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Links 5/6/2026

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Word of the day: sonder Richard Murphy

4,000-year-old tablets reveal magic spells, kings feared, and a beer receipt Science Daily (Kevin W)

Get Them Off the Damn Boat! | M/V Hondius in Cape Verde with a Hantavirus Outbreak Sal Mercogliano, YouTube

COVID-19/Pandemics

Climate/Environment

Dangerous heavy rains are getting more likely and widespread Yale Climate Connections. US focused but the finding is widely applicable.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a plastic trash nightmare. It could also be part of a much bigger, hidden problem CNN

World’s largest marine ecosystems are suffering from sudden jumps in ocean temperature Earth

Cities are rehearsing for deadly heat. Will it help when disaster comes? Grist

Amsterdam begins enforcing ban on adverts for meat and fossil fuels: ‘Climate crisis is very urgent’ Independent

Climate change increases spillover risk of rodent-borne arenaviruses EurekaAlert

Hazen Fire near Buckeye still 0% contained, almost 1K acres burned Arizona Repubilc

China?

Trump-Xi summit at best may codify new US-China coexistence rules Asia Times (Kevin W)

Stealing the Farm: China Continues Raid of US Agriculture by Theft and Agroterror AgWeb. Note this is a bona fide US ag pub and not a security/intel state mouthpiece

India

India is burning more coal as extreme heat and the Iran war squeeze energy supplies CNBC

India, Russia Explore Collaboration in Critical Minerals, Industrial Infrastructure InfoBRICS

Africa

Mali is FALLING to Jihadists: What Happened? History Legends

Egypt & Saudi Arabia Are Pitting Sudan Against Ethiopia Andrew Korybko

80% of Africa’s fertiliser is imported: how food systems can adapt to the Iran shock The Conversation

A Strange Change of U.S. Policy in Africa Daniel Larison

European Disunion

The “Big 3” Are Responsible for Europe’s Decline Finn Andreen (Micael T)

Berlin faces missile gap after Trump’s troop cuts Politico

The Economy of the Multipolar Future: Ireland and the case for a People’s Economy Multipolar Press (Micael T)

Old Blighty

Craig Murray: The Morass of Injustice Consortium News (The Joker)

New threat to Labour spending plans as UK long-term borrowing costs hit highest level since 1998 Guardian (Kevin W)

Food prices set to soar by 50 per cent compared to start of the cost-of-living crisis City A.M.

Wild Scottish salmon catch sinks to record low Telegraph

Salmon ‘wiped out’ and other wildlife killed after ‘tragic’ River Spey chemical spill Daily Record

Israel v. The Resistance

‘Total Victory’: How Iran Defeated Israel Kit Klarenberg. Today’s must read.

Israeli Settler Violence Continues Under American Neglect American Conservative. More like “tacit approval” but even this mild a reprimand needs to appear more often.

Israeli Finance Minister Smotrich Says Son Asked Him to Leave Some of Lebanon for Him to Destroy Antiwar.com (Kevin W)

I Was Beaten and Kidnapped by Israeli Soldiers When They Illegally Intercepted the Gaza Flotilla Zeteo

Prominent Christian Zionist Group Is Lobbying U.S. Lawmakers on Israel—Without Revealing It’s Funded by Israel DropSite

White House gave Iran private message before new Hormuz operation Axios

Over 22,000 People on More Than 1,550 Commercial Ships Trapped in Gulf – Pentagon Sputnik (Robin K)

The internet has a Strait of Hormuz problem Asia Times

Ex-spy Jonathan Pollard says he’s entering politics, slams Netanyahu and Bennett Times of Israel (Kevin W)

New Not-So-Cold War

How Russia Wins the New World War Global Geopolitics

Oreshnik Days Olivier Boyd-Barrett. Important.

Zelensky Threatens Moscow Parade; Putin Allows Strike Central Kiev; Oreshnik; Visits HQs; US Hormuz Alexander Mercouris, YouTube. Discussion of Russia matters starts at 34:00

Brief Frontline Report – May 5th, 2026 Marat Khairullin and Mikhail Popov

Problem with Ukraine’s 25,000 combat robots isn’t hardware — it’s keeping them connected on battlefield Euromaidan (Robin K)

Colombian mercenaries ‘dying for nothing’ in Ukraine – president RT (Robin K)

Lavrov, Rubio ‘touch base’ on current state of international affairs, US-Russia relations TASS

Imperial Collapse Watch

An Equilibrium Model of Counter-Base War in the Western Pacific Policy Tensor (Vikas S). A model with a lot of assumptions to make it tractable, but shows a lot of effort to have them be realistic. Bottom line: “Given these observations and our results, deterrence in Asia is no longer a feasible foreign policy objective for the United States.”

My Temporary Enemy’s Temporary Enemy… Aurelien

The Army is looking for ‘alternative protein’ for soldiers in the field Task & Purpose

Trump 2.0

Trump’s retribution? What to watch in Tuesday’s elections in Indiana, Ohio and Michigan Associated Press

More Americans are concerned about prices and Secret Service performance than about the Voting Rights Act You.Gov

Democrats Suck

Graham Platner has Democrats wondering if they need an outsider to win the White House The Hill. Help me. Over a lot of dead billionaires’ bodies.

