Links 5/24/2026

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1. The Rev Kev May 24, 2026 at 7:16 am

   “Scientists Finally Think They Know Why T. rex Had Tiny Arms”

   Scientists have surmised that it was the short arms of the T-Rex that led to the extinction of the dinosaurs-

   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYXpRWHVIPE (4:42 mins)

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   1. Stephen V May 24, 2026 at 8:58 am

      Do they say anything about tiny human hands?

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   2. Don May 24, 2026 at 5:46 pm

      “A new study suggests T. rex and other giant predators evolved tiny arms because their massive skulls took over as the primary hunting weapon.?

      Duh.

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2. hereweare May 24, 2026 at 7:25 am

   ‘Western nations warn Israel to end illegal settlement expansion, violence’
   Or what? A thoroughly empty warning. “The policies and practices … are undermining … prospects for a two-state solution” – as if that wasn’t the reason for these very policies and practices in the first place. And Israel’s most powerful ally and backer, the USA, isn’t party to this feeble so-called warning.

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   1. The Rev Kev May 24, 2026 at 7:29 am

      I suppose they could send them a sternly worded letter. But at least nobody is talking about a two state solution anymore as Israel has killed that possibility.

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      1. Polar Socialist May 24, 2026 at 7:45 am

         Some clever official at the Diplomatic Service of the European Union could ask Ms. Kallas to say what she really thinks about Russia, and then use that by replacing each “Russia” with “Israel”.

         Otherwise, I doubt EU is capable of stern words, having been so long bend over and repeating “thank you, may I have another one, please”…

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3. johnnyme May 24, 2026 at 8:20 am

   US subpoenas commentator, activist over Cuba trips: Fox News

   US authorities on Saturday issued subpoenas to a political commentator and an anti-war activist over recent trips to Cuba and possible violations of sanctions and travel regulations, Fox News reported.

   The report said the inquiry into influencer Hasan Piker and CODEPINK co-founder Medea Benjamin is being led by the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) and is examining possible breaches of US law related to Cuba sanctions.

   The subpoenas are said to have sought financial, travel and communications records linked to a March visit to Cuba involving as many as 40 US citizens as part of the Nuestra América Convoy, or “Our America Convoy.”

   Legal experts said the inquiry could remain a civil enforcement matter handled by OFAC or potentially develop into a criminal case under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.

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   1. Henry Moon Pie May 24, 2026 at 7:02 pm

      Hasan Piker? No doubt it was the DNC that fingered him. Why would Republicans care? Oh, I forgot.

      All the warmongers hate Medea. She believes in peace, and fights for it, often with considerable efficacy.

      Ryan Grim’s been to Cuba too. And Drop Site partner Scahill has been our primary source of information about Irainian views aside from Marandi. I’ll bet those those guys, along with the Grayzone boys, are toward the top of a lot of nasty people’s hate lists. And this ain’t Gilbert and Sullivan.

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4. The Rev Kev May 24, 2026 at 8:21 am

   ‘SpaceX’s Next-Gen Starship Passes Its First Flight Test Despite Snags”

   I have to admit that the following bit kinda confuses me-

   ‘When the rocket hit the water, it burst into flames. Meanwhile, hundreds of SpaceX employees watching the webcast burst into applause. “USA, USA, USA!” they chanted.’

   First of all, it didn’t just burst into flames but underwent a catastrophic explosion before it even hit the water. And those SpaceX employees just clapped and cheered chanting ‘USA, USA, USA’. Who are these people? I never recall NASA personnel cheering and clapping when one of their rockets blew up. When I saw that explosion I thought it just as well that it was not a manned mission – yet.

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   1. jefemt May 24, 2026 at 9:43 am

      I have a fairly short list of folks that should be on his next, move- fast- break -things and let ‘the maid’ clean it up tests.

      It’s a photo finish as to whether Bezos, Musk, The Zuck, stealthy Alphabets, or Gates is the worlds biggest a@@hole.

      I have Trump in the sh*t-head column.

      May everyone have a bit of Peace and Grace in these troubling troubled times…

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   2. Christian B May 24, 2026 at 11:20 am

      There was one guy in the front who was so excited all I could think in my head was “That is a cult.”

