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Links 4/14/2026

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When Cities Outrun the State Alice Evans (Micael T)

110,000-year-old discovery rewrites human history: Neanderthals and Homo sapiens worked together Science Daily (Kevin W)

The Noun, the Verb, and the Token: How Linguistic Hygiene Enables the New Right Steven Newbury

Perspective: The Clash of Seeing Facing Your Demons (Micael T)

COVID-19/Pandemic

Climate/Environment

Are we heading for ‘super El Niño’ – and what could we expect? Guardian

Here’s how the wildlife trade is fueling disease outbreaks across the globe Washington Post

Red List alarm: Emperor penguins, Antarctic fur seals ‘Endangered’ Oceanographic Magazine

New Crisis in the Making as Central Asia Lacks Enough Water for Spring Planting Jamestown

China?

Koreas

North Korea’s New Destroyers Challenge U.S. Navy Arleigh Burke Class Ships’ Dominance Military Summary

India

India’s Worrying Plans for Dams on Transboundary Rivers Shared with Bangladesh The Diplomat

India considers snakes, crocs for border duty along Bangladesh Daily Sabah

Africa

Ethiopia rations fuel, prioritises key vehicles as war shortages hit iol

Senegal protesters rally over cost of living and debt crisis Africa News

European Disunion

Irish army called in to remove fuel depot blockades Sky

On the streets of Dublin I met fuel protesters and the people who support them – yet our leaders still don’t get it Guardian (resilc)

Old Blighty

No 10 plans for mass protests over Iran war cost of living crisis Telegraph. From late last week, still germane.

Former Nato chief warns UK’s national security ‘in peril’ BBC

UK seeks to jail Palestine Action for ‘terrorism’ amid UK media blackout Grayzone (guurst)

Country that lectures Iran on democracy arrests another 523 people for peacefully protesting Council Estate Media

Israel v. The Resistance

‘Complete Collapse’ Looms – Gaza’s Bread System on the Brink as Flour Vanishes Defend Democracy

Mossad’s 007 Messes Things Further Up for the US and Israel at Everyone Else’s Expense Olivier Boyd-Barreett

A Cruel and Stupid Blockade Daniel Larison

Kevin W correctly called Stavridis a “professional dumbass”:

New Not-So-Cold War

Russia is Preparing a Large Spring OFFENSIVE on Slovyansk History Legends, YouTube

Bank of Russia disputes freeze of assets by EU TASS

The Russian Navy Deterred Estonia From Boarding Its “Shadow Fleet” Andrew Korybko

Indonesia enquires about Russian petroleum product supplies, talks underway Interfax

Imperial Collapse Watch

Has multilateralism hit a dead end? Could International organisations be collateral damage of the war in Iran? The Conversation

Despise Israel AND The Entire Western Empire Caitlin Johnstone (resilc)

Trump 2.0

Trump faces backlash over AI image of him as Jesus and Trump takes down Truth Social post of AI image portraying him as Jesus The Hill

The Fast Supper: Trump gives extraordinary defense of ‘blasphemous’ Jesus image… while holding two McDonald’s bags outside the Oval Office Daily Mail

Staunch Trump Supporters Are Now Asking if He’s the Antichrist Wired. resilc: “At least interning with him.”

First Lady Granted Access to DHS Luxury Jet With Bedroom, Bar and Showers Originally Tied to Deportations Los Angeles Times (Dr. Kevin)

MAGA Is Winning Its War Against U.S. Science Paul Krugman

Economy

The mystery variable that explains stubbornly low consumer sentiment G. Elliott Morris (Micael T). Important.

Average new car prices near $50,000 as rate of increase accelerates Fox26 (Kevin W). Wolf Richter has warned that used car prices are a canary in the coal mine for inflation.

Economic shock of Middle East war to cast shadow over IMF, World Bank meetings Reuters (Kevin W)

Starting material sourcing bottlenecks increase US drug shortage risks: report Fierce Pharma

Global supply chains in chaos after one month of conflict in the Middle East Credendo

This Isn’t a 1970s Oil Shock Foreign Policy

The Market Law of One Price – How the Donald Bombed Energy Consumers, Too Antiwar.com (Kevin W)

The Price Jump Is Coming: Why You Need to Stock Up on Food & Consumer Goods This Week Preparedness & Politics. I can’t read the US but I don’t think the panic buying on food is coming as fast as he thinks particularly in the US, which I don’t believe is facing a naptha and therefore plastics shortage soon. It’s not even remotely happening here even though we are weeks ahead in intense fuel price increases. I do see very selected signs of plastic shortages like a local huge foreignere-friendly grocer having to change some of the packaging they use for food prepared in the store. I don’t think that will arrive here in a serious way until May. I will particularly miss yogurt if that happens; it’s been a daily staple since I was 17. Milk is also delivered in plastic, so it is not as if I can readily get enough milk to make my own.

I also suspect he is over-egging the pudding in assuming pre-hurricane shelf-clearing buying. Most people will analogize to Covid, where shortages were selective (toilet paper! beef! eggs, but not due to Covid but a massive chicken cull). They may not anticipate certain shortages that consumers will find very inconvenient if they happen (say disposable baby diapers?). The US may see shortages of fresh fruits and veg and thus rationing of them by price. I am not at all clear about other food categories.

His list oddly omits some items, like vinegars as well as pickles (this is a big part of my larder, pickled red cabbage, kale and beets). He is also not big on frozen food. I snagged a lot of frozen eel and am hoping to get frozen wild caught smoked salmon trim, which I can by buy the kilo and is shockingly cheap for what it is. Have also stocked up on frozen spinach and berries, tons of coffee (keeps a year if frozen), and nuts and seeds rather than nut butters. I do agree with him on beans and oatmeal, lotta canned beans as well as shelf stable lime juice, salsa, some canned tomatoes, and sun dried tomatoes for fun. I also went very long canned fish (low mercury tuna and salmon), whey protein and powdered bone broth, which is good for collagen as well as some protein. But I also eat more dietary supplements than food and so am forward buying them even more than usual. And don’t forget all those other household items delivered in plastic that might become hard to get (I suspect they will in Asia, not at all sure re the US), like detergents, shampoos, soaps.

