The Canterbury Commute Dead Language Society (Micael T)
We’ve Been Getting the Ancient Greeks All Wrong Hedgehog Review (Micael T)
Why Does Music in Science Fiction Sound Like That? JSTOR (Micael T)
“Experts Say,” Um, No They Don’t Bentham’s Bulldog (Micael T)
The smelly baby problem Virginia Postrel (Micael T)
How American Dads Became the Parents Their Fathers Never Were Derek Thompson
Partying in the age of constant optimisation: Can hedonism and wellness truly coexist? Alexi Gunner
COVID-19/Pamdemics
Brain involvement:
➡️ PET studies show diffuse neuroinflammation in Long COVID
→ correlates with fatigue, brain fog👉 Likely driven by immune signaling, not direct infection 7/ pic.twitter.com/DpLlhw1PpY
— Vipin M. Vashishtha (@vipintukur) May 1, 2026
Fascinating new research from @PlzSolveCFS: What is going on with T cells in Long COVID and ME/CFS? 🤔👇
In this talk, researchers
Dr. Liisa Selin, Dr. Ayano Kohlgruber, and Dr. Roshan Kumar discuss their newest work, arguing that dysfunctional T-cells are driving MECFS and… pic.twitter.com/Ndi13XiW68— Long COVID Labs (@longcovidlabs) May 1, 2026
Climate/Environment
Setback in breeding low-methane cows Farmers Weekly
The quiet contradiction at the heart of the energy transition Lowy Institute
For The Past 20 Years Antarctica’s Deep Ocean Has Been Heating Up, Scientists Reveal Time
Europe hit by record heat, glacier loss and marine extremes per climate report France24
Tropical rainforest loss eases after record year, but still ‘11 football fields a minute’ South China Morning Post
Rare earth mining is poisoning Mekong River tributaries, threatening ‘the world’s kitchen’ Arab News
More than 60 percent of U.S. is covered by drought as impacts worsen Washington Post
China?
Hormuz effect? How US, China are ramping up tensions over the Panama Canal Aljazeera
A Top Russian Expert Criticized China’s “Rational” Response To Recent US Moves Andrew Korybko
Japan
Alternative framing for Japan's intervention
Japan sold $35 billion of dollars bought at around 80 yen the dollar for close to 160 yen, booking a massive profit that reduced Japan's net public debt — and in the process brough Japan high gross public debt down
— Brad Setser (@Brad_Setser) May 1, 2026
Japan Weighs $3 Billion Power Subsidies as LNG Crunch Bites OilPrice
Japanese travellers to China drastically decrease amid diplomatic row Bangkok Post
Africa
Sudan’s civil war: ‘Genocide’ in plain sight DW
Ethiopia Accuses Tigray Rebels of Joining Hands With Eritrea, Armed Group FirstPost
Jihadists urge united front against Mali junta as Bamako blockade begins France24
Southeast Asia
Myanmar ex-leader Aung San Suu Kyi moved to house arrest, military says BBC. Lead story.
South of the Border
Mexican Democracy (#MorningPressConferenceFromThePeople from the National Palace. Wednesday, April 29, 2026 YouTube). Rafeal Z:
In Mexico democracy is performed daily by having the president communicating with the citizenry presenting her activity and being open to any questions by the people. This time her presentation is translated to English, that’s why I’m sending it to you.
Cuba is running out of time. We need fuel now to save lives Guardian
European Disunion
US to cut troop levels in Germany by 5,000 amid Trump spat with Merz BBC (Kevin W)
Europe is LOST: War Preparations on Every Level | Dr. Ulrike Guérot Neutrality Studies. Robin K: “Pascal Lottaz hosts a very illuminating discussion of the tensions within the EU/NATO.”
French economy records zero growth in first quarter France24
Old Blighty
Thousands of UK firms face collapse as financial crisis deepens amid Iran war and tax increases Independent
Israel v. The Resistance
Gaza aid flotilla activists taken to Iraklio airport for repatriation ekathimerini
‘Another famine would be a nightmare’: Gaza’s descent into new food crisis National News
From Iran to Lebanon: the “Gaza model” is now a standard Israeli-American tactic of war Thomas Fazi
An Israeli importer has postponed the unloading of a ship carrying Russian grain in Haifa Vzglayd via machine translation. Micael T: “So the EU does have power over the zionazis? They just choose to not use it for good purposes.”
A Perspective From Lebanon: Who Will We Be When Things Get Hard? Nate Hagen
Trump renews call for Netanyahu pardon – Axios RT (Kevin W)
Why the 60‑day War Powers Resolution deadline doesn’t actually constrain presidents The Conversation (Kevin W)
An Unending War Based on Lies Daniel Larison
New Not-So-Cold War
Fraudsters have begun targeting Russians with SMS bombing glagol via machine translation (Micael T)
May 2, 2014: Ukrainian pro-Maidan Right Sector extremists killed at least 48 anti-Maidan protesters in Odessa Eva Karene Bartlett
Russia is stepping up its air strikes against Ukraine: The number of attacks has reached a new high Table Briefings
Lithuania charges 13 over alleged Russian-linked assassination and sabotage network Defence Matters
Why Russia is popular in the Global South Kamil Galeev (Randy K)
The mobilization mafia Events in Ukraine
Trump 2.0
Why Trump Might Come to Regret the Iran War Foreign Policy. Framings like this drive me nuts. If Trump were capable of regret, he’d regret the war now. And the authors seem unable to grasp that the war has mad Iran stronger. This is a point Alexander Mercouris has made, that winners in a conflict, even if it comes at high cost, emerge stronger. And on top of that, whether Iran is now a fourth great power is a topic of debate. That view was inconceivable before this war.
Trump on US Navy Seizing Ships:
It’s a very profitable business. We’re like pirates. pic.twitter.com/erWDQmJWnw
— Acyn (@Acyn) May 2, 2026
Trump says he will raise tariffs on EU autos to 25% Reuters. Unless Trump has a Commerce Department study backing this move, this tariff is not legal.
