Link 4/29/2026

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1. AG April 29, 2026 at 7:13 am

   re: China/India art

   Short piece by Vijay Prashad on a historic episode about trying to achieve artistic autonomy from Europe

   The Foolish Old Man Who Removed the Mountains
   https://luciddialectics.substack.com/p/the-foolish-old-man-who-removed-the?utm_id=97758_v0_s00_e223_tv4_tp1
2. AG April 29, 2026 at 7:15 am

   re: antidote
   Can anyone confirm that European squarrels (i.e. the small ones, not the gigantic US version) on a balcony are keeping away the pigeons???
   1. Irrational April 29, 2026 at 1:38 pm

      Not that we notice – we have both in the garden and they have the same favourite oak. Is there a trick I don’t know?
      1. AG April 30, 2026 at 7:31 am

         Well, I had hoped there is a trick.
         But I guess there isn´t it.
         I´ll be trying spikes then.
3. The Rev Kev April 29, 2026 at 7:27 am

   ‘Mario Nawfal
   @MarioNawfal
   🇯🇵A Japanese developer built an app that puts a fat cat on your screen and forces you to take a break
   Silicon Valley spent billions on wellness platforms, mindfulness subscriptions, and digital detox retreats
   A guy in Japan said: fat cat, problem solved’

   Ha! Is there anything that cats can’t do? Where do I sign up for one? The replies in that tweet are worth reading too-

   https://xcancel.com/MarioNawfal/status/2049159706514493541
   1. hereweare April 29, 2026 at 12:38 pm

      Cats are at least as good as dogs at alerting you to people approaching your house, except that you need to be alert to the cat as they don’t make a noise about it.
4. Carla April 29, 2026 at 7:57 am

   Here’s a link to the May 14, 2025 Farming First article from which the X entry about Mariangela Hungria was apparently taken:

   https://farmingfirst.org/2025/05/dr-mariangela-hungria-named-2025-world-food-prize-laureate/

   It seems Hungria’s work might dispel some of the despair over the current lack of fertilizer feedstocks, but so far, apparently not? Well, the article concludes with this quote from Dr Gebisa Ejeta, Chair, World Food Prize Laureate Selection Committee: “Her brilliant scientific work and her committed vision for advancing sustainable crop production to feed humanity with judicious use of chemical fertiliser inputs and biological amendments has gained her global recognition both at home and abroad.” So I guess the fact that SOME synthetic fertilizers are still needed using her methods means that millions will starve thanks to the Trump Middle East Follies.
   1. PapaPoe April 29, 2026 at 6:42 pm

      I am probably mistaken but I believe she just made nitrogen fixing crops more efficient. She has not found a way for nitrogen hungry crops to suddenly produce their own nitrogen through nitrogen fixation.
5. The Rev Kev April 29, 2026 at 8:11 am

   ‘Elijah J. Magnier 🇪🇺
   @ejmalrai
   The UAE aims to export 5 million bpd and will no longer be limited to 3.0–3.4 million bpd under OPEC+. The UAE needs the money.’

   Not so much an aim as an aspiration. They have to get that oil to market first and with the double blockade that is not possible. The war will have to be over before any of that can happen. There is a pipeline to the Red Sea but that has its own problems starting with the fact that only a large fraction of that oil output can go that way. So at the moment they are still in the hurt locker.
6. Mark Gisleson April 29, 2026 at 8:26 am

   Not an expert on Virginia politics but G. Elliott Morris’s take on Republican assumptions about turnout borrows heavily from DNC takes on the current electoral zeitgeist.

   Pollsters and consultants get election predictions wrong because they rely on the numbers and numbers often don’t reflect political reality. What these folks call “upsets” are simply normal political victories labeled as special only because the experts didn’t see them coming. 2020 is the exception that proves the rule (Biden cheated on a massive scale).

   Until the leadership of the DNC is purged and the Democrats are led by individuals in sync with their base (not their donors), the future remains red. Republican red because no one knows what blue stands for anymore. NOT TRUMP! is not a slogan, it’s an ad for Trump.
7. leaf April 29, 2026 at 9:03 am

   I think the link for the text “We did run a legal analysis by a top Chinese scholar which explained the logic, such as it is, of the US approach” still links to the Cradle article?
   1. Yves Smith Post authorApril 29, 2026 at 11:14 am

      No it is not a link but a comment on the tweet that follows. The Chinese scholar presented long-form a series of precedents showing how the US had seriously stretched terrorism statutes to create a pretext for treating US statues as having extra-judicial reach.
      1. leaf April 29, 2026 at 11:48 am

         Thank you for clarifying!
      2. Birch April 29, 2026 at 2:08 pm

         Could you imagine if the Statue of Liberty had extra-judicial reach? She’d fix things up right quick.
         Thank you Yves, your typos are rarely confusing but often entertaining.
8. TomDority April 29, 2026 at 9:04 am

   “The Christian village of Yaroun in southern Lebanon, before and after it was destroyed by the Israeli army.”
   The after picture does not, to me, look to align with the before….it looks like altered media.
   Still is a monstrous genocidal nightmare with no real plan to ……………………..???
   1. lyman alpha blob April 29, 2026 at 2:10 pm

      Not 100% sure, but it looks like the pictures were taken from slightly different angles, but are of the same village. The buildings still standing in the ‘after’ picture look the same as ones in the first picture.
      1. TomDority April 30, 2026 at 9:09 am

         Not angle of photo alignment but, structural damage and natural vegetation incongruity…the scene looks like a long-abandoned village as opposed to a recently destroyed village
   2. cfraenkel April 29, 2026 at 3:19 pm