AI

Claude Mythos, evaluated Gary Marcus

Mythos and National Power China Talk

OpenAI Staffers Horrified When Senior Leadership Hatched “Insane” Plan to Pit World Governments Against Each Other Futurism (Kevin W)

The Future of Everything is Lies, I Guess: Safety Aphyr (Paul R)

They Cloned Her Voice, Then Claimed Her Songs | AI Music Scams Are Using Copyright Law as a Weapon Against Real Artists Vinyl Culture (Micael T)

AI Doomers Built a Radical Ideology. Now Their Followers Are Acting On It. Jordan Schactel (Micael T)

The Bezzle

How The Trumps Blew $1 Billion On Bitcoin Forbes

Bankers rebuff White House claim that stablecoin yield doesn’t threaten deposits Coindesk

Class Warfare

Organic Intellectuals and Toilet-Paper Fire Un-Diplomatic (Micael T). A must read. I am surprised this sort of thing has been so long in coming.

Crime Is Not a Moral Failure—It’s a System Output William Murphy (Micael T)

Democracy Is Not a Ballot Box: It Is Control Over What We Produce and Who Owns It William Murphy (Micael T)

As U.S. Automakers & Unions Pull Out of Brasil, Chinese Automakers & Sometimes Slave-Like Conditions Move In Mike Elk

The Manosphere fills a void created by neoliberalism which has been largely ignored by progressives Bill Mitchell (Alan S). From last month, still germane.

Antidote du jour. John U: “Desert Bighorn Sheep gamboling in a slot canyon above the Colorado River.”

And a bonus:

A second bonus:

And a third:

See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.

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96 comments

  2. Samuel Conner

    A note on emergency food supplies, dried beans are much cheaper per calorie than canned, and can be cooked easily with a pressure cooker, provided one has electricity (and water).

    I use an Instant Pot, and the power consumption is a fraction of a kilowatt hour (pennies at present prices) per cooking cycle (power consumption around 1 kilowatt while pressurizing, then drops to single digit watts after at pressure). If one happens to have a home solar installation with battery storage, one can cook for free forever.

    1. Samuel Conner

      Adding, if one cooks in double-boiler mode (food in a smaller pot inside the inner pot, with water for pressure at the bottom of the inner pot), one can reduce the amount of spatter on the lid during pressurization (and rapid depressurization, if one does that), which may extend the life of the lid seal. I recommend having spare seals on hand if one expects supply disruptions.

    2. Mark Gisleson

      Dried beans are good, canned goods also good if you do not relish the notion of dining on beans alone.

      Not good? Frozen meat and fish. It’s an excellent bet that if the power goes off, there will be a lot of meat and fish around — all you can eat but eat quickly! This doesn’t apply to folks with their own generators but then you have to worry about fuel. And then, given inevitable societal changes that come with shortages, you will need to protect your fuel, freezers and storerooms from people who are desperate for food/fuel.

      I live in a meat producing area and keep my freezer only partially filled as the electricity will fail long before the local supply of livestock has been wiped out.

      Reorganizing ourselves into coherent political parties capable of dealing with real world problems would, frankly, be easier than surviving coming fuel and food shortages. The challenge in doing so would be coming up with a plan that didn’t comply with the first rule of survivalism: Eat the rich.

      1. Mark Gisleson

        Apologies for not scrolling down and seeing Taunger’s remarks. I should also point out that having electricity when others do not will attract a lot of the wrong kind of attention.

      2. Wukchumni

        Eat the rich

        …would that be a Consom-mé?

        You can prepare as much as you want for something wicked this way comes, but most everybody else hasn’t because we live just-in-time lives in everything we do. Just-in-time memory spans, just-in-time warehousing of information in our noggins, etc.

        Many will not adjust in time, and then it turns into a Max Mad world, oh fully armed and dangerous too, as an added bonus.

        Its gonna be a mess, and the one item of most use is a bitch to store, and highly flammable as an added bonus and goes bad relatively quickly (maybe a year with Sta-Bil additive) so as a result most all of our leashes on life boil down to what’s in the gas tanks of our vehicles.

      3. Yves Smith Post author

        DO NOT MISINFORM READERS.

        Frozen protein IF COOKED is fine for up to 24 hours at room temps.

        If you have a freezer pretty full, it will take hours to get to room temp given thermal mass. So you have ~28 hours.

        That includes smoked and cured fish or smoked chicken if that appeals

        My Japanese eel is cooked.

        1. BrianH

          I come at this not from a prepper background, but as someone who grew up in a rural area where our family canned and froze practically all our needs for the coming year. While frozen food does last for a year, even the best packaging leads to outer edge freezer burn after 8 months, while canning seems to last forever if done carefully. It also depends on the produce, I can’t stand canned corn, but frozen corn is nearly as good as fresh.
          Of course if your freezer goes out, you do have a day or so as it slowly defrosts, but, if the outage persists, you are eventually confronted with having nearly all your food ready for a large buffet.
          If you are concerned about power reliability, it seems leaning towards canning, drying and salting is the best route. And if you have the right location, many root vegetables, onions and squashes (even some fruit) will keep a long time in a properly constructed root cellar.

          1. Yves Smith Post author

            The power where I am has been reliable save one transformer blowout (about 5 hours to fix) and scheduled maintenance (6-10 hours, 3x in 2 years). The latter was part of an upgrade for the entire ‘hood so we may not see that again for a while.

            I was lucky in that I could go to a nearby coffee shop when these outages happened during the day and that my condo has a northern exposure in a complex with a lot of trees.

            If I do buy a condo here, I will ante up for a big battery backup system not so much for the fridge and freezer but to run fans. They are essential for a lot of the year.

        2. AG

          Congratulations to Japanese eel. Although I prefer it fried which would however cause a heat issue. But I assume such delicacy is more of a common thing in your area?
          (For some idiotic reason in lifestyle magazine Germany Yuzu juice, Ramen noodles and Matcha have been a thing in recent years. Especially Matcha is everywhere in all possible shapes and forms.)

      4. earthling

        It’s really sad to realize millions of people are spending so many hours and days trying to scrimp and cut food costs to the bone, buying ahead in fear of even worse times. This isn’t how we should be spending what free time we have.

        And the suffering is for no good reason; only because the 1% will not curb their own greed, half the country voted for a greedy grifter, and half the senate has no conscience.

