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Links 3/18/2026

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Haiku and Tanka To Endure Times of War Jeff Rich

Overlearning Freddie deBoer. Important. I can name YouTubers with a propensity to this sort of curve-fitting.

Scientists finally reveal how this Alzheimer’s drug really works Science Daily (Kevin W)

The key problem with the “brain in a vat” thought experiment Big Think

COVID-19/Pandemics

Mass Disabling Continues Ian Welsh

Climate/Environment

Revealed: the world’s worst mega-leaks of methane driving global heating Guardian

Sea levels around Africa are rising faster than the global average: what’s behind this alarming trend The Conversation

Indonesia readies 35 cloud-seeding ops amid El Niño threat Antara

Big Oil Knew It Was Wrecking Louisiana’s Coast, Records Show DeSmog

The Colorado River’s Problems Are About to Get Deeper Bloomberg

An Invisible Crisis: The Hidden Environmental Impact of Pharmaceutical Waste Earth

The Plastic Detox review – a film so terrifying you will want to change your life immediately Guardian

China?

Not just Navy ships anymore: China now builds next generation fighter jets faster than anyone Kevin Walmsley

The fiscal family: adviser says China’s tax flows should resemble parental ties South China Morning Post. The Chinese fondness for describing things in terms of family relations IMHO has the speaker infantilizing the listener and makes the Chinese seem less smart than they are (as if this sort of dumbing down is necessary).

India-Pakistan

‘Water War’ rages as India-Pakistan tensions reach boiling point Responsible Statecraft

Africa

African policymakers should be clear-eyed about the short and medium term impacts of the U.S./Israel-Iran war Ken Opolo

South of the Border

Trump Administration Said to Tell Cuba That Its President Has to Go New York Times

European Disunion

European Parliament moves to revive the EU-US trade deal after months of gridlock Euronews Poodles gonna poodle…

Europe could offer to help Trump on Iran — if he backs Ukraine, Finland’s Stubb suggests Politico (Kevin W)

Old Blighty

Wet winter brings long-term problems for farmers BBC

Israel v. The Resistance

Severe sandstorm sweeps through Gaza tent camps France 24

* * *

UK security adviser attended US-Iran talks and judged deal was within reach Guardian (Vikas S)

Too Much to Swallow Dingusanich

TRUMP’S WAR ON IRAN COULD COST TRILLIONS Intercept (Ann). “Could”? In GDP growth terms, already baked in.

Trump bombing US-Arab relations back to the 70s Responsible Statecraft (resilc)

Versus….How MBS’s bet on Iran backfired Financial Times. I can’t even. resilc: “His bet on usa usa is the losing hand……”

Pakistan-Afghanistan

Pakistan-Afghanistan Conflict Highlights: Taliban Says Pak’s Strikes On Hospital Is ‘Crime Against Humanity’ NDTV

New Not-So-Cold War

Ukrainians Sound Alarm Over Coming Russian Spring Offensive Simplicius

Brief Frontline Report – March 17th, 2026 Marat Khairullin and Mikhail Popov

Big Brother is Watching You Watch

Yes, this is bad, but it is why God invented the Faraday bag:

Imperial Collapse Watch

The Specter of Third Worldism Events in Ukraine. Important.

U.S. Navy Minesweepers Assigned To Middle East Have Been Moved To Pacific (Updated) TWZ. ma; “More evidence of the decrepitude of an important piece of the US arsenal? “.

Trump 2.0

Trump says he’s ‘not afraid’ of Vietnam-style ground combat in Iran Daily Mail (resilc)

Trump Can’t Spin His Way Out of This War New York Times The Orientalism is thick in this piece.

US: Judge orders VOA employees to be reinstated DW

Joe Kent Resignation

Joe Kent, a Top U.S. Counterterrorism Official, Resigns Over the Iran War New York Times (resilc). Wowsers, he has the male analogue to the Mar-a-Lago face, cut jawline and cheekbones. Hate to say it but this look will make him more credible to conservatives.