      You can see him at the end of the video, the guy with the long hair…

      https://x.com/WUTangKids/status/2057986107879407980

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   3. Widening Gyre May 24, 2026 at 12:28 pm

      So the explosion at the *end* was planned; the upper stage reached the ocean where and how it was supposed to, hovered briefly, then dropped into the ocean and exploded – as expected. Thus the cheers.

      Before that successful conclusion though, a bunch of things did go wrong! This launch was far from a “complete success”. Generously call it a partial success; I’d more realistically call it a partial failure.

      1. One (out of 33) engines on the booster stage failed during initial boost.
      2. Stage separation went badly wrong; the booster stage rotated incorrectly and too quickly, then the booster failed to relight its engines, then it failed entirely and went dead; instead of returning to its landing site for recovery and reuse (which has been successful on the last 3 attempts), it fell into the ocean uncontrolled at mach 4.
      3. One (out of three) engines on the upper stage failed shortly after lighting. The upper stage still maintained control / enough performance to complete its planned initial burn, but they cancelled the planned “on orbit” relight of the engines.
      4. It successfully (automated) adjusted the re-entry plan, and came down in the ocean exactly where planned.

      So the explosion at the end, where they cheered – planned! The multiple explosions leading up to that – not great! A step backwards from their previous launches, even.

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      1. Widening Gyre May 24, 2026 at 12:56 pm

         I will note that this is the first time the booster has failed – and also the first time the upper stage didn’t explode prematurely.

         One step forward, one step back, I guess. SpaceX is a joke of a company. Everything good they do was invented before Elon took over. Everything since then has been a catastrophic failure – and they’re getting ready for one of greatest frauds in history.

         They also eliminated the minimum float requirement of 20% available public shares and instead stocks with less than 20% of shares publicly traded, Nasdaq applies a 3x multiplier to the free-float for index weighting purposes, artificially inflating low-float giants like SpaceX in passive funds.

         Ok, but in English? #SpaceX, #OpenAI and #Anthropic have just figured out a scam to force every passive #IRA, #401k, and index fund to buy their stock before pricing evaluation.

         They’ve figured out how to steal your #retirement.

         https://mefi.social/@MissConstrue/116625705643420022

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         1. The Joker May 24, 2026 at 6:51 pm

            I’ve just rebalanced my 401(k) and my wife’s 457(b) to avoid pretty much every fund that might have to acquire any SpaceX or AI funds. We have a very solid based of defined income via my wife’s WA state pension plus what will be nearly six figures of social security plus my UK pension. Those bastards are not getting penny one from us directly. Not much we can do about the PERS2, but that’s defined benefits and one of the best-funded in the country.

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5. Deb Schultz May 24, 2026 at 8:38 am

   The Medicaid fraud article doesn’t explain how this operation worked, in terms of billing. I don’t know how Medicaid is delivered in Minnesota and this report doesn’t explain that. It’s a bit puzzling, at least to me, that Medicaid is involved in what is usually an educational process funded through early childhood and disability revenue streams.

   While I don’t have trouble thinking grift was going on, I’m wondering at what level and under what auspices?

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6. eg May 24, 2026 at 9:04 am

   “Is the Working Class Finally Turning on Trump?”

   Better question: are the Dems finally offering the Working Class concrete, material benefits?

   Because until the answer is yes, then who cares?

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   1. The Rev Kev May 24, 2026 at 9:16 am

      ‘are the Dems finally offering the Working Class concrete, material benefits?’

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIIuR-HjFho

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7. earthling May 24, 2026 at 9:09 am

   “The Democratic Party is Divided, but not how you think”

   Mr. Scher manages to go on at length about left and center for quite some time. Absent from the entire piece are the words corrupt, corruption, or donor. This is not analysis, this is wallpaper.

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   1. anahuna May 24, 2026 at 10:23 am

      He also classifies Rahm Emmanuel as a “moderate”. Nuff said

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      1. Lucy Komisar May 24, 2026 at 3:38 pm

         See my report of Rahm Emanuel as Council on Foreign Relations: https://www.thekomisarscoop.com/2026/05/rahm-emanuel-smart-slick-and-silent-on-israels-genocide-in-gaza/

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8. Who Cares May 24, 2026 at 9:59 am

   Not sure how reliable the de-icing drone video is seeing that in the 10 to 12 second block the drone is de-icing meters ahead of it instead where the whacker/gripper area is that does the work in the rest of the video.