Democrats want Trump to lift lid on Israeli nukes RT (Robin K)

Our No Longer Free Press

Economy

Forget oil, fertiliser is the shortage that will cause the most suffering The Times

Is A Famine Baked In For 2027? Ian Welsh. He forgets lubricants. Not only are they derived from petrochemicals, but output was further dented by Iran’s large and successful strikes on Saudi Arabia’s Jubail petrochemical facility. You need lubricants to run forklifts. You need forklifts to distribute food. So the US is more exposed than many think.

Why Water Scarcity Is Emerging As A Key Energy Constraint Forbes

UK airlines given green light to cancel or consolidate flights to conserve jet fuel Guardian

Manufacturing Is the Biggest Net Loser in Jobs, 5 Quarters Total Michael Shedlock

US economy on an unstable knife edge at present Bill Mitchell

Mr. Market is Giddy

The bond bubble’s reckoning FX Street

AI

The U.S. and China Have a Common Foe. Hint: It’s Not the U.S.S.R. Thomas Friedman, New York Times (Dr. Kevin). ZOMG!!! Not an effort to sell Chinese action v. Iran, as you might expect.

Breaking: Autonomous Agents are a Shitshow Gary Marcus

Pennsylvania sues AI company, saying its chatbots illegally hold themselves out as licensed doctors Associated Press (Kevin W)

Mark Zuckerberg ‘Personally Authorized and Actively Encouraged’ Meta’s Massive Copyright Infringement to Train AI Systems, Publishers and Scott Turow Allege in Lawsuit Variety (Kevin W)

The Bezzle

How Microsoft Vaporized a Trillion Dollars Axel Rietschin. Important. Illustrates how too much contact with AI makes people dangerously stupid. Also: “If you’re running production workloads on Azure or relying on it for mission-critical systems, this story matters more than you think.” Our tech maven Dave: “I’m pretty cynical about the state of software, but this 6-part series was eye-opening.”

Private Credit Could Spark Psychological Contagion, Barr Warns Bloomberg

Guillotine Watch

Can Tracking Private Jets Predict an Imminent Apocalypse? One Site Thinks So Gizmodo (Dr. Kevin)

Don’t Cry for Jeff Bezos’s Yacht Paul Krugman

Class Warfare

The new generation of fake leftists: from Zohran Mamdani to Zack Polanski Political Economist (Micael T)

Palantir and the New Order: Neoliberalism is dead. Say hello to Techlordism – The Point Yanis Varoufakis

Antidote du jour. Tracie H: “This is a Costa’s hummingbird. First one I ever saw, but I’ve seen him several times. He visits the same branch of one of our trees, is why I think I am seeing him regularly rather than just the same kind of hummingbird. I’m guessing I won’t be seeing the Allen’s hummingbirds that I saw in Orange County (CA) out here in the desert where we’ve moved to.”

And a bonus:

A second bonus:

And a third:

See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.

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103 comments

  2. Trees&Trunks

    The 4,000 years old tablets and beer recipes.
    It just confirms my aesthetical requirement that if you want to write for the ages, make sure to include beer (or at least wine or other booze) in the story.
    Given the slump in beer and alcohol consumption of the youth of today I don’t see any new books coming up for the people in 6026 AD to read. Sad stuff…

    1. Wukchumni

      I hadn’t been in a Trader Joes in a world of Sundays (that would be around 96 of them) and was a bit taken aback by the new and improved liquor area which was easily 1/2 the size I remember it to be.

      Asked the cashier what’s up?… and he said it was on account of people drinking less these days~

      1. The Rev Kev

        Makes you wonder what people are spending their money on these days for light recreation. Drugs? Online gambling? Netflix? Or more likely scrambling to pay the bills.

          1. The Rev Kev

            Maybe when the whole AI circus implodes and disappears up it own fundamental orifice, then computer chips will be as cheap as, well, chips.

          2. hk

            Prices of SSDs are crazy. Even mechanical hard drives are much more expensive than just months ago. :/

      2. flora

        The funny counter to this is that my local, longtime, health food store has suddenly added an entire new refrigerated aisle for beer. They never sold beer before. Beer is a health food? Who knew?

        1. Alice X

          My longtime food co-op has sold beer and wine for years. When the price of food goes up vertically, maybe the beer and wine for the horizontally inclined won’t go up quite as much.

    2. motorslug

      Youth today don’t really need liquor, they have pot.
      The biggest spenders opposing legal marijuana laws:

      Pharmaceutical companies
      Beer, wine and spirits lobbying groups
      Conservative xian groups
      For-profit prison industry

  3. dearieme

    “the proclamation of what I call the Hollywood Hegemon: the attempt to persuade the American public, and gullible foreigners, that the US after the turn of the century was not a failing industrial power with an ageing military, but a world-bestriding imperial colossus.”

    Do I remember Joe Biden saying something to the effect of “We are the USA and we can do anything”?

    Becoming President transformed him from an ignorant, dim machine politician to “sharp as a tack”. Magic!

  4. Wukchumni

    My Temporary Enemy’s Temporary Enemy… Aurelien
    ~~~~~~~~~

    Another powerful essay~

    A good many of us remember how it used to be, we’d drive our cars with no way to communicate with anybody while out on the road, nor anything to tell us how to get to our destination aside from say a Thomas Brothers guide (a SoCal thing) that had mapped it out for you in a book nearly the size of a phone book.