GOP CLown Car

Rise in anti-Muslim rhetoric by GOP sparks uproar on Capitol Hill The Hill

Centrist Melissa Bean Wins 8th District Democratic Primary New York Times

Oil Regulators Found Hundreds of Wells Violating Oklahoma Rules. Then They Ignored Their Findings. ProPublica (Robin K)

L’affaire Epstein

Donald Trump’s Racism Mirrors Jeffrey Epstein’s TomDispatch

Our No Longer Free Press

Interview on Israeli-US Attack on Iran Sam Husseini. Censored in the UK.

We Are Being Set Up. Tucker Explains. YouTube. With Glenn Greenwald

Economy

Are the Economic Books Being Cooked? Paul Krugman

Skyrocketing Gas Prices Threaten Political Order Across the Globe OilPrice

Mr. Market is Moody

I Predicted the 2008 Financial Crisis. What Is Coming May Be Worse. New York Times (Ann). Bookstaber is the real deal. I cited him often in the runup to the crisis.

AI

Why Are We Still Doing This? Ed Zitron. ZOMG another great read plus you get to think about something other than Iran.

Ultra-Processed Information: AI and the Coming Deluge of Noise Nate Hagens

AI Job Loss Research Ignores How AI Is Utterly Destroying the Internet 404 Media

The Bezzle

My Self-Driving Car Crash Atlantic (resilc)

Guillotine Watch

Mega Yachts trapped in Dubai As War Rages | SY News YouTube (resilc)

Warriors’ Casino: The People Making A Killing Gambling On War Racket News

Class Warfare

Exposed: How Debt Became the Tool the Wealthy Use to Drain Workers’ Income Egberto

4,000 Meatpackers Strike in Colorado at Brazilian-Owned JBS Mike Elk

Americans Should Have a Right to Full-Time Work New York Times (resilc). Note the re-write of the headline.

Antidote du jour (via):

See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.

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54 comments

  1. Trees&Trunks

    “Overlearning Freddie deBoer. Important. I can name YouTubers with a propensity to this sort of curve-fitting.”

    Feel free to name names!

  2. The Rev Kev

    “Trump bombing US-Arab relations back to the 70s”

    ‘To avoid making the mess worse, the United States needs to return to constructive diplomacy with Iran. Reviving something like the 2015 agreement that strictly limited Iran’s nuclear program would be a big improvement in regional security over the current predicament.’

    Not possible. Trump has repeatedly demonstrated that he regards negotiations as a chance to decapitate leaders and negotiators so trust is at zero levels. Just before he decided to attack Iran, Iran had put a deal on the table that went beyond the 2015 JCPOA but he ignored it because it was never about nuclear enrichment but taking over Iran and it’s oil instead.

  3. Wukchumni

    The Colorado River’s Problems Are About to Get Deeper Bloomberg
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    Supposed to be 58 degrees on the slopes at Beaver Creek today, which offers a chance to wear shorts and a Hawaiian shirt on the piste de la resistance that’ll resemble runny mashed potatoes. Book it Danno!

    The bigger factor is the melt-freeze cycle is over, meaning that for the next 10 days of this heat wave the snow will be melting off feverishly, not that there was a lot of it to begin with in a forgettable winter in the mountain west where all the Colorado River water comes from.

    None of the water that will be rushing into the Colorado River is particularly needed now, and evaporation will take its toll on a fair amount of it.

    Decision time regarding the largess has been put on the back burner repeatedly over the years, but this is where push>meets<shove.

    C'est it isn't so eau!

      1. Wukchumni

        Indeed!

        Daniel Swain is the best meteorologist I’ve ever seen, and worthy of wide attention.

        1. Joe Renter

          In the central Ca coastal town I live in, yesterday it was 87! I believe it was the warmest day I have experienced in three years I have been here. Today it should be 85. Going to get in the 55 degree Pacific Ocean in a bit.