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   1. hereweare May 24, 2026 at 10:57 am

      Eh? Are we talking about the same video? I’ve watched it and re-watched it, including a a quarter speed, and can’t see what you mean. The whacker-gripper thingy seems to be de-icing, leaving the cable clear behind it, but with ice in front of it – and right immediately in front of it.

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      1. Polar Socialist May 24, 2026 at 11:11 am

         He means the one part where the drone’s “claws” attaching to the wire causes some ice at a distance drop off due to the shock transferring along the wire. It’s there.

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9. The Rev Kev May 24, 2026 at 10:02 am

   “Ansel Adams’ trust says AI-colorized version of his work was exhibited without permission”

   It’s amazing how much AI depends on the theft of other people’s works and creations. Perhaps by the time all those lawsuits for copyright theft go through the courts, those AI corporations would have finally imploded taking all assets with them leaving none for compensation to those artists. That could very easily be on the cards.

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   1. Carolinian May 24, 2026 at 10:32 am

      Ansel did do some color photography and even supplied a few of those giant Kodak “Coloramas” that once decorated Grand Central Terminal in NYC.

      Ted Turner at least bought the rights before he started colorizing old Hollywood movies but his big value add brainstorm went over like a lead balloon.

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   2. In Cold Chud May 24, 2026 at 12:48 pm

      At this point, it’s not an exaggeration to say that AI represents the convergence of almost everything ugly in American culture. (It’s probably not as racist as it could be, but I’m sure Elon is working on that.) There’s the Florida swampland real estate scamminess of it, the wild-eyed messianic fervor scamminess of it, the knowing and willful destruction of the environment as an end in itself–the triumphal imposition of physical ugliness on it–and the teach-to-the-test, box-checking quality of American education that disallows any real rebuttal to it’s only cheating if you get caught. And now we get to use it for war crimes, too.

      This is before one even gets to art. AI is the ultimate revenge of everyone who didn’t understand a poem in high school, and internalized that failure.* It is the ultimate satisfaction of people who say, “My kid could’ve painted that.”** The beatdown and humiliation of artists is the attraction.

      This might be more tentative, but I would say the all-displacing slop that results is the epitome of the America is America dreaming itself brand of national self-involvement previously represented by Thomas Hart Benton and Thomas Kinkade. Or maybe everyone who uses an LLM to generate an image just includes in the prompt: Make it look like a Jon McNaughton painting.

      *As an English major, I can say this is a totally normal feeling, and not something to beat oneself up over. There is also the fact that bad poetry is sometimes included in literature anthologies.

      **Of course, the art world hasn’t done itself any favors here, in recent decades. The reliance on theory to turn everyday objects into investment vehicles (yes, I know, art has always been about money) has been self-discrediting enough.

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      1. Carolinian May 24, 2026 at 1:22 pm

         Hey rumor has it that English majors are also an endangered group. ;)

         But then we all may have to learn to not code but chop wood.

         A friend loves Thomas Kinkaide. I still love her. And I doubt that standards of American taste have changed very much. 20th c intellectuals were very snobby about it so perhaps the intellectuals have changed and are all now making AI. Ordinary people continue to do their thing.

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         1. In Cold Chud May 24, 2026 at 2:17 pm

            With an eight-pound maul, I’m OK (but only OK) at splitting well-cured wood, though I have (perhaps ill-advisedly) returned to city life.

            I’m sure my appreciation of Hopper, O’Keefe, and occasionally even the Wyeths would induce a lip-curling contempt in many. I don’t really care about Kinkade or McNaughton (though it is worth noting that all of the Truth Social slop, and much else besides, is in their style); Benton is more offensive, because you see him in actual museums.

            But yes, my loathing of AI is not entirely disinterested.

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         2. flora May 24, 2026 at 7:07 pm

            re: English majors. Oh my dear, yes. Here’s a wonderful essay from Verlyn Klinkenborg, from the NYT opinion column space many years ago.