    It was a slower well thought out life and so was the news cycle, which had no outside competition for eyeballs.

    My dad was all about stocks, it rather consumed him. So when the stock market crash of 1987 comes along, mom and dad are in Hong Kong, and the information flow there is not quite the consistency of molasses, but close.

    He calls in a panic and wants me to tell him what’s what as far as I can discern, and tv and radio voices only know so much, and newspapers are more detailed, but daily-not right now. Pray tell, where else were you going to find the skinny on things last century?

    The fact was I kinda knew nothing, and that was ok before this contraption came along, with high speed urgency on damn near everything, accuracy allayed or simply ignored.

    1. PlutoniumKun

      Yes, a great essay as always.

      A key takeaway for me is that a future ‘multilateral world’ doesn’t mean what most people think it means. The demise of US power does not mean a neat carving up of the world into regional hegemons – it will be a world of deal makers, where countries, or regions within countries, will thrive only if they balance carefully an often contradictory set of layered internal and external demands. Nothing will be as appears on the surface.

      1. hk

        If we ever get a multipolar world, it’ll be a world of controlled anarchy (deliberate choice of words). How “controlled” it will be will depend on the kind of institutions we get, and international institutions are hard to put together. I’m not too thrilled about it, but we get what we deserve, I suppose–esp those of us in the West.

        1. Wukchumni

          Comeuppance see me sometime, along with everybody else in the Pyrite Billion.

          We’re richly deserving of something illiquid this way comes.

      2. hk

        The first major difficulty is the assumption that the politics of international institutions works the way we think it does, based on a very small selection of approved models, and that this selection of models constitutes the totality of the possible options.

        There is something interesting about this observation that Aurelien makes, something that good institution builders always understood: you CAN create “institutions” (not always “official” ones) that simultaneously meet multiple models of what different people think what they are supposed to do, by making sure that the situations that reveal what it is and isn’t among them never arise. This was the stock and trade of both US politics and international diplomacy for many generations, and ran exactly the opposite of what lawyers (even if many of their makers were trained in law) think institutions ought to do. Institutions created this way, as it were, didn’t actually address the alleged problems that these competiting models of what the institutions were supposed to deal with if they arise, but operated, in effect, as talking shops where people would talk informally about how to make sure that these problems are suppressed before they even arise or, at least, how to keep them out of view so that the institution wouldn’t have to expose its limitations. But being a talking shop was actually far more effective than being an actual institution that did something–the former could at least do something about the problems; the latter would just collapse because of its built-in internal contradictions.

        The rise of mediocre lawyers, who think, as they were taught, that institutions exist to address actual problems put these institutions to ruin, methinks. Good politicking, in many ways, is exactly the opposite of being a good “textbook” lawyer. The latter deal with crimes and disputes that have already come to being. The latter ensure that they don’t happen in the first place (if they are very good) or, at least, are kept well hidden and don’t need to be dealt with explicitly (if they are good, but not that good).

        1. PlutoniumKun

          Many good institutions operate precisely by providing a forum for built up pressure to be released – most skillful politicians understand the merit of simply allowing people to speak, to vent, to think they’ve been heard. I think this is something many modern political handlers don’t understand which is why an enormous amount of political pressure can build up, then erupt in an unexpected direction (see, Brexit).

          1. hk

            The value of a good talking shop that doesn’t do what it’s “supposed” to do, but provides venue for people who understand the “root causes” of the problem to talk among themselves and, possibly, raise smokescreens, away from public view–what we used to call derisively as “smoke filled back rooms”–is not appreciated (and wasn’t appreciated in the old days). Instead, we love fetishistic slogans like “sunlight being the best disinfectant” or such…

        2. brian wilder

          especially common in the alt-media, which, as often, uncritically accepts the analyses of the traditional media, but complains about the consequences

          we collectively cling to familiar problems because we do not want to lose our grip on the familiar

          when in 1931 the Bank of England left the gold standard after struggling economically for a decade, resolving in that single stroke a raft of impossible dilemmas, a Labour politician exclaimed, “no one ever said we could do that” (or something to that effect).

          politics envelopes a great range of human ambivalence. politically well-designed institutions do cope with the anarchic chaos of ambivalence with a multiplicity of conceptual ambiguity. institutions also print menus.

  5. .Tom

    > Word of the day: sonder Richard Murphy

    .Tom’s follow-up of the day: solipsism.

  6. hunkerdown

    Chris Bennett, the author of the AgWeb article, looks an awful lot like Chris Bennett… for Congress (CA-03), and check out that new gerrymander — Rancho Cordova and Lake Tahoe in one district, whew-whee!

    FWIW, he claims to be “AIPAC-free” but we’ve seen that’s easy enough to work around. His survey answer to “What committees interest you?” seems to have been amended; he indicates a lot of particular interest in the Foreign Affairs Subcommittee, which the incumbent Ami Bera also sits on. It smells like myth building.

    1. Yves Smith Post author

      This is ad hominem and a violation of site Policies. You need to address his article and not engage in strained attacks on his bona fides.