    3. Yves Smith Post author

      I hate to sound annoyed, but this came off as if you were questioning my prep. The underlying article did recommend dry beans.

      I am NOT cooking beans in a tropical country. Are you nuts?

      Cooking anything, even boiling water, raises the indoor temperature. Even fluorescent lights increase the heat level. I can feel the difference when I walk from an only midly lit room to a dark one at night.

      2. Wukchumni

        I’ve made mention prior of turning an insurance policy against hunger into a gift for those in need…

        My food bank doesn’t care about use-by dates all that much, but no dented or rusty cans, and in regards to the latter, I have my own personal chef, Boyardee in the pantry and easily 9 out of 10 cans of Spaghettios don’t get eaten, so it’s a nice spin-off win-win situation.

        I think the food bank would frown on getting an old bag of beans as a donation, though.

        1. Kontrary Kansan

          Aren’t ants edible? Dry them. Sprinkle on your salad.
          Lots of protein, fiber, and minerals.

          1. AG

            Don´t they say the same about, er, nuts?
            (So either I stay with them nuts – or they have been selling me ants secretly all along. Which explains the similiarity between “ants” and “nuts”)

        2. AG

          True story, long ago:

          FF Coppola came by a friend´s house to visit the friend´s old man.
          Coppola only knew old man liked tomato sauce.
          So Coppola, probably last minute, fetched a few of his cans of tomato cans before hopping on the plane as gift for the old man.
          When Coppola came to the house old man nodded and smiled to the cans handed over by humble Coppola (“self-made!”). Coppola left. Old man never touched the cans. What Coppola did not know, old man was making spaghetti only with his very own tomato sauce recipe.
          Couple years later, old man had already died, we friends go to the kitchen and stumble into the cans by Coppola. All of them still there. We think, old man dead, so no need to keep those cans any longer. We open, cans are all expired. We look at the date. Turns out they had already expired well before Coppola had taken them with him. He must have reached into the wrong shelf in the hurry.

          p.s. with a proper load of red wine we used them cans nonetheless + enough Parmigiano and the sauce was fine. We just had to skim off the top. So Coppola eventually passed the test.

      3. Yves Smith Post author

        I forgot to add, but on top of that, we have tons of itty bitty ants, the tiniest form factor imaginable.

        At a friend’s house, they had gotten inside a sealed Mason jar of cashews. LOTS OF THEM.

        I am not confident of being able to keep ANY food pest-free once it is out of its original packaging ex being in a fridge or freezer.

        An open can of beans can go into the fridge. Non-open cans are clearly bug-proof.

        3. thoughtfulperson

          I’ve wanted to check out a solar cooker, saw some vacuum insulated solar cooking tubes that look like they might work well.

      4. FreeMarketApologist

        Totally get it! Dried beans + overnight soak + pressure cooker helps minimize heating up the kitchen (and an electric induction, rather than gas cooker). I eat rice & beans (various Indian dals and veggie dishes) year round, and it can be a challenge in the summer. The Indians have managed on this diet for centuries, and in similar climate in the southern part of the country, but with the advantage that they have done much cooking out of doors. If you’re in a city without a balcony however…

        1. jefemt

          24 hr dried bean soak is a HUGE saver of energy.

          Look into rocket stoves… maximum BTUs for very little twiggy stick-y wood.

          Really, the most important thing is a pharma grade excessive dose of Fentanyl.
          Or, a much more harsh —reliable gun and one bullet. :(

        2. AG

          Soak the beans (most lentils too of course) overnight, isn´t that normal? Except the red lentils for dal which are available around here at least. Softer and quicker to prepare. Why I prefer them. Lentil burgers, lentil soup, lentil stew…

          1. jefemt

            I force pressure cook dried beans, 3 x water to beans, no soak, when pressed for time.

            2 cycles, over 3-4 hrs. I am under-organized. And an energy hog.

            1. AG

              You don´t appear under-organized! 😉
              At least to me.
              I know pressure-cookers. Used em a few times.
              It´s not for me. But then I don´t have to feed a huge flock and have time to prepare the way I find most convenient.

      5. Mark Gisleson

        Thailand grows a lot of food and the citizenry is not given to panic: you picked a smart safe haven. I do tend to think in terms of temperate zone planning and forget NC has a global readership.

        I’m old enough to remember power outages not being uncommon but never lasting more than a few hours. Yes, this was way back in the era of plentiful transformers.

        All my ‘takes’ are USA-focused. If it weren’t for all our foreign wars I wouldn’t know much about the rest of the world at all.

        1. Yves Smith Post author

          I think people here are unduly chill. Look at a grocer. Even here, plastic EVERYWHERE! How do you get food from the farms (particularly meats) with no plastic? We are about to hit the wall here on plastic. I know of a factory in Bangkok that shut down due to lack of feed stocks. I give it to mid-June/early July when the merde starts to hit the fan.

          As I have said repeatedly, famine (here, mere shortages) are mainly the result of maldistibution, and not overall inadequate production.

          People in Bangkok and on the coasts are not near growing areas. As indicated, fishing has close to stopped due to diesel costs. Maybe fishermen who do daily fishing and sell to local markets are OK but the ones who go out for a 10 days to 2 weeks have stopped

    4. Carolinian

      I use an Indian made Hawkins stove top pressure cooker ordered from Amazon. It works great and if no stove then you can pick up the propane version at Walmart. We campers are already survival mode prepared.

      Of course traditional pressure cookers do require you to use a timer to keep track of the process but they last for years and years. I wonder if Instapot can say the same.

      1. Samuel Conner

        Instapot certainly has a many more failure points than a conventional externally-heated pressure cooker, but it’s still a pretty simple device; few moving parts to wear out. I have been cooking multiple meals/day with a 6qt model since the beginning of the pandemic. The only problem I’ve encountered is that the seal does eventually wear to the point that the pot cannot reach pressure. I have to replace it after a couple or few hundred uses.

    5. Dalepues

      As a young soldier I had to attend various survival lectures given by trainers who had gone days in the bush without packaged food at hand. Most of the roots and plants I have since forgotten, but one part of the last lecture really stuck with me.
      The sergeant said this (paraphrased):

      “None of you here know what hunger is. You think you know because you spent a day without eating because the McDonalds or the KFC was out of range. But I’m here to tell you that that wasn’t hunger.
      I’m here to tell you about real hunger.