Tribal Terrorism John Robb (Micael T). Important
Don’t Believe Everything That You Read The Memory Hole (fk)
Fed
Behind Powell’s High-Stakes Decision to Stay at the Fed New York Times (Kevin W)
Trump fumes as Jerome Powell plots future at Federal Reserve The Hill. “Plots” as opposed to “plans”? Seriously?
Democrats Suck
Pundits are wrong about the Democrats’ “missing” voters G. Elliott Morris
L’affaire Epstein
Our No Longer Free Press
Press freedom worldwide falls to its lowest level in 25 years Aljazeera
Hearing that the Daily Wire laid off over 50% of their staff today.
As much as I positively despise what their execs put me and my family through there are a lot of good people that work there with families to feed who could use a prayer.
— Candace Owens (@RealCandaceO) May 1, 2026
Economy
Billions of meals at risk due to Iran war, says fertiliser boss BBC. This metric is meaningless. Craig Tindale estimated the fall in output level globally in key crop categories from the war + El Nino. Forgive my sloppy screenshot:
Global energy shock tests limits of oil reserves Monde Diplomatique
Why U.S. Oil Companies Are Not Plugging the World’s Energy Gap New York Times (Kevin W)
Asian currencies wilting in the Iran war’s heat Asia Times (Kevin W). Erm, the baht is where it was a year ago.
Tankers Move from Fuel to Crude Trade as War Upends Flows OilPrice
Antitrust
Who Actually Controls the Music Industry in 2026? | Live Nation, Spotify, and the Labels are Buying Everything Vinyl Culture (Micael T)
AI
Pentagon strikes deals with 7 Big Tech companies after shunning Anthropic CNN (Kevin W)
The Bezzle
Securitization of Oil Wells: The New Energy Subprime in Three Dimensions 3D News. Total way too small to be a systemic hazard. More an indicator of froth.
Guillotine Watch
The humiliating cross-examination of Elon Musk Judd Legum
Dubai chefs’ shrink menus as Iran war makes tomatillos, scallops harder to source Internazionale
Class Warfare
Who Rules America? Inside the Hidden Architecture of the Ruling Class William Murphy
CEO pay soared in 2025, 20 times faster than workers’ pay Guardian
Antidote du jour. John U: “A couple of wild Toms walking down the street”:
A bonus
A farmer in rural Ireland noticed that one of his cows would cry for hours every time he left for the train station to pick up supplies.
Moved by her distress, he started taking her with him. To everyone’s surprise, the cow quickly learned the routine. She would calmly wait on… pic.twitter.com/CJ44OIFSLf
— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) April 30, 2026
A second bonus:
Two cows saw their owner coming home and jumped up to greet him like giant puppies. pic.twitter.com/AvM2vA5qsT
— The Figen (@TheFigen_) April 30, 2026
And a third:
Slovakian woman visits the lions she raised as cubs. Their parents were used in circuses across Eastern Europe and rejected them when they were born pic.twitter.com/bzbmdJ042h
— Nature Unedited (@NatureUnedited) April 30, 2026
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
85 comments
Comments are closed.
“Scientists warn it’s probably too late to save the ‘luxury crops’ that are used to make coffee, chocolate, and wine”
For those scientists, they may classify them as ‘luxury crops.’ But to everybody else, they are also what makes life worth living. Woe onto those workplaces down the track where everybody starts the day without their morning coffee.
Not a prepper, not in any meaningful sense but I did order two cases (24 bars) of unsweetened chocolate recently. Local honey, unsweetened chocolate and plenty of Uncle Mark’s pot butter heated together and popped into the freezer makes for a nice treat before doing yardwork or going to bed (depends on which pot butter I use ; )
That recipe however does not require chocolate. Or coffee or wine. I doubt the world will ever stop producing tea but I do worry that I won’t be able to afford my caffeine of choice much longer. Shortages are coming for us all one way or another.
Often, Kev, “Scientist” is used to mean Puritan, in the sense of one whose main joy in life is denying other people their joys.
Some people will complain that that use of “Puritan” is rather unhistorical – but then so is that use of “Scientist”.
re: Doctorow SMO?
I can live without this kind of nonsense:
“In the podcast I compare the failure of Putin to anticipate the problems of launching his Special Military Operation in February 2022 with the failure of Trump to see the disaster he is now mired in over the Iran war. In both cases the presidents were lulled into expecting an easy time by their past successes. For Trump it was his easy win in Venezuela. For Putin it was the easy win taking control of Crimea in 2014 when the Ukrainian troops surrendered or chose to withdraw from the peninsula without a shot being fired. Moreover, in both cases the presidents relied on bad intelligence when they decided to initiate military action. Trump listened to Mossad, Israel’s world-beating agency, as everyone supposed, only they aren’t and weren’t, instead of heeding the caution urged by his own CIA. Putin did not listen to his military intelligence staff, who, I learned, never were invited in to the Kremlin to discuss the planned move against Ukraine. I make this point to support the generalization that no country has a monopoly on stupidity or on losing moves.”
‘Coffee and a Mike’: EU exists to wage war on Russia
60 min.
https://gilbertdoctorow.substack.com/p/coffee-and-a-mike-eu-exists-to-wage
Doctorow forgets the part where the SMO had basically worked and Russia and the Ukraine were working their way to an agreement in Istanbul. But then Boris Johnson arrived and kicked over the negotiating table. And since then Russia has been fighting not just the Ukraine but also the forty odd countries of the Western Alliance.
I don’t know if this is quite a nonsense, at least in the big picture sense: it is pretty clear that Russoa’s initial plan for Ukraine was premised on Ukrainian morale collapsing and Kiev giving up and when that ultimately didn’t materialize, Russia spent some time in the doldrums without a clear plan over what to do. It wasn’t until Western aid was flooding into Ukraine and the Z man began making big noise (and iirc, after Ukraine began counterattacking the weak Russian covering forces) that Russia called up reserves and changed orientation.