  4. Ben Panga

    Re: Trump says he’s ‘not afraid’ of Vietnam-style ground combat in Iran

    As someone on Twitter put it:

    He sure was afraid of Vietnam-style ground combat in Vietnam

  5. Bob from Kansas

    “Exposed: How Debt Became the Tool the Wealthy Use to Drain Workers’ Income” – I have to wait to watch the video, but just saying I have the worst credit score, not because I have a lot of debt, or I that did not pay any kind of bills, but only because I do not want to have debt enabling devices (credit card, mortgage, car loan). Since it has been such a long time when I last had a credit card (20+ years) I cannot get one without getting a “training wheels credit card”. It does not matter what my income is or how much money I have in the bank.

    Yet, during my daughter’s first year of college, in a small student loan debt and no income, she received multiple offers for credit cards. I told her that this is the trick, they want suckers, and it is because they know I am not a sucker, they do not want me at the table.

    1. flora

      People who pay off their balance every month and don’t incur late fees are known in the CC industry as deadbeats. Tells ya what is the CC industry’s profit model.

      A deeply indebted customer paying the minimum each month is a CC company’s best client… in the CC company business model. / ;)

      1. JohnnySacks

        This family is even worse than that. We only use cards which offer rebates on purchases. Unfortunately, we have $2k waiting on our GM card but the choices and prices of vehicles are sickening (not just GM, either). Maybe this looming recession will have an upside in markdowns?

    3. Jonathan Holland Becnel

      That’s how Chase Bank got me in College at LSU. Sign up for our credit card and get 50$ free.

  7. The Rev Kev

    “Wet winter brings long-term problems for farmers”

    They are talking about Cornwall and Devon here which I believe has a reputation for lots of rain – kinda like Seattle. But what surprises me is that instead of talking to livestock farmers, that they did not go to regular farmers and ask them how they are getting on for fertilizers. But maybe that is why the BBC ran this story instead.

  8. Sibiriak

    Medhi Hasan interviews Ben Rhodes (former Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications and Speechwriting under President Barack Obama).

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HO5SClVehBk

    “Rhodes tells Mehdi that Israel’s ultimate objective is to turn Iran into a “failed state.” He criticizes Democratic Party leadership for failing to respond to the conflict…”

    00:51 Rhodes Reacts to US-Iran War
    2:30 Israel’s Role in Pushing the US Toward War
    6:48 How Netanyahu Pressured Obama on Iran
    8:30 Biden and Harris’s Handling of Iran
    10:48 Is Iran a Threat to the United States?
    13:31 Obama’s Libya Intervention
    17:57 Obama’s Drone War
    21:08 Pro-War Democrats Should Be Primaried
    25:34 Trump Was Misled by Netanyahu

  9. brian wilder

    Raffi Krikorian transitions his narrative of his Tesla crash from focusing on FSD anomalies to
    Chatbot assistants rather abruptly:

    My car didn’t warn me when it was confused. Chatbots don’t, either; they deliver their results in the same confident voice, whether they’re right or hallucinating. They perform expertise, even when the sources they cite are dubious or fabricated. They use technical language in an authoritative tone. And we believe them, because why wouldn’t we? They’ve been right so many times before.

    Are these fully comparable applications of AI? Is the human experience of these different applications of AI comparable?

    It seems to me that we are asking LLMs to do something qualitatively different from what we are asking an autopilot to do. My experience of my own “process” is certainly different. Driving a car or riding a bicycle doesn’t feel to me at all similar to composing, say, an email summarizing the results of a meeting or outlining Wikipedia articles.

    The sudden outbreak of earnest piety in Krikorian’s narrative makes me wonder whether he was avoiding some landmine. One moment he seemed ready to approach the critical issues of legal and moral liability by explaining how he had retrospectively come to understand the particulars of his own car accident and then . . . Chatbots.

  10. pjay

    – ‘Trump Can’t Spin His Way Out of This War’ – New York Times. The Orientalism is thick in this piece.

    Anyone who thinks our “liberal” Establishment isn’t completely committed to the Greater Israel project should read this disgusting “critique” of Trump. For example:

    “Mr. Trump’s instincts about Iran were correct in a few ways. Its government is distinctly dangerous, having spent decades oppressing its own people, sponsoring terrorism, trying to destroy Israel, turning Lebanon into a failed state, protecting a horrific regime in Syria and pursuing a nuclear program. Mr. Trump also recognized that Iran’s regime was weaker than it pretended and could be weakened further through confrontation.”

