Links 4/19/2026

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1. neogeshel April 19, 2026 at 7:47 am

   Far more than a generation. Imagine my children growing up to support Zionism. Hah. Nagonnahappen

   “https://www.axios.com/2026/04/18/israel-us-support-congress-netanyahu”
2. The Rev Kev April 19, 2026 at 8:10 am

   “Mexico Country Profile Population and Demography”

   I suspect that some of these figures will change in the coming years. Starting next month, Mexico is introducing a Universal Health Service to replace the patchwork quilt of medical services that they have at the moment. Of course I have no doubt that this will draw the ire of the Trump regime as this might inspire people in the US wanting the same thing-

   https://www.zmescience.com/science/news-science/mexico-is-officially-launching-universal-healthcare-this-week/
   1. jefemt April 19, 2026 at 9:19 am

      It’s hard to keep up with Elroy Musk’s prognostications, but if we have UBI, we will logically have universal health care, at the robotic arms, probes, and screens of AI. Cool!!!
      And folks in Tech will gladly que up to endure the implied taxes and redistribution of their income.

      Riiiiiiiiight. Pass me some Ibogaine. I am falling behind on all the Trippin’ on high…
      1. The Rev Kev April 19, 2026 at 9:22 am

         C’mon, man. The future is so bright, according to our tech lords, that we will have to wear sunglasses to see it.
   2. Kontrary Kansan April 20, 2026 at 1:07 pm

      People in the US have been “inspired” to have universal health care/Medicare for all for decades.
      The Health Care oligopoly are closely allied with the FIRE sector in sharing ownership of what passes for US governance.
      Sheinbaum seems to keep making moves to reduce Mexican dependence on/exploitation by the US. Maybe she’ll make some headway before the CIA cum banks employ a more compliant Mexican government.
3. Mikerw0 April 19, 2026 at 8:30 am

   A must read. Everything you need to know about LLMs. They are genuinely defective and oversold for that they can. Besides, this is really funny.

   https://wealthofgeeks.com/ai-chatbots-are-giving-millions-of-people-medical-advice-a-researcher-tested-what-happens-when-the-science-they-rely-on-is-completely-made-up/
   1. tegnost April 19, 2026 at 8:58 am

      This is good. Don’t Believe the (AI) Hype
      Remember that all of the administration story lines are being consumed by AI, lies and all…
   2. jefemt April 19, 2026 at 9:29 am

      CNN ( I know, I know) had a convergence last night_ Kara Swisher on ‘living forever’, health ‘care’ trends of the rich and famous, and Bill Maher went off with particularly angry commentary on the disaster that is AI .

      Both folks circling around data, devices, and societal trajectories.
      Speaking of circling, what a interesting and weird time to be circling the toilet – I meant Sun

      Here’s an idea: lets get involved in war in the Mid-east. Think of the Money to be made!!!
   3. Lefty Godot April 19, 2026 at 2:43 pm

      They are so bogus, and yet some large subset of Americans are using them as therapists and surrogate friends (or lovers). The onramp from living in the fantasy world of American media to living in the fantasy relationships with stochastic word parrots is not very steep. In the 1970s we had Eliza, a simple computer program that would talk to you like a therapist (of the Carl Rogers persuasion) by repeating your questions as declarative statements and then asking for more input from you. Now we basically just have a souped-up version of that primitive program that can repeat what the most common continuation of a conversation with you would be while prompting you for more input. They call this “intelligence”. It’s just another freakin’ computer program.
   4. ISL April 19, 2026 at 3:46 pm

      But, real doctors (I mean Physician’s Assistant – can anyone find a doctor anymore?) are giving millions of people medical advice that is bad based on a ten-minute visit (if you demand they do not leave in five minutes). The article stated 10% felt the advice was wrong? I have felt 100% of the advice I was getting from my PA was wrong (and she mistranscribed my questions to the doctor who supposedly still exists – at least he is listed on the website with a photo from when I recall he had hair (three years ago he did not)).

      I switched to a traditional Chinese medicine doctor (yes, a doctor! I wonder if my “doctor” has hair again? Maybe a weave?), and resolved an issue that had been unresolved for over 15 years by my regular doctor – I mean PA.

      Anyway, the real question is whether AI is better than crappy US health care! And so we see the point of the enshittification is to drop the bar to where AI is better and then fire all the doctors and PAs except for the elite who know they deserve actual health care (and can pay for it).
4. Christopher Fay April 19, 2026 at 8:32 am

   While the sailors’ rations on our American gun boat diplomacy fleet are a taco and beans, Minstral of War Hegseth was scarfing the good stuff, steaks and lobster at a $100 million rate. https://www.foxla.com/news/pete-hegseth-pentagon-lobster-spending-93-billion
   1. The Rev Kev April 19, 2026 at 8:50 am

      In reading about the shortages aboard those ships, I wondered how the women aboard were making out with female hygiene products. Even if they stocked up, those ships have been at sea twice as long as they were supposed to be so everything must be running short by now. Probably by now they have been reduced to using rags like their 19th century ancestors had to use.
      1. ambrit April 19, 2026 at 9:52 am