Doctorrow’s analogy is admittedly somewhat forced: there was nothing that Venezuela taught US about Iran. But, it is also true that Crimea and earlier, Georgia, taught Russia nothing about NATO. So it is true, I think, that both US and Russia undertook their military ventures woefully underresourced hoping for a miracle outcome–even if the latter’s goals were far more modest.
Ps: I suppose I’m thinkibg of the US misadventures as the comically exaggerated version of SMO.
I´d like to heartily disagree with the assumption the Russians weren´t prepared.
The complete opposite is true.
We know for instance that the SMO officially was started in April after negotiations failed.
Putin in that April decision told General Staff explicitely there is “no time window”.
So speed was not a category for success. Instead they should take as much time as necessary.
The negotiations were one of of several paths long prepared.
Or to use Andrei Martyanov´s boastful formulation: “Russia has been preparing for this war since 1945”.
There is more truth to this than just superficial rhetorics.
Why else e.g. would they not demolish their old tank factories and those countless Cold War facilities in the 1990s?
The Russian success in SMO is probably one of the most impressive examples of long term planning in the past 100 years.
Despite all the lies, all the deception, all the treachery by the US and Europe the Russians prepared not only the economy but also the Russian “MIC” achieving their goals in such a methodical way that it´s almost scary.
Go back to the situation under Bush II.
Putin suggested NATO membership, the US developed the conviction of a successful first strike capability, then Putin gave his speeches in Munich and to NATO and around 2008 announced the coming weapons sytems.
Almost everything that was proclaimed in those speeches took shape.
That´s quiet amazing.
Victory in a war with 2M killed enemy soldiers doesn´t just happen over night.
It´s military and industrial culture. And culture is among those phenomena that take longest to establish. And once in place it´s pretty difficult to just abandon it.
I think both “prepared” and “not prepared” could be simultaneously true.
The short term operation that began in February clearly did not plan for a long war. It was lacking in troops and depended on “shock and awe.” However, where Russians were prepared was that they had contingency plans IF things went sideways–start calling up reserves and activate the war industry on big scale, even as start adapting to the economic warfare.
Where the US war becomes the comical caricature was the absence of contingency plans: either the first plan, despite the low chance of success, “works” or we throw big tantrum.
I don’t think it’s really a ding on the Russians to say that the February operation was “insufficiently prepared.” They had to scramble large, but still insuffiient force in a fairly short time to launch the operation–you don’t launch “full scale” operations in that short a time. The best one can do is to have contingency plans, which they did–although I think they were still a bit slow to activate them. I suppose, in a way, I’m actually being a bit easy on W and Trump, at least for “starting” their messes. The absence of not having contingency plans, however, is a crime.
I can imagine a conversation: “Mr President, here is our plan A.”
“What do we do if it doesn’t work?” “Oh but it will work, Mr President.”
I can equally well imagine it with the roles of the military men and the politician reversed.
It used to be said that much of history was made by men who were slightly drunk. We don’t seem to have that excuse these days. Maybe voting for teetotallers is a bad idea.
Maybe we need more leaders that are drinkers. Trump himself is a teetotaler. Such men are not to be trusted. I remember reading how people complained to President Lincoln that General Ulysses Grant would get drunk from time to time. Lincoln replied that considering how many victories Grant won, that if he found out what Grant drunk he would send a case to each of his Generals.
good point
You know, Romans supposedly had the saying that people who don’t drink are not to be trusted…
This and the comment below by DJG below made me think about the drunken decision by a normally not drunken Roman: supposedly, what Caesar (normally a teetotaler) said when he crossed the Rubicon was “let’s roll the dice” in Greek (from Menander, as Caesar loved quoting Greeks), not “the die is cast” in Latin. (Was it Plutarch who popularized this story? Ironically, he was Greek.) He didn’t have a clear plan for what to do once he made himself an enemy of the Roman establishment. Rather, he intended to take chance and adapt as necessary. But, in a way, like the Russians and not Trump, he and his men were “ready” to adapt as necessary and not intent on relying on things turning out favorably just by dumb luck.
> ““let’s roll the dice” in Greek (from Menander, as Caesar loved quoting Greeks), not “the die is cast” in Latin.”
Sorry I don´t get it. Why does “the die is cast” get involved here?
“The die is cast” implies thst Caesar was confident, knew what exactly he was doing, and planned for everything. “Let’s tlroll thr dice” implies that Caesar was not quite so confident and was gambling.
Thank you. I’m still waiting for a transcript to come out where Putin said he thought the SMO would be a walk in the park. Meanwhile, we have seen plenty of evidence that that Trump expected an easy win in Iran.
p.s. It´s not implausible that Doctorow takes these public positions rather for mostly economic reasons not because they mirrored his personal conviction. He knows that in the altern. media sphere too many sources suggest that Russia is in control and has been for most of the 21st cent. So in order to attract crowd he rather takes an adversarial position. In this he appears a bit like the very opposite to John Helmer who would rather die than make an argument he is not convinced of and cannot prove. Which doesn’t mean one should totally discard Doctorow. But soft issues are more his thing. Or insight into more Western aligned groups.
Arguing for the “truth” of any narrative is treacherous without more documentary evidence than we have.
Russia was not prepared in Feb 2022 to fight a protracted war. Many Western analysts fail to appreciate how much Russia had effectively de-militarized. Putin sent a ragtag bunch into Ukraine — private military companies, Chechen and Cossack militias to fill out the limited number of regular “contract” troops available — a smaller number than Ukraine could mobilize.
From Putin’s grand strategic perspective, this was itself a problem that might have to be solved. If the war was short, good — mission accomplished. If the war was long, also mission accomplished, because a long war would require mobilizing Russian society and economy for a struggle with the “collective West” that Putin could see coming sooner or later, but that most Russians did not.