    And so on.

    You see, it’s not that Iran doesn’t deserve to be dismantled like the “horrific regime in Syria” it protected. It’s that Trump lacks any real strategy or “apparent plan” for doing so. The editorial goes on to list the three “strategic problems” with Trump’s war: (1) the difficulties of carrying out regime change “without ground troops” (the editors clearly desire regime change, so… what are they saying?); (2) the failure to guarantee “that Iran’s murderous regime does not become a nuclear power” by securing their enriched uranium, noting that “Secretary of State Marco Rubio acknowledged that ground troops might be the only way to capture the uranium” (so… what are they saying?); and (3) failure to plan for the economic consequences of the war (oil, Hormuz, etc.).

    For those who might wonder how the actions of Israel or the Israel Lobby in the US might have played a role in this fiasco, rest assured that they are not mentioned here. Netanyahu is mentioned once, in a sentence about how he and his buddy Trump “conjured up dreams of regime change” without adequate planning. But that’s it.

    Compare this “analysis” to Joe Kent’s resignation letter and tell me which is more helpful in defining the central problem.

    1. John Wright

      The Times has that Trump has “temporarily lifted oil sanctions on Russia, which is a gift to an enemy”.

      So the sophisticated Times editorial board has defined Russia as an enemy.

      “Rival” is a better, less inflammatory, term for Russia.

      An enemy is someone one might go to war against.

      No wonder the USA media is losing trust.

  11. TimH

    The Chinese fondness for describing things in terms of family relations IMHO has the speaker infantilizing the listener

    I get pissy with US articles giving areas in terms of football fields, data storage in terms of number of songs (used to be books), and using the vague term average as opposed to stating median (usually most useful) or mean (often used to infer BS from a very not-normal-data-distribution).

    1. Yves Smith Post author

      The Chinese cases come often from top officials. including Xi, so your examples are a category error. Plus those officials hold themselves as being much better than ours (true but these family metaphors IMHO detract from that positioning).

  12. lyman alpha blob

    Venezuela hasn’t got their president back, but they did get a small bit of comeuppance by beating the USA team in the final of the World Baseball Classic yesterday. Venezuela was leading 2-0 in the 8th inning until Bryce Harper, one of my least favorite players, and who reminds me of some Delta Force wannabe, hit a two run homer to tie the game for the US. But Venezuela came back with a run in the 9th and finished off the US! The US team showed typical USian grace and sportsmanship by ripping off their silver medals as fast as they possibly could – https://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/article/world-baseball-classic-kyle-schwarber-mason-miller-among-team-usa-players-to-immediately-take-off-silver-medals-045751342.html

    Stay classy USA!

    1. Don

      But the best part of watching this beautiful ballgame was the crowd in attendance, in Miami; solidly, noisily, joyously, pro-Venezuelan. How did that happen? Isn’t Miami supposed to be populated with anti-Cuban, anti-Communist, pro-America, right wing, U-S-A U-S-A U-S-A chanting Republican zealots?

      I, apparently, have been misinformed — am considering relocation to this socialist, palm-tree-bedecked Caribbean paradise.

      1. Late Introvert

        Video guy here, and I can tell you that they actively suppressed the audio of audience after the win.

  13. Tom Stone

    If the fire on the Geerald Ford was indeed sabotage it would be one more example of passive aggressive resistance to authority by the enlisted, the grunts who do the work and the dying.
    The grunts are masters of this, in every Military, it’s the last step before the fragging starts.
    They “Work to rule”. “Forget” to close valves, “Don’t notice” problems before they become emergencies and you can usually tell it is coming because the troops stop bitching.
    The troops know what the senior officers are like, they see Pete Hegseth making exercise videos rather than addressing the very obvious problems facing those who do the work and the dying.
    They know damn well that the administration views them as expendable pawns, at best.
    So they do what Soldiers and Sailors have always done when they know their military is led by corrupt incompetents.
    They push back in the only ways they can.