         You would be surprised at some of the uses for dried seaweed.
         There is a homophonic term for the above, but I shall be demure out of respect for the sensibilities of our female commentarians.
      2. flora April 19, 2026 at 9:52 am

         From Racket News,public excerpt:

         The Ford is Getting Tired

         The USS Gerald R. Ford’s record deployment has seen laundry-room fires, clogged toilets, and combat theaters around the globe

         https://www.racket.news/p/the-ford-is-getting-tired
   2. ciroc April 19, 2026 at 12:15 pm

      ・$98,329 Steinway & Sons grand piano for an Air Force residence

      Did you know how the USAF uses pianos?
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piano_burning
      1. wilroncanada April 19, 2026 at 5:00 pm

         ciroc
         Admiral’s tinckle on them.
5. Afro April 19, 2026 at 8:42 am

   Re: Millions of Americans Are Talking to AI Instead of Going to the Doctor, and It’s Giving Them Horrendously Flawed Medical Advice Futurism

   ****

   Part of that is for many people going to the doctor is a waste of time. It varies from doctor to doctor, the one I have now seems most concerned with being done in 15 minutes, and ignores symptoms so as to, I assume, not argue with the insurance companies. So I can understand why many people want to do their own research.

   I’ve now heard of multiple men who got colon cancer after their doctors told them to ignore symptoms.
   1. Democrita April 19, 2026 at 9:12 am

      This!
      I can’t believe how often I have had to diagnose my own medical problems.

      And, it’s often a waste of time that is also followed by a significant bill and long frustrating go-around with insurance bureaucracies designed to deny, deny, deny.
      I recently had to tell my adult child to not skip medical needs, that I would cover the bills insurance won’t pay. He avoids doctors because it is such a hassle and, let’s be honest (although he doesn’t say it), scary and demoralizing to get hounded by debt collectors (big medical conglomerates like NYULangone now turn bills over to collection at the drop of a hat.
      Especially aggravating when it’s a bill for which you are not in fact legitimately responsible because you have insurance that covers it. And you’re making minimum wage because it’s a shit neoliberal country.
      I hate Democrats so much for not fixing this shit when they could have. Grifting POS.
      1. ambrit April 19, 2026 at 10:00 am

         We must make application to Saint Luigi for ‘Divine Intervention.’ If said petitioning results in ‘kinetic’ actions against corporate malefactors, well, The Lord acts in mysterious ways.
         Stay safe.
         1. ThirtyOne April 19, 2026 at 4:16 pm

            The trajectory of our society suggests posting such sentiments could result in “un-citizenship”. Proceed with caution, citizen.
            1. ambrit April 19, 2026 at 11:02 pm

               True, and look at what the ‘citizens’ of France accomplished in 1789.
   2. hereweare April 19, 2026 at 9:28 am

      This is the UK:
      Meet Emma, the AI receptionist stopping you making GP appointments Telegraph
      GPs are replacing their receptionists with artificial intelligence chatbots that are preventing patients from making appointments.

      Millions of people around England have found themselves speaking to an AI receptionist instead of a human when trying to book an appointment or order a repeat prescription.

      The rollout has triggered a backlash from patients, who say GP appointments are now “unobtainable”.

      Pharmacists have also been left unable to confirm prescription details for vital medicines with patients’ GP surgeries as a result.

      Callers are connected to a chatbot named Emma – for Enhanced Medical Management Assistant – which is designed to end the “8am scramble” of patients being left on hold until a receptionist becomes available. However, patients have said they would rather join a queue and speak to a human.

      They complained of a lack of empathy, lengthy phone calls, being hung up on, having to repeat themselves, and not being understood because of their accent, particularly among people from Yorkshire.

      So ask an AI if you can see a doctor, and get the runaround, or ask another AI what’s wrong, and discover you have terminal bixonimania?
      1. Afro April 19, 2026 at 9:40 am

         The equivalent of that job for a human receptionist in the US is maybe $45,000/year+benefits, which employers are loathe to pay. So they’ll outsource it to an AI which is close to free at this time, and will one day cost a lot more than a human.
      2. lyman alpha blob April 19, 2026 at 1:26 pm

         RE: “…and not being understood because of their accent, particularly among people from Yorkshire.”

         Heh. Apparently this is not a new phenomenon. The clankers have had a hard time with Scottish accents too.

         Unlike the amplifiers in Spinal Tap, this elevator does NOT go to eleven.
   3. flora April 19, 2026 at 10:58 am

      an aside: From Matt Bivens, MD substack The 100 Days:

      Before the Opioid Crisis, We Had the Valium Crisis
      Each was a wave of addiction prescribed by doctors, who were in turn egged on by pharmaceutical marketing — orchestrated by the Sackler family! — that insisted it was safe and a great idea.

      – Matt Bivens, M.D.

      https://mattbivens.substack.com/p/before-the-opioid-crisis-we-had-the

      Opening paras:
      ‘Consider a sales pitch for the sedative medication Librium® as published in 1969 in a medical journal (and thus targeted at doctors). The advertisement featured a definitely-not-smiling young woman in a short coat, her arms full of books, who is identified as a new college student. The accompanying text listed reasons she might need medicated.