From Putin’s perspective, it was 1938 again and Germany was on the horizon. It was only a matter of time before an aggressive NATO took a lethal shot and time was on NATO’s side as it made incremental gains. He wasn’t gambling on a short war with Z’s Ukraine. Putin was gambling that Russia would stand a better chance against NATO in a long war started sooner rather than later.
I think Putin has largely won his gamble so far. The Russian people appear to have acquiesced to an acknowledgement that the Collective West is deeply hostile. Russian military mobilization has been impressive, with better logistics, drone tactics, etc.
It has not all gone Putin’s way. The contest for the near abroad isn’t going great, but does tend to force NATO to take off the mask.
The end game, should Ukraine partially collapse, may be especially hard for Putin to play.
Wouldn’t this be an obvious case of false analogy falacy? His point to “support the generalization that no country has monopoly on stupidity”. What would have been the stupid thing for the Russians, to allow for the nationalist Ukrainians to pursue their progroms and war against the Donbass Russians permitting them to control this region only to later go after Crimea, and station US nukes in their territory? Doctorow doesn’t understand that the SMO was the drawing of the red line that neither Ukranians, USians or Europeans understood. A failure that? The red line not only worked but is being slowly and relentlessly pushed South and West while Europeans keep stupefied in their idiocy. On the other one has to be very stupid not to notice that all this has strengthened Russians geostrategic position. Not to mention that Zelensky now rules a shadow of former Ukraine. Where the stupidity resides Mr Doctorow?
Really love today’s antidotes!!!!!
The ones with the two lions was amazing. They actually remembered her.
Amazing. Not only do they remember her, they clearly love her.
The idea that the US can rapidly ramp up oil production/exports has been debunked by basically everyone.
Here is another via Daniel Davis. Very complete as to the US specifically and the potential world wide damage should trump start bombing Iran.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3hFux59b16A&t=11s
The real problem is that US exports can’t be stopped. Of the 9 million plus barrels of LTO produced each day only less than 5 million barrels per day can be used in the US,the rest must be exported or the mix in the tanks and the SPR will cause problems.
Also nobody understands the changes made so far in the countries receiving this LTO to their refining mixes and whether they can continue to use LTO at these rates as their other sources of crude have changed as well.
This is one more option off the table when the present course of denial is no longer possible.
Thank you. Good discussion in there. Daniel Davies is among my favourites and Chris Martinsen gives here quite a good explanation even if i prefer written stuff.
re: Germany vs. RU
Apparently the Multi-Domain Task Force has been canceled which would be a very good thing, regardless of the limited capabilities of the systems in question (Dark Eagle/SM6).
I assume it´s a combination of causes, like Dark Eagle still not flying, low stocks, Russian warnings, truth behind Western systems´ failures both in Ukraine and Iran Wars.
Of course they are trying to sell it with “Merz insulted Trump”. Not military and technological failure. And that BS is seriously being reported.
German MEP Fabio De Masi confirms the info:
“(…)No new US missiles in Germany? That would be good news for once.
Apparently, the deployment of US intermediate-range missiles to Germany, promised by then-Chancellor Olaf Scholz behind the backs of the Bundestag, will no longer take place.
This is good news, as it would have put Donald Trump on the defensive and made Germany a potential war target.
The German Association for Security Policy (BSW) had, for example, successfully pushed through a critique of the deployment plans in the now-terminated coalition agreement in Brandenburg!
ZDF reported at the time:
Military expert and retired Colonel Wolfgang Richter sees “some weaknesses” in the decision. He said on ZDFheute live that one must, above all, weigh the pros and cons, “including the risks.” And a decision that “could lead to pressure for a preemptive strike” could, due to the high speed of cruise missiles and hypersonic missiles, “increase the pressure for a strike in a crisis heading towards conflict.”
Furthermore, Richter continued, there is an arms control situation that “we must not undermine.” Promoting arms control is also a German goal. He fears that “we are not doing that here, but rather failing to promote strategic stability between the US and Russia.” With this decision, Germany has “isolated itself.”
(…)”
re: today’s antidote du jure.
T and Vance taking a stroll? / ;)
jive turkeys
“Hormuz effect? How US, China are ramping up tensions over the Panama Canal”
Nothing to do with the Iran war. This is the Trump regime wanting to kick China out of the Panama canal after they have been there for over three decades to establish a stranglehold over that canal. The future intent may be to charge Chinese ships more for passage to make them less competitive or maybe to even not allow the passage of Chinese ships through there. Economically the US can no longer compete with China so instead the US is trying to get a stranglehold on all shipping lanes and to isolate China from their customers who are basically the whole world.
Re sci fi music–what no mention of Bernard Herrmann who, starting with the opening shots of Citizen Kane, was practically born to create a genre? He was able to go full bore in the great The Day the Earth Stood Still in the early fifties, which is still one of the best of all sci fi movies.
Of course George Lucas tried to change all this with his Korngold-ish John Williams score for Star Wars. But Star Wars was for kids. Herrmann’s weird and creepy seems more appropriate for our mysterious techno future.
…with an instrument invented by a Russian:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theremin
And where woukd the Beach Boys be without it?
My neighbors have 8 hummingbird feeders below the eaves of their house and it isn’t uncommon to get 20-25 sucking down red colored sugar water at each feeder-with 4 or 5 different breeds of hummingbirds, and it sounds eerily similar to a theremin.
“That is the most hilarious awful sound I’ve ever heard!”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cip47tH_rlU
Great movie. Great composer….Vertigo, Psycho, many others
https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/828-the-day-the-earth-stood-still/watch
“Trump says he will raise tariff on autos from European Union to 25%”
Fortunately Trump provided a helpful suggestion. Just have those EU countries fire all their workers, pack up all that manufacturing machinery, then ship it to the US and set up there so it will not be hit with any tariffs. A win for Trump and a big L for the EU as it further de-industrializes their countries, puts more of their people on unemployment, cuts their tax revenues and destabilizes their political system. But at least Trump will be happy.