    2. Adam

      The candidate has a full head of hair and strong eyebrows. The writer has notably less hair, nearly invisible eyebrows, appears to have several decades on the candidate. The writer also lives in Mississippi, which would be a very strange thing for a California candidate to leave up if it were true! If you genuinely think these men look that alike so you can’t differentiate between them, I think a trip to the eye doctor is in order.

      For what it’s worth, the candidate is also endorsed by TrackAIPAC.

  7. upstater

    Data centers descend on needy Upstate NY towns. Is anyone looking out for us? – syracuse.com

    If nothing else just look at the NYS map. These monstrosities will consume many thousands of megawatts, literally all generation in upstate NY. Many are sited very close to public New York Power Authority hydro plants. The biggest proposal is at a shuttered aluminum smelter – why make aluminum in the US when you can import and mine bitcoin?

    Note the example of a data center paying 3 cents/kwh for NYPA hydro power. What little we consume off the grid is 22 cents. They get tax breaks, too. This is what corporate welfare looks like.

    If you wonder you wonder why you electricity and gas bills are going up, look no further. Where’s Hochul? Probably shaking down developers for campaign cash.

    1. hunkerdown

      The obvious solution is for municipalities to condition these data centers on the provision of free residental district heating at some factor of their nameplate power consumption, production shortfalls to be paid back treble to the municipality on a monthly basis.

      1. ambrit

        The real solution here is for “malign forces” to employ, er, kinetic solutions on the data centres.
        America has form in this sort of thing. Anyone remember the Boston Tea Party?

        2. hunkerdown

          Don’t need it, Claude, from the San Francisco Tea Party, will delete your code for you given enough time. :)

          But my aim was to get universal, concrete material benefits into the discussion, and a business that is pent up back to their eyeballs might just be twistable enough to institute a precedent against interest…

          A little aside. As we know, the anti-AI chorus is primarily a lobbying project of the US AI majors. According to the 100-year-old traditional blueprint, they generate a sensational enemy and propose themselves as competent “fighters” against it. US AI’s 12-figure valuations are a bid to enforce a new distribution of computation that looks a lot like the enclosures, with the PMC playing the new ownership class.

          They have been trying to pretend China’s AI diffusion initiative doesn’t exist, so that Westerners don’t get any ideas that AI can and should be free, local, and private, but their IPOs are starting to hurt and now they must cry about it: A Dark-Money Campaign Is Paying Influencers to Frame Chinese AI as a Threat (WIRED)

          1. mrsyk.

            I am not convinced these data centers are viable construction projects in a post-Iran War reality. Maybe they aren’t meant to be built, but are instead designed to raise, plunder, and launder money.

        3. JohnnySacks

          You may be jesting, but that’s some incredibly low hanging fruit for ‘bad’ actors in a disenfranchised caste. Along with fiber lines, the destruction to society’s digital infrastructure would be enormous. We’ve already seen glimpses, the effects of the 2025 CloudFlare incident being a prime example.

          1. ambrit

            The issue I don’t see raised much in this regard is that the World got along pretty well before the Pseudo AI movement was spun up. It looks a lot like a proper cost to benefits analysis was not done here. My cynical self considers the AI build out phenomenon as being a “real world” example of a Grift in Progress.
            Stay safe.

  8. Tom Stone

    For something more cheerful, I hope the commentariat will share some of the things they have heard that caused them to pause in admiration of the humanity or caused them to spray coffee as they laughed.

    “Small Children aren’t much more work than a cat”

    “Well, So far that looks like a pretty definite maybe, but I’m not entirely sure”

    “I can’t be out of money, I still have checks left”
    ‘
    And my all time favorite:

    “Just because you are right is no reason to agree with you”

    It’s a wonderful world.

  9. DJG, Reality Czar

    I read “The Big 3,” so you don’t have to. While I agree that the big problem in Europe now may be the shortsightedness and bellicosity of the interlocking elites of France, U.K., and Germany, I don’t buy Finn Andreen’s logic. Hmmm. A Swedish libertarian living in France. Hmm. What could possibly go wrong theoretically?

    The delightfullest quote: “The most successful countries of Europe are also the smallest; Andorra, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, and Monaco. What characterize these nations are, if not hard currency, then at least neutrality, low taxes, light bureaucracy, and free trade. This is not new : the recipe for a nation’s success has been known for over a century, spelled out by Ludwig von Mises, for instance, in Nation, State and Economy (1919) and Liberalism (1927).”

    The population of the four countries he mentions is less than the population of the city of Torino. It’s no wonder so many on the libertarianish techno-right fall for thinking that Tolkien is history and geography. Monaco as a model for a modern industrial society. Indeedy-doody, as the delightful Arizona Slim used to write.

    Yes, Merz, Macron, and Starmer are remarkable for their bad faith, for their willingness to say anything to get elected, for their lack of a political program other than continuing the pillaging. But Finn Andreen and Minas Tirith aren’t an option available to us PIIGS, either.

    1. vao

      Andorra, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, and Monaco rely upon banking secrecy, financial mailbox firms, and tax-free zones; they are free-riders on a larger system; they cannot survive without their neighbours with a genuine economic activity. For that matter, neither Liechtenstein nor Andorra had their own currency, Monaco’s was tied — and subsequently replaced by — the French franc, and none of these countries except Luxembourg had an army.