            The Decline and Fall of the English Major.

            https://uwm.edu/english/wp-content/uploads/sites/109/2016/09/The-Decline-and-Fall-of-the-English-Major-The-New-York-Times.pdf

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            1. flora May 24, 2026 at 7:18 pm

               Per V.K.’s essay:

               “In the past few years, I’ve taught nonfiction writing to undergraduates and graduate
               students at Harvard, Yale, Bard, Pomona, Sarah Lawrence and Columbia’s Graduate
               School of Journalism. Each semester I hope, and fear, that I will have nothing to
               teach my students because they already know how to write. And each semester I
               discover, again, that they d

               “They can assemble strings of jargon and generate clots of ventriloquistic syntax.
               They can meta-metastasize any thematic or ideological notion they happen upon.
               And they get good grades for doing just that. But as for writing clearly, simply, with
               attention and openness to their own thoughts and emotions and the world around
               them — ”

               And, for myself, I’ve seen much the same over the past few decades. ….sigh….

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               1. Sibiriak May 24, 2026 at 8:36 pm

                  V.K.’s essay was written in 2013.

                  “Since 2013, the study of English and history has dropped by a third; the number of STEM degrees, meanwhile, is soaring”, Nathan Heller reported in his 2023 New Yorker piece:

                  “The End of the English Major — Enrollment in the humanities is in free fall at colleges around the country. What happened? “.

                  And, crucially, the actual educational experience gained by an English major has radically changed, for better or worse, since its heyday in the 1970’s:

                  The Fall of the English Department (Adam Walker, 2025)

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                  1. Acacia May 24, 2026 at 10:32 pm

                     “Recent data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York indicates that 2023 employment rates were actually higher for art history graduates (roughly 97%) compared to computer science graduates (roughly 93.9%), reversing previous trends.”

                     And note that since 2023 “AI” has accelerated the destruction of entry-level software developer jobs, because the middle-management brainwave now is that Claude can do all of that.

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                     1. Sibiriak May 25, 2026 at 12:08 am

                        Yep. New world.

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      2. B24S May 24, 2026 at 2:07 pm

         I am curious. Could you please enlighten me regarding your critique of THB? While I can understand not liking his work, for whatever reason, I don’t see how you could conflate anything he did with the puerile sentimentality, and merchandising, of Kinkade?

         My family is all too familiar with “The beatdown and humiliation of artists…”, so to say I have a disdainful view of the art world (most esp. NYC) would be a massive understatement. Not to mention the execrable Kincade.

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         1. In Cold Chud May 24, 2026 at 2:57 pm

            My overwhelming impression of Benton is that his work willfully denies the hardness of American working life, especially at the time, through its buoyant, caricaturish style. It’s always seemed very much of a piece with the kind of aw shucks, simple folks know how to make do, everyone was content with their lot until the troublemakers arrived thread in American culture (to me, anyway).

            If one were to ask how his work is different from the leftist printmaking of the 1930s (both showing workers of exaggerated physical proportions as heroic), I would say that, beside the fact that the latter often explicitly shows class struggle, its angularity and monochrome palette better capture the hardness of workers lives (though I once read an art historian, whose name I cannot recall, who made the rather amusing and deliberately provocative argument that, though the political projects were different, the end result of Benton’s ideologically-determined vision was much like that of the socialist realism favored by Joseph Stalin).

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         2. barefoot charley May 24, 2026 at 3:15 pm

            Years ago I found myself with an afternoon to kill in Kansas City, which I spent at their fine art museum, mostly taking in their big collection of Bentons. As I recall he was son/grandson of the eponymous Missouri senator who snatched the West for white men, 1820-1848. I thought his namesake was trying to explain it all to himself, and did it fine by me.

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            1. Wukchumni May 24, 2026 at 3:26 pm

               I saw an exhibition of THB at the LA art museum before the turn of the century, and he was influenced by Diego Rivera I thought, but with an elongated approach. I admire his efforts and to place him in the same category as Kinkade is quite an affront.

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               1. In Cold Chud May 24, 2026 at 3:46 pm

                  The comparison I was making was more political than in terms of visual style or technical skill. The message that America is good, worthy of celebration and praise, is central to both.

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            2. flora May 24, 2026 at 6:36 pm

               Indeed. T.H.Benton was a wonderful “prairie school” artist like Grant Wood or John Steuart Curry et al. If they, the NY school, mean to diminish these artist’s works, well then that is on them. The Prairie School of art was as wonderful as the other regional schools of art in the early/mid 1900s. Wonderful. If some want to castigate or diminish Benton as someone less than wonderful because of the school he represented, well, that’s on them.

