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Links 4/12/2026

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New approach to supercharge immune cells with fuel source tumors can’t steal TECHNOLOGY.ORG

Student Team Finds One of the Oldest Stars in the Universe that Migrated to the Milky Way Universe Today

Revolutionary Therapy Cured Three “Incurable” Autoimmune Diseases in a Patient ZME Science

The troubling rise of family estrangement Knowable

COVID-19/Pandemics

Long COVID could cost OECD countries €116 billion a year over the next decade Euronews

5 Vaccines Under Development That Would Change the World As We Know It AJMC.com

Climate/Environment

Climate change is outpacing evolution. Scientists are using DNA to catch up Phys.org

Climate Change Acceleration Alarms Scientists NationalToday.com

South of the Border

Cuba leader says he will not step down Semafor

As Mexico Enacts Universal Healthcare, Advocate Says Insurers’ ‘Stranglehold’ Is Moving US in ‘Opposite Direction’ Scheerpost

Venezuela passes bill to open mining sector to foreign investors Andolu Agency

China?


Quantum Power Parity: The Next Front in U.S.–China Strategic Competition Small Wars Journal

China Seized An Island While The World Is Watching Iran Forbes

US Navy Claims China’s Submarine Fleet Could Soon Go All-Nuclear SLASHGEAR

Taiwan’s opposition leader meets China’s Xi Jinping as both sides call for peace Courthouse News Service

India

Deal Under Pressure: What India Really Gains from the Trade Agreement with the US Fair Observer

Keeping roads and train lines open during India’s monsoon floods Phys.org

India Country Profile Our World in Data

Africa

Cuts to AIDS programs in Africa will mean another generation of orphans Seattle Times

Africa’s firms are not growing—new data reveal a jobs challenge World Bank Blogs

World-Beating Returns Challenge the African ‘Prejudice Premium’ Bloomberg

European Disunion

Airports, airlines urge flexibility as EU’s new border system causes ‘significant disruptions’ Andolu Agency

OPINION: Hungarian vote puts EU unity on the line Intellinews.com

Deficit denial: Why the EU’s fiscal rules are problematic Euractive

Old Blighty

UK to hold off on deal ceding Chagos Islands amid US opposition Al Jazeera

Greens win seat from Reform UK in Farage’s ‘flagship’ council after by-election sparked because incumbent was jailed Daily Mail

Israel v. Gaza, Yemen, Lebanon, Syria, Iran

Jeffrey Sachs: Ending Israel’s War on Peace Scheerpost

Inside Israel’s expansionist ambitions DW

Israel’s new strategy: Lean on Trump, pressure Iran, keep the military option Politico

Opinion: Silent conflict in the Israeli Occupied Territory Concord Monitor

New Not-So-Cold War

Ukraine and Russia exchange prisoners ahead of Orthodox Easter ceasefire Euronews

Russia’s Air Force Is More Dangerous Than Before Ukraine War, Experts Warn Latin Times

Zelenskyy’s top aide sees Ukraine nearing a deal with Putin Bloomberg

10% survived Events in Ukraine substack

Big Brother Is Watching You Watch

Your Face Could Be Your Downfall: The Privacy Risks of Biometric Authentication Nationaltoday.com

Clapper, Brennan Urge Spy Powers Authority Without Reforms Breitbart.com

Imperial Collapse Watch


Santa Cruz nonprofit closes homeless services amid financial strain KSBW.com

Trump 2.0

Trump unveils giant gold-accented victory arch design for US capital BBC

Trump’s FY27 Budget: $1.5 Trillion for the Pentagon, $33Bn for the State Department. Peace Through Missiles? RealClear Defense

Roger Stone convinced Trump not to fire Tulsi Gabbard: ‘Fortunately, I acted in time’ NY Post

Trump’s Iran fiasco has led him into the gravest territory The Guardian

Musk Matters

Two years after Elon Musk axed the $25,000 Model 2 in favor of robotaxis, Tesla is reportedly back at the drawing board with a compact SUV aimed at the budget end of the market. TECHNOLOGY.ORG

All About Elon Musk’s 14 Kids and Their 4 Moms, Including Grimes InStyle.com

Intel teams up with Elon Musk for Terafab AI chip project: Everything you need to know Business Today

Democrat Death Watch

Kamala Harris says she ‘might’ run for president in 2028 Los Angeles Times

Inside the DNC’s Middle East (not) working group Politico

Immigration

White House Declares the ‘Era of Amnesty’ in the Immigration Courts ‘Is Over’ Center for Immigration Studies

DHS Paying Local Police Millions in Quieter Approach to Immigration Enforcement The Marshall Project

Our No Longer Free Press

Judge Blocks Trump Administration’s Journalism Policy, Upholding Press Freedom NationalToday.com

More Muckrakers, Fewer Buck-Takers LA Progressive

Mr. Market Is Moody

Tyler Cowen: Why Oil Price Spikes Could Spark a Global Recession The Free Press

As Inflation Surges, Consumer Sentiment Falls to 74-Year Low The Fiscal Times

The Likelihood of a Stock Market Crash Taking Shape Under President Donald Trump Is Rising — and There’s a Clear Reason Why The Motley Fool

AI

ProPublica journalists walk off the job in first U.S. newsroom strike over AI NiemanLab.com

Foolish Pollsters Are Now Just Asking AI What Voters Would Say in Response to Questions and Publishing It at Face Value Futurism

The UN’s New AI Panel: This Parade Is Going to Need a Big Shovel Fair Observer

Demis Hassabis: Why AGI is Bigger than the Industrial Revolution & Where The Bottlenecks in AI Are 3 Quarks Daily

From ‘BuddhaBot’ to $1.99 chats with AI Jesus, the faith-based tech boom is here AP

The Bezzle

AI fuels new wave of insurance fraud as customers make FAKE images of damage that never existed: These are the most SHAMELESS examples This Is Money

Bullet holes and scam scripts: Inside the global fraud centres on frontline of deadly conflict The Independent

Guillotine Watch

Antidote du jour (via)

See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here

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93 comments

  1. upstater

    Add this to Guillotine Watch:

    Someone Has to Be Happy. Why Not Lauren Sánchez Bezos? NYT

    As half of an unfathomably powerful couple, Mrs. Sánchez Bezos seems to have influenced the uber-rich to stop apologizing, and start enjoying themselves.