      They’re clearly taken from two different vantage points; why are you looking for them to line up?!? And why does that lead to ‘altered media’? Curious as to the thought process… to me it doesn’t look like the two images were at all intended to be ‘aligned’. There are two structures in the after shot that are still identifiable, if only by counting windows that are left.
   3. Peter VE April 29, 2026 at 5:22 pm

      The Zionists left the shell of the church, visible in the middle of the before picture and to right of center in the after, but they leveled the mosque on top of the hill. The power pole left of the mosque in Before is still there in the center of the after picture. Evidently they didn’t want to waste extra C-4 on the church.
9. Wukchumni April 29, 2026 at 9:08 am

   Nowhere felt the disaster of the Empire’s dismemberment more keenly than the Habsburg rump state of Austria, which was struggling with hyper-inflation, hunger and political discontent. Zweig describes a culture of hoarding, where the currency was more or less worthless and people looked for stores of ‘real value’, ‘even a goldfish or an old telescope.’ For Zweig, the collapse was moral as much as economic, a world turned upside down. “A man who had saved for forty years and had also patriotically put money into the war loan became a beggar, while a man who used to be in debt was free of it. Those who had observed propriety in the allocation of food went hungry, those who cheerfully ignored the rules were well fed … There were no standards or values as money flowed away and evaporated; the only virtue was to be clever, adaptable and unscrupulous, leaping on the back of the runaway horse instead of letting it trample you.”

   Austria was the first hyperinflation of the 20th century after a long lag of the Confederacy being the last episode, and the article on the Habsburgs jives well with Aurelian’s latest effort.

   It’s not as well known as the Weimar hyperinflation as the numbers weren’t so bandy in comparison to what went down in Germany-not being able to compete in the billions for a buck category, but similar to Mexico’s hyperinflation in the 1980’s-early 90’s, it was enough to utterly destroy savings.

   A Mexican with 100,000 Pesos in the bank in the mid 70’s had the equivalent of US $8,000, and when the end came in 1993, it was more like $33, ouch!

   I was so uncertain how we would get hyperinfation in the digital age of money-as you need a prop of physical coins or currency to have made it happen, but in this instance the President is the prop.

   Everything in regards to the USA is seemingly wealth accumulation-not so much wealth preservation, how will we deal with the idea that the money isn’t worth anything rather all of the sudden, such as what went down in Austria in 1919?
   1. vao April 29, 2026 at 9:38 am

      Apart from Austria, Hungary and Poland — other parts of the Austro-Hungarian empire — were wrecked by hyperinflation after the end of WWI.

      Thus, from January 2023 to January 2024, the value of the Polish currency against the USD was divided by 290, and the wholesale price index registered a 46’678% inflation (figures from Izabela Mrzygłód: Harsh reality — Living in Warsaw under hyperinflation in 1923; I have not recorded where I found this paper).
      1. converger April 29, 2026 at 10:15 am

         https://bankinghistory.org/wp-content/uploads/Mrzyglod_Inflation_Paper_EN.pdf
      2. Wukchumni April 29, 2026 at 10:19 am

         Poland was the only ex-Soviet Bloc party country to experience hyperinflation in the early 90’s. Took a veritable shitlode of Zlotys to equal a buck.
         1. Wukchumni April 29, 2026 at 10:45 am

            p.s.

            Here’s a 1990 100,000 Zloty banknote:

            https://en.numista.com/210986

            Back before digital money was a thing, it was largely about physical currency, and I traveled to Europe quite a bit in pursuit of aged round metal discs-often by myself, and if you claim to be a practical joker-one must train for maximum effort, and the old world is just great for people watching compared to these not so united states, so there was this paper money dealer down in SD who frequented coin shows, and one thing he always had was crisp brand new consecutively numbered bundles of 100 of the latest country’s money to go B/K, and it was often the usual suspects, Latin America, Africa or Asia, but every now and then it would be spiced up with Israeli or Polish efforts at ruining their currency’s worth.

            A bundle of 100 cost $8-15 and i’d buy a few before bon voyaging back to Europe, with train stations being my specialty in terms of watching us do what we do.

            A candy bar wrapper on the ground even though it kind of looks like a piece of paper money will not attract eyes, but a 100,000 something banknote will do just the opposite, and i’d clandestinely leave said banknotes on the ground or on an escalator or dropped from the window onto the platform as the train was leaving kinda gig.

            It was cheap entertainment for $20

            We’re utterly fascinating to watch~
      3. vao April 29, 2026 at 11:50 am

         Ok, it is January 1923 to January 1924, of course.
10. DJG, Reality Czar April 29, 2026 at 9:13 am

    Zelenskiy rejects membership-lite offer from EU. bne IntelliNews.

    I recommend reading this article for the sheer number of times you will engage in eyeball rolling. It is one stupid quote after another: Don’t blame journalist Ben Aris for the eye-popping stupidity of the EU elites.

    As I have noted, the application for EU membership by Turkiye has been suspended. It would be the oldest. I can assure you that the Germans don’t want a country of 80 million Turks (uh, oh) with a metropolis of 17 million (Istanbul). So scratch that.

    Now, these strategic geniuses are trying to distort the application process to achieve ends it wasn’t meant to achieve. I note that the Ukrainians applied only in 2022 and insist on being fast-tracked. Somehow, Ukraine is going to eliminate corruption, halt the war with Russia, and align rules and regulations as required?

    I am indeed the Tsar of All the Russias.

    And Merz is as dumb as a doorknob, to use a Chicago expression.