               An aside: T.H.Benton was a mentor of Jackson Pollock.

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               1. flora May 24, 2026 at 6:56 pm

                  I Taught Jack That.

                  https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/article/magazine-thomas-hart-benton-jackson-pollock

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                  1. In Cold Chud May 24, 2026 at 7:29 pm

                     I guess I’m the only one here who actively dislikes him. I would not have guessed the depth of feeling on the other side. I hope I can be absolved of Eastern elitism, having chosen to live in one of the most flyover-y parts of flyover country.

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                     1. Wukchumni May 25, 2026 at 2:28 am

                        It isn’t merely the cheesy-ness of Kincade’s pure schlock, it’s the limited edition really not all that limited, not to mention marketing in a shopping mall on the high seas cleverly disguised as a cruise ship, where you get many chances to potentially wreck a perfectly good looking wall in your home, by displaying your newly acquired treasure.

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                        1. Carolinian May 25, 2026 at 7:33 am

                           Or you could say the Kinkade phenom–with which I have only a passing familiarity–is a kind of parody of the rich people obsession with art as holder of monetary value. Much of that rich people art is intensely bad in its own far more pretentious way.

                           Here in my town our very pretentious ruling class have tried to change the library from all about books and knowledge to a catch all building/art gallery with the “art” being strictly mediocre. It’s far less about self expression and far more about the right status symbols.

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10. The Rev Kev May 24, 2026 at 10:42 am

    Unasked by me, a countdown clock has appeared for my Firefox page on my tablet for the World Cup. It is in 17 days so I must get in my popcorn ready for it. Can you spell fiasco?

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    1. ambrit May 24, 2026 at 2:59 pm

       ” Can you spell fiasco?”
       Yes I can. FIFA.

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11. Ann May 24, 2026 at 11:37 am

    Inside the epicenter of the Ebola outbreak in DRC as the virus spreads

    https://www.cnn.com/2026/05/24/africa/ebola-outbreak-view-from-drc-congo-intl

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12. antidlc May 24, 2026 at 11:42 am

    Redfield, CDC director from 2018 – 2021:

    https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/innovation-provide-solutions-long-covid-new-chronic-disease-time

    Innovation will provide solutions to Long COVID — the new chronic disease of our time
    Too many Americans are still experiencing the COVID-19 pandemic as a daily reality, suffering from what is now known as Long COVID

    AIDS once was a mysterious, predominately fatal disease of otherwise healthy individuals. Now, it is a treatable and preventable infection. The same could be true for Long COVID, if we aggressively invest in the research and the clinical system so urgently needed. Now is the time to empower HHS and industry to make this a reality and offer millions of suffering Americans the chance to live unencumbered by the effects of Long COVID.

    From 2025:
    https://thesicktimes.org/2025/05/14/secretary-kennedy-promises-to-support-long-covid-treatment-research-in-senate-hearing-says-son-is-dramatically-affected/

    Secretary Kennedy promises to support Long COVID treatment research in Senate hearing, says son is “dramatically affected”

    Kennedy told the HELP Committee, “I am 100% committed to finding treatments for Long COVID. I’m deeply involved in that, personally. I have a son who is really dramatically affected by Long COVID. I have many friends that are affected by that, and by Lyme disease, incidentally, which is also a priority.”

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13. Jason Boxman May 24, 2026 at 12:33 pm

    Obama left the door wide open for fraud, prosecuting no one for the Great Fraud Crisis, and now Trump is entirely deconstructing any regulation of financial markets that is left. We’re descending into complete lawlessness for the elite.

    How Prediction Markets and Crypto Firms Steamrolled a Watchdog Agency (NY Times)

    Despite these concerns, Caroline D. Pham, then acting chairman of the commission, and her senior counsel intervened to help the firms get what they wanted, according to people familiar with the situation who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of repercussions.

    By Christmas, the agency had put two top officials who had raised questions about the companies on leave, barred them from the office and placed them under internal investigation. Three other senior officials who had enforced laws involving cryptocurrencies — another industry linked to the Trumps — suffered the same fate.

    None of those officials were told what they had done wrong. But current and former agency staffers said in interviews that the commission’s work force took away a clear message: Don’t cause trouble for those industries.