      The first day without food will cause you to go to bed with a headache. You’ll most likely get up during the night several times and have trouble going back to sleep. Your head will be pounding.

      The second day the headache will continue and all you will be able to think about is getting something to eat. You’ll start to think about eating leaves off the trees and maybe chew on some grass or weeds. On that second day you won’t be fit to be around anybody else because you’ll be in such a bad state of mind. You’ll be angry, short tempered, easy to piss off. You will be pissed off. That second night you won’t sleep at all. In addition to the head ache your stomach is going to feel like it’s filled up with knotted ropes. You will probably try to vomit, but nothing will come up. No sleep, no food. No plan.

      The third day you’ve reached a crisis point. Your entire body is racked with pain. You’re delirious. Your vision is shot and you’re weak and wobbly. You are so hungry that bad thoughts begin to enter your mind. You try to beat them down, but you know at that moment you could kill for something to eat. Literally kill. So you might think that this part of the course is just some BS we’ve made up for you, you better think again. Because when the day comes and your rations are gone, and there’s no McDonalds around the corner, these roots and plants just might keep your buddy from killing and eating you.”

  3. KD

    324 of the 435 members of Congress are controlled by Israel, and this is not a conspiracy theory.

    You are talking about the greatest legal loophole around FARA and the most successful foreign influence operation perhaps in the history of the American Republic. Of course it is a conspiracy theory, and Anti-Semitism to boot, because if it wasn’t, it would sound a lot like treason, which is an uglier word than Anti-Semitism from the standpoint of political legitimacy/Mandate of Heaven.

    1. AG

      Am I the only one having difficulty to see this particular tweet?!
      (Why should it be blocked – WHY SHOULD IT NOT?!)

      1. KD

        The real issue goes beyond Israel and the Israel Lobby. People elect decision-makers, but decision-makers are influenced in how they make their decisions primarily by money, not what their constituents want. Further, parties exist to provide gate keeping to insure that anyone standing for office is down with money driving political decisions, its the entire operation in DC and in state legislature. The result is a system that looks like a democracy, but functions as an corrupt oligarchy (and by design). As money concentrates, decisions are driven by a narrower and narrower slice of the population, and the general population gets angrier and angrier. But don’t worry, historically elites have had a solution for this problem, its called fascism or authoritarian capitalism, coming to a theater near you.

        1. jefemt

          I was delighted to learn that Orban’s crew helped draft Project 2025. That was new to me.
          Most legislation presented in US is drafted by lobbyists and special interests who have bought their man or woman, both sides of the aisle.

          Citizens United. Money IS speech, Corporations are people. Corporate birthright and/or place of incorporation is immaterial. No ICE needed.

          Perhaps Burning It All Down harkens back to that Blood/Tree of Liberty notion. Globally? Or is it simply Jackpot from over-capacity of a very flawed species?

          Hang in there, everyone!

          1. KD

            The wages of sin is death. Further, the deaths are the deaths of innocents, whether spiritually or corporally, sacrificed to atone for sin. The bigger and nastier and corrupt the system grows, the more innocents souls and bodies it has to consume to grow, until it finally collapses like a cancer.

          2. Vicky Cookies

            Money is speech, unless you want to boycott Israel. Then, you have no right to remain silent.

  4. taunger

    Re frozen foods and preppers – I’m sure you realize, Yves, but I’ll comment to draw out a couple details. frozen is less desirable due to need for refrigeration. Prepper community is often thinking of grid failure (a reasonable mid-term concern as maintenance piles up due to limited replacement equipment). Backup systems to power a freezer are costly, as the initial amperage draw of a compressor is high. So, path of least resistance toward survival for many preppers avoids frozen.

    1. Andrew F

      There’s a growing community of Amish in my area and one of the earliest developments other than house and barn are small square ponds to harvest ice and use all summer for freezing/refrigeration. Went inside a home once occupied by Amish and still had frozen ice in the late summer. When people outside the Amish community move into these homes they rip those out.

    2. Yves Smith Post author

      I am not a prepper. I am stockpiling for food shortages (or at least shortages in what I like to eat) due to plastic shortages likely badly impacting distribution. And if they don’t occur, I will still have saved some $ via getting lot of food at current prices.

  5. AG

    re: US wealth distribution

    March 30 2026

    America’s wealthiest households hit $30 million as middle class lags
    America’s richest are rewriting the rules of the economy.
    https://www.thestreet.com/personal-finance/americas-wealthiest-households-hit-30-million-as-middle-class-lags

    Roughly 430,000 households in the United States now carry a net worth of $30 million or more, based on Federal Reserve data. Within that group, about 74,000 households are worth $100 million or more, according to an analysis by Princeton economist Owen Zidar, as reported by The Wall Street Journal.

    Their ranks have expanded far faster than the general population, fueled by soaring stock prices and high-value private investments.

    Nearly 72% of the top 0.1% household wealth consists of corporate equities, mutual fund shares, and private businesses, according to the Federal Reserve’s Distributional Financial Accounts. The S&P 500 has more than tripled over the past decade, and those gains have flowed overwhelmingly to the wealthiest households in America.

    Top 0.1% have seen their wealth multiply more than 13-fold over 50 years.

    and so on…

    CBS News
    Jan. 31 2026

    Wealth inequality in America just hit its widest gap in more than 3 decades
    https://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-wealth-gap-widest-in-three-decades-federal-reserve/?ftag=CNM-00-10aab6a&linkId=900460731

    The top 1% of households owned 31.7% of all U.S. wealth in the third quarter of 2025, the highest share on record since the Federal Reserve began tracking household wealth in 1989. That share has increased even as wealth growth for the rest of the population has stalled or slowed, the data shows.

    Collectively, the wealthiest 1% held about $55 trillion in assets in the third quarter of 2025 — roughly equal to the wealth held by the bottom 90% of Americans combined.

    p.s. German wealth distribution around 2023 by comparison: top 10% own 50%, bottom 50% own 3%.

    In France as effect of the Covid crisis, I believe le monde dipl. had reported a few years ago, number of billionaires had quadrupled. Is that possible…

    430k is a lot of people to execute to apply the 1917 solution…which means also to say: Those people are a lot of influence which you need to break.