    Meanwhile, the oldest application now seems to be Albania — some twenty-five years of courting the EU bureaucracy. Albania has a long history with Italy (not always grand), but there are Albanian-speaking villages in southern Italy and a large recent immigration. A handsome church near me was assigned by the archdiocese to an Albanian Byzantine Catholic parish. Common past? Easy accession? Right? No. Sheesh.
11. LawnDart April 29, 2026 at 9:20 am

    Re; Russophobia

    Why Russophobia shapes Russian foreign policy and Abier’s Kiriakou tweet:

    It is very important to note that the west has been most recently intent on regime-changing Russia since Yeltsin’s fall.

    Why?

    Hermitage Capital, HSBC, Bank of New York, and others were working hand in hand with Russian mafia and corrupt Russian officials to loot Yeltsin’s recently post-Soviet Russia of untold billions of dollars in wealth, at least until Russia under Putin’s government began to wrest the punchbowl away. And they didn’t like this… there still was, is, so much left to pillage.

    US oligarch William (Bill) Browder should be noted as a cuckhold who is particularily resentful, funding a great many US politicians (mostly democrats) who will carry on his anti-Putin/anti-Russia vendetta in hopes of returning Russia to the glory days of the 1990s.

    Note that anti-Russia is nothing new: From the religious and imperial rivalry created by Charlemagne and the papacy to the genesis of French, English, German and then American Russophobia, the West has been engaged in more or less violent hostilities against Russia for a thousand years.

    It does strike my how Oligagch Browder’s pet democrats almost universally claim to be anti-racist or xenophobic, except when it comes to Russians.

    Democrat and (to a slightly lesser degree) Republican voters carry on this tradition of racism and xenophobia, all whilst believing themselves to be morally righteous, just, and superior to the others.
    1. lyman alpha blob April 29, 2026 at 2:16 pm

       Browder is at the source of much of the demonization of Vladimir Putin that most Westerners have swallowed hook, line and sinker. After his 90s looting spree, Russia had the audacity to tell him he owed some taxes, and he’s been foaming at the mouth ever since. And I don’t believe he ever paid the taxes.

       Ironically, Browder’s grandfather spent some years in the USSR as was head of the US Communist party for years.
    2. ThirtyOne April 29, 2026 at 2:38 pm

       In May 2017, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper stated on NBC’s Meet the Press that Russians are “almost genetically driven” to act deviously.

       “I was the CIA director. We lied, we cheated, we stole.” —Mike Pompeo
    3. Peter VE April 29, 2026 at 5:12 pm

       “US oligarch William (Bill) Browder”.
       No longer, Browder became a Brit 20 years ago, so he would no longer be subject to American taxes while cheating on his Russian ones. He can still get Congress to dance to his tunes, though.
12. The Rev Kev April 29, 2026 at 9:24 am

    “Haunted by Ghosts? New Study Provides a Surprising Explanation ”

    This study is complete bunk for at least two reasons. The first is as, they admit, that is was a small sample of people. The second is that they exposed people to infrasound which means that the whole thing was an artificial construct not related to the real world. What science can’t measure or explain they tend to ridicule such as the existence of ball lightning in the recent past. Or the existence of a sixth sense where a hunter feels/knows for sure that there is a tiger atop an overhanging rock or where a soldier hits the ground just as shrapnel goes though the space where he had been walking, even though he heard or saw nothing. Science would discount the last two examples but that does not mean that, like with the existence of ghosts, that they are right to do so.
13. ChrisFromGA April 29, 2026 at 9:31 am

    Re: the triumph of ego depletion

    I read that link with great interest … having recently read a lot of Eckhart Tolle’s work. I was disappointed that the study never really defined ego depletion, though I sort of get from a secondary comment on that substack that it involves self-control being a limited resource that depletes with use.

    Social psychology is not something I have any background in. But I wonder whether the term might be used in a more positive sense, insofar as having one’s ego depleted could be a good thing. My biggest breakthrough when dealing with depression was the realization that my thoughts are not me, and they pass through my mind like clouds in sky. Once I began to see that, I could separate myself from my ego and that led to a lot of peace. It is still a struggle though. I find that the ego can be managed but never totally depleted. Or if so, it comes back with a vengeance.
14. Earl April 29, 2026 at 9:38 am

    Analogous to dogs, domestic cats have smaller brains than their wild ancestors. Another example of the domestication syndrome, the characteristics of which were described by Darwin.
    https://smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/cat-brains-have-shrunk-with-domestication-1809795161
    1. communistmole April 29, 2026 at 12:10 pm

       Working link:

       https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/cat-brains-have-shrunk-with-domestication-180979516/
    2. Lefty Godot April 29, 2026 at 3:50 pm

       Haven’t homo sapiens brains gotten smaller since the days of Cro Magnon? And Neanderthals had larger brains still. Other than being “energetically expensive” I’m not sure there is much reason for selection to disfavor brains just for being large. But what other pressure would be sufficient to make a difference? Maybe it’s got more to do with how the brain is organized, which is only coincidentally related to size.
15. Carolinian April 29, 2026 at 9:47 am

    Re dogs sucking up–I’ve read that in pre history American cat species dominated among all predators because their ambush predator style of hunting is more efficient. However cut to now and the dog population has become dominant as cat species have often disappeared in favor of house cats. We have cat owners where I live of course, but the king of the beasts has a wagging tail. Dog brains may have shrunk but their social IQ is hard to beat.