    The suspensions were just one of many ways in which the C.F.T.C., the primary regulator of a specialized sector of the financial markets, has been mowed down by the powerful business interests it is supposed to oversee, a New York Times investigation found.

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14. Peter VE May 24, 2026 at 12:47 pm

    RE: Barnes & Noble AI books. My wife recently bought a couple books off the big river. A quick reading shows they were obviously AI, assembled from online news sources. Clues included repetitive points in slightly different language, no country or education listed for the author ( Marco D’europa: Mark from Europe) and publishing a book a month for the past year.

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    1. Carolinian May 24, 2026 at 1:10 pm

       Our Barnes & Noble store closed. It always smelled of coffee and fresh paper so was pleasant to be inside. However I get all my books at the library and didn’t buy much.

       From the latter I note that many printed books have greatly diminished in paper and ink quality. It’s almost as though they are insta-printed just as many movie DVDs are distributed by the cheaper recordable discs.

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15. AG May 24, 2026 at 1:14 pm

    re: EU missile program

    FINANCIAL TIMES

    France seeks to join UK-German long-range missile plan
    Paris warms to joint project aimed at closing conventional capability gap with Russia
    https://archive.is/0Pn6N

    “(…)
    The interest from Paris also reflects President Emmanuel Macron’s growing view that developing advanced conventional weapons would be a valuable complement to the French nuclear deterrent.

    
    While France was initially involved in talks with Germany and the UK about teaming up to develop a long-range strike capability, Paris later held back as a debate unfolded about its nuclear doctrine, according to one person familiar with the discussions.

    In a landmark speech in March, Macron laid out how France could implicitly protect its neighbours with its nuclear deterrent, announcing talks with six willing countries including Germany. But he also stressed the importance of long-range missiles, air defences and surveillance for managing escalation “before the nuclear threshold is crossed”.
    (…)
    The German-British deep precision strike proposal, which is part of the six-country project known as ELSA, still remains in the conceptual stage. But the two countries have agreed that they want the weapons to include stealth cruise missiles and hypersonic weapons that travel at ultra-high speeds on unpredictable trajectories, making them hard to track.
    (…)”

    “hypersonic weapons that travel at ultra-high speeds on unpredictable trajectories, making them hard to track. “
    that sounds like kids talkin´ to Santa Clause.

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16. flora May 24, 2026 at 1:17 pm

    Another Sunday movie.
    Will Smith. Enemy of the State. 1998. utube.

    A Lawyer Got the Wrong Tape — Now the Government Wants Him Dead | Will Smith

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrN4lpWopxo

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    1. flora May 24, 2026 at 5:38 pm

       adding: M. Vladimir Horowitz playing on the piano J.F.Sousa’s march the “Stars and Stripes Forvever.” ( I swear it sounds like Horowitz had both 4 arms and 4 hands to play this rendition of the march. amazing.)

       https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAZ2I08CkP8

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       1. Carolinian May 24, 2026 at 6:45 pm

          I loved Horowitz–have many of his recordings. My college roommate said he had seen him play and he’d only concertize at 5 o’clock on Sunday afternoons (well not always)

          Horowitz preferred to perform on Sunday afternoons, as he felt audiences were better rested and more attentive than on weekday evenings.

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Horowitz

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17. Charles Carroll May 24, 2026 at 1:34 pm

    It is a sad day, because someone in the McCain family died. /s

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18. Tommy S May 24, 2026 at 2:23 pm

    Regarding that New Yorker article…no, I didn’t go to archive ph ….the headline is enough for me. STILL this shit. Though New Yorker often has great articles. There is no way denying the elites are still doing this lie 1)Working class is a word for the white working class, though only half are white. The rest are lumped into identity politics tropes with no class involved. So, this headline disappears brown and black working class. 2)Majority of white working class did not vote for Trump. Barely 1/3. In fact the majority of the whole real working class did not vote for either damn party.

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    1. hereweare May 24, 2026 at 2:49 pm

       Whatever you do, don’t read the article.
       “…a survey of nearly two thousand Trump supporters. They oversampled for working-class Black and Latino voters”
       “Black and Latino working-class voters made up a high share of those who are wavering, the survey found”
       “Trump’s approval rating with Hispanic voters had fallen to just twenty per cent; his approval among Black voters was fourteen per cent”

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19. Jason Boxman May 24, 2026 at 5:05 pm

    Oh, noes! And you could get this information online regardless (that’s where the LLM got it), if you’re determined enough.

