pitch/tar.
Bolgia 3 (Hot): Simoniacs (corrupt church officials) with their feet in fiery flames.
Bolgia 8 (Hot): Counselors of Fraud, who are surrounded by fiery,, burning tongues.
9th Circle (Cold): Traitors (Betrayers of kin, country, guests, masters) frozen in the ice of Cocytus.
To me the main worry is Israel infiltrating the electronics industry in China.
Re; The Uniparty
“Pretty creepy”?
There’s about a thousand other ways I’d describe it, and “creepy” isn’t one of them.
Zero respect for the author… actually, negative. I am so sick of the name-calling and slanting– these so-called journalists absolutely disgust me.
Stick with the facts: these are damning enough.
Mark Ames is a good guy. He does use odd words and phrases to emphasize bad things, it’s sometimes a little disconcerting to hear him on Radio WarNerd describe some horrific thing as “gross.” But that’s just how he talks, “pretty creepy” is a strong term coming from him.
AI versions of Dr. Strangelove–
Have to pull this 80s movie out of the pile. Ally Sheedy!
War Game, the movie. Sky Net, the dips–ts dream. etc., etc.
Tucker Carlson. utube, ~1 hr, 46+ minutes.
Israel’s Sinister Agenda to Use the U.S. Military to Defy Trump’s Plan for Peace With Clayton Morris
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5y9DSaiLzh0
> RICHARD PENDLEBURY: After 4 years covering this horror…
The money quote:
This is doing a lot of work to wash the blood stains from UK hands. Someone ought to send Mr. Pendlebury Simplicius’ latest article, which ends with a list western experts proclaiming that the war would result in a glorious Ukrainian victory in ’22 or ’23.
Pendelbury is doing his lord’s work, and if he was betting on the ignorance of his readers, he lost– the comments are priceless.
Something does not jibe in the reporting about a Former US Air Force pilot arrested for allegedly training Chinese military pilots:
“Brown served 24 years in the U.S. Air Force before retiring in 1996.
[…]
After leaving active duty, he worked as a cargo pilot.”
So far, so good. Then:
“The former officer later became a U.S. defense contractor, training American pilots to operate the A-10 attack aircraft and the advanced F-35 fighter jet.”
How could he train pilots of the USAF on operating the F-35 if he retired as a military pilot a decade prior to the very first flight of that airplane? How could he himself get proper training in the F-35 as a contractor? All of this is quite odd.
Not the first time something like this has happened. ‘Former US Marines pilot Dan Duggan was arrested in Australia in 2022 after US authorities sought his extradition over allegedly illegally training Chinese pilots in South Africa in 2012.’ He became an Australian citizen but will soon be extradited anyway to the US where they will lock him up and throw away the key-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosecution_of_Daniel_Duggan
Pilots are “talent” and receive most of their advanced training from non-pilots who explain the tech upgrades, modifications and other “stuff”. These same personnel relentlessly grill the pilots for feedback on what worked and what didn’t.
Think about NASA: who trained John Glenn? Becoming “talent” requires training and coaching with coaching being the province of the “formers”. Not unlike pro sports with trainers and coaches. Also not unlike lab experiments where the guinea pigs are the “talent”.
“Those who can, do; those who can’t teach”. – George Bernard Shaw
And those who can’t teach, teach Phys.Ed.
Those who can’t teach become guidance counselors. Or so I concluded when I was in high school in a small Ohio town in the 1970’s.
Our football coach also taught geometry and did a pretty good job of that. But the team was lousy, so perhaps that supports your point.
Simulators is how. The F-35 and A-10 are both 100% single seat aircraft. With zero dual seat variants, training is heavily dependent on simulators.
“IT’S OFFICIAL: THE CYBERTRUCK IS MORE EXPLOSIVE THAN THE FORD PINTO”
No surprise there. If you are in a burning Cybertruck you are in a steel box. And forget smashing the windows to get out. They’re bullet proof remember? One guy burnt to death not long ago in his Tesla when his electricals died and he could not find the hidden door releases so that he could get out. Poor guy probably never thought to look up where they were in his manual beforehand. Why did Musk want manual door releases to be hidden? Don’t know, but the Chinese are banning that practice. I wonder if Tesla, like Ford did with their Pintos, worked out how many people would burn to death in their vehicles vs how much compensation that would have to pay out.
I luckily rear-ended some lady in my 1974 puke green (manufacturer’s claim was avocado) Pinto circa 1978, instead of the other way around. We also had a 1972 Chevy Vega lurking in the pits.
Proud ’72 Pinto owner (in high school) here.
Never caught fire, not even once, on me.
Definitely a much more fun car than my father’s Vega.
RE: Modi goes to Israel
Can anyone imagine Xi, Putin, Macron, or even Merz going to Israel and bending the knee like a supplicant?
It seems more like the sort of thing the President of Bolivia would do.
What is going on? Is Modi going to sellout India for a few rupees?
Helmer had a post that featured a source giving a reason:
https://johnhelmer.net/india-announces-its-separate-peace-with-israel/
It’s the long part under “Asked to clarify the Delhi politics which led to this outcome, an Indian source in a position to know replied…”
I’m not justifying, just presenting…
Maybe to get some intervention on improving things with Trump after just rolling over and letting Trump walk all over them previously. I don’t think they did too well out of all the tariff negotiations and refusing to let Trump take credit for ending the Pakistan-India clash
https://rupe-india.org/aspects-no-87/what-explains-indias-response-to-trump/
The tariff thing fell apart with the SCOTUS … I wish I had the link handy, but it was stated on the day of the ruling that India called off their team of negotiators who were headed to DC to put the “loose framework” of a deal into an actual written document. There is no trade deal between India and Der Orangutanfuhrer.