      If small states are the answer, then I wonder why Nauru, Cape Verde, Montenegro, or Belize are not as prosperous. On the other hand, Brunei and Singapore are — but again, Transnistria and Vanuatu are not. Perhaps there are other reasons than size for the prosperity of a country.

      Then there is this howler:

      “As if historical responsibility were not enough, the economies of the Big 3 are now in the doldrums, worse than most EU countries in terms of economic decline and social tension. Bad socialistic choices were made.”

      Nearly half a century of neo-liberalism resulting in utter failure, hence it must be the consequence of some “socialistic” policies.

      It is always dismaying to stumble on those libertarian arguments, time and again.

      1. The Rev Kev

        Agreed here. “Socialistic” policies indeed. Nothing to do with the *checks notes* twenty sanction packages launched either which have had massive blowback on the EU countries themselves. The UK may be worse. They have a massive hole in their budget but not only are they giving the Ukraine £5 billion each and every years for the next 100 years but have said that they want to take part in that 90 billion Euro gift to Zelensky. It’s all the fault of those damn commies.

      2. Irrational

        Luxembourg: Used to be the case, not so much now (secrecy only for residents). Now frequently getting hit with EU rulings on rights of cross-border workers, which are a rounding error for other countries, but very expensive for Luxembourg. Plus we have to pay France, Germany and Belgium to ensure they build even half decent train connections here (and with Belgium that doesn’t work).

    2. hk

      In case of Monaco, it is quite literally an old world version of “Indian Casinos” in US, complete with a casino and tribal ties (the real citizens of Monaco, of whom there are only a few, are sibsidized by the monarchy.)

      To be fair, local Indian casinos (in SoCal) look glitzy and fancy. Maybe some people think that should be our future….

    3. hereweare

      “The most successful countries of Europe are also the smallest; Andorra, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, and Monaco.”
      Vatican City is Europe’s smallest state by population, and the world’s by area.

    4. bertl

      Given that all politics is local, it’s interesting to see that Starmer’s giving coin to the green goblin as a way of greasing us back into the EU while our provincial towns and cities are desperate for funds to keep services going.

      Pretty subtle two fingers up to the voters as we head into tomorrow’s local government elections.

      Either he’s playing some rarified form of ten dimensional chess or he is just a really stupid f-cker who despises ordinary people like bin men, teachers, junior doctors, factory workers, farm labourers, the elderly, disabled and unemployed, parents with autistic children and every non-Zionist, Jewish or not. My mind, it boggleth. He’s the Harold Shipman of English politics. I ended up voting Green (thank God for postal votes).

      I think this is the election which will build or destroy the machines which will decide the future of British politics for the next three or four decades, just as the 1976 local government elections did – although nobody noticed it at the time.

  10. The Rev Kev

    “Collapsing Empire: How Iran Defeated Israel”

    By the sounds of this article, it was Mossad that had all these dreams of an Iranian collapse and defeat, in spite of others trying to sound warnings. Then Mossad went to the CIA and both then told Trump what he wanted to hear. My take on this is that the realist analysts in Mossad have been pushed aside by Zionists in the same way that hard-headed analysts in the US intelligence community were pushed aside in favour of boot lickers. If this is true, then Israel will get a flogging as time goes by – or even now. Maybe it was the Zionists in Mossad that said that Hezbollah was weak and Israel could go in and seize southern Lebanon no problem. That hasn’t worked out either.

    1. hk

      So, the Mossad was the Oracle of Delphi? I guess even they didn’t know what their prophecy meant…

    2. hereweare

      I thought the title misleading clickbait. “Collapsing Empire: How Iran Hasn’t Been Defeated by Israel” would be far more appropriate.

    3. TimH

      This doesn’t feel right to me. My expectation is that Mossad would be far more competent in their analysis of their Enemy Number One.

  11. Jabura Basadai

    yesterday evening mrsk commented on my description of my small orchard and the benefits it provides to calm a mind – mrsk wrote …imagine you’ve written a poem or two under a narcotic pollen buzz…” which was interesting because i had just finished writing a poem – always an intimidating idea to share my poetry since there are such excellent wordsmiths among the commentariat, and it isn’t based on a song – poetry has been my way of letting go of the chaos – also a fear of criticism in sharing with such an erudite group of folks here – but since it struck me as an unusual mention by mrsk i thought i would throw caution to the wind and share – i usually format the poems in a particular way that is impossible here in the comment box, which unfortunately detracts slightly but don’t think it will matter to y’all – btw, thank you mrsk for your intuitive comment which made me wonder where it came from – perhaps this will disappear into the aether as my final comment to mrsk did about a hitchhiking trip taken decades ago to Franconia then Montpelier on the way to Montreal, then a train ride to Windsor with a stop in between in Toronto to revel in Caribana – why it disappeared is a mystery – c’est la vie –