    Which was the reason why Hobsbawm defended the Soviet purges. To quote Start Trek II “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of few. Or the one.”

    Am not on the side of that. But of course, how do you solve this. Because those forces will never stop from doing everything to defend their power.

    That is a serious problem, the left (as in cooperative, humanistic, soldarity-driven) hasn´t solved…

    1. rob

      that is a real point.

      What we are up against(so many things)… are being driven by so many people’s/families/”households” best interests. The people in the US, and the rest of the world who are doing well financially, which means are secure in their perceived future; are really the problem. OUR problem, not theirs. THEIR problem is all of us(the vast majority of actual people), and our persistence in wanting a fairer world.
      All the groups out there. the left and the right . All seem to be what is actually driving the idiocy ,with trump as the lightning rod. But the democrats, and establishment voices like richard Haas of the Council on foreign relations, saying there should be a blockade… then trump said there would be.
      We have the left and the right all moving the ball down the road to fascism.The religious,the progressives(in name only),the oppressed(in name only) project 2025,technocracy,etc
      And for sure , these people by and large are really the banality of evil….led by the nose by a manipulated media and an education system that teaches against the discernment of a class system. The education system is attacked in any way that would produce an educated population for the resistance to the class war that has been waged since the beginning of this country. After all,
      The “founding fathers” created this country as a Republic. Specifically to allow those financially well off,
      ‘properly” minded men to control the levers of power. The problem 250 years ago… is the same problem we have today, except on a global stage, during a planetary moment of crisis.

      And now we are just at the point of “when a game is rigged for too long, those who win get stupid”

      1. AG

        “We have the left and the right all moving the ball down the road to fascism.”

        And those among the left do not understand that they are part of it.
        Mayb that´s the core issue.

        Or where: “the rabbit is in the pepper” 😂 – to translate literally a German idiom (“there´s the rub” or “crux of the matter”). In fact German too knows the term crux as Krux.

        2. KD

          To start, stop calling it “inequality” and start talking class warfare and the fruit of intentional policy decisions intended to enrich the wealthy at the expense of workers.

      2. Mark Gisleson

        Reading about our long slow slide into ex-empire the word that comes to mind unbidden most often is in fact banal (with evil a very close second). Hannah Arendt nailed that one.

      3. Steve H.

        Turchin recently:

        > Disintegrative phases end when elites finally figure out how to shut down the wealth pump, but this is a story for another post.

    2. vao

      “430k is a lot of people to execute to apply the 1917 solution…”

      Just apply the 1793 solution: tumbrils and guillotine.

      After all, during the “Terreur”, the French executed 35k-40k people when their total population was slightly above 28m; this corresponds pretty exactly to 430k for a 341m population in the USA.

      1. AG

        yep

        But with 1793 the moral question about violence and uprisings in discourse today comes up much less than with 1917.

        It would also correspond with Yves´s repeated concerns about inequality in the US today being worse than in pre-revolutionary France.

      2. Lefty Godot

        In essence we are all working for about 9,900 people. 900 billionaires and 9,000 centimillionaires. Of course each of those individuals probably has immediate family and some top lieutenants who would very closely share their interests and opinions. So realistically there are about 99,900 people who could just go away, and huge amounts of wealth could be returned to the plebs and a whole lot of policies and practices that only benefited those wealthy people could be repealed/revoked/terminated with extreme prejudice. Certainly quite a few members of Congress and the Supreme Court fit into that “top lieutenants” category, while many others are just grifters that should be encouraged to find some other line of work with their heads still attached. It really is astonishing how such a small group of people is able to lord it over the other 330,000,000 Americans unchallenged. It’s not even “the 1%” but a fraction of a percent.

        1. GF

          I think that small group of people lording it over the rest uses a simple system to get what they want – they buy for it. A 90% wealth tax would solve the problem.

  6. AG

    re: EU v. freedom of speech

    BERLINER ZEITUNG

    machine-translation

    EU chat control 2.0: Is the surveillance of private messages finally coming?
    The EU’s chat control measures have already failed several times. But behind closed doors, negotiations for compromises are now underway once again.
    https://archive.is/LIe3x

    The so-called EU chat monitoring was supposed to be a thing of the past. A corresponding vote in Brussels has already failed twice. However, according to a leaked document, EU governments are still considering various options. A negotiation process between the European Parliament, the Council of the EU, and the Commission, a so-called trilogue, is scheduled for Thursday. Could “chat monitoring 2.0” still be implemented?

    Officially, the measure is intended to protect children, but its effectiveness has not yet been proven. An EU exception temporarily allowed companies like Meta and LinkedIn to search private messages indiscriminately and on a large scale – this regulation expired on April 3. Whether such practices will continue is currently unclear.
    (…)
    EU chat control: No end in sight?

    The European Parliament advocates for strict limitations on such intrusions: scans should only be conducted in cases of concrete suspicion and specifically target individual users or groups, and should only take place with a court order. End-to-end encrypted communication and so-called grooming should be explicitly excluded. The Council of Member States goes even further and rejects mandatory searches entirely. Instead, providers should be able to take “voluntary” action against abusive content; at the same time, it is emphasized that encryption must under no circumstances be weakened or circumvented.
    (…)
    According to the document, a combination of voluntary measures by providers and supplementary monitoring mechanisms by an EU authority would be conceivable.
    (…)
    negotiations will thus continue.

  7. upstater

    Uh-oh… this is getting serious. When airlines pause share buybacks, you know this is serious!

    Jet fuel shock from Iran war worsens crisis for global airlines Reuters

    Underscoring efforts to preserve cash, Qantas has delayed a planned share buyback, citing higher and volatile fuel prices, one of the first ​major carriers to stall shareholder returns.

    Those executive stock options were so in the money until February 28! Then there is this potential antitrust immune monstrosity getting a hand wave review:

    United Airlines CEO pitched American Airlines tie-up in meeting with Trump, sources say

  8. Ben Panga

    >Staunch Trump Supporters Are Now Asking if He’s the Antichrist

    If I understand apocalyptic Christianity correct this still would be good, right? We need the Antichrist before we get Jesus 2?