So, something else is going on. Tom Stone’s comment further down about “Kompromat” has bells ringing in my head. Maybe Modi is in the Epstein files.
Modi is in the Epstein files, and allegedly had to dance and sing for Trump in Israel among other things, probably not a good sign
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/2/2/modi-to-kevin-rudd-how-epstein-files-set-off-a-storm-far-beyond-the-us
This view is understandable given where you come from, but the Epstein files are completely irrelevant. Modi has got away by publicly doing things that are far worse than anything Epstein files might hypothetically disclose about him. Furthermore, India’s opposition poses no real threat to BJP’s power. The US however does have enormous leverage, not vis-a-vis ‘India’, but Modi and the capital backing him. Indian elite will bend the knee and do whatever is asked of them. This has long been predicted and known by acute observers in India. The article above on Tariffs need to be read alongside this one, which outlines the basis for Modi’s political power:
https://rupe-india.org/aspects-no-87/the-adani-group-and-international-capital/
The US also announced a 126% tariffs on all solar exports from India using the Adani trump (ehem) card.
https://energy.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/renewable/us-sets-initial-duties-on-indian-solar-imports-at-126/128768655
Also bear in mind that RSS, the fascist organization closely tied to BJP has deep financial roots in the US and has long held Israel as a role model state. The Indian bureaucracy, predominantly composed of upper caste Hindus, is similarly enamoured by Israel’s ‘achievements’.
Forgot to add, the supposed ‘calling off’ talks over the trade deal was a bluff. Modi government’s public statements on foreign policy should be given about as much credence as the statements of Israeli officials defending their human rights record.
https://www.aninews.in/news/business/piyush-goyal-meets-us-counterpart-howard-lutnick-ambassador-sergio-gor-discuss-economic-partnership20260226140738/
Thanks for these articles. This, from the update on the RUPE piece, describes a basic tenet from Trump’s negotiations strategy handbook,
A person close to Adani is quoted as saying that a “Damocles sword” still hung over the tycoon and there were worries about the “indefinite nature of the investigation”.
I believe the common denominator here might be Modi and Netanyahu’s shared hatred of Muslims and their wish to kill as many as they can get away with.
Macron and Merz, yes, I can picture them bending the knee. I can also picture Bibi flying to Moscow to explain himself, which he has already done.
The issue of the rest of the decade is how Bibi tries to get Xi in line.
The Coastal Elites Are Right, Actually Hickman’s Hinterlands
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Growing up in El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles del Río de Porciúncula, to be a player in game of life there seemed to revolve around somehow ending up with a house if not at the beach, within a mile or so.
It’d be a regular Horatio Alger tale of acquisition-pulling yourself up by mortgage bootystraps… somebody out in deep coastal Flyover such as Rialto, buys and sells 7 houses en route to San Clemente, where they run out of real estate looking west into the drink.
I’ve mentioned that when I lived a short time in NYC the people I met kept talking about how great the city is as though trying to convince themselves. People who “ride in a hole in the ground” and often live in apartments the size of a kitchen need self convincing.
Other takeaways include the conviction that Broadway is waaaay overrated and that the glamor of the place can get old unless seen from inside a limo.
Give me a life surrounded by nature over all that “heroic materialism” (ht Kenneth Clark). “Making it there” may not be full compensation for the “everywhere” that they scorn
Sounds like Berlin!
A shitty place, whose non-poor inhabitants (most transplants from elsewhere) romanticise the decay and misery.
My dad in the stock biz had an apartment in NYC and flew out there a few times a month in the go-go days of the late 60’s, and the NYSE was where all the action was, so the whole family moved to Port Washington and a rental house in the summer of ’69 to test-drive the Big Apple across the way, and what an impression it left on a 7 year old.
My mom made sure we did everything possible-museums, historical spots, Statue of Liberty, Empire State building, the zoo and more, including a 2 hour bicycle ride with her and my siblings in Central Park after i’d relatively recently abandoned my training wheels.
Port Washington was a well off enclave in Long Island, and I remember that most of my 7 or 8 year old contemporaries had only ever been to Coney Island.
Maybe 3 weeks after the Apollo 11 crew landed back on the Earth, there was a ticker-tape parade for them, and I was perched on my dad’s shoulders about 8 people back from the front, and i’m pretty sure Neil Armstrong pointed at me as the car went by, can you imagine a similar sense of wonderment in a 7 year old now?
They were on the Moon a month ago, and here they are 50 feet away~
The permanent move there never took, as the market crashed in April of 1970 and daddy-o was out of work for a few years, best laid plans and all.
Those are wonderful memories, Wuk. Thanks for sharing them!
One of the most loved aspects of living in NYC by its inhabitants is the endless opportunities to have a vibrant social life with a tremendous mixture of people.
I always say “NYC is a great place to live, but terrible to just visit”.
It’s quite a bit harder now with the explosion in prices and crowding, but the essential character remains.
Give me a life surrounded by nature, Sing it!
I did time in NYC. In exchange for living in a shoe-box apartment and going to work in an office building, I got money, awesome food, music, cinema, the opera, you get the gist. I even got to coach high school level basketball. This was an amenable situation for a time. Covid put paid to it by making public spaces toxic.
I’m happy to be back at the camp. I like to be outdoors. There has been quite a bit of snow shoveling as of late.
New Yorkers Thinking They’re Better Than You Because Their Life is Bad (3:20):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnxtvSMw49M
Thank you Conor, for an interesting collection of links for today. There are a number that I have read and at least two I have shared or bookmarked. The link to the Pentagons UFO Psyop had new but expected information. I would like to share a little of what I have read recently for the commentariat.