      ‘ “Her newly stimulated intellectual curiosity may make her more sensitive to and apprehensive about unstable national and world conditions,” the ad copy intones. “Exposure to new friends and other influences may force her to reevaluate herself and her goals.”

      ‘So, she’d need daily sedation once she realized that the carpet-bombing of Vietnam was wrong?’
   4. Jason Boxman April 19, 2026 at 11:06 am

      Honestly, it seems like in too many cases, having the ability to order your own tests and write your own prescriptions would be more helpful than being forced to see any doctor.

      It’s 2026 and most doctors still deny that SARS-CoV-2 is airborne, and the literature that it is anything but “just a cold” is beyond overwhelming.

      What a useless profession. To this, add Public Health.
      1. Afro April 19, 2026 at 11:22 am

         One irony is that it is extremely hard to get into medical school. I write recommendation letters from time to time so I find out, I see young people who are very smart, very conscientious, hardworking, empathetic, etc have an extremely hard time getting accepted into even mediocre medical schools.
   5. Roxan April 19, 2026 at 11:35 am

      Wait until you’re on Medicare. Drs spend the entire vsit–after a months long wait–on the same list of intrusive useless questions every single visit. The most recent guy didn’t even order my usual meds despite calls from the pharmacy.
   6. curlydan April 19, 2026 at 12:00 pm

      These days you’re lucky to see a “doctor”. Usually, I get shuttled to the nurse practitioner or physician’s assistant. Friendly people but clearly not doctors.
      1. Jackiebass63 April 19, 2026 at 1:21 pm

         I must be lucky. I actually get to talk to my doctor on my yearly visit. He listens carefully and never rushes me out the door. A rarely in today’s medicine. Most places schedule 20 Minuit appointments . Too often you don’t actually see a doctor.
         1. neutrino23 April 19, 2026 at 1:39 pm

            Same here. I’m on Medicare and doctor visits and follow ups have been great.
      2. wuzzy April 19, 2026 at 8:42 pm

         Quite often the PA’s NA’s and RN’s are more helpful and supportive than the MD’s who stare in their laptop instead of looking at me.
6. AG April 19, 2026 at 8:55 am

   re: CIA & Western Marxism

   JACOBIN
   
   Book review of Gabriel Rockhill´s “Who Paid the Pipers of Western Marxism?”:

   No, Western Marxism Wasn’t a CIA Plot

   By Russell Jacoby

   Gabriel Rockhill’s polemic against Western Marxism seeks to condemn a set of postwar left-wing intellectuals such as Herbert Marcuse. Heavy on innuendo but light on evidence, the result is more like a show trial than a serious political indictment.

   https://jacobin.com/2026/04/review-rockhill-western-marxism-cold-war

   facebook counter-post by Katerina Kolozova (Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities – Skopje
   Senior Researcher and Professor):

   He doesn’t claim it’s a CIA plot. His argument is more nuanced: they were too ready to collaborate with the state and corporate power they ostensibly criticized. Their critique implied that one ‘could and should never imagine the end of capitalism.’ They rarely mentioned Marx, except to demonstrate how ‘outdated’ he was. They didn’t plot against Marxism; they compromised it by burying it and inventing a ‘Non-Marxist leftism.’ This is the core of Gabriel Rockhill’s point, which is frequently and deliberately oversimplified as a conspiracy theory.

   also:
   https://schoolofmaterialistresearch.org/
   1. Roger Anthony Boyd April 19, 2026 at 2:15 pm

      Let’s remember the long reach of McCarthyism (including INTELPRO) throughout the state and academy that stretched through the 1950s. Academics had a choice, mainstream ideology or a “critical” theory shorn of class dynamics and historical materialism. The modern “Frankfurt” School was really formed in its time in the US (perhaps more the “Washington” School) , funded by the US state and wealthy benefactors while many worked directly for the US state and even security services. Jacobin is exactly the type of publication that is a result of this period.
   2. Darthbobber April 19, 2026 at 8:01 pm

      Seems like a rather sterile argument to be trotting out yet again. The Frankfurt school was scarcely the sole or main Marxist tendency in the west, just the most opaque and for that very reason the most appealing to that group within the intelligentsia who find accessibility or even intelligibility intellectually suspect.

      Both Lukacs and his protege/critic Meszaros mentioned en passant Adorno’s connections to the American state, but that was, with good reason, not the main criticism. The biggest criticism was that they had abandoned the pursuit of an hegemonic alternative to the capitalist metabolic order.

      And Meszaros in particular, did NOT counterpose them to “actually existing socialism”, but acknowledged that what the Soviet project had dead-ended into had stripped it of its claim to actually BE that hegemonic alternative. Indeed, by the mid-50s to the extent that the USSR had a demonstration effect on the western working class it was likely to be a deterrent one.

      We seem, in some circles, to be in the midst of another wave of tankie nostalgia. Which is problematic for many reasons not the least of which is that the repetition of failed strategies is unlikely to produce better results the second time around.