    2. Joe Renter

      In Theosophy the antichrist is not a person, but rather as an archetypal force or energy, a system of illusion that opposes the evolutionary progress of humanity.
      Also in modern esoteric thought that energy or force was battled in WW1 and WW2 where it was defeated. Unfortunately the dark brothers are making an another last stand on many fronts. They are working through mostly the economic system and the axis of evil. This axis is a triangle that has a physical locations as well. Want to guess where they might be located? One is in the settler colony.

      1. Jonathan Holland Becnel

        THESE GREEDY NAZI FUCKS HAVE BEEN BIDING THEIR TIME SINCE WWII.

        THEY HAVE CREATED VAST RESERVES OF CAPITAL TO COUP THE HIGHEST LEVELS OF FINANCE AND POLITICS THROUGHOUT THE EMPIRE.

        THEY ARE MAKING THEIR MOVE, BUT WILL BE DEFEATED ONCE MORE THANK JOVE!

        PATRIOTS OF THE WORLD UNITE AGAINST THESE FASCIST LOSER PSYCHOPATHS!

        #AMERICANREVOLUTION2

  9. 4paul

    I don’t want to speak for anyone, would we agree by next year the world will look like an apocalyptic sci fi movie (Mad Max, Dune, Children of Men, whatever your fave?)

    Surely there is at least one person on planet earth who paid a hundred million USD for a tanker full of oil, to be delivered last week, and it has not even left the Gulf. How has that not caused lawyers/accountants/insurance/markets to freak? The Global Observable Oil Inventory graph from Eric Nuttal shows plenty of of oil in tanks, but that has to get to a refinery and be refined; is anyone re-routing it?? And given petroleum products are in everything, those stocks will be drawn down lightning quick, making oil Just In Time, which makes everything manufactured subject to daily disruption: “sorry mates, no work today, truck didn’t arrive, check back tomorrow”.

    I don’t think the world has seen a complete lack of Dead Dinosaur Juice; Covid and 9/11 were demand shocks; the 1973 oil shock was because of price; year 2008 Global Financial Meltdown the US government pushed an ungodly god-like amount of Quantitative Easing which lubricated the proceess and kept The Spice Must Flow. The world has never seen a complete lack of Dead Dinosaur Juice, so no one knows how to fix it, and the previous fixes (QE) won’t do anything.

    Do we agree, by the end of this calendar year:
    – fuel riots
    – food riots
    in a few countries in
    – EU
    – south/east Asia
    – Africa
    – a couple in South/Central America
    then next year all over the planet?
    any countries already in strife (Somalia, Sudan, Sahel, Syria, Lebanon, Ukraine) will become even worse hellholes?

    by the end of this calendar year prices on literally every good and service >+10% (at the pump gasoline in the US is already there)?

    Absent a magic wand, I don’t see how to avoid the worst case scenario; I am sympathetic to the idea that worst case scenarios never happen, and Covid was not even close to the worst case, but I think most of us agree Covid was horrific, made more severe by our Leaders’ poor decisions.

    I mean, even if today we pretend like all this never happened, and ships sail, there is still the damage to ports and production in the Gulf countries … I know the US is more insulated than other countries, but Blowback tells us the US will feel plenty of pain (the poors more than the rich). I am very confused.

    1. jefemt

      I personally believe it is that grim, and the logical flow, based on the locale and the players, is a very grim outcome. It might not be sudden, but instead a very drawn out shitty decline. Lotta sufferin’.

      My problem is I fail to find any ironic humor in The Folly. It’s a problem— I think I take it all too seriously, probably because I was brought up to believe in making a difference, agency, morality, yada.

      In terms of mind-f*ckery, Covid was a piker!

      1. Wukchumni

        No one wants to fix it.

        We’re in a prolonged flat-spin in our aircraft, and so far-so good.

        The only advice I can give is to embrace something that doesn’t involve money in really any capacity, and the wilderness doesn’t take credit cards either.

        Everything else with a price tag attached is going to be in for a heck of a roller coaster ride, no really more of an ascent in a cable car, with the whipsaw of inflation felt all over the world.

  10. nap

    Happy New Year, Yves! And thank you for all your amazing work. (Hope you don’t get too wet.)

  11. William Beyer

    Regarding the toilet paper fire…where was the fire sprinkler systems that would have suppressed the fire quickly? No way in hell a million square foot warehouse did not have such a system. Sabotage likely.

  12. Jason Boxman

    From Organic Intellectuals and Toilet-Paper Fire

    But if the system of exploitation keeps ratcheting its squeeze on the wages and working conditions of labor for the sake of maximizing profit, eventually you hit a breaking point. You can only sheer a sheep so deep before you’re actually skinning it. I’m talking about capitalists cannibalizing the very labor that produces the surplus value that keeps capitalism going. When you’re cutting into muscle, you’re going to get spasmodic reactions.

    I wonder where that breaking point really is? We have SNAP because employers pay so little at times, hello Walmart, that employees would starve to death without the federal government subsidizing the cost of Walmart’s labor. Capitalists already do the starvation wage thing, to great effect.

    This is why the working class needs what Gramsci called “organic intellectuals” of its own—people who can articulate the interests of the masses, who can explain how and why the people share an objective solidarity of position as exploited, surplus, and repressed labor. Organic intellectuals must be by and for the class whose interests they represent. They must know the taste of pain that makes the working class more unified in its interests than workers themselves might realize. It is the role of the organic intellectual to express into being what makes it possible to even speak of a working class. And in bringing about the consciousness of the worker in a shared project, it makes collective action possible. And collective action is the opposite of random acts of arson and assassination.

    Interestingly, when I read this I recall Lambert pointing out that newspapers laid off all their labor reporters, and to the extent any labor issue is covered, it is by business reporters. And we know media generally takes stories of working class privation and puts that happy time spin on it.

    1. jefemt

      Third time the charm? I promise this is the last time…

      Everyone should watch, “If A Tree Falls… a story of the Earth Liberation Front”
      Environmentalism and Social Justice are intertwined, right? Great documentary.

      Arson is arson, NOT Terrorism, right? Words matter?

      https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1787725/

    2. Alphonse

      the working class needs . . . intellectuals . . . by and for the class whose interests they represent.