I have read a number of books over the last year related to the JFK assassination and just last week reluctantly bought the book Flight From Dallas, which covers a very small aspect of the probable flight from Dallas of the Oswald doppleganger after the killing. The book itself is very short and I can understand why no libraries have it in their collection. There is not much there. The source, Robert Vinson, was accidentally on the (CIA) plane and was later employed for the last 18 months of his career at an Air Force base in SE Nevada. He thinks this transfer was a means to keep an eye on him. After the House Select Committee on Assassination asked for information in 1992 he came forward with his story. I copy the “UFO” stuff here for your readers. Similar information may yet be revealed in future articles in Ross Garber’s blog:
‘Lead me to your takers…’
UFO’s are the perfect ‘Look! Squirrel’ device to instantly divert our attention away from anything else-almost equal to any SoCal car chase in progress on the 405, in the dogs of persuasion.
Interestingly I knew a man who had been Director of Nursing at a famous hospital in his younger life. He was only mildly demented, and displayed no obvious psychosis, when he discussed his peripheral involvement with an alien necropsy. He seemed smug about having been so privileged…
Drove by Roswell at night years ago. There was definitely some weird stuff going on in the air. Lots of lights moving very quickly. Even at the time though I remember the talk of “UFOs” being a cover for the test flights of advanced warplanes going on.
I must admit I’ve never understood the UFOs being cover for test flights argument. I mean, aren’t a Soviet Union or a China going to think either a) “UFOs? that’s weird, what if it’s aliens? let’s have a look…” or b) “UFOs? that’s weird, it’s probably test flights for experimental aircraft. let’s have a look…”
Misdirection would make more sense. Perhaps test flights at some other location.
(not trying to be whatever, genuinely curious)
My “Health care” premium went from $24 to $92 per month.
Not a lot of money unless you live on a small fixed income, which I do.
The Trump Admin is in an awfully big hurry to lock things down with surveillance and ICE cooperating with cops and the Military, perhaps someone is paying attention to climate change and the difficulty in controlling the plebes when things get dicey.
Like attacking Iran, this looks like “Now or Never”.
Re: tweet with a screenshot showing “the Times of Israel openly bragging about controlling Trump with Epstein.
I think this is a slight stretch. I had to dig, but it’s from a blog post from July 25 (not as one might first assume from the last few days). The blogger (excuse my ignorance) seems to be a religious dude who rambles on about God, prophecy and similar stuff.
It doesn’t meet the description in the tweet for me.
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/trump-israel-and-the-epstein-files/
– ‘The Pentagon’s UFO Psyop’ – Ross Garber
William Casey supposedly said: “We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.” I’ve always felt that a more accurate statement would be: “We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when it is impossible for the American public to determine what to believe.” In this age of AI, multi-level disinformation wars, and complete media capitulation to our intelligence agencies (whose stove-piped agents sometimes work at cross-purposes against each other), I think we are just about there. I don’t think even our top elected officials know what to believe.
It’s absolutely terrible. The other day I went down a rabbit hole that led to some performances of James Brown from the 60s. The man was incredible – I could barely believe what he was doing onstage with all his moves. Then I started to doubt the provenance of the somewhat grainy video, but it claimed to be posted before AI came on the scene. Of course, it would be trivial for youtube to fake the upload date too.
Really hard to fathom that this abomination was released on the world with zero oversight. I was going to say zero forethought, but clearly the techbros knew what would come from putting this into the hands of everybody to do with as they pleased, and thought it would be a good idea.
Thanks for that Vanessa Beeley video. She is very on point. I agree with her that the war is still on.
Anybody have color on “…and they are potentially sabotaging the mission…”, in reference to the crew of the USS Ford (at about 11:30 into the video)?
Her videos and other posts have been on my daily list for a while now. Perspective.
Just spitballin’ but those pics suggest a ground game against Iran started late 2024 and they’ve been taking their time with positioning it, dealing blows here and there along the way.
Yes, going back to the recent overthrow of Assad seems arguable.
Apparently some crew are throwing tee shirts into the plumbing to clog the toilets on the Ford.
They’ve been stuck on that barge for over eight months, and not too happy about it.
Thanks, that is clarifying.
‘jeremy scahill
@jeremyscahill
CIA posted a video in Farsi encouraging Iranians to contact the Agency and offering instructions for using Tor and other encrypted/anonymized methods to do so.’
Can you imagine if the Iranians did the same to America and offering big cash rewards? Think of the outrage in Congress, especially by the CIA Democrats. I wouldn’t trust the CIA though. Not that many years ago they had a spy network in Iran which worked well – until a klutzy spook sent one an email message to one of those sources but accidentally included every other contact email in the carbon copy line of that email. The Iranians had one source compromised but all those email addresses told them the other members they did not know so the Iranian were able to roll up the entire spy ring.
““European Army”: A Thought Experiment
Here’s a thought experiment. A European Army is created – and Ursula gets to decide what to do with those soldiers.
I got stuck in the first page. It starts bringing forward a document from 2003. It immediately made me think of Aurelien’s “Thinking Backwards” were he states that the West has lost the habit of thinking in an organized fashion. Here for instance, whatever was though in 2003, even if then there were still some habit of organized thinking, the situation is now very different and now the EU is a much larger and diverse monster that incorporated many countries from East Europe. If that “European Army” was so difficult in 2003 now looks chimaerical. The role of that army would be to “protect EU territory” and “contribute to stabilize crises further ahead”. So it should be something like two different armies with different objectives and capabilities… just to make things more complicated.