    1. Glen

      Remember this is the all volunteer armed services! The stories going around for what happened in the armed services during Vietnam and the draft (which was long over by the time I was in) were worse.

      But since W’s middle east wars (I lump Trump’s Iran war as W squared for stupidity), the services have to rely on calling up National Guard units, and contracting out everything else but the actual fighting (and sometimes even that). Most people did not realize that bases in Afghanistan that were reported as 5000 military were actually over 40,000 once you started counting the contractors and locals. I wonder what that mix is for the GCC bases currently being hit? And I wonder if there is any truth in what is being reported everywhere except the West:

      Iran’s 3,200 Casualty Claim vs America’s 13 Dead: Who Is Telling the Truth About the West Asia War?
      https://english.dainikjagranmpcg.com/international/irans-3200-casualty-claim-vs-americas-13-dead-who-is/article-15539

  14. The Rev Kev

    “How MBS’s bet on Iran backfired”

    I think that the Financial Times is telling a bunch of porkies here. The Gulf States would have been told about the upcoming war and went along with it so long as it was quick and this especially applies to MBS. Trump would have told them that it would be all over in a few days before anything adverse happened and America would end up having control of Iran’s oil and gas fields. Only it didn’t workout that way. Yeah, Trump is duplicitous but those Gulf States run a master class in that subject. They refuse to sue for peace and push Trump to continue attacking so if all those Kingdoms were overthrown in the coming years, I would shed no tear for them.

  16. LadyXoc

    How is it possible that the opinion piece urging 40-hour workweeks for min wage jobs does not address the elephant in the room: health insurance. The reason Target, Lowe’s, MacDonalds, Walmart, etc won’t give workers 40 hours a week is because they would then be required to provide health insurance and other benefits. This is a calculated ploy to deny Americans a living wage that includes health insurance.

  19. Lefty Godot

    I’m going to ask my NRA leaders to make sure we have the right to carry these babies. So we can be ready when Obama Trump tries to take our guns and put us in FEMA ICE concentration camps. Hell yeah!

  20. Kontrary Kansan

    Debt: The Tool of the Wealthy

    Is it really necessary to rehash this? Keep wages low, inflate consumer and asset prices, enhance planned obsolescence with cheap goods, keep pushing credit cards. Jeez! This series has been going on for so long it’s in reruns with AI enhanced color and a growing list of sponsors!

  21. Jason Boxman

    Big Techs massive AI data center buildout runs smack into higher gas prices; they’re using gas turbines on-site and ditching the power grid

    Why Tech Giants Are Ditching the Power Grid (NY Times; paywalled)

    It is the industrial version of what homeowners might do to get through a hurricane. Only in this case, some technology companies are planning to rely on off-grid gas power for many years.

    This is happening as electricity is becoming a major political issue, with fights breaking out over how much energy costs, where it comes from and who ought to pay for what. Data centers, which consume huge amounts of energy, are at the center of these debates.

    Going off grid was no one’s first choice. Off-grid power generally costs a lot more, partly because developers need to install more equipment than will be used at any one time in case machines break or need servicing. A lot of this gear is also less efficient than the airplane-size machines used at big power plants, meaning it needs to burn more gas to generate the same amount of electricity.

    But in some states, it might take years to get permission to plug new power plants into the grid.

    By the end of 2025, an estimated 39 percent of the gas power capacity being developed in the United States was designed to serve data centers on-site, according to the Global Energy Monitor, a nonprofit organization that tracks energy projects. That is up from 5 percent at the end of 2024.

    And no one wants this AI trash.

    Perhaps Trump’s war puts an end to this.

    AI is hungry

    It is the kind of equipment you might expect in remote oil fields. Were they connected to the grid, the machines being installed in New Albany could potentially power around 600,000 homes. Another power plant that was proposed last week would be big enough to provide electricity for an additional 200,000 homes or more if regulators approve it.