      The fact that the American and west European capitalist propagandists made propagandistic use of the Stalinist purges and show trials, the military suppression of the 40s east German general strike, the ’56 Hungarian (Marxist) attempted course change, the Czech uprising, etc etc, the relentless hostility to any independent organization of the proletariat, the very non-mythical chain of gulags, doesn’t mean that those things didn’t really happen, or that they aren’t highly problematic for claims of that system’s apologists that it remained the standard bearer of the Marxist project.
      1. Chris April 20, 2026 at 6:29 am

         I do not like the Frankfurt School (at all), but they are not opaque (well, not in themselves). They appear opaque to an Anglo reader because they are German, and German thought has a structure very different from Anglo thought because it has a different history. The same goes for Hegel and Heidegger, who people think are very opaque but actually are not.
         1. Darthbobber April 20, 2026 at 12:40 pm

            Never found Hegel (or Marx) all that opaque. Nor Husserl. There’s a German joke about Heidegger that he’s difficult to translate into German.
            1. Chris April 20, 2026 at 2:37 pm

               Heidegger employs a lot of neologisms. In this he is emulating Aristotle, who did a similar thing with Greek. You know what he means, though.
7. Carolinian April 19, 2026 at 9:05 am

   Re SC, the Savannah River Site and Plutonium pits–as I’ve mentioned here before I’ve actually been there when in high school and had to wear a radiation badge but no Jimmy Carter yellow booties. We only toured the labs full of scientific instruments and glove boxes. I don’t remember that much about it. During that time (the height of the Cold War) SRS made tritium for a-bombs or rather h-bombs. While South Carolina now has a widely based industrial economy, back then it was all farming and MIC with the latter supported by our long in the saddle politicians like Strom Thurmond. That latter Dixiecrat was himself from Aiken–something even in the pre a-bomb water? He was a very strange duck.

   As an amusing side note in the movie The Sum of All Fears, after a stolen Israeli bomb is used against Baltimore, the scientists say its radiation signature is “Savannah River Site.”

   Truth and fiction converging?
8. tegnost April 19, 2026 at 10:05 am

   There are two stories that are notable in the la times…
   One, uber lyft drivers rationing trips due to gas prices sent me the algo to find alternative sources and lo and behold there are a lot of these stories. Isn’t it great that uber dashing insta lyfters are shielding the corporate parent from the costs associated with the “scaling globally” extra sovereign multinational tech takeover of the world project that is not working so great right now and sending gas prices are going through the roof. Overhead is for thee, not for me saith the corporate entity! Luckily no one will need to go anywhere in the approaching stagnation.
   Two, and this one is really funny…
   Swalwell scandal sparks fears of deeper rot on Capitol Hill”
   I can’t even type it out without laughing…
9. The Rev Kev April 19, 2026 at 10:07 am

   “Bibi torched U.S. support for Israel for a generation”

   Oh, I would say that it is much longer than that. The generation that grew up watching the film “Exodus” and stories of the 6-Day War is dying out now. The younger generation does not have that experience but have seen what Israel is all about on Tik-Tok – until the Zionists took that away from them. Our political leaders may tap dance around Israel but everybody else knows the deal, no matter how many laws they create to make criticism of Israel illegal. Israel is on the down slide now.
   1. Carolinian April 19, 2026 at 10:35 am

      From what I’ve read a lot of people were dubious of Israel in the beginning. Einstein, once a Zionism supporter and someone they wanted to be their president, turned against the colonization in the fifties. Eisenhower and the US deep state in general maintained arms length. Psychologically much of the world wanted to leave the horrors of WW2 behind.

      It was what Finkelstein called The Holocaust Industry that brought Israel into the foreground. Anne Frank’s diary (not actually a diary but edited as such by her surviving father), films like Night and Fog in France and Exodus in USA, the rise of the Palestinian resistance which hijacked airliners and did help to produce an Israeli victim narrative–all these contributed. The narrative became that Israel was an inevitable and righteous response to Nazi madness and the death camps rather than the settler colonial project that it actually was and had been for decades prior to the 40s.

      I think you are right that this is over for good. The Israelis have been overplaying their hand for far too long.
      1. AG April 19, 2026 at 7:36 pm

         Among many other things, one could add the mini-series HOLOCAUST, at least as Germany is concerned (which I have never seen). Or SCHINDLER´S LIST which I have declined to watch again after I first saw it back in the movie theatre when it opened.

         Another factor is the destruction of the anti-Zionist Jewish organisation, THE BUND and its legacy, due to WWII and Zionist propaganda after 1945/1948.

         In fact a narrative-replacement had taken place which cannot be stressed enough:
         Jews who disagreed with Zionism were completely removed from history. And when they persisted, like Finkelstein, the abhorrent term “self-hating Jew” was used. I actually do not know with whom or what organisation this originated.

         Be that as it may – Germans using this demeaning term were completely oblivious to its crypto-racist nature. Not least because some German Jewish public figures polemically were using it themselves to provoke which was simple to do with Germans and their embarrassing knee-jerk reaction on these issues.