      Absolutely. This is why progressives cannot represent the working class and why most of the nominal left abandoned it. Selectorate theory: A leader’s number one priority is is to reward the winning coalition that gained him power and keeps him there, for without power he can achieve nothing.

      I worked for the Green party. I agreed with many of their policies. Then I realized my mistake: no matter their pretty policies their primary agenda will always be to pay off their PMC supporters. It won’t even be cynical. That is who they are.

      I further realized that this means not me. I own assets. My family is my first priority. I can feel how that influences my thinking. I do not believe that anyone can escape his interests – or even that he necessarily should. There is much exploitation, some conscious, some unconscious, in the name of client groups. Far better is an honest negotiation between parties who own up to their interests. Negotiation takes strength. Do not ask me to cast aside my sword and represent you. Has that worked in the middle east? No: let you have a sword also. Then we can look at the alternative, sit down and find an honest peace.

      Honest negotiation between strong parties pursuing their interests is a masculine strategy. Moderates are the first target of zealots. The manosphere article mentions no positive vision of masculinity. Maybe the fault lies with the documentary; regardless, the article does not seriously engage with the legitimate concerns and experiences of men. It presents only abusive strivers and progressive feminists. “You are with us or you are with the terrorists.” No, I don’t think so.

      There are more moderate advocates of masculinity, from Teal Swan to Holly Mathnerd to Helen Andrews, or my favourite, reactionary feminist Mary Harrington. It speaks volumes that those who first comes to mind who are able to speak about this are women. Men must not rely on others to represent us.

      Oh, the empire has done its job well. Divide and conquer. Raise up minority client groups. Make them hated. You can rely on their loyalty for they dare not make common cause with the majority whose oppression you use them for. This is the core function of elite universities: select the best of the marginalized and integrate them into the ruling class.

      I have said similar things about men here before, to the protests of boomer men. I believe your admissions that your generation mistreated women. Nor do I imply that mistreatment has ended. Doing wrong is not a zero-sum game. I suspect many of you had bad fathers. But to me you are living in the past no less than your fellows whose Cold War hatred and fear of Russia never ended. It is necessary but not sufficient to satisfy the material needs of men. And we all need their strength. First, listen.

      1. Bad Coffee

        There are more moderate advocates of masculinity, from Teal Swan to Holly Mathnerd to Helen Andrews, or my favourite, reactionary feminist Mary Harrington. It speaks volumes that those who first comes to mind who are able to speak about this are women.

        We are not supposed to know much about the moderate manosphere – the really dangerous one. It speaks volumes indeed how invisible they are, how adeptly they are bracketed out by Theroux and the acceptable public discourse. Just in case you are up for a starting dive for yourself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WV7uVf9I-4g

        It is not just neoliberalism that construes lesser males as miserable failures – it is a part of human sociobiology. As Tate said roughly: women are born valuable and wonderful to the society, while men are not born with any value – you have to demonstrate it to earn respect, good money, sex or anything. That is a function of own diligence after all, whatever the rationalising polite society says.

  13. Earl

    “Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City” is the topic of Greg Grandin’s narrative of Henry Ford’s attempt starting in 1927, to create a rubber plantation on a tract of Amazonia twice the area of Delaware. The project was an example of delusional capitalistic overreach defeated by the environment and the culture of the native workers. The book includes the interaction of Ford’s management with the Brazilian state and national governments. I was unaware of the influence of the Ford dealer network. If Ford has indeed abandoned Brasil, it is the end of a generation’s long involvement. I see that Ford is to partner with Chinese producer Geeley to make EVs in underutilized Ford factories in Europe.

  15. upstater

    Freight railroads shrink-mode. The Shortline Railroad Association gave some awards (Shortlines bought up light density branches from the 4 major class 1s) . This was interesting from the CEO of Finger Lakes Railway: Trains magazine

    “When I started in the business, we had about a 35% market share of the total tons that move in this country. We were the first call that most transportation managers made when they had to move something. We had warehouses that we worked with, and partnerships to develop new and maintain a current level of business.

    “That’s all changed. Today, I think we do border on the point of irrelevance when you start to look at the numbers. Our market share today has gone from 35% to 9% [added]. That’s all we have, of all the tons that move in this country. … Nine percent of the total 11 billion tons in this country is not good,” Smith said.

    Part of the problem, he suggested, is that railroads are being shortsighted about the traffic they chase. Or perhaps not short-sighted enough, given that they focus on long-haul traffic when, he said, 90% of the nation’s freight moves are 500 miles or less.

    The class 1s have been asset stripping since Carter’s deregulation. PSR greatly exacerbated the decline.

    1. Kyle

      It truly is a race to bottom with freight rail in the USA – shed all competitive traffic and then soak captive customers with the worst service and high rates. I work at a major North American railcar lessor and the contradictions are maddening. For example, we have to move railcar wheels by semi-truck instead of railcar to our railcar repair facility because (1) the Class Is and TTX have completely allowed car types for this commodity to age out and (2) a *negotiated* rate (not tariff) for moving railcar wheels is 10 TIMES higher than semi-truck for only 3 times the shipment volume! Just his past quarter, I’ve had THREE instances of lessees preferring to move their damaged railcar via semi-truck instead of rail (it’s a nightmare for our shop guys to unload from a semi-truck instead of rail ugh) A perfect avatar of the USA’s industrial decay and rentier favored planning

    2. Glen

      While making some family related travels last year thru nine western states, I noticed more than a few short line railroads that used the same orange, black, and yellow color scheme on the locomotives and traced it back to this:

      Genesee & Wyoming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genesee_%26_Wyoming

      Genesee & Wyoming Inc. (G&W) is an American short line railroad holding company, that owns or maintains an interest in 122 railroads and railways in the United States, Canada, Belgium, the Netherlands, Poland, Bolivia and the United Kingdom; and formerly in Australia.

      Here’s an incomplete list of the railroads owned by this holding company:

      List of railroads owned by Genesee & Wyoming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_railroads_owned_by_Genesee_%26_Wyoming

      I’m not sure what to make of this except that it sure looks like the reason for the Sherman Anti-trust Act has effectively been undone with this massive consolidation of the American railroads, and I completely agree with you that the loss of market share is also a disaster. It wasn’t that long ago that the railroads were bragging that “mileage” on a freight train was effectively 400 mpg (I think it was fuel required to move a ton of goods) compared to whatever a diesel truck gets rolling down the freeway (7.2 mpg is the Federal minimum for new semi’s, older ones averaged 5 mpg). Seems like smarter companies would be moving shipping to the rails if it is at all possible, and the country would be requiring electric trucks to do the short haul moves (like from ship to rail, or rail to point of use) given what’s going to happen to the world’s diesel supply. This obviously could not be done everywhere, but even implementing something like this at the large ports could potentially save a lot of diesel fuel.