    Never Said Goodbye

    Never said goodbye, the chance is gone,
    Living with fate and cursed by destiny.
    A witness to life while also
    being a participant.
    Watching the power of celebrity
    in politics and entertainment. An ever ephemeral,
    Elusive and enigmatic goal utilized for conjuring tricks that
    dazzles the eye and fools the mind. Chasing the merry-go-round
    of prestige used by the truly powerful.
    Will only a true study of history
    rid us of these monsters?
    History a difficult puzzle, with more pieces than stars in the sky
    requiring a taciturn silence like the eye of a hurricane,
    Sensing motion without movement, ominous.
    Where is the wisdom from centuries of subjugation
    making ignorant hearts undisturbed by envy or greed?
    Is there a slender thread to real meaning, hoping to deny
    continuation of the next servile generation? Can we transcend
    the inevitable, or what seems inevitable inherent codes of conduct
    in our humanity, or is there no natural and perfect harmony of interests?
    Just control, manage, manipulate and intimidate within the context of a folklore of democratic
    decision-making. Common sense now seems more common than sense of the echoing unconscious
    monologue that accompanies us going nowhere, with nowhere to go in the pseudo world
    created by the mass-media we take within ourselves. Losing independence
    and a desire to be independent, as vague optimism
    that suffuses and sustains drifts slowly by like
    an old song, remembering only the words,
    But forgetting the melody.
    The silence of moral order through
    manipulation, distortion and distraction
    makes celebrity more appealing and easy to accept.
    When common sense becomes dollars and cents
    the wealth and power
    does not bring intelligence or knowledge.
    What should be valued and desired
    is never what money will buy.
    We never said goodbye
    to our democracy,
    The chance is
    Gone

      1. Jabura Basadai

        thank you for comment – was about to ask moderator to remove the poem –

          1. Jabura Basadai

            glad you had the opportunity to read – it was your comment that led to me overcoming my shyness to post – between my orchard, daughter’s garden and writing poems, been able to keep an even keel and have patience –

              1. Jabura Basadai

                powerful lyrics – wonderful voices – have only recently begun to appreciate opera – we have a local public radio station that only plays classical during day, which includes a smattering of opera, and jazz at night – WRCJ Detroit – NO NPR news or any news programming, just music – found them channel surfing while driving disgusted by NPR news – thank you for the link and comment – just in from cutting lawn and watching my daughter and her partner planting a row of roses – stay safe & healthy!

    2. Avalon Sparks

      What a lovely poem, you are quite the wordsmith. Thank you so much for sharing!

      1. Jabura Basadai

        thank you – both comments appreciated and made it worth posting – despite initial hesitancy –

        1. ambrit

          Never forget the adage: An artist is his or her own worst enemy.
          Your poem is good work and worthy of publication.

          1. Jabura Basadai

            true that adage – submitting chapbook – not the first time but the first time took it seriously – have written something always since leaving high school – thank you for your comment – have 30 poems as part of the chapbook titled “Creatures of the Past Birth the Future” – wish me luck –

            1. Archie Shemp

              Good luck! Do let us know when the chapbook appears.

              I’ll join the dawn (here) chorus of appreciation. Your poem makes me more determined than ever to get out and experience the outside more. Birds are migrating now, and a local park has many different temporary visitors, including noisy owls! I’ll occupy a bench more often, close my eyes, try to discern every distinct voice in the chorus.

      1. Jabura Basadai

        will definitely in appreciation of a valued comment – you do know how to turn a phrase Wuk –

  12. ciroc

    >Stealing the Farm: China Continues Raid of US Agriculture by Theft and Agroterror

    The CCP has executed the most expansive technology heist in history, tapping all fields of U.S. industry, business, and production, including agriculture, as evidenced by a 2017 report by the U.S. Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property estimating a loss of $255 billion to $600 billion to the U.S. economy each year, and fingering China as the “principle IP infringer.”

    The threat from China is real, but relying on military means to counter it is pointless. Even if the United States were to develop new fighter jets or missiles, China would probably steal the blueprints. Rather than expanding its military, the United States should focus on stopping China’s intellectual property theft and cyberattacks.

    1. TimH

      fingering China as the “principle IP infringer.”

      But not the principal IP infringer?

      Perhaps they mean that China is following the classic engineering principle of taking an existing approach and improving on it…

    2. dearieme

      The US used to do well out of stealing IP. Now it’s the gamekeeper not the poacher.

  14. The Rev Kev

    “How Microsoft Vaporized a Trillion Dollars”

    Considering this is Microsoft, I am not surprised. As they say, the fish rots from the head. And all this cluster**** was on the leadership of Microsoft and misusing the people that were working for them – those that they did not fire that is. This 6 part series is full of technical terms but you can follow the human story behind it. Did the top leadership know about the fiascos taking place under their watch? Or did they close their eyes and thought of their salaries and stock options instead? I think that it was Sun Tzu that said that too much success can be a disadvantge and with Microsoft he would have been right.

  15. tegnost

    Krugman…
    Now there was, politically, some back pressure against that until Trump was elected the second time. And I think we have to bear in mind, we have to take seriously the idea that an important reason that we are in the state we’re in, an important reason that we have a would-be fascist regime in power — I don’t think they’re quite managing to pull it off, but they definitely would if they could — is that a handful of incredibly wealthy men wanted all restraints off.

    FFS Paul. where have you been, in a wine cave?

    https://fortune.com/2023/06/23/fdic-accidentally-released-list-of-companies-it-bailed-out-silicon-valley-bank-collapse/
    FTA…
    The new document underscores that in addition to serving a legion of startups and fledgling businesses, SVB was a go-to bank for tech industry giants, including some that have kept their relationships with the bank confidential.