         In fact it was so well established that even critical leftists would be using it – regardless if in a Woody-Allen-ish tongue-in-cheek manner – because eventually we know that most jokes are taken more seriously than admitted for containing an allegedly “true” core. (Something I oppose when it comes to true comedy but that´s a different subject again.) And thus such jokes stick even better.

         p.s. Some argue that actually criticsm within Israel would be among the strongest. You could say things there which would be unthinkable in Germany. Things shown e.g. in the documentary about antisemitism Semper had featured in his more recent Sunday post (even if Finkelstein and the director did not get along well as far as I know.)
         But mocking antisemitism and the Holocaust in Germany but France also is among the supreme crimes in terms of free speech that you could commit.
         1. commumistmole April 20, 2026 at 3:35 am

            Der jüdische Selbsthaß by Theodor Lessing, published 1930.

            One of the Authors Lessing analyzes is Otto Weiniger, which Hitler called the only decent jew.
   2. dearieme April 19, 2026 at 11:06 am

      I have two jokes concerning the claim that the Ashkenazi Jews are the cleverest race in the world (even though I dare say the claim is true).

      (i) The cleverest race in the world would not eschew bacon.

      (ii) The cleverest race in the world would not concentrate their numbers in a little patch on the desert’s edge, bordered on three sides by tens of millions of enemies.

      Still, that’s humans for you, eh? Daft as a brush, the lot of them.
   3. ACPAL April 19, 2026 at 11:10 am

      People have had misgivings about the Jewish people for over 2,000 years. The governments have been trying to stomp out that grass fire for a few years now with no success. IMHO Bibi just extended that for another 2,000 years, at least.
   4. Jonathan King April 19, 2026 at 12:01 pm

      I’m of the generation that watched “Exodus” (in my case, half a dozen times) and experienced the Six Day War in real time, albeit from a remove. I have a vivid memory of sitting in the bleachers at my 90% Jewish public high school in L.A. in June ’67, thinking that I should go to Israel to help out … all 115 profoundly chickens^^^ pounds of me. I’ve spent the ensuing 60 years atoning (as it were) for that inculcated brainfart, not just in re Israel but with respect to all imperial adventurism since … especially Amerika’s.
      1. Late Introvert April 19, 2026 at 3:18 pm

         I was talking to my 91 year-old mom just last weekend about that book and movie, and how we both realize what a load of BS it all was, so it’s not just young people.
         1. Tom Stone April 19, 2026 at 8:20 pm

            I picked up a used copy of “Exodus” at the Holmes Book Company on 14th street in Oakland, Used paperbacks were10 for $1 when I was in high school.
            I was paying attention to Girls and the Vietnam War, it wasn’t until that War wound down that I learned about Al Nahkba.
            I also learned that Israel is a theocratic State, racist to the core because Zionism is Tribal in the extreme.
            Lied to again.
            And lied to about every War since.
            Kipling put it well “If any question why we died..”
            Humans.
   5. TomDority April 19, 2026 at 5:32 pm

      I tried to customize a flag on Amazon – it was the prohibited symbol (the red circle with line) over the word genocide……..apparently, that was not allowed because of their policies.
      So, even standing against genocide is somehow not appropriate and, this standing against genocide by creating that flag gets tagged even when in no relation to Israel and USA.
      It seems today’s politicians in the USA and abroad are desperate to keep genocide linked to antisemitism…why?? I can only guess it is to distract from the dozens of genocides in our modern times and provide an easy out when they are asked where they stand on genocide…for or against? But, as everyone and everything has a right to exist…what do I know.
      Ooh war, I despise
      ‘Cause it means destruction of innocent lives
      War means tears, to thousands of mother’s eyes
      When their sons go off to fight and lose their lives
      I said, war (h’uh)
      Good God, y’all!
      (What is it good for?)
      Absolutely (nothin’) ‘gin
10. AG April 19, 2026 at 10:16 am

    re: Germany crisis

    OVERTON-MAGAZINE comment

    use google-translate

    Germany, a horror story
    Germany is in decline. The worst will be over when those who can still remember better times are no longer with us.
    https://overton-magazin.de/kommentar/gesellschaft-kommentar/deutschland-ein-schauermaerchen/

    “(…)not everyone benefits from war and a constant state of crisis: there were 24,064 corporate insolvencies in 2025. Before the pandemic, there were 28 percent fewer: 18,749. Personal insolvencies look like this: in 2025, there were 106,941 – compared to 85,320 in 2019, before the pandemic also delayed insolvencies. An increase of 25 percent. In 2002, there were 46,840 personal insolvencies – 128 percent fewer.

    In 2025, 13.3 million people were considered at risk of poverty – that’s 16.1 percent. Twenty years earlier, this figure was 14.7 percent . Homelessness has tripled: in 2005, an estimated 345,000 people were without a roof over their heads – by 2024, this number is projected to exceed one million . In 2005, there were 480 food banks in Germany – this number more than doubled in 2024: 975 food bank locations can be found throughout the country. In 2005, the food banks provided assistance to approximately 500,000 people – last year, this figure rose to up to two million people in need .(…)”

    p.s. Of course this trend will accelerate:

    Now some sick technocrats argue in WWII-think that a war will help. But the world is a different place now.
    The regions that would usually bear the brunt of the damage done are now taking over supremacy.