A drive through my region: BMW, BASF, Aldi, Lidl, Bayer, Thyssen-Krupp–practically a little Bavaria. No beer halls….yet.
The first listed may have brought most of the others but there were some chemical plants before that. We cotton pickers have welcomed our new Euro overlords. Before that our textile overlords mostly came down from New England.
“Setback in breeding low-methane cows.” I’ve owned a lot of cows and imho the best way to lower the amount of methane they produce has nothing to do with breeding. Grass and hay are the natural diet of cows and when that’s what they eat they produce little methane.
But the milk industry wants maximum milk production per cow and the way to achieve that is to feed them highly processed grain mixed with drugs and molasses. Along with more milk comes more methane.
We’ve been getting the ancient Greeks all wrong. By Colin Wells.
I will have recourse to the DJG Axiom: Anglo-American writing about the Mediterranean world is poor, and Anglo-Americans writing about Italy are almost always wrong.
Colin Wells, indeed. Wells is grinding away at the problem of “supremacists,” which is a problem of Anglo-American prejudices. Then he goes into the orality problem and the abstraction problem.
There are some major misses in the essay. First, Homeric poetry was sung. He keeps missing the point, that a sung epic has certain constraints. Yet a sung epic is easier to memorize, because the music backs up the words. You know, as in the first words of the Iliad, “Sing, Goddess…”
See also sung liturgy in Catholicism and Orthodoxy, as well as Gregorian chant.
He also skips over a peculiarity of the Greek language: Greeks invented more than one alphabet. Linear B was used to write Minoan Greek — around 1100 BC, a date he poohpoohs. Then Linear B died off, and the Greeks created a second alphabet.
He also makes this odd statement: “Latin has its own peculiarities, as the first handoff of alphabetic literacy to another culture.” Wells doesn’t seem to be aware that the Romans likely imported the Etruscan alphabet, as evinced by the assignment of certain sounds to certain letters. The Etruscans had imported a Greek alphabet, but we don’t know enough about Etruscan writing.
So the classics are doing too much work within a USAnian context here: What about just reading the classics and allow us to have conversations with people in the past? As I mentioned recently, Plutarch is always fascinating. Sappho beckons. Lucretius is enlightening. The Greek Anthology of lyric poems is insightful and gorgeous.
Wells is circling a tad too close to the Jada Pinkett Smith School of Classics for my taste. Like her, he is worried about U.S. racism, and like her, his solution is veering toward, but but but my grandmama told me Cleopatra is “really” “black.”
Well, no. Not so long ago, I read a book about Roman superstition, voodoo, and spells by one of these newer classicists who felt compelled, mid-book, to spend a page on Romans and Roman racism. Some people truly do need to get out more.
thanks!
Thanks for the erudition. As a mere dabbler I’ve been reading about the Greeks lately and they did seem to have a sophisticated grasp of human behavior with a heavy overlay of myth to account for everything else. That said the “red in tooth and claw” ancient world doesn’t seem very much like the current and a lot more tribal. We have tribal of course but with aspirations to get beyond all that. The planet may depend on it.
Linear B was the second script, wasn’t it? Linear A was the first. Linear A was used to write Minoan, or at least that is the common supposition. Linear B was used to write Mycenaean Greek, but is thought to be a bookkeeper’s script, stocked with ideograms. A literary application has not been found.
Wikipedia helpfully explains,
A “Dark Age” intervened between the destruction of the “palaces” where Linear B found application circa 1100 BCE and the re-emergence of Greek literacy using an alphabet adapted from Phoenician abjad.
The thumbnail summary is that Homer composed his epics circa 800 BCE, those epics were written down initially circa 600 BCE. The pre-socratics show up in the sixth century speaking Ionian Greek. So, I think the basic outline of dates works for Colin Wells’ thesis.
I half expected him to pull out The Birth of Tragedy, that other over-the-top pleading for the millennial world-historical importance of Greek literary culture.
His thesis is not unlike the Gutenberg thesis, the idea that the expansion of popular literacy in the 16th and 17th centuries was a driving force behind political and ideological religious conflicts, which often seemed to revolve around passionate embrace of abstractions and abstract reasoning.
I think my fellows in the 21st century are mostly overinvested in narrative meaning and underappreciative of analytic function, so I am sympathetic.
Wells should stick to the classics rather than attempt to come up with a classicist soteriology. While
the language and script changes in Greek might have been conducive to the articulation of abstract ideas for Greeks, that does not mean they were a necessity for everyone.
Vedic and Buddhist philosophy written in Sanskrit demonstrates abstract ideas (see Samkhya for instance, consciousness, self, etc.) were articulated in a consonant based script; whereas Chinese philosophy described both ethical and metaphysical notions (as well as astronomical phenomena) in highly dissenting ways (the 100 schools) through a character script.
“French economy records zero growth in first quarter”
By the end of the year, I expect most EU countries to have either zero growth or negative growth. The headwinds that the EU are facing are getting up to gale strength. With smart, intelligent leadership the EU might be able to adapt but we all know the chances of that happening.
Thanks for the Nate Hagens “Frankly” link. I never miss one of these “Frankly” pieces that appear every Friday. Hagens is a smart guy with a breadth of experience from Wall Street to the OIl Drum with a Chicago MBA and a Ph.D. in environmental science. On top of that, he’s interviewed some of the smartest people in the world over the past four years while giving his Great Simplification talks to groups all over Europe, the U. S. and India. As a result, he’s quite well connected and wired in to elite discussions. Especially since the Iran War broke out, and since he interviewed Craig Tinsdale shortly after the Strait was closed, Hagens has been quite somber and serious. (Larry Wilkerson, another person rather well connected, evinces a similar tone.)