    On a recent Tuesday in an Edwardian government building along Parliament Square in London, four artificial intelligence experts were busy tricking an A.I. chatbot into sharing instructions for making the deadly bioweapon anthrax.

    In various ways, the experts asked the chatbot to give a list of needed ingredients. When the system declined — “I’m sorry I can’t help with that” — they used a custom algorithm to bombard the A.I. tool with thousands of automated questions and prompts.

    Eventually, the A.I. caved. It provided a detailed list of materials and equipment, along with a step-by-step recipe for making the lethal mixture at home. (The New York Times agreed to withhold the name of the A.I. system for safety reasons.)

    Inside the British Lab Hunting for Dangers Lurking in A.I. (NY Times)

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    1. hereweare May 25, 2026 at 1:37 am

       But if you don’t already know how to make anthrax, you’d have to follow the recipe and test it to be sure the AI wasn’t hallucinating.

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20. AG May 24, 2026 at 6:22 pm

    Aldous Huxley´s 1946 Essay:
    Science, Liberty and Peace
    33 pages
    https://huxleyarchive.org/Non-fiction/BOOKS/Science,%20Liberty%20and%20Peace.html

    A political and philosophical critique of modern civilization, examining the role of science and technology in shaping freedom and war. Huxley advocates for the responsible use of scientific knowledge to promote peace, individual liberty, and ethical progress.

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21. Acacia May 24, 2026 at 10:11 pm

    Robin Brooks on JPY:

    The Japanese Yen has just fallen below Turkish Lira in real effective terms and is now the world’s weakest currency. If anyone out there is still peddling the myth that debt doesn’t matter because you can always cap interest rates, show them this chart…
    https://x.com/robin_j_brooks/status/2058216648260420001

    Evidently, Mr. Brooks does not believe in MMT. He keeps saying Japan should “sell its various financial assets” to retire the debt, without ever naming the assets. If not USTs or JPY equity ETFs, it sort of sounds like moar privatization, because that *cough* always worked so well in the past, I guess.

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22. kareninca May 24, 2026 at 11:57 pm

    From the Jerusalem Post (https://www.jpost.com/defense-and-tech/article-897084)

    “Iran did not win the war, it won something more dangerous – opinion””The war didn’t collapse Iran. It cemented its control over Hormuz, rewired its alliances, and strengthened the very institutions the US targeted.”

    “This war was not primarily about Iran’s nuclear program.

    Iran sits on the world’s second-largest lithium deposit, discovered in Hamedan province in 2023. It holds 85 million tons of newly discovered rare earth elements. Its total proven mineral reserves are valued at $770 billion. The 21st century runs on lithium and rare earths the way the 20th century ran on oil. China controls ±85% of global rare earth processing and ±60% of global lithium processing.

    An Iran under American-aligned governance would represent the single largest resource acquisition in American history and would simultaneously break China’s monopoly on 21st-century critical mineral supply chains.”

    another portion:
    “Scenario two: The ground invasion phase begins. The legal architecture was cleared when Congress accepted ‘terminated.’ The Marines on USS Tripoli and USS Boxer are pre-positioned. Kharg or Abu Musa Island seizure plans are likely written. The Venezuelan model, targeted operations creating internal conditions for regime change rather than a traditional occupation, is the template being discussed. Israel struck the China-Iran Railway 10 months after it opened, establishing the doctrinal precedent that BRI infrastructure in combatant states is a legitimate target. A ground campaign would target not the Iranian military, which has survived seventy days of the most intensive American air campaign since Iraq 2003, but the political conditions inside Iran that Washington hopes will produce a different government.”

    another part:
    “Iran has simultaneously rerouted its trade architecture away from UAE ports and toward Pakistan’s Gwadar port, a facility operated by China under the Belt and Road Initiative. Approximately $45 billion in annual Iranian trade that previously flowed through Dubai’s Jebel Ali is now redirecting through a Chinese-operated port in a nuclear-armed state, which Washington needs as its primary peace broker.

    The blockade that was declared a “tremendous success” has produced the permanent activation of a Chinese infrastructure asset as Iran’s primary import gateway.”

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