    Even if it´s an uneven process and slow, damage and “costs” that were usually externalized cannot be any more. Not least due to Europe´s military and economic impotence. So I would argue the stronger the “Global South” gets the more obvious it will be to Europe´s warmongering elites that going to war will not work as they might know it from the past imperial age. Their spin doctors and think tankers and advisors will tell them that all this would turn out to be suicide.

    Why – and I may sound like a broken record – it would be so important for the peace movement to understand and acknowledge and spread the insight that Russia militarily is so much superior. Only if the futility of going to war is made obvious from the beginning to as many as possible, can it be stopped.
    1. Lefty Godot April 19, 2026 at 3:40 pm

       Maybe “war will help” if most of your population centers are out of missile and heavy bomber range (or very well protected by AD), and if you have solid domestic industrial and agricultural production supported by several generations of skilled laborers (not credentialed paper shufflers). But even then it will be the kind of “help” most sane people would gladly do without. Does any nation in the EU look capable of receiving even this dubious benefit from a war? For that matter, does the US, without significant help from other countries, including the ones most likely to be treated as wartime adversaries?
       1. AG April 19, 2026 at 5:51 pm

          >”For that matter, does the US…?”
          Perhaps one could bring up the argument “superpower” in contrast to the EU countries, which after all are no superpowers. Nor is the EU at large.
          A modicum of supremacy and “righter” than right, and certain “entitlements” could be reserved for the US only for this difference in historical status and in means of political economy at their disposal.
          Correct me if this is a false statement, but I would assume while the world could not just carry on with a US suddenly imploding it could well accomodate with the EU going down. Former is part of the critical mass which cannot be replaced (yet), latter is not.
11. ChrisFromGA April 19, 2026 at 10:18 am

    Watching a Trump admin PR flack dissemble on Meet the Depressed. He can’t even answer the interviewer’s questions honestly. Can’t confirm whether JD Vance is going to Pakistan, can’t explain the flip-flopping on sanctions on Russian oil.

    At least the interviewer is doing a good job of calling out the lies. We need a new category of awards for the biggest lie of the year – call it the “Joeys,” named after the 80’s car commercial character Joe Isuzu.

    “Ladies and Gentlemen, the Joey for the biggest lie of 2026 goes to Donald J. Trump for claiming that ‘Iran has agreed to never close the Strait of Hormuz again’ on Friday, April 17! Here to accept the award, Karoline Leavitt!”
12. The Rev Kev April 19, 2026 at 10:24 am

    “No election date yet in Venezuela as U.S. presses regime to allow Machado’s return”

    With this article, you have to remember that it is a ‘Miami Herald’ article so is probably playing to local audiences. It’s ironic that the US is demanding that Venezuela change it’s voting system so that Machado can win. I read an article a year or two ago saying how the Venezuelan electoral system was much superior to that of the US and more fair. And this was by international observers that went to that country for those elections. If memory serves me right, the US government threatened any international observers that went to watch the last election. How about that.
13. dearieme April 19, 2026 at 10:47 am

    “First close pair of supermassive black holes detected?”

    It’s Spring so of course they are pairing off.
14. Jason Boxman April 19, 2026 at 11:08 am

    They Went Abroad to Save Money. Moving Back Seems Unaffordable. (NY Times)

    Americans have enjoyed lifestyles that would normally be out of reach to them by working remotely in countries with lower living costs.

    Oops?

    Nino Trentinella enjoys the luxuries of an upper-middle-class life in Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, where she has lived for more than two years.

    Ms. Trentinella, 46, who grew up in Baltimore after emigrating from Tbilisi as a child, has been working remotely as an expatriate, choosing to live a nomadic existence. She earns under $40,000 a year as a freelance educator specializing in art, mostly working with children. She has a housekeeper who comes twice a week, takes cabs almost every day and eats at local restaurants regularly. Her husband earns a variable mid-five-figure income annually.

    understandable, why live here?

    Digital nomadism rose in popularity in 2020 as the pandemic normalized remote work. Since the 2024 presidential election, interest among U.S. citizens in moving abroad has spiked, and Americans left in record numbers last year, many in search of lower living costs.

    About 5.5 million Americans live abroad, according to the Association of Americans Resident Overseas, a nonpartisan group for citizens outside the country. For those planning to return home, many find that they aren’t able to replicate the same comfortable lifestyles they’ve had abroad. As a result, they have made plans to continue living outside the United States, or have made radical life changes.