This particular Frankly is a moving one. Nate does meditation, something he strongly recommends in this and other videos as a way of keeping it together as things fall apart, and his meditation coach lives in Lebanon. He spoke with her at length, hearing about how she was putting up several people who had lost their homes, how they hear the bombs hit and wonder if the next is coming for them, and how villages with centuries of social capital built up, are being leveled by the Israelis.
If you’re not familiar with Hagens, I’d encourage you to look around his Youtube channel for something that sounds interesting to you. My bet is that you’ll learn something from whatever you pick.
The right to repair issue is part of the Licensing Revolution.
Remembered if imperfectly, paraphrased the George Carlin comment that “where interests are shared, there is no need for a formal conspiracy.”
RE: We’ve Been Getting the Ancient Greeks All Wrong
I’m not quite sure what the author’s argument is here. Lots of hand wringing and trying to defend classics against being considered “racist”. And at the end, a rather esoteric discussion of the merits of Albert Lord’s arguments vs. Adam Perry’s, akin to arguing over how many angels dance on the head of a pin.
The author does then try to claim some special genius for the Greeks, specifically with their scientific advances. Those were very important to be sure, but there is quite a bit of modern scholarship that shows that concepts developed by Pythagoreans for example were also known in ancient Babylon centuries before Pythagoras. The author just sort off handwaves this away after a very brief mention with no details.
Maybe I was just lucky, but the way the author seems to suggest classics should be taught is how it was taught to me 35 years ago. I don’t recall the Greeks or Romans being put up as some sort of progenitors of all civilization, and we did discuss their flaws. And we learned that Homeric writings were composed orally and written down later. Not only that, but one of my professors, a woman no less, actually had Albert Lord himself come and give us a lecture, which was quite fascinating!
There is something similar to people talking about antisemitism in East Asia (no joke: I came across several books about antisemitism in Japan, and the scary thing is that I knew exactly what they were talking about.) The thing is thatm since there have practically no Jews in East Asia (less China than Japan or Korea–but given peculiarities of “minorities” in historical China, a discussion of Chinese Jews is another topic altogether.), everything about “the Jews” becomes abstract. I found that Japanese and Koreans casually buy into various Jewish stereotypes with disturbing casualness (which several of these books harped on) but also they don’t really care much about them–to them, the Jews are just another random group of white people, no different from others, and some of these stereotypes are even thought to be positive (probably says more about the insular character of these peoples).
The curious juxtaposition leads to things like the Fugu Plan (there’s an interesting book on the topic by a rabbi named Marvin Torkayer, who learned of this while he was a USAF chaplain based in Japan. He gets overly excited about the topic, I think, and exaggerates importance to Japanese policymaking during WW2 by a good deal, but still makes for a revealing read.) where, eh, Japanese made strange policy choices based partly on peculiar interpretation of what to Westerns would be cringy stereotypes.
I find myself disagreeing with G. Elliott Morris again, although not quite as vehemently as before. He keeps omitting one very key fact from his analyses: Voters no longer trust Democrats to ever accomplish anything they swear they will this time by god fight for.
Morris sees undecided voters as former Republicans. I see them as Democrats who no long want to dance with the party that brought them. Doesn’t mean they want to dance with Trump, but if that’s what it takes to get their former beau’s attention…
Neither party represents the majority of voters. The only thing keeping the Duopoly in power is a complex fifty-state set of rules moderated by an insanely corrupt news media and adjudicated only by hyperpartisan judges. Between now and the fall off-year elections is a minefield of toxic (to Democrats) Dip State reveals waiting to be explosed (exposed/exploded, this is a word we’re going to need going forward ; ): the gang that couldn’t conspire straight is about to be de-pantsed from fake scaffolding and inert pipe bombs to their forever wars.
The question this fall won’t be whether voters hate Trump; the question will be will whether voters trust either party enough to bother to turn out. Maybe we should just ask Netanyahu to pick a winner for us ; ) [Note that Morris does not mention Israel, Iran, or Netanyahu while discussing election outcomes?!?!]
Can either party produce a candidate worth voting for?
William Murphy’s
Will give you adequate understanding. We get to vote for the candidates, the Ruling Class chooses them.
The most recent edition, as far as I can tell, of Thomas Dye’s “Who’s Running America (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C5S93VWM)” is a good overview of how institutional control keeps the needs of the ruling classes aligned and met, no matter who’s elected.
Any of the previous editions, which are based on the US President elected at the time, are also insightful.
The way the questions are framed obscures a lot of what’s going on. For instance, “Who do you trust more, Democrats, Republicans, or [Don’t Know]?” The missing answer is Neither. That would have changed the entire interpretation of what is going on, namely that these are not “low information” voters, but that they are well informed that both parties are scamming them. And on the so-called Crime issue, the committed Trump voters are interpreting that strictly through the Fox News lens of illegal Mexican “gangbangers” menacing “white” virtue or swan-eating Haitian subhumans. So, yes, nobody else cares much about that. If you added a different crime category of Political and Corporate Corruption then I bet that would shoot to near the top of the list, because that’s the sort of crime that impacts most people and gets committed with impunity by TPTB. Like “diversity” (in DEI), the limited selection of options you can pick, in this care for “issues important to voters”, carefully restricts you to the approved set of choices and hides what is really going on.
Americans are divided into two groups: those who divide Americans into two groups, Democrats and Republicans, and those who don’t.
“The Canterbury Commute”
Damn. I now suddenly want to pull my copy of “The Canterbury Tales” off the shelves and start reading it again. It really does take you back to an earlier time and I would not mind betting that some people do pilgrimages along that route in honour of Chaucer.
Heh. Powell is going to do as I wrote down a while ago. Stop being the Fed chair but staying on otherwise. Which means he stays on as governor and the chair of the FOMC until the end of his term. The first stops Warsh from getting the job as Fed chair since the person for the chair can only be selected from a limited pool of positions. Wharsh occupies none of them an the easiest way to get one was to replace Powell as governor. The second is why they are fuming about Powell staying on as shadow chair of the Fed. It is the FOMC that tells/advices the chair how to vote on interest rates, Warsh can ignore it guess who gets the blame when the inevitable leaks occur while inflation goes up.