    A lot of things make Lauren Sánchez Bezos ridiculously happy. Helicopters. Fashion. Protecting the narwhal. Her little sister, Elena. Her five best girlfriends. And, of course, her new husband, Jeff Bezos.

    She and Mr. Bezos do everything together. On a typical day, the newlyweds wake up around 6 in their new, roughly $230 million compound on Indian Creek, an exclusive private island in Miami often called “Billionaire Bunker.” They don’t touch their phones. Instead, they begin each day by listing 10 things they’re grateful for — and they can’t repeat what they named the day before.

    From there, the couple drink their morning coffee in a sunroom and watch the sun rise: hers from a mug that reads “Woke Up Sexy as Hell Again,” his from one she got him that spells HUNK in symbols from the periodic table. They play pickleball. Six days a week, they work out for an hour with a private trainer. “He looks good, doesn’t he?” Mrs. Sánchez Bezos said of her new husband, in an interview in Miami in January. She slow-nodded, repeating, “He looks good.”

    Fortunately I hadn’t had breakfast yet, otherwise I would have puked. I read no further…

    1. CanCyn

      I find it interesting that aside from the ridiculously needless mansion and the private trainer many of us could follow that morning routine. No need for billions of dollars to start your morning like that.

    2. Michael Fiorillo

      In this Time of Freaks and Monsters, she seems to have rightfully earned, not just married into, her place in the Pantheon.

    3. JohnnyGL

      People who need a big feature article in the NYT to explain in great detail about how happy they are…well, makes me think maybe they’re not quite so happy.

      “He looks good” — Lady, who are you trying to convince? Us? Or yourself?

      We’re told people like Bezos are SOOOO important to the functioning of the economy, but my goodness, they’ve got time for specialized workouts and lots of pickleball. Sounds like low productivity stuff to me.

      Please, give the coordinates of that island to the Iranians and have them send over a couple of those Sejil missiles and do the whole world a huge favor. Or Maybe the Russians with their Oreshniks? I’ll let them figure out the right tool for the job.

      1. vao

        Could they also target Musk, please?

        The article about his progeny filled me with dismay. Look at the names he and his partners give to their children:

        X Æ A-Xii; Strider Sekhar; Comet Azure; Exa Dark Sideræl; Techno Mechanicus; Seldon Lycurgus; Romulus; Arcadia…

        I believe there is a law in the USA enabling people to change their given name (I know a few European countries do); once grown up, those boys and girls will probably have to resort to it in order to avoid bearing what look like names of manga characters.

      1. Carolinian

        And she has duck lips going by what I saw at the inauguration. To quote a long ago movie title: Revenge of the Nerds.

        To be sure it may be crass to criticize people based on their appearance but surely these two are begging for it.

        1. Jason Boxman

          Twitter has frequent eruptions of comment on her appearance. As if there’s little else to talk about. I’m getting old school computer games in my feed now, though, which is kind of cool. Shame I can’t go back to a time and place where I was ignorant of how much this world sucks.

    7. Matthew

      Happiness on a very strict regimen. . . contradiction in terms? What if she grows unhappy with her ‘Sexy As My Hairshirt’ mug? What happens if she–gasp–ages and doesn´t feel sexy? Lot of icebergs looming up ahead. . .

    8. wendigo

      Sounds like the opening scene of a future movie.

      I imagine the ten things will be part of the rest of the movie.

  3. .Tom

    Ms. .Tom votes today in the general election in Hungary. She happens to be visiting her parents.

    My prediction: either Peter Magyar’s Tisza party wins or the euro orthodoxy denounces election fraud.

    2. JM

      I have a friend who voted there today and has been sharing some reports. Seems like pretty high turnout so far.

      I agree with the prediction, fwiw

      1. .Tom

        She told me it was in the news that by midday 50% of those registered had voted. That’s a strong turnout indeed.

      2. vakond

        The number of people out in the street here in Budapest was higher than usual for a Sunday and there was a half hour queue at the the local polling station.
        The television coverage keeps mentioning the strong turnout.

      3. Darthbobber

        For all the hullabaloo, I still have trouble seeing Magyar as anything but a younger Orban, who outflanks him to the right on immigration among other things.

        2. .Tom

          Yup!

          If what I heard is right that Tisza got 2/3 of the parliamentary seats then Vance really did it in for Fidesz.

        3. jrkrideau

          My first thought was that sending Vance to Hungary meant that Trump, etc. wanted Orbán to lose.

          1. Darthbobber

            Maybe. Though the Tisza MEPs haven’t been notably more cooperative about the Ukraine venture than Orban’s to date.

            Though this might just be because Ukraine’s fairly toxic in much of Hungary, and he couldn’t openly avow his intentions pre-election.