    But for sure all that barking can be annoying.
    1. The Rev Kev April 29, 2026 at 10:03 am

       Careful there. You don’t want to start a “flame war” of which makes the better pet – cats or dogs. That way lay madness. :)

       https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbpoybgEQk4 (10:19 mins)
       1. flora April 29, 2026 at 11:30 am

          I guess it depends on what one wants in a pet.
          If you want a pet that jumps on your keyboard when you’re typing or jumps on your lap when your trying to read a book, then get a cat.
          If you want a pet that comes into the house when wet from rain (and especially if muddy) and shakes water all over everything, then get a dog. / ;)
16. Patrick Donnelly April 29, 2026 at 10:29 am

    Lignite is not just a fuel, it is an excellent fertilizer.

    Quick, FLOOD it!
    1. hereweare April 29, 2026 at 12:59 pm

       More of a soil conditioner than a fertiliser. It can make NPK, from whatever source, more available to plants.
17. The Rev Kev April 29, 2026 at 10:34 am

    “No, higher turnout won’t fix the Republicans’ midterms problem”

    The Republicans will want to be careful here. When people get sick and tired of a government, that is when they turn out in force at the polls. They turn out in large numbers and they turn up early so as to help get rid of the sitting government. I saw this with an election here in Oz back in ’07 and it was as real as a smack in the face. The Republicans may get a higher turnout but they can’t control how they will vote.
18. The Rev Kev April 29, 2026 at 10:49 am

    Turns out that King Charles has his own Trumpian sense of humour-

    ‘Speaking at the White House on Tuesday, Charles humorously mentioned the ongoing construction, saying: “I cannot help noticing the readjustments to the East Wing… I’m sorry to say that we British, of course, made our own small attempt at real estate redevelopment of the White House in 1814,” in a reference to British troops burning the building during the War of 1812.’

    https://www.rt.com/news/639246-king-charles-jokes-burning-white-house/
    1. flora April 29, 2026 at 11:17 am

       Sounds a little bit like a poke in T’s eye considering Charles is a great promoter of preserving historical sites and buildings. / ;)

       That Charles forerunners didn’t entirely destroy the WH and its contents in 1812 can be credited to then-pres James Madison’s wife Dolly.
       She insisted the famous Gilbert Stuart portrait of George Washington be taken down from a WH wall and saved during the WH evacuation.
       1. flora April 29, 2026 at 12:18 pm

          adding per Wiki:

          Stuart made several portraits of Washington. They were much in demand at the time. One of the portraits became known as:
          “The Athenaeum Portrait, also known as The Athenaeum, is an unfinished painting by Gilbert Stuart of United States President George Washington. Created in 1796, it is Stuart’s most notable work. The painting depicts Washington at age 64, about three years before his death, on a brown background.[1] It served as the model for the engraving that would be used for Washington’s portrait on the United States one-dollar bill. ”
          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athenaeum_Portrait

          adding: an engraving results in a reverse image print of the plate engraving. So on the dollar bill Washington is looking to the right instead of the left as in the portrait.

          (That’s enough US history trivia for today. / ;)
19. Jason Boxman April 29, 2026 at 11:09 am

    From AI’s Economics Don’t Make Sense

    As I discussed last week, Uber’s CTO said at a conference that it had spent its entire AI budget for 2026 in the space of a few months, with Goldman Sachs suggesting that some companies are spending as much as 10% of their headcount on AI tokens, with the potential to increase to 100% in the next few quarters.

    This is the direct result of training every single AI user to use these services as much as humanely possible while obfuscating how much they really cost. Every single major company demanding that every single worker “use AI as much as possible” has done so while either fundamentally ignoring or being entirely disconnected from their actual token burn, and as companies are forced to pay the actual costs, I’m not sure how you can economically justify any investment in this technology.

    Absolutely true at a company I know well. Everyone is repeatedly asked weekly to use AI as much as possible, experiment, and explore. That can’t be cheap. Someone’s gotta pay for all those tokens. It’s expected to show up in employee quarterly objectives, to use “AI” tools to do whatever is functionally adjacent to the primary role. The role description was even updated, to explicitly state that workers use AI tools for first iterations and planning.

    And this isn’t somehow magically exempt from the cost of inference. Someone budget item pays for all of this. And it isn’t clear how anyone on the executive team deduces whether actual value is produced in excess of the compute cost, probably because the true costs are not yet being paid.

    But the bill comes due, as Baron Mordo says in Dr. Strange:

    Baron Mordo: You think there will be no consequences, Strange? No price to pay? We broke our rules, just like her. The bill comes due. Always!

    Everyone is hopped up on this stuff; it can’t possibly end well. It’s like the most unbelievable mass delusion; I guess when people accept the Pandemic just magically went away, any belief is possible.
    1. flora April 29, 2026 at 11:22 am

       Ed Dowd (and no doubt others) thinks the only thing keeping the stock market aloft is the AI bubble. So, the effort to keep the stock market from falling is what’s behind the madness of supporting AI at any cost.
       1. Jason Boxman April 29, 2026 at 1:01 pm

          True, but I think corporate obsession of it is a kind of shared delusion of this being the future of computing or some nonsense. It’s that herd mentality of corporate executives, all doing the same thing, because no one loses the game of musical chairs if everyone makes the same clownish plays.

          This trash can’t implode fast enough. I’m tired of hearing about it and seeing the carnage it causes. I think never has there been a “service” so completely socially destructive and so maligned by the general public. People rage against “auto stop/start” ICE at red lights, but that’s at least marginally environmentally useful, if much unwanted.

          Frontier LLMs are just garbage in every conceivable way. Literally we aren’t even going to get built railroads or whatever out of this.