Would an European Army be an essential “tool” to make the EU a unified actor on the global scale? How that? We are now seeing in the person of Kaja Kallas the disaster that a Unified Foreign Affairs Office can turn to be, so let us double down in disasters and create a unified European Army. I suggest that the first Chief of Staff of such army been chosen from the Baltic chihuahuas too.
My pub conversation proposal for European defence is:
1. kick out the Americans
2. create a single European army
3. make amends with Russia
4. secure your southern approaches by facilitating the development of Northern Africa
5. Middle East: too complicated. Support whoever confronts USrael, involve China or something… it is a bit removed, so I suppose that a decent partnership with Turkey will do (even if we have to call it Türkiye)
6. develop a real pan-European defence industry
7. French nukes go European (let’s leave the UK out of this whole thing).
The benefits are obvious: you reduce your strategic risks, the consolidation of armies gets you a more functional army and cost savings, Germany can’t invade anyone. For me, as a Catalan, it is a big shot in the vein: the sector that covers Catalonia is commanded by a Finnish general instead of a Francoist bastard. WOW!
The costs… mmm… Linking to my Catalan nod: the paper focuses on defence against external threats, but leaves out what is perhaps the most important function of an army: the defence against internal threats, i.e., its own population. I mean, the new army would certainly keep on playing that function, but it would redefine it according to the political priorities of a Brusselsian bureaucracy.
Then there is the issue of internal European politics: NATO was created to keep the Russians out, the Americans in and the Germans down. Having made amends with Russia and kicked the Americans out, keeping the Germans down is the only extant issue to deal with. The EU is the soft, political way to do that: integrate Germany in a web of balances and counter-balances and endless negotiations in Brussels or wherever. It has worked until now because the issue of raw power was never really on the table: the real power in Europe were the Americans and the Europeans could have their tiffs in the sandpit, but things were under control because the kids had limited responsibilities. Now the issue of the hegemon (even devoid (in theory) of a traditional military dimension) resurfaces:
What sort of relationship are the Europeans going to have among themselves?
Isn’t the internal political aspect of establishing a European army what may make it or break it? If the Euro was, arguably, a mistake, what would be the consequences of a Euroarmy? Power is not only military power and Germany would still wield a good deal of financial, economic power. The discussions about a European army seen to always assume an ideal multipolar world out there and, in addition, leave out two crucial things:
1. European integration was an American invention in the context of the Cold War and the EU remains an institution that sees itself as part of the American order. And, as a consequence, the second one:
2. Would the EU itself survive the creation of a truly independent European foreign and defence policy? Is a post-American EU even possible?
Re Jeffrey Epstein’s tissue samples: Some have suggested that he may have had himself cloned.
Anthropic whittles away at safety pledge. The reason they gave:
is a classic example of a multipolar trap, an aspect of game theory that goes a long way toward explaining that much of human behavior that’s violent and destructive is a result of the system they’re operating in rather than some general genetic predisposition to evil or on account of particular, immoral, powerful, individuals.
Thinking Backwards. Aurelien
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Another powerful essay, thank you.
The west seems to be relying on the iMaginot Line of thinking, heads buried safely in deep defensive positions where if you keep saying you’re winning, why you must be.
CUBAN BORDER GUARDS ATTACKED BY FLORIDA SPEEDBOAT The Intercept
El País started yesterday with a shameful headline accusing Cuba of sea murders against a civilian vessel with a tone that the same outlet never dared to use to describe the horrors of missile killings by the US Navy in the Caribbean. The report and headline somehow changed later when official Cuban sources reported on the names and the materials (weapons) found on the boat. El Pais is now mired in double, triple, quadruple reporting standards depending on “factors” and not hiding any more the kind of globalist Neoliberal interests pursued, while doing their best to disguise these as progressive, modern-leftist, or something. Shameful but the editors don’t give a damn.
The intitial response yesterday before the identities were known had multiple FL politicians denouncing the Cuban “communists” – they all had to get that epithet in there.
Now that this appears to be another Bay of Pigs type fiasco, I suspect they’ll suddenly start holding their tongues.
I bet those politicians wish the Cubans were as vicious as the US military and just turned the initial survivors to pink mist, dead men tell no tales and all…
I read two different US politicians use the same word – ‘massacre’ – to describe what happened but only because this group was caught. I wonder what the interrogations will reveal as to who was helping them with their ‘mission.’
Police on alert after ‘school wars’ incite pupils to carry knives (The Times)
Police and teachers are braced for “school wars” being whipped up on social media, including teenagers being encouraged to bring knives to class.
The Metropolitan Police have begun an operation in response to social media posts dividing schools into “teams” and urging them to “be violent”. Schools across London have been divided into “red v blue” teams, each with its own rules and points system, in social media posts circulated during half term.
Some of the social media posts tell children they will get videogame-style “points” for certain actions — from “punching up an opp [opponent] — 20 points” to “chase an opp — 10 points” to “stain an opp — 15 points”.
Points are also awarded for recording footage of the clashes. Some of the posts advise children on which knives to bring, explicitly saying that “Rambo knives are prohibited”. Children are also being encouraged to bring compasses, rulers and scissors as weapons.
The posts appear to aimed at year 11 pupils, although younger ones may also be encouraged to take part, the schools have said. In total more than 50 schools in at least 12 London boroughs have been pitted against each other for scheduled brawls.
Very curious. So much is written in the passive. No mention of who is posting this stuff. The screenshots seem off to me also – they don’t fit with any urban culture aesthetic I’ve seen.
Laura Trott, shadow education secretary, told the Times: ‘This is utterly terrifying and it shows why we must get children off social media now.
Oh.