      3. Kouros

        While I was 100% for his EU related policies, the cozying with Trump and the hosting of Netanyahoo with an arrest warant really made him puky. I guess nobody left to vote for in Hungary. There is a talent in Hungarians to choose the worst option for themselves… I suspect they will end up having some of the more expensive gasoline and natural gas prices in Europe very soon… “Freedom” is not free…

        1. chris

          I don’t know if there are other politically viable positions for leaders to take in Hungary. They need cheap energy from Russia. They are a conservative people who do not hold with woke Europe. They are close to the fighting in Ukraine. They have a large Jewish population in Budapest. That combination of facts don’t lend themselves to vastly different outcomes regardless of who is leading the country. I suppose the EU can come in and tell them they need to starve for the good of project Ukraine, but that’s not a valid position either.

  4. jefemt

    Israel, white phosphorous.

    Is there anything that USrael is doing right or well these days?

    Not keen on being lashed to them & their apparent inevitable chosen trajectory. Harshing any mellow.

    1. Huey

      I genuinely don’t think they could possibly sink any lower, sans nukes.

      Of course, as far as the media is concerned, I’m sure it’s all fine. They’re not dropping white phosphorous on NYT reporters, so they must have a very good reason to excuss this. /s.

  5. Huey

    Seeing what’s happened to Venezuela just makes me sad.

    It’s a total travesty, and all so that the soldiers who sold Maduro out could watch the US laugh at them, begging for their 30 Trump coins.

  6. Wukchumni

    A tennis racket that sells for a few hundred bucks new, is worth over a hundred grand because of it’s status as a latter-day religious relic of sorts-a piece of the true cross shot, if you will.

    1. Randall Flagg

      Thank you for that link Carla.

      That one example of a person expressing his talents, It highlights what’s so sad about everything going on today and has for centuries. If we quit focusing on war and “enemies “, and focused on bringing out the best talents in each one of us, imagine the world we could be living in.
      Of course I’m naive as F but I’ll keep dreaming.

      1. Rabid groundhog

        Yankees, Zoo, NYBG. Three reasons to set foot in Da Bronx if you don’t live there.

        1. Michael Fiorillo

          Wave Hill… Arthur Avenue Italian food stores… City Island… indeed, Da Bronx, da whole Bronx and nothin’ but Da Bronx!

  8. The Rev Kev

    “Trump unveils giant gold-accented victory arch design for US capital”

    After Trump eventually goes, the Arc de Trump will still be there. You will never have a unified opinion to tear it down and at most they will strip off some of the garish gold on it. That thing will be in DC for good.

    1. Christopher Fay

      With present trajectory it will be for the US’ greatest military and diplomatic defeat. Americans’ hopes and dreams will be interned in one side of the arch while congress peoples’ prayers are encased in cement in the other side

    2. Wukchumni

      I never really saw much leftovers of the 3rd Reich in my many travels around Germany, but you’d see leftovers from Il Duce in Italy, with the main station in Milano chock full of fascist statuary and whatnot.

      1. Carolinian

        Right.

        There’s a famous bit of film showing the swastika on top of the Brandenburg Gate being blown up and perhaps it will joined by one of the fireworks display when the Trump arch crumbles into dust via dynamite. Tear down the ballroom too.

        In line with the above about the Bezoses America needs to take its country back from these wackos.

        1. steppenwolf fetchit

          The torn-down part of the White House East Wing should be left torn-down, though. It should be labeled The Trump Wing Monument. A big sign of a grinning Trump pointing at it with the caption ” I did that” could be put up next to it. Also, we could begin naming sewage plants and nuclear waste disposal sites after Trump.

          We should tear out the Trump Patio and restore the Jacqueline Kennedy Rose Garden at the White House, though. Maybe officially call it the Jacqueline Kennedy Rose Garden because she was behind it, I think.

          We could make a little garden of skunk cabbages and give it a fountain in the form of a vomiting vulture ( vomiting urine-colored water) into a little pool amid the skunk cabbages. We could call it the Trump Garden.

      2. gk

        Hitler’s offices in Munich (now the Hochschule fuer Musik). The Haus der (deutsche) Kunst, also in Munich.

    3. upstater

      Maybe the Trump Triumph Arch can be done by July 4, 2026 for the Semiquintennial? The victorious US warriors can march underneath by Trump’s reviewing stand. Think of last year’s Trump birthday parade. (Like RK said last year, a bunch of guys walking in the same direction).

      To meet the deadline it can be made of plywood covered with stucco. Constructioncan be quick! Who in MAGA land would notice the difference? And the big plus is demolition would be far easier in 2029 (if not before) than if stone and concrete are used.

    4. flora

      The Midas Touch was a curse. / ;)

      Per Wiki:
      Midas rejoiced in his new power, which he hastened to put to the test. He touches an oak twig and a stone; both turned to gold. Overjoyed, as soon as he got home, he touched every rose in the rose garden, and all became gold. He ordered the servants to set a feast on the table. Upon discovering how even the food and drink turned into gold in his hands, he regretted his wish and cursed it. Claudian states in his In Rufinum: “So Midas, king of Lydia, swelled at first with pride when he found he could transform everything he touched to gold; but when he beheld his food grow rigid and his drink harden into golden ice then he understood that this gift was a bane and in his loathing for gold, cursed his prayer.”[19]

    5. chuck roast

      Nothing new here. This is like “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny”…the Republican Imperium will always be with us. I was in DC when the WWII Memorial was unveiled. It was sited on the National Mall between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument…a violation of all democratic principles, but of course that is the function of republicanism. I kept waiting for the legions to march in from Gaul.