          And we’ve normalized mass copyright theft, fraud, abuse of customers.
       2. hereweare April 29, 2026 at 1:13 pm

          That doesn’t really explain why individual companies are demanding their employees use more and more AI. Traditionally, companies promoted their own perceived interests, even if the collective result was to depress the stock market, or even the real economy. Have they suddenly subordinated their own interests to some ‘greater good’, fallen victim to some mass delusion, or decided their interests lie in adopting AI?
          1. flora April 29, 2026 at 1:43 pm

             You’ve never heard of management fads? Lemme tell ya, management fads are a real thing.
             1. flora April 29, 2026 at 1:56 pm

                adding: I miss Scott Adams. / ;)

                https://screenrant.com/funniest-dilbert-comics-scott-adams/
             2. hereweare April 29, 2026 at 2:45 pm

                So “the effort to keep the stock market from falling is what’s behind the madness of supporting AI at any cost” was ironic?
                1. flora April 29, 2026 at 2:56 pm

                   No.
                   1. hereweare April 29, 2026 at 3:52 pm

                      Then I don’t get you. Keeping the stock market from falling is a management fad? (“So, the effort to keep the stock market from falling is what’s behind the madness of supporting AI at any cost.”)
          2. cfraenkel April 29, 2026 at 1:52 pm

             Individual companies all make decisions at the same C-suite level, made by execs who a) don’t understand (or care) about their employee’s expertise or welfare, b) all have the same status seeking financial incentives, including all having most of their rewards dependant on bubble inflated market returns, and c) all get inundated by the same AI hype and don’t know or care enough to question it.

             So no, the ‘companies’ haven’t, but the decision-making class at the top has.
          3. Borson April 29, 2026 at 6:03 pm

             So the Emperor walked in the procession under the beautiful canopy, and everybody in the streets and at the windows said: “Lord! How splendid the Emperor’s new clothes are. What a lovely train he has to his coat! What a beautiful fit it is!” Nobody wanted to be detected seeing nothing: that would mean that he was no good at his job, or that he was very stupid.

             – Hans Christian Andersen
    2. ilsm April 29, 2026 at 1:28 pm

       Somewhere in Ed’s e mail yesterday he estimated that spending on AI needs to be more than a trillion $$ in 2030 for the suggested 112 GW universe of data centers to not lose buckets of money.

       That is how many times the U.S.’ IT spending.

       That does not include the world of data and keeping it pristine.

       Who knows if 112 GW will get done, when all the experimenters have to pay the full load.

       How many NVIDIA GPU end up in warehouses like a lot of fiber in 2000?
       1. flora April 29, 2026 at 2:10 pm

          Fiber was finally useful, as in useful now. Chips age out through obsolescence. The demand for the best chips now for data centers is pushing up the prices of new pcs, tablets, and phones due to massively increasing memory and cpu chip demands. In a way, the pc world is destroying its year-over-year customer base of individual purchasers, imo.
       2. Henry Moon Pie April 29, 2026 at 3:54 pm

          Sounds like we’re getting to the “bricks without straw” phase with prices of food, gas and utilities through the roof while jobs disappear. Keeping the analogy, maybe those horizontally massive data centers, when they go defunct, can be used as mausoleums for the people who caused them to be built. Mummification optional.

          Apparently, we’re expected to suffer cheerfully for two causes. No, our children’s and grandchildren’s future is not one of them, nor is making sure that in the presnt, no child is hungry or without safe housing and good medical care. Instead, we’re all expected to sacrifice so some crazy TechBros can build their silicon Golden Calf, and so Bibi and the Zios can get some lebensraum for their super-duper new house for YHWH.
    3. Bugs April 29, 2026 at 4:01 pm

       Accenture. Their CEO is nuts and bet the whole company on it.
    4. ArvidMartensen April 29, 2026 at 7:41 pm

       AI Economics:
       We lose money on every token, but then make it up through volume
       Oh, and every year someone “invests” a few billion dollars in our company.
20. Ignacio April 29, 2026 at 11:20 am

    Lukas Ekuweme X says

    “That LNG which was enroute to you, well Asia pays more, sorry.”

    I just don’t believe that. The cost and extra time of LNG transport is too high to work that way. The number of vessels is limiting so more to Asia means many less deliveries with longer journeys apart from exceedingly large transport costs.
21. AG April 29, 2026 at 11:32 am

    re: Why Russophobia shapes Russian foreign policy Ian Proud

    This is a short text but in essence actually a podcast conversation between Proud and his guest Alexander Vassiliev, formerly a KGB Intelligence Officer in the American Department of First Chief Directorate.

    I haven´t listened to it yet.
    But one question:
    He now lives in the UK.
    Why?
    And what does that mean.
    (What would Americans or God forbid the British do if their “man” moved to Russia?)
22. Jason Boxman April 29, 2026 at 11:40 am

    We’ll always have AI slop

    Behind the A.I. Boom, a Boring Business Is Soaring With Better Ads (NY Times)

    For years, DribbleUp, a sports equipment company, spent its own time and resources figuring out whom it should advertise its basketballs and soccer balls to on Facebook. But for the last two years, it has placed those ads entirely through Facebook’s artificial intelligence tools.

    Since then, DribbleUp’s sales have outpaced its marketing expenses. It has also started spending more money on Facebook.

    The company’s experience speaks to how A.I. is reshaping the digital ad industry. Over the past three years, Google, Meta and other tech companies have used the same artificial intelligence behind chatbots to power advertising.

    The emerging A.I. systems are helping companies automate their marketing. Small and large companies alike can now create ads, target audiences, bid for space and measure results. The process has made it easier for local businesses to develop campaigns as sophisticated as ones from corporate giants.

    Powered by copyright theft!