  22. Jason Boxman

    In this edition of America is going great, PPI came in smoking hot, this before, the war

    PPI inflation surprise: Producer prices rise more than forecast in February, complicating Fed outlook (Yahoo Finance)

    US producer prices rose more than twice as fast as expected in February, according to data released Wednesday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

    The Producer Price Index (PPI) rose 0.7% in February over the previous month, up from January’s 0.5% gain and more than double economists’ expectations for an increase of 0.3%.

    …

    Headline final demand prices — the closest producer-side measure to consumer prices — were led by food and energy prices, up 2.4% and 2.3%, respectively, over the previous month.

    Just imagine what next month’s numbers are gonna be?

  23. LawnDart

    TRUMP!!!

    You know, the poor guy has taken a lot of criticism and bashing– some rightly, for sure– especially when he seems to claim “wins” day in and day out… so much winning.

    I never did like it when people offer criticism without offering solutions to what they see as a problem, and I’m sure Trump doesn’t like it either, so here we go: a public challenge Trump is sure to win– clear victory; no contest, no dispute, an easy win for the man:

    HERE IS THE CHALLENGE

  24. lyman alpha blob

    RE: the Zitron piece

    He talks about Anthropic and how they might become profitable. At a company I’m familiar with, they have started shoving the clanker at all employees whether they want it or not. One person spoke about their experience using it to get directions for a procedure on an Oracle platform. They had to do multiple prompts before getting anything workable, but eventually there they were – the miraculous directions!

    A less enthusiastic person might note that if you have a software platform in use for years and otherwise intelligent employees still struggle to use it properly, then it is not good software and probably should not have been purchased, given that what it replaced actually worked. They might also note that if it takes multiple attempts before the clanker spits out anything close to usable, what is actually happening is the employee is training the clanker, and not just for free, but paying for the privilege of doing so.

    This appears to be happening at all kinds of companies – upper management lacking an IT background larding up their companies with enshittified tech mainly because everybody else is doing it, and spending big bucks to do so.

    NC readers have seen the studies showing that the less one knows about “AI”, the more one believes it is useful. We’ve also seen studies about cognitive abilities dropping with prolonged “AI” use. If these “AI” companies ever do become profitable, it will be because PT Barnum was right. There really is a sucker born every minute. The more people use “AI”, the dumber people become and the more suckers are created. It could turn out that bulls**t grinders willturn a profit after all.

    1. AG

      More superficial than what you lay out but for me it´s first inventing a “product” and then use the political leverage to enforce “market” for it.
      Whether we want it or not.
      (Frankly not a single day I do not curse Apple in general and I-Phones in particular. In that regard the “Steve Jobs” biopic which was incredibly good propaganda for the company does at least give a little insight into how the incompetent hack could still prevail due to certain political connection/financial sources. The latter is not explained in that film naturally, but if you are not totally moronic like the screenwriter, you can deduce that truism of how the IT-biz works in reality.)
      Says me, admittedly not an IT-person. 🙄

  25. Mikel

    Why Are We Still Doing This? – Ed Zitron

    NTW in a bit of conversation with Ed:
    Silicon Valley Accelerationists Take On the World and Everyone in It

    Taking away economic, political, and social power from certain segments of society. It’s not about how well the BS works.

  26. AG

    re: Tucker Carlson

    I listened to 20 minutes from Taibbi/Tracey.
    They talked about Tucker´s claims re: CIA.
    Initially I turned it off disappointed. However then went back.

    And they tried to make a point to question Tucker´s claims based on some of his other appearances such as his discussion with that Megyn Kelly person about demons.

    Here let me remind of the Pentagon Paper Principles established within the Washington Post which demanded to only follow two principles before publishing a story: 1) relevance 2) truth.

    There is no principle #3 by the name “source”/”sympathy”/”character” etc..

    This is something Taibbi has been hammering away for years I believe and it is a crucial point. No question.
    In the case of Tucker it however puts us into a difficult position.
    It Tucker is the only source of the CIA threat and there – at time of the show – was no way to verify/falsify independently what do you do? You do check that person´s other stories and do turn to a principle#3 and try to deduce from credibility. Is a political journalist credible if he also talks about demons?