      The next week I was on the phone with some of our federal funding recipients from Salt Lake City. They asked me about it. I told them that I visited it, and my impression was that the legions from Gaul could be marching in at any moment. There was a lull in the conversation…

  9. Mark Gisleson

    The Latin Times ‘story’ about the Russian Air Force is a nonstarter. Remember that 40-mile long Russian military convoy that just parked on an open highway for about a month? Never once being attacked from the air because by the end of the first month of war Russia had established air superiority over Ukraine? (The LT along with most Western media still pretends that the Russian convoy stalled, unable to ‘fight’ their way to Kyiv or that Western leaders didn’t have to clear flight plans with Moscow when flying to Kyiv.)

    The Latin Times seeks to tell us that it’s the length of the war that made Russia tougher. A talking point based on both Russia and Ukraine getting much tougher over the last four years, a process that toughened a million Ukrainian soldiers into rigor mortis (those not suffering from fragmentation, immolation or hypersonic atomization).

    Russia is not fighting a war, it’s systematically exhausting the West’s armories of hideously expensive underperforming munitions, missiles and drones.

  10. Vicky Cookies

    Re: Inside the DNC’s Middle East Working Group: In 2017, the DNC had a lawsuit against it by mistreated Sanders supporters dismissed on the grounds that it is a business, not a political party. But where in the business world would this sort of wishy-washiness be tolerated? “As a body, we recommend this going back to the task force,” said Ron Harris, the resolutions committee co-chair. “But then we can put some — I don’t want to say ‘constraints,’ but expectations that we hear back.” That in response to someone going over the head of their non-working group and introducing a resolution to recognize a Palestinian state (where, geographically, and in what universe, I have no idea).

  11. Jason Boxman

    Wow, I give money to ProPublica every year. That sucks. I hate this world. I really do.

    1. Steve H.

      > I hate this world. I really do.

      My daily simple prayer is giving thanks for Life, Love, Existence, and Kitties.

      Existence is in my head as Spencer-Brown’s mark of distinction, but rapidly flips to the more tangible views of galaxies and space clouds. My World also consists of those I Love; in a transactional space, Love is an untradeable asset. Love requires Life, thinks I, as the green of spring comes forth, with cancer-survivor dancing in parking lots to banger funk on the radio.

      Kitties are self-explanatory.

    1. JonnyJames

      Even if the so so called neocons are purged, what about the traditional imperialists, and “neo-Realists” who want war on China?

      And of course the old school Realists like Zbig B. wanted to maintain US global “primacy” Weaken Russia, contain China…Zbig advocated back in 97 for the US to “pry Ukraine away from Russia” to prevent Russia from becoming a great power again.

      Different approaches to empire and hegemony?

      1. AG

        “Different approaches to empire and hegemony?”
        good question

        I would cautiously suggest that neither is intended 🤔

        I only had heard of the name Mott. I don´t know his particular agenda.
        This being The Realist Review it may be a combination of academic naivité and genuine concern.

        On the one hand he oddly suggests to try using the Deep State against Neocons, including its powers granted to them by Neocons(!) if I understood correctly. So the term “purge” is used pretty literally.

        He kicks off his essay with a first hyperlink to CSIS (!) criticizing Obama´s wars

        The Obama Administration: From Ending Two Wars to Engagement in Five – with the Risk of a Sixth
        2014
        https://www.csis.org/analysis/obama-administration-ending-two-wars-engagement-five-risk-sixth

        Followed by a link to Hillary Clinton in 2008 calling for war on Iran, to end his essay with a link to the Church Committee and an essay by himslf embracing multipolarity. (And many links in between.)

        That´s also the breadth of thinking presented here.

        Of course he does address the very legitimate question: How do you dismantle the US Deep State in reality with the legal tools existing? (although I am not sure it helps the problem to treat it in such a cursory way.)

        But then he does call out project Ukraine and Israel and among the many hyperlinks which I find almost the most value in, there is an essay by Utrecht Univ. laywer Alexandra Hofer who I know from Pascale Lottaz´s NEUTRALITY STUDIES, here, about EU sanctions:

        EU Makes Punishment without Trial LEGAL | Dr. Alexandra Hofer
        Jan. 2026
        56 min.
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4WBqRV37V4

        So you could argue Hofer belongs to the good guys as far as her professional constraints as a lawyer allow her to be (even if the particular essay Mott is linking to may not discuss the most pressing issues of her chosen subject):

        Our Humanity at Stake: The Human Costs of Economic Sanctions for the Sanctioner
        Alexandra Hofer
        August 2025
        https://www.fordhamilj.org/volume-48-issue-5/2025/8/7/our-humanity-at-stake-the-human-costs-of-economic-sanctions-for-the-sanctioner

        with this comment provided by Fordham Univ.

        Hofer argues why sanctions should be understood as a form of structural economic violence, whether or not this is intended by the sanctioners. Hofer’s contribution focuses on “sectoral sanctions” adopted primarily by the United States and the European Union. While concerns continue to be raised about the UNSC sanctions regime against North Korea, they are not included in this article. Hofer also does not discuss the US and EU sanctions regime against Russia. Though these measures have the potential to cause drastic consequences for the Russian population, so far the Russian economy has demonstrated resilience (much to the sanctioners’ frustration). Afterwards, Hofer argues that the violence of unilateral sectoral sanctions undermines the European Union and United States’ attempts to portray themselves as “normative actors”— actors that seek to uphold and enforce normative standards, such as human rights.