    America is a third world country

    Another concern is the high cost of health care in the United States. Ms. Trentinella said she relied on health care insurance from France, where she lived briefly and where her partner is originally from. She said many other local expats enjoyed cheap, fast, out-of-pocket services, paying just under $40 for routine treatments like blood tests.
15. Hepativore April 19, 2026 at 12:14 pm

    Speaking of Big Brother and surveillance, has anybody been looking at this proposed congressional H.R. 8250 bill? It would bake-in mandatory age-verification into the very operating systems of your phones and computers. It is basically like the horrible bill that Gavin Newsom signed into law in California but even worse.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12YONf1Wl0I

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_5-VhiXjUs

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPc869MO86k

    The text of the bill itself:

    https://www.congress.gov/119/bills/hr8250/BILLS-119hr8250ih.pdf

    This was never about the children but censorship and surveillance. If this goes ahead, anything that could be thought of as even quasi-subversive online would risk being blocked or shut down by doxing anybody that tries to access material that is being deemed “questionable” by various governments or corporate techbros. I would not be surprised if all of these “age verification” measures that are being rammed down people’s throats worldwide are some sort of backlash by the elites to prevent something like another Epstein exposé from ever happening again.

    This could affect us all.
    1. Lefty Godot April 19, 2026 at 4:01 pm

       If social media are that threatening to children, they are threatening to everyone and should be shut down. But that would mean a massive loss of holy profits! And, as you say, nobody sponsoring these bills cares a fig about children anyway, it’s the same old excuse that’s always been trotted out to justify surveillance and censorship.
16. AG April 19, 2026 at 12:32 pm

    re: Germany AfD v. NATO / (TELEKOM news service)

    I am not an expert on AfD as I pointed out in the past.
    But sometimes an item that I run across seems interesting enough to post it, even if the scale is limited to Germany or only some regions within:
    
    AfD´s main defense politician and allegedly last NATO-guy resigns.

    use google-translate

    Where is the AfD headed now?

    For nine years, Rüdiger Lucassen championed NATO within the AfD. Now he has had to resign. Why? And what does this mean for the party?

    https://www.t-online.de/nachrichten/deutschland/innenpolitik/id_101211884/ruediger-lucassen-und-die-nato-warum-musste-der-afd-politiker-zuruecktreten-.html

    “(…)This course, however, is a decisive reason for Lucassen’s resignation: against Russia , in favor of NATO , US and Western alliances, against the AfD’s tendency towards fundamental opposition, and in favor of moderation and a coalition with the CDU/CSU at the federal level.

    The second reason for his resignation is the style with which Lucassen pushed this course: headstrong, uncompromising, even disregarding the opinions of the many former soldiers in the working group. Yet, in terms of content, they actually think similarly to him(…)”.

    One has to be cautious with the source. It´s German TELEKOM who have established themselves as a quite nasty government elites aligned news aggregator with aggressive news staff trying to spin events. In a style similiar to US legacy press they often write over-long pieces to simulate substance and sell government positions in a not too obvious way.

    I first became aware of them when they smeared and denounced Hersh for his North Stream investigation.

    A seasoned news reader like myself was surprised to first find TELEKOM meddle in the news genre.

    (If I find time I might add info on TELEKOM in a post responding to this one.)

    “(…)Lucassen’s internal party opponents derisively call him a “boomer,” a “Western extremist,” or a “NATO boy.” A relic from another era. And they’re right about the last point: Lucassen represents positions that were mainstream in the AfD in 2016. But by 2026, the party is a different place.

    It has bowed to the programmatic strength and successes of the eastern branches, even though these have only a fraction of the members compared to the western branches. It is no longer a soldiers’ party, but a “peace” party. No longer pro-NATO, but for a “multipolar world”—and within this, often explicitly pro-Putin.(…)”

    However the entire story eventually turns out to be one of much hot air: A nothingburger.

    Because Lucassen´s successor is not so much different. He is only more friendly: Jan Nolte, 37.

    “(…)Nolte and Lucassen are close and respect each other. Lucassen had already planned to hand over the reins to Nolte next year, halfway through the legislative term.

    The 37-year-old is also a former soldier, comes from the West, and condemns Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine. However, he also emphasizes the West’s historical complicity and has frequently been interviewed by pro-Kremlin Russian media in the past. He is married to a German woman of Russian descent who previously worked for the Kremlin-friendly “Compact” magazine. But above all, Nolte is a different type: so far more reserved and quieter than Lucassen.(…)”

    So: What´s the news here, dear TELEKOM?

    I guess it´s just a piece to try scratch the image of the AfD.
    In fact people like Sevim Dagdelen have long warned that AfD will turn out to be a Trojan Horse re: militarization and NATO-alignement.
    If anything, nothing will change.
    1. Roger Anthony Boyd April 19, 2026 at 4:17 pm

       The AfD was founded by three neoliberals, and the female co-leader Alice Weidel (the leader in reality) did her PhD under a very neoliberal economist. Bernd Lucke, the primary founder, is an economist with extreme neoliberal views. Weidel is also on record as saying that Germans should “get over” any guilt for their Nazi past (her grandfather was a senior Nazi judge).

       The party was substantially funded by a Swiss-German oligarch, August von Finck (the son of a very prominent Nazi banker), to the tune of millions funnelled through proxies. The other major startup donor was the German oligarch Folkard Edler, a shipping magnate. There is also the funding scandal involving millions of Euros, where a front man was used to hide the identity of the Swiss-German Hedding Conle, who also made questionable donations to Weidel’s political campaign.