    I did not stay to the end since I had no time. Their criticism or at least doubt was not entirely unjustified.

    However what is the difference to Sy Hersh when he published a story officially building on a single source? (mostly he is trying to protect his multiple sources and therefore deflects the real number.) But fwiw in the public scrutiny he too, like Tucker, stands for himself ie merely his reputation may sell the story.

  27. Ann

    Jerusalem Post – Apparently, this happens despite warnings to parents and rabbis, also cases in New York are mentioned:

    Infant hospitalized with herpes after circumcision involving direct oral suction
    A two-week-old baby was hospitalized at Wolfson after contracting herpes during a circumcision involving direct oral suction.

    https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-890328

  29. AnonG

    Re: Overlearning

    Nice writing. When I was younger I adopted the same learning strategy used by the author in the piece Freddie links to in the first paragraph. Learning all fallacies as a way to sharpen my own reasoning and protect against faulty reasoning seemed surefire to me. Looking back it really was a mix of cowardice (specifically a fear of making a wrong claim plus a fear of the attendant shame) and arrogance and conceit (I can be sure that others are the ones wrong, not me, which lets my ego maintain the all too human narcissistic fantasy of omniscience).

    This did nothing really to improve my positive reasoning and assertion skills and taught me little about constructing a good argument. It’s hard and humbling to risk finding truth for yourself, and very easy to spend your time pointing out others errors without contributing anything to the discussion.

    1. Late Introvert

      Yes, good article. I’m both a home music production nerd and also highly skeptical of audiophiles, so right up my alley. Good speakers matter, start there.

      I received too much praise as a youth for being “smart” and it left me over-confident and in for many rude awakenings in my 20s and 30s. My own daughter got praise for working hard and she is in a much better position. I think it also helps not to be the smartest person in your class. She grew up in a college town so that was never an option. She in fact learned a healthy awareness of it all.

  31. Late Introvert

    re: “The Specter of Third Worldism”

    I agree it is a must read. Slight quibble with the statement:

    The Soviet Union collapsed less because it abandoned communist ideology — Gorbachev presented perestroika as the true embodiment of Leninist ideals — but because it hoped to be given an equal place at the table in the ‘civilized west’.

    Surely the Cold War’s arms race along with the relentless hostility of the West towards the Soviet Union from the very beginning would have played at least some role?

    1. Daniil Adamov

      The former was survivable, a significant material strain but not determinative. If the elite wanted to stay the course, it could have, if perhaps at some increasing cost to the general population’s living standards (but that would’ve been nothing new and that’s what the security apparatus is for). The latter was precisely a part of what many people wanted to escape (“equal place at the table”), including a big part of the elite after the first generation was safely in the earth.

      Though I have a different quibble – the main reason they wanted this so badly was that an increasing number from top to bottom indeed no longer cared for the communist ideology that much. Gorbachev did, in his deviating and liberalising way, and he was not alone, but when other elites rebelled against it outright, they found little effective resistance. Nothing compared to what the communists themselves faced coming in. And that was also in large part due to ideological collapse, plus a hollowing-out of social institutions. Americans did not and do not have the power to produce such things in other countries, as comforting as it would be to blame them.

      1. Late Introvert

        Thank you Daniil! Very informative, and a good reminder about American power, and institutional rot, at a time when it is sorely needed.

  32. Hank Linderman

    NYT headline has changed to a 3rd version: “Let Americans Work 40 Hours A Week” https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/18/opinion/minimum-wage-hours-work-part-time.html?unlocked_article_code=1.UlA.xKrL.cqJh-KdS7BaK&smid=url-share

    Also – notice how the NYT doesn’t allow comments for certain subjects: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/19/us/rfk-jr-transgender-care-ruling.html?unlocked_article_code=1.UlA.xL5C.JkyF-GTQtC8y&smid=url-share

    (These are gift links, should be viewable by anyone.)

    I read comments to see the range of reactions from readers. I suspect the range of responses would be very interesting on this story, but the NYT clearly doesn’t want that.

    Best…H

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