  13. The Rev Kev

    “Foolish Pollsters Are Now Just Asking AI What Voters Would Say in Response to Questions and Publishing It at Face Value”

    An amazing story this. Why bother conducting polls when you can just use a LLM? What could possibly go wrong? Trump has been boasting showing a CNN poll showing that he has 100% support from MAGA types. Was that from an LLM? I mean, even North Korea’s Kim Jong Un has to settle for only a 97% win at the polls.

    4. Alphonse

      I have been expecting government to replace citizens with AIs. It is already the case that governments do not have relationships with real human beings, only with models of human beings. AIs just take this further. This is not a matter of corruption or abuse by particular politicians: it is the essential nature of modernity.

      When you fly internationally the name in your passport must perfectly match the name on your government ID. As far as the system is concerned, you are your name. Everything else about you is irrelevant. The system only manages a model, not a flesh-and-blood person. Most of the time this distinction does not matter. When it does the consequences for the individual can be severe, for example when one is a victim of identity theft, when the system mistakenly records one as deceased, or when one’s name matches that of someone else on a No Fly List.

      AI provides the ability to model individuals in depth. We worry about AI systems used to predict pre-crime. I think this is not the right understanding. The AI is not guessing whether you will commit a crime: it is managing a model of a person who is or is not a criminal. There is no guessing involved: the model is a criminal or it is not. Whether that corresponds to the real you is neither here nor there: the real you is not something the system is capable of seeing or relating to. Only the model is.

      This is terrifying, but it is not new. James C. Scott in Seeing Like a State describes the phenomenon it detail. He tells how French officials travelled from town to town to assign surnames. The government needed individuals to be legible to its systems so that it raise a conscript army.

      The replacement of real things with symbolic representations is the essence of rationality. It is what makes reasoning possible – as in Enlightenment reason and the replacement of the personal and feudal relationships of the ancien regime.

      Adorno and Horkheimer of the Frankfurt School explained how, since Bacon, measurement – i.e., the substitution of models for real things – was a method for control. The philosophical argument corresponds with the biology of the brain described by Iain McGilchrist. The right hemisphere deals directly with experience. It does not engage in representation and symbolic reasoning. The left hemisphere, in contrast, knows nothing but representations. In consequence, whereas the right hemisphere sees a world entirely made up of living things and spirits, the left hemisphere sees only inanimate objects to be manipulated.

      AI polling may seem like a propaganda tool. It is far more than that. Government will build a model of the population and query it to predict how it will respond to stimuli. Like automated high-speed A/B testing this will enable rapid development and refinement of policies, communications and initiatives where the reaction of the public has been determined ahead of time. They won’t just do this on a population level. They will do this for every individual, using the same data that advertisers have been gathering.

      Can there be any mechanism of control more total than one that predicts what you will do before you know yourself? If you do not react as the model of you predicts – is the model in error, or are you in error? The outlier becomes the problem to be eliminated. We saw this last century. AI just allows the logic to be taken to its limit.

      1. Daniil Adamov

        There is truth to this, but I wonder whether LLMs would “take it further” in a way that is useful to the state or not. The models they create may be even more out of touch with reality than those of early modern bureaucratic states. If relied upon, they will eventually produce disasters that may become too costly even from the rulers’ perspective. Not that this contradicts it being part of that bureaucratising trend, which also could undermine the state through false representation… It’s largely a difference of degree.

        Frankly, if I were a ruler, I’d rather deal with self-interested human liars than selflessly hallucinating programs. The former would still be closer to reality and might even become more honest with incentives.

      2. AG

        Just a miniscule contribution to your larger scale outline, director Alex Garland´s sci-fi mini-series DEVS (2020) dives into a scenario where a company has developed a simulation capable of predicting not only behaviour but actions of the whole species and as such ultimately the future.
        Referencing various works, like Laplace´s Demon or Uncertainty.

        (Admittedly this builds on a serious concept of science which sort of inverts your very true hint – as I permit myself to read it – that it´s in fact a lack of quality, control and essential fallacy of inadequate technologies being used. They of course cannot deliver accurate predictions so the humans supposed to be predicted are being shaped to confirm the predictions. And since that too isn´t possible hence the modelling.)

        p.s. from a new post on quantum physics:

        N. David Mermin, a leading condensed-matter theorist and one of the clearest voices in modern quantum foundations, has long argued that the deepest lesson of quantum mechanics is not about the existence of particles, waves, or hidden realities, but about the structure of correlations between possible measurements. In this characteristically precise remark, Mermin strips away the metaphysical baggage that often burdens discussions of the wave function, collapse, or ontology. Quantum mechanics, he insists, does not describe “things” that possess definite properties between measurements; it describes only the statistical relations that appear when measurements are actually performed. This view dissolves many traditional puzzles, nonlocality, the measurement problem, and counterfactual definiteness, by relocating the content of the theory in the correlations themselves rather than in any underlying “beables.” Mermin’s perspective has been highly influential in quantum information science, where the focus is on what can be verified through experiment rather than on speculative pictures of unobservable reality. It represents a sophisticated, minimalist realism that accepts the mathematical structure of quantum theory without demanding a classical-style ontology.

        1. Alphonse

          Thank you AG. I am not sure I follow you here though:

          your very true hint – as I permit myself to read it – that it´s in fact a lack of quality, control and essential fallacy of inadequate technologies being used

          I think I would object even if the models were perfect. I believe that the primary purpose of democracy is citizenship, not outcomes. My core objection to AI governance is not that it will make mistakes but that it relegates us to the status of objects of manipulation. I object to technocracy even if we could agree (I don’t believe we can) that it worked “better,” providing more just and human outcomes. I believe that self-governance is an inherent good. It is our task to realize ourselves as adult humans, not be treated as children no matter how good that might make us feel.