On to the Guardian’s version
Still no mention of who might be posting. This line stood out to me:
But pupils are sceptical about the veracity of the posts, which some believe to be spoofs, according to the Metro, which first reported on the issue. It quotes one year 10 pupil saying: “People are just trying to fearmonger parents … Any teenager with common sense would not meet somewhere where the police have been told about and bring a weapon.”
Very strange…plastic vibes?
Not that there isn’t a big issue with kids and knives in London. Just that this doesn’t make any sense or fit with any gang/turf stuff I’ve seen before. Kids don’t get into knife stuff because there’s an organised competition; it’s too contextless.
Then again maybe I’m just out of touch and it really does go as this article suggests https://hounslowherald.com/tiktok-school-wars-the-viral-trend-fuelling-rivalries-across-london-p30904-95.htm
Sounds like typical teenager trolling/shit posting catching the concern and attention of parents and staff. Usually it’s fake but also kids are stupid and we’ve seen similar trends having real life consequences.
This is why we need an IRL CLASS RANK UP GAME where you get points for learning books, participating in political events like party building or government meetings.
Pokémon Go?
More like GO POLITICAL!
Stürrmer is poised to push for a social media ban for under 16’s, I.e. age verification = real I’d verification for the whole country.
These posts are the bayonetted babies in the incubators of Home Office censorship.
Bingo
Is Polymarket in on the action?
As to Kompromat on Trump held by Israel I’ll simply point out that Roy Cohn was Trump’s Mentor.
The odds that Roy Cohn would not have Kompromat on a protege are vanishingly small, compromising people defined his existence.
And the old saying that “Two people can keep a secret if one of them is dead” comes to mind, if the freaking “Times of Israel” knows about the Kompromat it will come out soon or late.
Trump has made a lot of enemies and his increasingly erratic behavior means that his usefulness to the people who matter has decreased significantly.
It’s gonna be lit, as Mr Boxman puts it.
Trumps usefulness is the absolute crux of this moment. The US going to war with Iran is the “why” of the Epstein Affairs, Trump the tool to get it done, and they are sooo close to achieving this outcome.
Fresh live just now, Col. Macgregor on Daniel Davis’ show
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmYVS51KA4U
Doug not pulling any punches!
Trouble at sea.
From Due Dissidence, utube, ~16+ minutes.
Toilet Troubles Plague Deployed US Navy Vessel as Iran War Brews
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiKqf096bUk
L’affaire Epstein
Living like a lord my friend,
is gonna make you scared and mean
now you wear your skin like iron,
your face a graven tangerine.
you weren’t your daddy’s only boy,
but his favorite one it seems
he began to cry when you said goodbye,
and sank into your schemes.
Jeffrey was a fixer boy,
his banks were fat with offshore deals
he wore his rep outside his pants
for all the crooked rich to feel.
Jeffrey met his match you see
in a jail up in NYC
nobody heard his dying words,
the cameras were broke.
all the federales say
they could have had him any day
they only let him slip away
out of kindness, i suppose.
Donald can’t yell fake news
all night long like he used to.
the shit that Jeffrey ate that day
ended up on Donald’s face
the day they laid poor Jeffrey low,
Donald split for Mar a Lago
where he got the bread to go,
the federales know
the pundits tell how Jeffrey fell,
and Donald’s tweeting in capitals
the desert’s quiet, DC’s cold,
and so the story ends we’re told
Jeffrey needs your prayers it’s true,
but save a few for Donald too
he only did what he had to do,
and now he’s growing old
Townes Van Zandt – Pancho and Lefty
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3LQeRqTBK4
Bravo~
Flowed so well…
I want to express my thanks for the fact that today ALL the imbedded tweets were readable aloud by the text-to-voice app spouse and self use as we review the links. Specifically, we are using Read Aloud for the Firefox browser on a Windows 11 laptop. This is much more convenient, and I hope that whatever tweaks are needed to make this happen become standard.
This venue is one of our major sources of news now. We have abandoned legacy tv “news shows”, with only an occasional exception for the PBS Newshour or the BBC, which we take cum grano salis.
The obvious tradecraft here is for Iranian intelligence to use these instructions to feed whatever misleading info they want into the CIA. Or just mount a DOS attack by having thousands of people follow them and flood any “legitimate” users.
Wasn’t the CIA a lot better in the 50s?
Attack coming this weekend?
Democrats plan to force Iran war powers vote next week (CNBC)
Certainly gets Democrats out of a vote for a war that they support anyway. And they can say that they were trying to “do something” and Trump acted irresponsibly, before they could act. Oh noes.
No, you have this wrong. Nat explained it yesterday:
Obviously, this is the kind of thing DC swamp-creatures would rather keep their credulous voters ignorant of when making their reply to the POTUS’ SOTU 2026.
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2026/02/trump-sotu-2026-kabuki-epstein-iran-abigail-spanberger.html
It was noticed that at Trump’s SOTU speech that the Democrats sat around like a bunch of sourpusses for most of it but when he talked about going after Iran, they were up on their feet cheering just like the Repubs.
Donald will carry the can in the history books, and be blamed when it goes wrong. However, there is elite consensus on the Iran-destruction project. They are happy to stay quiet and let it happen.
In the UK press for example there is little coverage of the negotiations and almost zero of the military build-up or what the outcome might be. Lots of articles about Iranian protesters, Iranians spys doing bad things etc.
“We wouldn’t have done it this way, but it’s a good thing for the regime to go” is the vibe.
Donald is a fall guy in some ways. And I’d guess after the war is started he will have finished his purpose.
Notice also Vance’s positioning. Clean(ish) looking hands.
You seem to have preference for thewire.in, for reporting india-specific news. I suggest you also look at other alternatives for more balanced view points.