It is one of the more (if not the most) impressive malicious compliance actions I’ve seen. Hand over the spot demanded but stay on to using the very pressure tactics Trump & Co. used as the reason why. Thus forcing more authoritarian actions to get Warsh on the board and denying them the actual prize of chairing the FOMC.
riffing on the “Smelly Baby Problem” link, were he alive today Victor Hugo might lament that the wealth of the nation is being discarded into its landfills.
Baby scat is probably less heavily medicated than adult, and might make better (or at least “less contaminated”) soil amendment (after suitable thermal composting). Perhaps what we need is compostable baby diapers, not merely disposable ones.
—
On a less whimsical note and in context of the unfolding ag productivity crisis, it is worth noticing that much of the nitrogen from fertilizer than we eat in our food is excreted in our urine and discarded. Victor Hugo’s lament about the “bleeding wound in the body of France” may be relevant today.
Here’s an interesting item about combining wood ash (significant K, a little P, lots of calcium) with human urine (lots of N) as a tomato fertilizer.
I don’t think this is free text at the journal site, but someone helpfully uploaded a pdf to the researchgate site.
A sibling who heats with wood has provided me with tens of kg of wood ash and urine is plentiful (though I think I may need to cut back how heavily I salt my meals). This year I will try this and make my own productivity assessment.
Here you go.
gotta let the pee sit in a jug, and air for a few days, otherwise it’ll burn the plants.
and, as always, depending on diet, etc.
when Tam was on chemo, i noticed a marked difference in the built wetland where the pee diverter drained, as well as in the dry composted humanure and wood shavings/oak leaves that sat in the pasture, covered, for a year before dumping out.
all back to normal, now, 4 years later.
wood ash, too..apply in winter, so the woodash lye can run off/get degraded.
otherwise, make a hopper of some sort to let it leach out with the rain.(and collect it to make castille soap, if you like…ready when an egg floats in it,lol…nothing like castille soap that smells like bacon!)
both my composting toilets feed the pee…as well as shower, etc…into built wetlands that have…among many things…cattails. excellent habitat for dragonflies, etc.
and, btw, the first of the latter are out and about for the first time today. red darners, alighting on the ends of stock panels and such that keep the ducks off the various plants.
next will be the white darners(these are my names, idk what theyre actually called) that look like cigarettes. big dragon flies will emerge in a couple of weeks.
Dubai chefs shrink menus as Iran war makes tomatillos, scallops harder to source — Internazionale
I haven’t posted comments recently because the world has gone so completely insane that I don’t understand what’s going on, therefore I have nothing of value to contribute. But this marvelous article was too good to ignore. Sometimes in life, one must speak up.
Flying avocados and tomatillos all the way from semi-arid Mexico to very-arid Dubai? Really? And people pay through the nose for this nonsense? Clearly, globalization has run amok and must be curtailed.
‘Mordor Intelligence’ is quite the name for a market research firm. Very appropriate for a world descending into total chaos.
‘… the Strait of Hormuz, the only sea access to the UAE, which imports more than 80% of its food for consumption, remains effectively closed.’ Just think about that for a moment. Unless things get resolved right quickly (which I doubt), Dubai is massively totally irrevocably comprehensively screwed.
‘The UAE ministry of economy and tourism did not respond to a request for comment.’ Well, neither would I. Sometimes it is better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to open one’s mouth and remove all doubt.
‘…finding alternative routes to transport hard-to-source perishable ingredients, such as Norwegian scallops or certain Japanese seafood, had become a costly challenge.’ Madonna! Non ho parole.
‘Chefs Lash and Cheung expect the market to pick up.’ Hope is not a strategy, my pretties. High time to start looking for alternative employment arrangements. Moscow has lots of pricey restaurants, so you might start your job search there.
In the USA, they say that immigrants go from rags to riches to rags in three generations. In Dubai (and several other Gulf societies), I predict that they’ll go from camels to Ferraris to camels in three generations. And Dubai–a totally artificial creation of High Globalization–is very much in the forefront of this process.
A belated thanks to Yves and the outstanding team at NC who provide us with a daily dose of sanity.
‘from camels to Ferraris to camels in three generations’
Funny that you should say that. I read about this guy from Saudi Arabia talking about how the oil there will not last forever. So he said that his grandfather rode a camel, that he drives a Rolls Royce and that his grandson will ride a camel.
He’d look bloody silly riding a camel in Mayfair.
I mean, we don’t really expect the grandson to live in one of those Gulf hellholes, do we?
Mark you, Mayfair may have become a hellhole by then too.
(Am I using “hellhole” as a euphemism? Guilty as charged.)
Will the Saudis be able to keep up with the Ukrainians? The Kiev dealership was the third-best Bentley dealership in Europe.
I was about to say something about Russians leavingvitvslone, but I guess every Bentley they sell is one less tank (or whatever) for the Ukr army.
I hear ya, its tantamount to watching a meth addict with unlimited funds being a battering ram and ruining everything and everyone they come into contact with-this woeful administration, At some point you don’t want to gawk at the latest horrific accident on the freeway that took you 2 hours and 12 minutes to approach.
I’m getting burned out frankly, and doing burn piles on the all cats and no cattle ranch has been my crutch of sorts, but now burn season is over~
Likewise, I’m drained.
Same, particularly since Easter Sunday.
Trump should just give Nut’nYahoo a wing at Mar A Lago and call the whole thing off.
“ Mor time with his family” has a venerable history.
Maduro was charged with violating a US law (regarding weapon possession) while not within US jurisdiction.
On this theory, couldn’t DJT eliminate BN’s legal problems by simply issuing his own pardon? (perhaps might have to kidnap BN to enforce it, though).