          In practical terms AI will make mistakes, and even if it did not perfect government is not possible: humans are so incomprehensibly diverse that there will always be irreconcilable differences of interest. Judgment must always be involved. But again, my objection derives more from my fundamental beliefs about what it means to be human.

          Though the matter of difference is key. Arendt talks about how every person introduces something new into the world, and that the highest calling is to reveal who we are (pretty much what I mean by realizing ourselves as adults). This is a fundamental objection to authoritarianism that leaves no room for preferring tyranny if it makes the trains run on time.

  14. Widening Gyre

    “The troubling rise of family estrangement”

    Boy this article left a bad taste in my mouth. ‘World’s most divorced man mad that his wife and daughter won’t walk to him anymore’ feels like a better headline for the piece.

  15. AG

    re; Craig Murray from Venezuela

    recommended longer entry

    The Weight on Delcy Rodriguez
    March 31st

    “(…)
    Let us get one thing straight. I have spoken personally to those closest to President Nicolás Maduro. I have spoken with Francisco Torrealba, who followed Maduro as President of the Transport Workers Union and also took over Maduro’s seat in the National Assembly. I have spoken to Maduro’s son, also Nicolás. None of these people believe for one second that Delcy Rodríguez was in any way implicated in the kidnap of Nicolás and Cilia Maduro.

    Why does almost everybody in the West believe a narrative that nobody in Venezuela believes, and which I am quite certain is untrue?
    (…)”
    https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2026/03/the-weight-on-delcy-rodriguez/

    2. Alex Cox

      I don’t know what the majority of people in the west believe, and I don’t think the excellent Craig knows what the majority of Venezuelans believe.

      However, I read Telesur daily, and it has not reported the CIA chief Ratcliffe’s visit, nor shared the photo of him and Delcy shaking hands.

      The story of the kidnapping, & the massacre of 32 Cuban bodyguards and 70 or more Venezuelans has yet to be told.

      1. AG

        Interesting point.

        Murray sometimes may still be naive – despite his expertise and I would regard him as one of the most authoritative voices in the altern. media world on certain issues.

        He has also single-handedly taken on entire judicial bodies and fought them for years. Not to speak about the decade long struggle in the Assange battle.

        If he speaks about intern. law re: Palestine e.g. you know you can use that anywhere.
        That is invaluable.

        With all that it might not be unexpected that he is sure of himself and will initially defend his positions.

        In military affairs I found weaknesses in his argumentation (SMO & Iran vis a vis Venezuela).

        But what Western public person of this stature knows anything about these things in all seriousness?
        Also nobody is expert in everything.

        I will always come to his defense (not that this were necessary here and now) especially since he corrected his own views on Russia around 2 years ago without any necessity.

        He walked back from some of his rather critical views of Putin and the SMO in his blog, publicly. That was a stunning act of integrity I don´t know who else would admit to and which should always be remembered.

        I genuinely believe the events since 2022 February were a period of reckoning for him. He did give up some convictions.

        So I am convinced that he is rather naive and gullible in ways Chomsy is too. Even if that may lead too far off now.

        Fwiw: Murray in the Venezuela piece e.g. writes (my apology for longer excerpts since the entire piece is a long read):

        “(…)
        I have looked again through many articles that forward this narrative, and all of them very obviously come primarily from Washington sources, and it is a narrative that the United States has been very, very assiduous in feeding you.

        It begs the question, if Delcy really is a Western puppet, why is the Western Establishment so keen to tell you that? In every other circumstance, like the Gulf monarchies or al-Jolani, they are always anxious to promote the myth that their puppets are not puppets.

        My maxim, that if the government really wants you to know something, it probably means it isn’t true, holds in this case. Trump wants it known that Delcy Rodríguez is his puppet because it is part of his victory narrative, the fake story of Trump greatness. It is also intended to divide and weaken the socialist movement in Venezuela.

        We have to look at the night of 3 January when Maduro was kidnapped. There is one key fact which again is simply not part of the Western narrative. It was Nicolás Maduro who instructed the military to stand down and not to fight, in the event of an attempt to take him. In fact he was aware that such an event was imminent, though he did not know the exact date.

        Maduro’s primary concern was to avoid war between Venezuela and the United States, war which would devastate this peaceful country.

        It is important to note that Maduro was consciously following the template of his mentor President Hugo Chávez in his kidnapping in a CIA-orchestrated coup in 2002. (That link is a wrenching reminder that there was once a Guardian and Observer not captured by the security services). Following armed opposition insurrection on 11 April 2002, in which 19 Chávez supporters were massacred and 150 injured, a military coup captured President Chávez and he was flown to the island of La Orchila in a CIA-chartered plane.

        Opposition leader Pedro Carmona was sworn in as President by the military leaders and instantly recognised by the Bush regime in Washington. He announced the immediate repeal of all of Chávez’s reform measures. However the people and bulk of the armed forces rose against the plotters and after only 48 hours took back control. Chávez returned to power. This is the basis of the brilliant Irish documentary The Revolution Will Not Be Televised (which, naturally, was never televised).

        The key thing to understand is that – remarkably – Chávez did not execute any of the coup participants, not even those in the military. There were in fact few prosecutions, jail sentences were remarkably light and many – including “President” Carmona – were allowed to “escape” into exile. The longest jailings were for those who actually took part in the massacre of April 11. Chávez gave a December 2007 general amnesty.