    “Anybody that’s close to the space has seen a real shift change,” said Wesley ter Haar, chief A.I. officer at Monks, a marketing firm. “Technology is ready to meaningfully replace manual effort in our industry.”

    But also big data stuff that is now also called “AI”

    But the real business breakthroughs have come from targeting. It used to be that an advertiser would say, for example, “I want to target women in New York between the ages of 24 and 35.” Now it’s the opposite: Meta and Google are using A.I. to recommend customers the brands should be going after.

    But then more theft

    Small companies have been some of the biggest beneficiaries of the new tools as they use A.I. to save money on designing the ads themselves.

    Chris Wilhelmi, global head of data and media at Monks, the marketing firm, said customers were saving 30 percent on the cost of campaigns. On content, it can be as much as 65 percent. Many are reinvesting those savings into testing and experimenting with new ad strategies.

    (bold mine)

    Slopfest!
    1. cfraenkel April 29, 2026 at 4:20 pm

       Better results for ads generated by a platform’s own AI tools when said platform is desperately trying to convince any and all that AI tools are the next sliced bread? That then results in more ad spend? Who could have predicted that?!? /s
23. AG April 29, 2026 at 11:42 am

    Thanks for Kiriakou.

    Two quibbles:

    Why can’t Americans not stop calling each other on first name basis like they all were one great 300M big people encompassing family. It´s annoying and dishonest, at least on a permanent basis in certain situation, also to me as non-US.

    Also, I will never get over Tucker´s clumsiness in his reactions.

    A few days ago that was correctly addressed by Finkelstein with Lottaz/Maquardt, Carlson acting out like being an idiot.
    (I still have my doubts about Carlson´s real competence in certain areas. But that is pure speculation by my side. I haven’t followed close enough to bring up proof.)
    1. flora April 29, 2026 at 11:54 am

       You must not be from around here, pardner. (old joke). / ;)
       1. AG April 29, 2026 at 12:00 pm

          I was there long enough as a youngster when much more tolerant.
          Coz, I really liked that.
          So when you´re in it it´s great. And you get used to the superficiality which might have truly to do with the scale of the country and people constantly moving around. (I got along extremely well with US Americans.) Besides that “superficiality” trope is a cliché once you settle somewhere it changes and things become “normal”. So much is also merely tourist angle which is twisted in any country.
          But once you are not part of the bubble any more but are looking at it from the outside, it is weired….
          🙃😇☺️
          1. flora April 29, 2026 at 12:42 pm

             Shorter: When in Rome…. / ;)
             https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/when+in+Rome
    2. LifelongLib April 29, 2026 at 3:23 pm

       IIRC calling people you don’t know well by their first names became a thing in the mid 70s. Before that adults were addressed as Mr., or Mrs./Miss (later Ms.). Even in college classes around that time I was Mr. __ for a couple of years, then profs and others started feeling free to use first names. I sort of got around it by giving my full first name in class and reserving my family nickname for friends and others who actually knew me.
    3. ArvidMartensen April 29, 2026 at 7:49 pm

       My theory
       When I was a kid, professionals were called by their title – eg family doctor was Doctor X. Now he’s just ‘call me Alex’.
       And something gets lost. The acknowledgement that Dr X went through 7 years of gruelling medical education to get to practise as a doctor.

       Whereas, good ole Alex, well, he thinks I should do this but I’ll just go and look up Google to see what the consensus is about my problem. And my neighbour had something similar so he might have some ideas.

       And nurses used to dress in freshly washed and pressed uniforms, and looked spiffy. Now they look like the cleaners. As do ER doctors.

       So this builds respect for years of professional education and professional expertise? I think not.
24. hereweare April 29, 2026 at 1:40 pm

    FCC orders review of ABC licenses after Jimmy Kimmel’s Melania Trump joke

    So, displease Trump, for example by making a joke he finds in bad taste, and the media company who broadcast the joke loses its licences? Before long, the USA’ll lose the excuses for independent media it currently has. “Praise be to Donald J Trump, the Saviour!” will start and finish every programme and every movie.

    (As for the bad taste, which is worse – joking about Melania being widowed, or announcing an intention to send an entire nation back to the ‘Stone Ages’ and destroy its civilisation, to take but one example of the bad taste personified in Trump?)
25. Jason Boxman April 29, 2026 at 1:42 pm

    From Aurelien’s post, it’s hard not to relate this to the CDC’s bundled attempts at producing a working PCR test in the early days, and the unwillingness and inability of third party labs, that had both the skill and equipment to just do testing, to do so. Because reasons. Wasn’t legal or whatever, blah blah, in the midst of the beginnings of a Pandemic for which China literally had just shutdown their entire country. I mean, you’ve got to be kidding; I would have said, were it me, come arrest me if you must, I’m running PCR tests unsanctioned out of my lab, consequences be damned.

    As far as I recall, zero labs, academic or otherwise, did so. And precious weeks were lost.