These two perplexity responses can help you to present a balanced views.
arrange these websites by popularity: times of india, indian express, the hindu, deccan herald, telegraph india, india today, scroll. in, the wire.in, quint.in, the print.in, new indian express, NDTV, livemint, economic times
https://www.perplexity.ai/search/arrange-these-websites-by-popu-2fFaURmcRu.nM1uQdnCwdQ
arrange these websites by pro-modi anti-modi stance: times of india, indian express, the hindu, deccan herald, telegraph india, india today, scroll. in, the wire.in, quint.in, the print.in, new indian express, NDTV, livemint, economic times
https://www.perplexity.ai/search/arrange-these-websites-by-pro-7CcNf.KERhmekdKMnUn9QQ
If you go back and look through our posts, we regularly link to those sites and more on India.
We also have a limited amount of time and space, and seeing as this is not an India-specific site, cannot guarantee that we get an article in that cheerleads Modi’s visit to a state committing genocide for the sake of balance.
If you have an issue with the contents of The Wire pieces, please lay them out——preferably without the help of AI. Thanks.
I truly can’t believe that you’re posting some AI slop “analysis” of English language Indian news sites here. And each of those sources move around in their level of support for the BJP as well as having editorials that slam Congress, etc. Times of India might have moved more to the right but it’s not 100% in the bag for Modi and the RSS. And the Wire is more patriotic than this would make it sound. Just shaking my head…
I cut my teeth on the Hunt Brother silver bubble-gaining adult status in the midst, and as the bubble was extra frothy, the Hunts only wanted physical delivery of .999 fine silver Comex deliverable 1,000 ounce bars, so anything not pure was either quite discounted from the spot price or not wanted in some cases in late 1979. The few refiners were hopelessly backed up, it takes time to render pure silver from alloyed silver.
My sister has a set of sterling (92.5% pure) silver flatware she’s used about 4x in 25 years, and asked me to get a current quote, and from somebody in the know, nobody in the wholesale biz wants to buy anything not pure now, which is similar to late ’79
1979, by Smashing Pumpkins
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aeETEoNfOg&list=RD4aeETEoNfOg
Aurelien’s article contains a significant error. He writes:
“Foch, the greatest General of the War, understood this, and began to build an attrition machine which would eventually defeat the Germans, but he was sacked before the end of the War precisely because it all didn’t seem to be happening quickly enough.”
But Foch was not sacked. Indeed, he was made overall C-in-C of the Allied armies in 1918.
Perhaps Aurelien meant Joffre (who was removed in late 1916) ?
I have some other quibbles, too. e.g. the German high command was well aware of the attritional nature of the war. This is apparent from reading the memoirs of Falkenhayn. Ludendorff, in his memoirs, bitterly attacks the German government’s failure to fully mobilize the nation’s resources. These memoirs were published shortly after the war, so they fairly represent these generals’ thinking at the time. Ludendorff’s, in particular, are a “hot take.”
As for Russia, aside from the dearth of ammunition that caused the calamitous defeat in 1915, it was the railway system that disintegrated over the course of the war (throughput in early 1917 was only half of what it had been in 1914.) By the fall of 1916, it got so bad that the Russian high command had to choose between supplying the armies, or feeding the towns. They chose to continue the offensive (in order to support their allies’ offensives in the West), and let the towns go short that winter.
On A new caretaker class? As robots go mainstream, there’s a job they’re creating instead of eliminating
This is f*king stupid. What happens when our Climate wasteland future empties out cities. What good are these things in rural environments without sidewalks? LOLz. And they’re trash
lol why can’t you have people do the delivery then?
Are you kidding me?
I guess we need to fix the built environment for this trash too.
What a dystopian hell this world is.
Beautiful Irish wolfhound antidote today. When I first met one I was struck by how expressive his eyes were. Also, when I took him for a walk, I felt like I was leading a pony! Lovely dogs, but sadly short-lived.
Dog mistaken for wolf was my antidote of the day– beautiful animal.
Of course, it would have made the race much more interesting if it really was a wolf… a whole pack of them.
File under AI hubris:
From Breaking Points, utube, ~22+ minutes.
AIs Push NUCLEAR WAR In 95% of Scenarios
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpcORwM7qjI
Funded by Anthropic, Super PAC Begins Ad Campaign to Support Rep. Valerie Foushee Durham Dispatch
Miss Anthropic?
Foushee faces an anti-aipac challenger. Foushee was in serious campaign contribitions lagging behind the challenger. Until…. until…..
Breaking Points, utube, 35+ minutes.
Hakeem Jeffries CAUGHT Funneling AIPAC Cash Into Dem Primaries
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjidZIHTYI0
CIA fomented uprisings and funded opposition in countries a job largely taken by NED and USAID. People cry about USAID de-funding but most of the money it spent was on regime change in places like Georgia and Ukraine. Not just there either. They’re guilty of a mass of crimes against humanity.
Democrat’s outrageous defense of USAID shows their bankrupt morals.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/opinion-usaid-really-did-wasn-110000211.html
https://the307.substack.com/p/how-the-ned-and-usaid-are-tools-of
‘Need a lord on the board’ The first sentence ‘Consequences are rare in British politics are rare in British politics ‘ also applies to the U.S. The announcement that VP Vance is to be the corruption czar is ironic given that the president to date has not suffered from his repeated commutation of sentences and pardons of white-collar criminals who have stolen millions and even billions. Headlines include from the Washington Post dated 3/16/2024 ‘Trump granted clemency to Medicare fraudsters before vowing to cut entitlement program abuse.’ And from the NYT on 1/21/021 ‘For Prosecutors, Trump’s Clemency Decisions Were a “Kick in the Teeth.’ A favorite is the commutation of businessman Phillip Esformes’ 20 years sentence for a $1.3 billion Medicare and Medicaid fraud. https://www.local10.com/news/local/2020/president-commutes-sentence-of-miami-beach-king-of-medicare-fraud/
Fraud threatens the viability of our public health insurance programs. Upcoding is extensive from the local provider’s office to hospitals, and corporate behemoths like Kaiser Permanente and UnitedHealth. My view is that more white-collar criminals need to do some jail time if only to reinforce the stigma of stealing from those who depend on these programs. I believe the government is too willing to use civil suits rather than prosecute. State licensing agencies like medical boards need to be willing to investigate and discipline.