        The same astonishing tolerance was shown to Juan Guaidó, the Western puppet who attempted a farcical military coup on 30 April 2019. While his coup was a pathetic failure and his total number of military defectors was 50, he nevertheless caused the deaths of four people and wounding of 230.
        (…)”

        “(…)
        Delcy Rodríguez is struggling under an almost unbearable burden. A lifelong socialist whose own father was tortured to death by a CIA-run Venezuelan security service, she now finds herself effectively a prisoner of the United States. Venezuela is not Iran. It does not possess the military capacity, the strategic depth or the alliances to fight the United States. If Trump wakes up one morning and decides on full regime change — and he could — the result would be an immediate bloodbath and the total erasure of all the social gains of twenty-five years of Chavismo.

        To prevent that catastrophe Rodríguez must placate Trump. She must speak the language of economic liberalisation that Washington wants to hear, even though the actual policy shifts amount to only the smallest rightward adjustment in an economy that remains overwhelmingly mixed. The fundamental social-democratic achievements — the education, the health missions, the housing programmes, the pensions and welfare, the privatised utilities — are being preserved.

        Rodríguez’s strategy is therefore one of grim endurance: hunker down, preserve what can be preserved, and wait for a change of political wind in Washington. Sources very close to her repeatedly mention the November midterms in the USA as the next possible turning point.

        The tragedy is that this woman must endure the portrayal abroad, spread from Washington, as a traitor to her class and her country. She cannot publicly kick too hard against Trump without risking the provocation of the psychopath to the very violence she is trying to avert. A friend who has known her for decades told me: “She is doing what she can to keep the peace in this time of war.”

        There is very concrete evidence of Rodríguez’s loyalty to Maduro. Far from erasing Maduro or positioning herself as the new face of the revolution, Delcy Rodríguez has covered Venezuela in highly visible “Free Nicolás and Cilia” billboards and street art, while introducing no material that praises herself or attempts to construct her own cult of personality. This public symbolism is a powerful, real-life counter to narratives of disloyalty or betrayal.
        (…)”

        p.s. His Lebanon trip alone cost £35k paid for by crowdfunding. Now the task is up again re: his Venezuela trip. So this is not about getting rich either. Admittedy I have a lot of respect for him, so one may call me biased 😉. Which doesn´t mean that I am not critical as hinted above.

    3. Quintian and Lucius

      Why does almost everybody in the West believe a narrative that nobody in Venezuela believes, and which I am quite certain is untrue?

      Because the progression and result of the Maduro affair is exactly what you would expect it to be if Delcy was implicated.
      That doesn’t mean for certain she was, but I can’t see how it’s possible to claim she isn’t at least compromised after the fact.

      1. jrkrideau

        Somehow being compromised after an event seems to imply time travel.
        I can’t see how it’s possible to claim she isn’t at least compromised after the fact.

        Scrambling to get the best deal available seems possible.

  16. ambrit

    A short North American Deep South Zeitgeist Report.
    All is not lost. Saw the first hummingbird of the year this morning in the back yard. Nature, despite our “best” efforts, always finds ways to show just how paltry Terran human pride is.
    Putting out the feeders with fresh fluids now.
    Stay safe.

    1. chuck roast

      Nice. Yesterday I saw a half dozen Piping Plovers and Sand Pipers working the surf line at Third Beach. They are energetic little buggers. Funny how they fly together. Now I’m waiting for the Horseshoe Crabs to do their Spring mating crawl. They will both propagate the faith and feed the fowl and fish. The Zeitgeist working for us all.

    2. Alan Sutton

      Feeders and fresh fluids are not the best way of feeding hummingbirds.

      Plants with flowers that they like are. Much better.

  17. Tom Stone

    I suspect quite a few elderly Americans will be unhappy when they learn that the meds they need to stay alive are no longer available.
    It won’t bother a lot of them for long and it will be a benefit to the funeral industry while speeding up the generational transfer of wealth.

  18. AG

    re: USSR and Russian Orthodox icons

    fb-post by Alexey Golubev, Univ. of Houston, on a new study from Manchester Univ. Press

    Would be interesting to know if some of these statements are not contestable.

    Soviet materialities
    Socialist things, environments and affects
    Edited by Mollie Arbuthnot, Christianna Bonin and Gabriella Ferrari
    https://manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526182128/

    “(…)
    I focus on Russian Orthodox icons to demonstrate how their transformation into objects of museum expertise and historical heritage was intricately connected with the survival and transfer of imperial and ethno-national narratives during the Soviet era. The chapter highlights how ‘heritagisation’ operates as an important process in the making of modern material cultures: its goal is to reclassify objects as historical, rendering the practices and life-worlds associated with them marginal or obsolete so that they no longer interfere in the formation of a new social body. Yet this effort also produced a by-product. By stripping icons of their original materiality and locality, an authoritative group of experts in the history of art contributed to the eventual nationalisation of state socialism.

    Thus, by the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, an authoritative discourse emerged to redefine icons from material objects of worship into relics of Russia’s deep history. This discourse discarded the actual functions and practices associated with icons in their original social environment of Russian Orthodox religious communities, but it did so by pointing out their other, hitherto ignored, material properties: the ability to reveal hidden images dating back to medieval or early modern painting traditions that could be incorporated into the grand narrative of Russian history. Yet its application was still rather limited, as the overwhelming majority of icons remained in the possessions of religious communities. Imperial intellectuals could access only a limited number of old icons that were, to start with, expensive to acquire, as collecting icons became an increasingly fashionable activity in the 1900s and 1910s. The Russian Orthodox Church was too entrenched in late imperial political and social life to allow for its key material object to be fully redefined and abducted from its domain by metropolitan intellectuals.