    The $1 billion that Sequoia, the firm famous for backing iconic companies including Apple, Google and WhatsApp, had at SVB made up a fraction of its $85 billion assets under management. In addition to maintaining its own accounts at the lender, the firm also recommended every startup it backed do the same, Michael Moritz, a partner at the firm, wrote in the Financial Times. A representative for Sequoia declined to comment on the depositor list.
    Kanzhun, which had $902.9 million in deposits with SVB according to the document, didn’t respond to multiple emailed requests for comment. The company, which was heavily backed by Chinese giant Tencent before it went public on the Nasdaq in 2021, was among the largest Chinese companies to IPO in the US that year.
    Altos Labs Inc., a life sciences startup that works on cell regeneration, had $680.3 million in deposits with the bank. The privately held company has raised $3.27 billion from billionaires including Jeff Bezos and Yuri Milner, as well as Mubadala Investment Company and other investors. An Altos representative declined to comment.
    Payments startup Marqeta Inc. had $634.5 million at the bank, according to the document. In a statement, the firm acknowledged that it had “significant deposits” at SVB, but was already in the process of moving money to other banks. “While Marqeta supported the decision to guarantee all deposits at the bank, our ability to execute as a business and meet our financial obligations would not have been impacted, even if it was a longer resolution process” the firm said.
    IntraFi Network, which provides deposit services to financial institutions, had $410.9 million worth of deposits at the bank, according to the document. However, in a statement, the firm said that it didn’t actually have any of its own money with the lender, nor was it a client. The amount, rather, represents the funds of almost 2,000 different depositors whose balances were fully insured when SVB collapsed, according to IntraFi.
    Crypto stablecoin company Circle Internet Financial Ltd. previously disclosed its SVB deposits, which at the time represented 8.2% of the reserves backing its USD Coin. A spokesman said the company had no additional comment. The USD Coin, which is intended to maintain a 1-to-1 peg to the dollar, briefly drifted from that $1 level on the news of Circle’s exposure. The document listed it as SVB’s biggest depositor with a balance of $3.3 billion.
    Streaming set-top box maker Roku Inc. also previously disclosed having roughly 26% of its cash and cash equivalents parked at the bank. The document listed its balance at $420 million. A Roku spokesman declined further comment.
    Fintech company Bill.com previously disclosed it had roughly $670 million at the bank. The firm said the amount included about $300 million of its money and $370 million that belonged to customers. A company spokesman declined further comment. The FDIC document listed Bill.com’s total balance at $761.1 million.

    President Joe Biden.
    There are none so blind as those who will not see…

  16. Wukchumni

    Welcome Americans, sit yourself down
    And meet the best win keeper in town
    As for the Democrats, all of them crooks
    Rooking their constituency and cooking the books
    Seldom do you see
    Honest men like me
    A gent of good intent
    Who’s content to be

    Master of the White House, doling out the charm
    Ready with a handshake and an open palm
    Tells a saucy tale, makes a little stir
    Convicts appreciate a bail bond savior
    Glad to do a fiend a favor
    Doesn’t cost me to be nice
    But nothing gets you nothing
    Everything has got a little price!

    Master of the White House, keeper of the National Zoo
    Ready to relieve them of a right or 2
    Watering down the Dollar, a requiem for a long wait
    Pickin’ up their knick-knacks when they can’t see straight
    Everybody loves a billionaire
    Everybody’s bosom evang friend
    I do whatever pleases
    Jesus! Won’t I bleed ’em in the end!

    Master of the White House, quick to tell a lie
    Never was a possibility to pass him by
    Servant to the Zionists, butler to the great Bibi
    Charlatan, mountebank, and giving us the heebee geebees
    Everybody’s boon companion
    Every 13 year old girl’s chaperone
    But lock up your children
    Jesus! Won’t he skin you to the bone!

    Master of the White House? Isn’t worth my spit!
    Con man, pornographer and lifelong shit!
    Cunning little brain, regular Lolita-like affair
    Thinks he’s quite a lover but there’s not much there
    What a cruel trick of nature landed me with such a louse
    God knows how I’ve lasted living with this bastard in the White House!

    Master of the White House!
    Master and a half!
    Con man, pornographer
    Don’t make me laugh!
    Servant to the Zionists, butler to Bibi the great
    Hypocrite and toady and ingrate!

    Everybody bless the landlord!
    Everybody bless his spouse!

    Everybody raise a glass
    Raise it up the master’s arse
    Everybody raise a glass to the Master of the White House!

    Master of the House from Les Miserables

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VALfpc-dJ7s&list=RDVALfpc-dJ7s

  17. The Rev Kev

    ‘Daughter always said she preferred dogs. They adopted a cat, and this happened’

    Nice to see that the cat distribution system is fully working still.

    1. TimH

      Dogs are usually chosen by their new owners, while cats prefer to choose their staff.

      1. Oregon Lawhobbit

        As the meme goes:

        Dog owner: We spent two years of heavy research and interviews to select him.

        Cat owner: I was taking out the trash one night and there he was.