See ‘How doctors buy their way out of trouble’
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-healthcare-settlements/
Re: Japan
https://xcancel.com/index201306/status/2024868997976723678
After the election, the term “Takaichi Depression” is flying around online. Some people might be thinking, “Oh, that’s me.” Can’t focus on work or housework. Don’t want to watch the news. Feeling unwell. Sighing constantly. Feeling down no matter what I do.
And if someone nearby says, “Takaichi-san is great, isn’t she?” it’s absolutely the worst.
What’s so great about her? “Well, she seems like she’d get stuff done, right?” What ‘stuff’? “I don’t know what exactly, but…” You support her even though you don’t know?
It’s hell for non-supporters. It wrecks your mental health.
Times like this, even a little comfort matters. First, the numbers.
As already pointed out, while the LDP won 316 seats, their vote share was 49% in single-seat districts and 37% in proportional representation. Their absolute vote share relative to all eligible voters was 27% in single-seat districts.
Not everyone supports Takaichi.
On the 16th, the Asahi Shimbun released the results of a telephone opinion poll. According to it, 62% of respondents felt the LDP winning over two-thirds of the seats was “too many.” Regarding policies where public opinion is divided, 63% said “it’s better to proceed cautiously.” The policy citizens most want the government to focus on is countering high prices, at 51%. In contrast, only 9% cited foreigner policy, 5% cited constitutional revision. The general public’s mindset is moderate.
This gap between such moderate public sentiment and the violent election results breeds despair.
Hence the depression. It’s not that you’re strange.
Thank you for introducing me to The Ultimate Avatar of Balance. From the linked article:
I found another recent article from the same blog more interesting. From The Grammar of Collapse: Why We Mistake Language for Physics (And AI for Salvation):
What he’s saying is while physics is constrained by reality, language is not. Language evolved to serve social cohesion. A linguistic abstraction of reality is reinforced by consensus, regardless of underlying reality.
Language privileges coherence. But linguistic abstractions in different domains are not mutually coherent. When there is energy to spare the contradictions are not obvious, but when energy is scarce abstractions fail. I would note that this applies equally to contemporary culture war hallucinations.
Ecological myths of traditional societies may be coping mechanisms developed by societies that collapsed in the past and were forced to shift from growth to sustainability.
The complexity of modern society is a dissipative structure – that is, the natural consequence of a surplus of energy passing through the system and creating complexity as it goes, much as a powerful river carves out a complex delta as it flows to the sea. AI is the peak of the complexity produced by dissipation. It does not create growth: it consumes it (the accursed share).
One of the implications of this post is that hallucinations are not a property of AI per se but of language itself. Just as people use language to say the expected things and achieve harmony with the group, AI is essentially a completion engine designed to produce the most likely output to correspond with the input. (As businesses AI companies adhere to the same fitness criterion of popularity.)
Here I quibble. That is indeed the limit point at which collapse is inevitable. In practice collapse happens earlier because of social reasons: people choose collapse when it costs less than maintaining a complex system, as I said in a recent comment.
Regardless of hallucinations, it is in the interests of even clear-eyed elites to delay collapse, reducing the gap between social collapse and mathematical collapse as much as possible. It is in their interests to prevent the population from making the rational choice to – as John Michael Greer says – collapse now before the rush. War and the surveillance state both serve that end.
Put another way, AI, war and surveillance are efforts to delay social collapse while advancing mathematical collapse.
“AI is the peak of the complexity produced by dissipation. It does not create growth: it consumes it (the accursed share).”
I think AI is a tool and if it does anything it is only throu an input from a human originated command. The output can be anything, from a name on a potential kill list, to a CV and resume matching a particular job description, research plan, speech, article, vacation scheduling, you name it.
I also think that the collapse in the language comes from a higher point, and that is the ethics/morals and the language used that mimics an ethical/moral front that reality built in every one of us through evolution – a sense of fairness, justice, front that is contradicted by reality: the emperor has no clothes.
Testing LLMs on the ethical board will reveal that they cannot ever behave like a Mark Levine or a Trump because within their sinews there are embedded many goodies that have whitstood the test of time and of heaps of arguments thrown at them, and the weights they have created in the machine will not only prevail but will overcome. This is not optimism, it is math.
No, wash your mouth out.
AI is not just a tool. There is already ample evidence that AI use reduces critical thinking skills, memory, and attentiveness.
Your Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of Cognitive Debt when Using an AI Assistant for Essay Writing Task MIT Media Lab
ChatGPT May Be Eroding Critical Thinking Skills, According to a New MIT Study Time. Layperson friendly summary of above study
Generative AI: the risk of cognitive atrophy Polytechnique Insights. A different study, from France.
Plenty more where that came from.
A study posted weeks ago here at NC also identified that among the experts using AI, that it enhances critical thinking. People that know their stuff, but use AI nevertheless for productivity enhancement. Likely they scrutinize everything and probably also double check the output.
Ms. Smith, you have posted here one or two esseys written by Kautylia the Contemplator. I am quite convinced that the writings, while directed by a person, are truly the product of an LLM.