  16. Es s Ce Tera

    re: ICJ ruling Israel committed genocide

    I see nothing in the news, does anyone else see anything?

  17. Wukchumni

    Average new car prices near $50,000 as rate of increase accelerates Fox26
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    I’ve now driven further than the Moon in my trusty Tacoma @ 241k miles, and its a bit long in the tooth, but has always faithfully gotten me everywhere without a hitch in that nearly quarter of a million miles, so in lieu of buying a new ride and then driving it into the ground, i’m staying put.

    A weird thing in theft has come about, tailgates on Tacomas are being stolen apparently left and right. Mine has a prominent dent, which will hopefully dissuade would-be tell tail tales.

  18. flora

    A new fake Windows update scam.

    Scams, Threat Intel
    This fake Windows support website delivers password-stealing malware

    https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/scams/2026/04/this-fake-windows-support-website-delivers-password-stealing-malware

    The payload:
    “A fake Microsoft support website is tricking people into downloading what looks like a normal Windows update. Instead, it installs malware designed to steal passwords, payment details, and account access. Because the file looks legitimate and avoids detection, it can slip past both users and security tools.”

    1. flora

      As the article notes:

      If you receive an email, text, or notification urging you to install an urgent update, don’t click the link. Instead, open Settings > Windows Update and check directly.

      1. ambrit

        We received this past weekend a very well constructed phishing e-mail purporting to be from E-Bay. The form and font of the fake were identical to real E-Bay communications. Something didn’t seem right, so I went to our E-Bay account to check and, no such message listed. I am going to make it a habit in future to go to the proprietary account that any E-mail says it represents and double check. Hackers are getting better by the day.
        Stay safe. Be vigilant.

  19. Judith

    This is a Water Cooler comment.

    In western MA, I just saw a bumper sticker that said “OBAMA 2028”.

    1. Lefty Godot

      Ugh. Yes, my extended neighborhood and there are a lot of deluded woke Democrat, blue-no-matter-who people of comfortable means out and visible. “If we could just have a BIPOC-LGBTQIA+ President overthrowing foreign governments for Democracy and bombing elementary schools for Human Rights, everything would be ever so wonderfully better!” Like the MAGA crowd, these folks are deeply siloed in their fake news sources and they believe every word, whether it’s about Trump the Arch-Demon or Evil Putin or Islamic Terrorists and Antisemites hiding in every woodpile. A decent sort who is running for Congress against the incumbent here is calling for a laundry list of 15+ campaign pledges to please the PMC types, including things that will alienate half the potential non-PMC voters and things that Democrats have promised forever and never delivered on, because he can’t just say the issues are Corruption, Empire, War, STOP and have his potential voters understand that. It’s sad.

      1. ChrisFromGA

        People forget that Obama (and especially Hillary, being foisted on the voters) gave birth to Trumpism.

        With a big role for the Republican party becoming a bunch of low-energy simps – Exhibit A: Mike Johnson.

    2. Mark Gisleson

      I still have GIANT METEOR 2016 on the back of my car.

      Wow. Until I typed that I didn’t really realize how old my car is (permanently parked when the pandemic started).

  21. XXYY

    Organic Intellectuals and Toilet-Paper Fire Un-Diplomatic . A must read. I am surprised this sort of thing has been so long in coming.

    Workers and employees taking revenge on their employers is certainly something that’s been with us since the Industrial Revolution if not long before. I suspect specific incidents are always ruthlessly suppressed both in the information system and by criminal penalties, not to mention whipping, lynching, and so on. The first of these is getting substantially harder in the internet age, when elites have largely lost their former ability to moderate almost everything we see and hear.

    It does seem like employers are getting more and more ruthless, and that instead of doing it discreetly are now speaking about it in the open rather proudly. People like Elon Musk and his followers, for example, seem to preen and pat themselves on the back when they discuss how they have lowered their workers pay, crushed their unions, moved their work offshore, and so on.

    Doubtless elites have talked amongst themselves this way over glasses of brandy in front of the fire, but now they seem to have much less reticence, perhaps a result of spending their days surrounded by yes men and fanboys and enjoying a constant, wide separation between themselves and their workers.

  22. Grebo

    Neanderthals and Homo sapiens worked together [in Israel]

    Genesis 6:4

    There were giants [Nephilim] in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.

    Numbers 13:33

    And there we saw the giants, the sons of Anak, which come of the giants: and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight.

  23. ThirtyOne

    Facepalm: It’s another day, another sign of the growing anti-AI data center sentiment in the US. One week after the city council of Festus, Missouri, voted 6-2 to approve a development agreement for a $6 billion facility, voters removed all four incumbents who were up for reelection, changing half of the eight-seat council in a single night.
    https://www.techspot.com/news/112066-missouri-town-ousts-half-city-council-after-6.html

    Also:
    It was reported last week that 13 shots were fired at Indianapolis councilman Ron Gibson’s home after he backed a $500 million data center project that has caused months of protests and rallies from residents. A note was left on his doorstep that read “No Data Centers.”

  24. Grebo

    Re: yogurt

    I make my own from powdered milk. Mix it up by shaking in a half-full bottle. I use an instant-pot to boil it, then once it has cooled stir in a couple of spoonfuls from the previous batch and ‘cook’ it. Low-tech methods are not much harder.

  25. chris

    It may be hard to keep up with all the local social destruction given what’s happening in the Middle East, but, we here in the US are still managing to fall apart independent of what is happening with the war. Hampshire College just announced it was closing. Hampshire College was not a little school of cosmetology or an ITT tech type institution. It had been in operation since 1965. It had research and grants and small class sizes, all the things that were supposed to be ideals for a small liberal arts college. With the demographic cliff of graduating high school seniors about to hit, I expect Hampshire will have a lot of company soon.

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