    In the late Soviet Union, the interaction with old icons became a quintessentially urban experience, part of the ideological project funded and driven by the state authorities to educate Soviet citizens into rational subjects by exposing them to a spectacle of historical progression in national art that had its deep roots in Russia’s ‘antiquity’. Seeing icons in museum collections was something Soviet citizens would often do on a tour to a regional or national capital. Referred to as ‘monuments of ancient art’ (pamiatniki dreimei zhivopisi), icons in museum collections were arranged in chronological succession, representing a local take on the national artistic tradition in regional museums such as in Petrozavodsk, or aspiring to provide its general overview in the Tretyakov Gallery and the Andrei Rublev Museum of Ancient Russian Culture and Art in Moscow. Visitors were encouraged to explore the exhibited icons visually – one does not kiss a monument of ancient art, after all – to become enlightened inheritors of this ancient tradition. A similar logic drove the incorporation of mosques into the Soviet heritage preservation discourse and practices in Soviet Uzbekistan that Arbuthnot describes in Chapter 11 of this volume.

    At the same time, only a fraction of the Russian Orthodox icons accumulated in collections of Soviet museums was available for their visitors to view. Most of them remained hidden in storage facilities, accessible only to scholars and museum curators as bearers of high cultural capital. Besides, as artefacts of Russia’s antiquity, icons in museum collections required (and produced) a very different culture of the body than icons as vibrant objects of daily life and religious rituals. The only people sanctioned to interact with old icons materially were restoration experts who used solvents and scalpels to remove later layers as well as paints, pigments, and varnishes to restore and protect the original image. Spending months and years hunched over old icons, restoration experts represented a different, enlightened culture of the body where authority and expertise were acquired and multiplied through intimate contact with objects of national pride. It was from this authoritative position that they continuously insisted that it was better for old icons to stay in museum halls and storage facilities than in their original locations, a claim still maintained these days.

    There is an obvious correlation between the collections of colonial art and culture in imperial museums and the collections of icons in Soviet and later Russian museums. This includes their mutual origins in the violent dispossession of native owners, their foundation in the radical recontextualisation of functional objects into evidence of historical or artistic progress, the spatial redefinition of objects of collection (local objects serve as synecdoche for national or global processes, thus losing their locality), and their effect: the production of the modern enlightened subject. However, while conversations on colonial legacies of European and North American museums and on the restitution of looted colonial art have been increasingly prominent globally, the status of old icons as quintessentially museum pieces is barely challenged in Russia. The restitution of old icons to the Russian Orthodox Church is one of the few things that unites the otherwise helplessly divided Russian educated class in a harshly negative reaction to such developments. The recent transfer of what is arguably the most famous Russian Orthodox icon, Andrei Rublev’s fifteenth-century Trinity, back to its original location, the Trinity Lavra of St Sergius (it was painted for its iconostasis), was an exemplary case of almost universal condemnation of the de-museumification of a historic icon in Russian non-government-controlled news outlets and on social media. The staff of the Tretyakov Gallery where the Trinity stayed for ninety years during most of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries attempted to sabotage the transfer through claims of the icon’s fragility and need for repairs, triggering a mass panic that its relocation from the museum would become a major blow not just to the material integrity of the Trinity but to the very Russian culture.
    (…)”

    1. LifelongLib

      Well, we condemn thieves for taking works of art that were publically displayed to end up stashed in some collector’s basement, but if it wasn’t for museums that’s where most of it would have been all along. I’m not commenting about the Russian icons here, but the vast majority of the art currently in Western museums would historically have been decoration in wealthy private homes, decaying in old buildings, buried in rubble, or simply lost. My guess is that even something like (say) the Elgin Marbles have been seen by more Greeks in the British Museum than would have seen them if they had been left in the ruins of the Parthenon. I’m fine with returning art to its proper owners if there really are any, but my suspicion is that much of the decision is more politics than moral right.

      1. Daniil Adamov

        It’s politics exploiting a concept of moral right.

        The difference with Russian icons may be that most of them would’ve been available and in use, whether in churches or at home (latter was the case with most Old Believer icons at least). They weren’t primarily art objects – until they were reclassified as such by people explicitly opposed to associated religious practices. Although I suppose you could say the same about a lot of native art extracted from the colonies as well.

    2. Daniil Adamov

      Drevnei, not dreimei.

      Also, there is a substantial religious component to the educated class and I am not sure their opinions are similar.

      Otherwise I find this broadly correct, though I’m not an expert on the subject and I also can’t vouch one way or the other as regards availability. If anything this may downplay some of the early hostility, the zeal with which recently established Bolsheviks sought to claim and simultaneously disprove icons; but later they largely settled into treating them as “the wealth of our people, though also a leftover from the past” (as Vladimir Vysotsky put it in one of his satirical songs).

      There is a famous museum of local Old Believer icons, founded by and still associated with a currently-liberal politician I find generally odious (Yevgeniy Roizman). It was set up in 1999. Roizman’s is the sort of liberalism that is often indistinguishable from what Americans would call conservatism, and generally religion-friendly, at least nominally. It’s curious that he and his supporters are still a part of this trend. I find myself wondering what the Old Believers think of it. The Niconian Orthodox Church seems fine with it, but then of course it wouldn’t have many problems with treating Old Believers as quaint remnants of the past.

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