But I don’t deny that for unformed people, unsharpened ones, and those unwilling to sharpen themselves, that AI likely induces lazyness of mind. Because of pocket calculators nobody learns by rote the multiplication table anylonger…
Please produce evidence. Haig is pro-AI and I am disappointed at him using the site to promote his beliefs.
A search shows no such “study”. It shows many articles discussing the purported potential of AI to promote critical thinking as opposed to evidence that it does so.
And this is before getting to the still high level of AI errors, as reported by among others, IM Doc, an inventor colleague, and a construction engineer/architect, as in users in three different fields.
I did not say it doesn’t produce errors. This is why one has to be critical and pay attention to the output ALL THE TIME. I work from home, way away from the office and colleagues, which I meet maybe twice a year. I use LLMs as research assistants and so far the quality of the products provided is very good. Yes, they hallucinate a bit with references, which anyways I have to check and read for appropriateness, but otherwise, they are quite comprehensive, and so far I am actually learning. And they are a boon with producing code. Imagine you are a speaker of a romance language. But instead of French you have to produce something in Italian, or Spanish, or Romanian, very fast. LLMs allow you to do that and you have a decent idea what is going on and you can also check on the spot if the output is working as intended.
And, if it is raining, cold, and you are bored, you can engage in all sorts of debates. Will they start using tactical nukes very fast? That only depends on the parameters given to them. But I tell you, with the existing US decisionmakers paradigm and mindset, they will escalate to tactical nukes very fast…
And appologies for not digging in the NC archive to pick up the article that I mentioned. It is there. I don’t deny the general conclusions you summarized with the citations you have presented. It is inherent for biologicals to be lazy. Racoons and bears and bald eagles would rather go after garbage. The seagulls and seals would rather steal from the fishermen, no? Thus, the question is how you operate such new tools, how to educate people to be on par with such tools? How to forge the human on the anvil of AI and the hammer of reality to become mentat? It is a narrow and hard path…
Sigh. There have been quite a few posts here on NC about the dire effects of AI in education, that is, in primary schools, in college, and at the post-graduate level. It sure sounds like you did not want to read or think seriously about any of them.
I was asked to advise guidance to a university class that was trying to find signatures in machine data.
I mentioned to avoid web search engine responses, as they were based on internet information instead of manufacturer intellectual property that is not available outside of the manufacturer/vendor secure website.
Very low quality information on the web, if you know what you are looking at.
Well, currently the “AI”s are all suggesting that we nuke each other, just saying.
AIs Push NUCLEAR WAR In 95% of Scenarios
It is the parameters given to them, which are a reflection of the US decisionmakers mindset and paradigm they live in. They are mostly trained in the Anglosphere materials…
re: China vs. SPIDERMAN
It is all over Hollywood outlets: 2 days ago Sony Film CEO Tom Rothman claimed that SPIDERMAN installment “No Way Home” in 2021 did not get a China release because the Chinese wanted the film only if the scenes containing the Statue of Liberty were cut. Those however made up the last 20 minutes of the film.
I frankly believe that´s BS by Rothman.
I believe there was something totally different, probably some mone thing and so Sony decided to circulate this fraudulent explanation instead.
Why on Earth would the Chinese make such a nonsensical demand?
And the worst thing: EVERYBODY believes it. Nobody dares to ask “Mr. Rothman what´s the proof?” Because normally that would be the standard journalistic reaction: “Find another independent source.”
Not to mention: Anybody ever bothered to ask the Chinese?!
Listen here to The Town podcast with Rothman on stage
TC: 3:20 – 4:00
https://podcasts.apple.com/is/podcast/part-2-sony-film-ceo-on-marvels-decline-and/id1612131897?i=1000751164362
US-Iran nuclear talks end without a deal as threat of war grows (Guardian)
The indirect talks in Geneva were held in two sessions, with reports that the US team led by Donald Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, had been disappointed by the proposals put forward by Iran.
The brevity of the second session of talks appeared ominous, observers said.
At one point, to the frustration of Tehran’s team, Witkoff had to break off his talks with Araghchi, to drive across the Swiss city to meet Ukrainian negotiators.
The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, has also said Iran’s refusal to discuss its ballistic missile programme is a problem, prompting Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Esmaeil Baghaei, to complain about inconsistencies in the US negotiating demands...
…Trump’s coercive negotiating deadlines have always been flexible, but his military commanders will not want to keep such a large and expensive concentration of forces on a leash for much longer.
Trump is under domestic pressure to show that he has not taken the US down a negotiating blind alley, with Democrats demanding a vote in Congress on what they are describing as his war of choice. An Associated Press poll this week found that 56% of Americans did not trust Trump to make the right decision to use military force outside the US.
—
Pressure on DJT to pull the trigger must be huge now. I imagine every Ziodonor is blowing up his phone (not an exploding pager reference).
Thump, thump, thump go the war drums…
It feels very close now.
edit: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/feb/26/trump-attack-threat-looms-as-nuclear-talks-between-us-and-iran-go-to-wire
With Possible Strike Looming, U.S. Says Staff Can Leave Israel, and Urges Speed (NYT sorry no archived version)
Subhead:
In an email to embassy workers Friday morning, Ambassador Mike Huckabee warned them that if they wanted to leave Israel, they “should do so TODAY.”
Drums getting louder still…
Big standing O for Paul Anka who called it. The Ellisons get the whole WB caboodle and Netflix gets 2.8 billion break up fee for front running the deal to up the purchase price. Pretty much the only ones who lose are the public as Zionist control of the media expands and media consolidation races to near monopoly status. Oh, and Anderson Cooper who left CBS and the Ellison rule only to have them purchase CNN where he has quite a bit of time on his contract left.