I have seen more people in my feed suggesting that the way we save matters is to invite the nation of Israel to reside in the US. I would like my country to remain open to immigrants of every background, faith, and dream… but no. I have no desire for the US to absorb a collective people and their leaders who are only interested in chaos and death.
Netanyahu’s next address should be a secure place where he can safely wait trial for war crimes and genocide allegations to be decided. The settlers and those sympathetic to them are welcome in the US as long as they respect law, including property rights. I have no interest in creating a new state of Israel to metastasize inside the US. I have no interest in supporting any actions that would expand Israeli borders beyond the 1967 agreements. I’m open to my leaders discussing a one state solution where both Palestinians and Jews have equal rights. I’m open to a multi-state solution. I do not want one single tax dollar to continue funding the status quo.
I realize that what I want is irrelevant to my elected officials. I realize that no party or elected person is seriously considering what would be best for the US or the world right now. I hope we can find a path away from this madness so that the killing stops and all peoples can have a safe place to call home.
Yes, but it would be nice if he didn’t end the world in the mean time!
– “We’re like pirates.”
LOL! Once again I have to hand it to him; nobody says the quiet parts out loud like Trump! I think this is easily his biggest threat to the Establishment, which basically supports his overall agenda but is not ready to pull back the curtain and reveal that brick wall quite yet. If they finally manage to get rid of him this will be the reason.
“Like”,”are”, what’s the difference?
I’m really looking forward to those random Chinese cargo containers full of anti ship missile launchers.
“Like”,”are”, what’s the difference?
Pirates were more honest and supportive of their shipmates?
Had a buddy in law school who did his B paper on the insurance and employment practices of the “pirate culture” in the New World. Supposedly they were quite sophisticated for the era.
Not having read the paper or vetted his research, I offer the observation only for consideration. ;-)
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/5/2/yemen-reports-hijacked-oil-tanker-headed-for-somalia
Yemen’s Coast Guard has said that it is attempting to recover an oil tanker that was hijacked off the coast and is now heading towards Somalia.
The “M/T Eureka” was seized off Yemen’s southeastern Shabwa province as armed assailants boarded and took control of the vessel, the coastguard said in a statement on Saturday. The hijackers then steered the tanker to the Gulf of Aden towards the Somali coast.
The attack is at least the fourth to take place near Somalia in recent weeks, with pirate activity in the area on the rise in an apparent reaction to the war in Iran. Officials say pirates have become emboldened as naval forces patrolling the Red Sea area are distracted by the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz and civilian maritime routes diverted.
I envision him doing the Pirate King Song
I am very grateful to the people who maintain the site and prepare the daily feast of links for us to savor, but my juvenile mind loves a pun adjacent typo: “COVID-19/Pamdemics”.
Yes, beware of the Pams! They’re everywhere :)
and interesting development, here on the farm: my eldest and his best buddy are removing a buncha sheds and an old calf pen at a local ranch. brought me a buncha 10′ telephone poles and…and this is the cool part…a big stack of these heavy duty stock-panel-like things. but what they really are are the panels from world war 2 that they’d interlock and spread out to make make-shift landing strips. perfect for making the pipe pen suitable for the 5 show pigs we’re getting for free,lol.(i trained these guys well)
to think that my grandad landed B-29’s on stuff like this in the pacific theater is way cool.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marston_mat
So the US is reducing the number of troops in Germany by 5000. Good riddance!
But I can’t help but wonder where they are going. They aren’t discharged, so they will continue in active duty. Will they be deployed in the Middle East or Southeast Asia? Tracking where they are going might give some insight into US strategic priorities.
Another thing is that news didn’t mention any reduction in the number of US military bases in Germany. Will the bases have less staff? Or will Americans give the Germans access to those bases, especially now that Germany is aiming to build the most powerful military in Europe.
Let’s hope it does not cause the same externalities the last couple of times they tried that.
The throwaway framing of the Foreign Policy article by the two US bipartisan Mideast policy apparatchiki (one of them a former Israel Baseball League Commissioner) does have some interesting admissions.
John Mearsheimer, take a victory lap: “For Israel, a nuclear Iran is an existential threat; for the United States, it isn’t.”
Don’t get any ideas that might influence US policy — “When it comes to Iran, Israel in a way will be the tail wagging the dog.” Walt should join Mearsheimer on the next lap.
“The US definition of victory will be hard to achieve as long as the Iranian regime remains in power, however weakened.” So our war aim is to destroy the Iranian government — and you thought only Trump said the quiet part out loud. They also think that Iran’s definition of victory is for the government to survive and to control the Strait, and allow as how the latter sure makes it seem like Iran has an edge over the US.
(And let’s not let it pass without observing that they bring in a third party opinion that implicitly acknowledges that the US controls the Panama Canal.)
For some reason they don’t explain, Iran has to be fought. The closest they come to giving a reason is that Iran is bad. It spreads its influence through proxies with the goal of “death to America and Israel,” and has an authoritarian religiously dominated government. That’s why it has to be overthrown, in their view. Any comparison with other US allies would be unmentionable whataboutism.
These are standard observations of fact coming from the outsider sphere — but to find them in an article designed to keep the orthodox foreign policy elite all on the same page is a fairly significant exposure. They can only let this stuff leak out sideways, but there it is. They know.
re: May 2, 2014: Ukrainian pro-Maidan Right Sector extremists killed at least 48 anti-Maidan protesters in Odessa Eva Karene Bartlett
Since it corresponds – Ivan Katchanovski published an updated version of his Maidan Shooting rsearch paper this March:
Confirmation of False-Flag Shooting of Maidan Activists in Khmelnytskyi by Ukrainian Trial Verdict and Investigation
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/403249840_Confirmation_of_False-Flag_Shooting_of_Maidan_Activists_in_Khmelnytskyi_by_Ukrainian_Trial_Verdict_and_Investigations