    Over time, this has produced a working culture in which initiative is in practice discouraged, in spite of the drivel about “self-starters” in recruitment advertisements. People limit themselves to what they have been specifically told to do, often measured against quantitative targets, and neglect those things that, however useful and sensible they may be, don’t figure in the printed list. This means that there is effectively no intellectual or practical capability to respond to the unexpected, let alone to serious crises. And when the blame game begins, it’s seen as a perfectly reasonable defence to argue that such and such a crisis “wasn’t my responsibility.” As long as you have ticked your boxes and met your targets, no-one can blame you if a disaster occurs elsewhere. We can see this mentality at work in the reactions (or to be more precise lack of reactions) of western governments to the crises over Ukraine, and even more Iran. People attempt to deal with a crisis by doing what they have always done, only more so. Things that are not their responsibility are no doubt the responsibility of someone else, except that no-one, at any level, seems to have realised that the problem with politics is, as Harold Macmillan famously said, “events,” and so no-one is actually responsible or prepared for events that are not anticipated.
26. hereweare April 29, 2026 at 1:54 pm

    ‘An oligarch’s dystopian scheme to discredit journalism with AI’
    Newsguard et al on steroids. Peter Thiel can destroy reputations in seconds. Just wait till Trump starts using Objection AI’s Honor Index to justify withdrawing broadcast licences.
    A Peter Thiel-funded startup launched this month will use an “AI jury” to “subject the media’s claims to systematic investigation and judgment.” That same system of AI adjudication assigns a numerical value — the so-called “Honor Index” score — grading the trustworthiness of individual reporters. And for a starting price of $2,000, anyone can pay for the company to review and adjudicate complaints they may have about a news outlet or reporter.

    Objection AI was founded by Aron D’Souza, a lawyer best known for leading the Thiel-funded lawsuit that bankrupted the digital news outlet Gawker in 2016. D’Souza has described Objection as a private arbitration court, which individuals can turn to when they feel they have been unfairly maligned by reporters or pundits. “Your reputation takes years to build and seconds to destroy online,” the company wrote in a recent post on X. “Objection makes adjudication fair, fast, and affordable.”

    The company is funded with millions of dollars in funding from Thiel, former Coinbase CTO Balaji Srinivasan, and other investors.
    1. samm April 29, 2026 at 7:09 pm

       Yeah, that Thiel is a real kook. Sure, he can make the tool. But how to make the world accept biased AI slop as the last word? I’m sure he’s a real busy guy, but maybe he could think it over during his next infusion of young people’s blood.
       1. hereweare April 30, 2026 at 3:17 am

          He doesn’t need to get the world to accept it. As I said, the likes of Trump could use it to justify further attacks on journalism. And advertisers might be put off by low scores on Thiel’s Honor Index, cutting off funding for outlets he dislikes.
27. ChrisFromGA April 29, 2026 at 2:00 pm

    Fed Chairman Jerome Powell gives his final presser in about 30 minutes. I have never been a fan of the Fed, but I think that Mr. Powell did a fine job under difficult circumstances. I suspect that when Taco’s poodle takes over, we’ll miss him. Here is my tribute to the Fed Chair.

    Sung to the tune of, “Willie the Wimp” by Stevie Ray Vaughan

    Melody

    Chairman Jay Powell was buried today
    They laid him to rest in a special way
    Sent him off in the finest style
    With skyrocketing yields, he really drove ’em wild
    Mariner Eccles would think of him, often
    Talkin’ ’bout Chairman Jay Powell, and the mad attack by Taco
    Chairman Jay Powell, and the mad attack by Taco

    That Taco he cooked up some fine legal swill
    He had a rage-postin’ license, and got up in Powell’s grill
    The economy was propped up in the drivers seat
    He had gold bugs counting digits with a smile so sweet
    Frivolous law suits had the whole town talkin’
    Chairman Jay Powell, and the mad attack by Taco
    Yeah, Chairman Jay Powell, and the mad attack by Taco

    ow!

    [Guitar Solo]

    When the POTUS did the TACO Jay was wavin’ his banner
    He left like he lived, in a lively manner
    With a-hundred treasury bills in his fingers tight
    He heard bond traders squeal; with a-flashin’ headlines
    He been wishin’ for wings, no way he was walkin’

    Talkin’ ’bout Chairman Jay Powell, and the mad attack by Taco
    yeah, Chairman Jay Powell, and the mad attack by Taco
28. In Cold Chud April 29, 2026 at 2:08 pm

    Re: Aurelien

    This is all true for America, as well, with one small but perhaps significant difference: Postgraduate education in anything related to policy is part–I would argue the most important part–of the filter that ensures total ideological reliability (i.e., one passes through the filter, or is filtered out, after matriculating). Because of the differences in higher education and class between the United States and Great Britain, this isn’t surprising. (Yes, I realize they do note “the sheer difficulty of getting a worthwhile job these days,” but they give the example of a job at a think tank. Here in the USA, this is a cudgel against a much broader swath of the PMC.)

    How by contrast, will today’s comfortable and entitled middle-class react to such mild constraints as compulsory petrol rationing, or the widespread cancellation of holiday flights, and extended waiting times and triage in hospitals?

    I imagine it will involve kicking down even more viciously, and redoubling their commitment to a vision where the limits of the possible are getting back the status they had 10 or 15 years ago.

    This relates to something decidedly American that I’ve been thinking about recently: How the liberals/Democrats will manage to f– up their post-Trump moment. My guess is, it will be something like this: Offer nothing materially to the bottom 50-80% of Americans, do not prosecute anyone from the Trump administration (the job is, as Matt Christman noted, doing crimes), but instead pursue an anti-populist campaign of cultural and economic vengeance against little people, guaranteeing that we will have white Christian nationalism by 2033. (Hey, history rhymes!)