       It is fake populist, jumping on the anti-immigration bandwagon to gain traction. Its policies include a flat tax, widespread deregulation and cuts in social spending, and climate change denial. An oligarch-serving party wrapped up in xenophobia, race hatred and nationalism. Maybe we have seen that before?
17. ciroc April 19, 2026 at 1:29 pm

    >Elon Musk’s Mistaken Call for a ‘Universal High Income’ Reason

    Pairing advancing AI with a universal basic income would give people a major incentive not to work, right as many existing jobs are being automated away. Instead of people finding their next comparative advantage in an economy being made more productive but also automated by AI, many would probably just stay home instead.

    Far from mitigating the employment effects of AI, a universal income would seem to usher in the jobless dystopia that those convinced of AI’s transformative effects are worried about.

    After the Black Death killed half of Europe’s population, England enacted maximum wage laws with severe penalties to counteract the resulting rise in wages caused by the shrinking labor force. However, employers often broke these laws. When a significant portion of the workforce leaves the labor market, its members can become their own bosses. Furthermore, research suggests that if people received enough money to live on without working, they would not stop working entirely but rather pursue more fulfilling work.
18. ISL April 19, 2026 at 3:34 pm

    I recall reading only a few days ago an interesting article on the Ukrainian drone industry (interesting in the how) and that currently was producing millions per year (obvious propaganda). Nice to see a link that Ukraine plans to procure 25,000 drones over the next six months! Obviously, the propagandists are not talking to each other! And I stopped reading at the headline – enough Ukrainian propaganda in a few days for me!
19. amfortas April 19, 2026 at 6:01 pm

    for the NC compendium, should one ever be made:
    https://orange-anselma-35.tiiny.site/
    the glossary of empire.
    send it to those in yer cohort who are still happy in their pods.
    1. AG April 19, 2026 at 6:36 pm

       thanks!
    2. anahuna April 20, 2026 at 4:25 am

       Echoing and amplifying that thanks, Amfortas. A welcome, out of the way discovery.
20. AG April 19, 2026 at 6:15 pm

    from links: “Hampshire College’s demise is yet another blow to creative, outside‑the‑box options in higher education”
    https://theconversation.com/hampshire-colleges-demise-is-yet-another-blow-to-creative-outside-the-box-options-in-higher-education-280791

    and this among the hyperlinks:

    “More than a quarter of private colleges are at risk of closing, a new projection shows”
    https://www.npr.org/2026/04/13/nx-s1-5777582/many-private-colleges-at-risk-of-closing

    In a way I find this much more shocking than the much discussed war between the governmnt and some Ivy Leagues (which on the other hand has mostly been forgotten too by now.)

    last paragraph:

    “(…)
    What documentary filmmaker and Hampshire graduate Ken Burns told The New York Times about his alma mater’s closing helps explain why it and other experimental colleges could not survive as the exception to the rule in today’s higher education landscape.

    “(Hampshire) was dedicated to a transformational education, in an era when higher education has been hijacked by the transactional,” Burns said. “A college education is, to some, like a Louis Vuitton handbag. And that’s not Hampshire.”
    (…)”
    1. PapaPoe April 20, 2026 at 3:30 am

       This was always going to happen. Gen Z is smaller than the Millennials who were larger than Gen X. Colleges built infrastructure for a unsustainable population. Add to that, college is no longer seen as important. It’s too expensive and the ROI has not kept up with the cost of an education or inflation.

       I make the same as my dad did at my age…except he made this 26 years ago. I can barely make ends meet but he was able to own 2 cars, 1 house, 2 vacations per year and raise 3 kids that played sports/traveling teams….I have 2 kids and there is no way I can give them the save kind of life.
21. AG April 19, 2026 at 6:31 pm

    re: music video

    not entirely my style but others here might appreciate:

    Berlin-based Syrian rap artist Siba with her song against the ongoing destruction of the Arab world.

    DOUNANA (without us) SIBA & MONKYMAN
    4 min.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdFlJFXPNZU
22. skippy April 19, 2026 at 11:03 pm

    Don’t know if anyone has pointed this out.

    Yanis Varoufakis
    @yanisvaroufakis
    Palantir were kind enough to sum up its hideous ideology in 22 points. And I have taken the liberty of annotating each one of them. Here is my interpretation of all 22 of them (preserving the original numbering – for the original see their tweet below):

    https://x.com/yanisvaroufakis/status/2045981489603461309

    Seems about right.
23. Wukchumni April 20, 2026 at 8:43 am

    Wildfires used to ‘go to sleep’ at night. Climate change is turning them into prime burning hours PHYS.ORG
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    I was soaking in the wee hours at a hot springs talking to the Battalion Commander for the nearby Pier Fire in August of 2017 that scorched 36k acres, and he emphasized over and over again that in his nearly 40 years of fighting wildfires, he’d never seen a wild land conflagration that didn’t go to bed, until this one.

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