    The one point where I might differ with Aurelien is on PMCs’ adaptability to a world of roadblocks set up by warlords. I think they will take to it well.
29. hereweare April 29, 2026 at 2:41 pm

    Image of Trump to be featured inside new passports to mark America’s 250th – Washington Post, archived
    For Americans who don’t want Trump’s face on their passport, they can renew their passport online or go to a passport agency outside of Washington. But this will be the only available passport for those who show up in person at the Washington Passport Agency until this limited edition runs out.
    1. The Rev Kev April 29, 2026 at 7:05 pm

       If it wasn’t the Washington Post I would have called that a bad AI prank. Gawd, he wants his face everywhere.
       1. hereweare April 30, 2026 at 4:11 am

          Numerous other outlets are reporting the same thing.
30. ChrisFromGA April 29, 2026 at 2:44 pm

    Powell: I am continuing to serve as a Fed governor for an undetermined period of time

    Editorial comment: Good! He’s growing into the role of a gadfly. A thorn in Taco’s side. Add him to the list of growing thorns, including M T-G, Massie, etc.
31. hereweare April 29, 2026 at 4:01 pm

    A.I. Bots Told Scientists How to Make Biological Weapons NYT, archived
    A microbiologist and biosecurity expert at Stanford University, Dr. Relman had been hired by an artificial intelligence company to pressure-test its product before it was released to the public. That night in the scientist’s home office, the chatbot explained how to modify an infamous pathogen in a lab so that it would resist known treatments.
    Worse, the bot described in vivid detail how to release the superbug, identifying a security lapse in a large public transit system, Dr. Relman said, asking The New York Times to withhold the name of the pathogen and other specifics for fear of inspiring an attack. The bot outlined a plan to maximize casualties and minimize the chances of being caught.
32. lyman alpha blob April 29, 2026 at 4:02 pm

    Aurelian’s post, and specifically the part about the military and how officers now are more paper pushers than fighters, is spot on. There was also mention of how we don’t make them like we used to back in the WWII era, which does resonate with what I know about the topic.

    I have a relative in the Navy who is close to becoming captain of a vessel. Very smart guy, seems pretty competent, but he’s also never been close to any fighting in his almost 20 years of service. He spends a lot of time doing academic training, and was recently rotated out of his port of call to do some more, just about when the latest war with Iran started. Lucky for him! I do hope he makes it out without being killed in some stupid conflict started by chickenhawk politicians.

    I will add this excerpt I recently read from Voltaire’s Bastards by John Ralston Saul, written in the early 90s. He also hits the nail on the head about the difference between than and now –

    “The idea behind training officers as rational executives was to incorporate “a number of business practices and techniques designed to make the Pentagon bureaucracy more efficient.” These apparently worthwhile techniques did far more than that. They revolutionized the American officer corp by introducing, in the words of Richard Gabriel, “the habits, values and practices of the business community.” This, in turn, changed the motivation of officers from self-sacrifice to self-interest. The effect was to transform the professional officer into half bureaucrat, half executive. In the process everyone mislaid the basic given of membership in an officer corps: that each individual in order to do his duty is prepared to do the unacceptable – that is, to die. Getting killed, after all, is not logical, rational, efficient or what a businessman would perceive as being in his personal self interest.”
    1. The Rev Kev April 29, 2026 at 7:08 pm

       Revealing quote that. Also shows how a military officer will regard his career as a stepping stone into corporate life and shape his military career accordingly.
       1. skippy May 1, 2026 at 1:56 am

          That old Kubrick movie mate …. Where mister chin [Douglas] and the General have a chat … Damn you Sir … so its not so much a new thingy via a corporate perch but, more of a life/social network status thingy …
33. flora April 29, 2026 at 4:31 pm

    File under AI: From Breaking Points. utube.

    DYSTOPIAN: AI Surveillance Tech CAN SHUT DOWN YOUR CAR

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxOtWhF9hyw
34. flora April 29, 2026 at 4:57 pm

    File also under AI: From Jacobin magazine.

    Stop the AI Build-Out, Start the Fight

    https://jacobin.com/2026/04/data-center-ai-moratorium-bernie
35. Karen April 29, 2026 at 5:03 pm

    Verso. Verso shut down a BIG paper mill in Wisconsin Rapids, WI during Covid and blamed Covid for the shutdown. Right. The economy of Wisconsin Rapids took a huge hit with the loss of all those high paying jobs.

    That mill bought 25% of the pulpwood in Northern Wisconsin and probably some from the UP of Michigan also. They paid very good money for pulpwood. The shutdown along with the high diesel prices during Covid hit loggers and truckers hard and devastated the logging industry in Wisconsin. Many loggers went bankrupt. Other loggers said you could pick up processors, skidders, etc. very cheap afterward. Logging was/is a very big part of Northern Wisconsin’s economy.

    We had a big storm in August, 2021. My husband and I own 80 acres and the storm knocked down $40,000 worth of large trees. Before Verso closed loggers were a dime a dozen and it would have been no problem finding someone to harvest that storm damage along with some other stuff we wanted selectively cut. Before Verso closed we would have been paid $10-20,000 for that stumpage as the landowner share. We offered the storm damaged timber for free and still couldn’t find anyone to harvest it. That timber is still sitting there and rotting.

    After hearing about Maine it is clear that those private equity bastards caused Wisconsin’s and our loss also.
    1. chuck roast April 29, 2026 at 9:44 pm

       I checked my old logbook for Bucksport:

       8/8/16 7 hours from Rock City. Anchored in 19′ @ high across from the flagpole. They’re demolishing the paper mill.
36. MorningReaderA April 29, 2026 at 7:32 pm

    Regarding the donut hole. I sort of think that the author missed a point. It is the local conditions that matter the most to the people. One might even trying to make an argument that the local conditions are all that matter truly to the living person. So, even the global might be quite different, it is just “ideology” to some extent.

    The blog author was trying to make a political theory application of the donut math. It is a good article, but I think the application is not convincing.
37. Chet G April 29, 2026 at 7:37 pm

    Yves, I truly appreciated your bonus featuring the storks, which more than compensates for all the ongoing war and strife.

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