        Not entirely wrong – every one of our cats has been provided by the Cat Distribution System. Or else there’s a hidden Cat Magnet on our back patio…

  18. AG

    re: EU vs. China

    BERLINER ZEITUNG

    Study warns: EU plans against Chinese technology could cost member states billions
    Brussels’ cybersecurity plans to replace devices from Chinese suppliers would entail enormous costs. Germany would bear the largest share.
    https://archive.is/G4E4x

    “(…)
    The European Union’s planned crackdown on Chinese suppliers in critical sectors could cost member states €367.8 billion between 2026 and 2030, according to a study by consulting firm KPMG commissioned by the Chinese Chamber of Commerce to the EU (CCCEU), a Brussels-based lobby group for Chinese companies in Europe, which Reuters reported on Wednesday.
    (…)”

    In other news, Belgian Central Bank´s Pierre Wunsch stressed that EU is not competitive due to energy costs.

    Good night Europe.

    1. Lefty Godot

      The links at the top about increases in Kaposi’s sarcoma and osteoporosis linked to prior COVID infection can almost certainly be repurposed to blame “the jab” for those and similar phenomena associated with “the plandemic”. After which the speaker can move on to “the climate hoax” and “Trump’s stolen landslide re-election” as suitable conversation pieces. Or maybe it’s time to move on to UFOs/UAPs again…what a country!

  20. mrsyk

    Once again, thanks for the antidotes. Beautiful hummingbird, creative fish owner, silly dog, and a cat that draws old magic out of a child, and how cool is that!

    1. The Rev Kev

      So much for Trump’s promise that his ballroom wouldn’t cost taxpayers a dime. Now the GOP is looking for a billion dollars in funding.

  23. Wukchumni

    Cities are rehearsing for deadly heat. Will it help when disaster comes? Grist
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    Caves are ideal, or in the case of the French example, an abandoned tunnel works fine.

    Last summer here was ideal with around a dozen days 100 degrees or more, versus our recent record of 69 days of 100 or more in 2021.

    We regularly had days 20 degrees over average in the winter, why not the summer?

  24. hereweare

    ‘Ex-spy Jonathan Pollard says he’s entering politics, slams Netanyahu and Bennett’
    Pollard last year also compared his treatment by US interrogators to that experienced by Hamas hostages held in Gaza, lobbing the explosive allegation that he was raped while in custody.
    It’s well known that rape is rampant in US men’s prisons. Imprisonment is effectively sending men there in order to be raped, unless they’re powerful in some way, as many a US movie and cop show makes clear

  25. Wukchumni

    Mind-blowing demographic shift: For the first time in modern U.S. history, women 40+ now have more babies per capita than teenagers.
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    My sister had her first kid when she was over 40, and her boys are challenged-being on the autism spectrum, and I was down in SD with her for 61st birthday and she mentioned how most all of her friends had messed up kids and all had their first baby over age 40.

    Its really about the only time this has happened in the long history of human beans to such an extent, way past your prime the first time.

  26. hereweare

    One for Yves!
    What Happened When the Pope Had to Call Customer Service – NYT
    Even the Vicar of Christ can be thwarted by a customer service representative.

    About two months after Robert Francis Prevost, a Chicago-born cardinal, became Pope Leo XIV in Vatican City, he put in a call to his bank back home, a close friend, the Rev. Tom McCarthy, told a gathering of Catholics in Naperville, Ill., last week.

    The new pope identified himself as Robert Prevost, saying that he wished to change the phone number and address that the bank had on file, Father McCarthy said.

    The pope dutifully answered the security questions correctly.

    Then, the woman on the line for the bank told him that it wasn’t enough — he would have to come to the branch in person.

    “He said, ‘Well, I’m not going to be able to do that,’” Father McCarthy said in a video clip shared on social media, recounting the new pope’s growing frustration as the audience laughed. “I gave you all the security questions.”

    The bank employee apologized. The pope tried a different tack.

    “Would it matter to you if I told you I’m Pope Leo?” he asked, according to Father McCarthy.

    She hung up.

  27. AG

    re: Maidan

    The insane ideologue and historian Andreas Umland with a hit piece on Ivan Katchanovski.

    Controversy Is Not Method: Ivan Katchanovski and the Politics of the Maidan Shootings
    https://ikrs.org/controversy-is-not-method-ivan-katchanovsky-and-the-politics-of-the-maidan-shootings/

    Abstract

    This critical essay examines Ivan Katchanovski’s interpretation of the Maidan shootings of February 2014 and argues that the thesis rests on methodologically unstable foundations. The review analyses problems of source validation, forensic inference, disciplinary accountability, evidentiary standards, and causal overreach. It argues that the accumulation of fragmented materials does not by itself constitute reliable analysis and that politically consequential claims require stronger methodological and expert grounding. Particular attention is given to the use of visual materials, the Hotel Ukraina thesis, the treatment of state violence, and the movement between political interpretation and forensic claims.

    1. AG

      Katchanovski response post

      “I’ve accepted an invitation to present my open access book “The Russia-Ukraine War and its Origins” at George Mason University. There is Stalinist-style denunciation campaign initiated by Umland, Shekhovtsov and their ilk to censor my book. The campaign is based on deliberately false claims and is politically motivated.”

      Indeed sick, sick people

      p.s.

      Eventually, if you are Russia, faced with this kind of crazy fascistic hatred (and Katchanovski is Ukrainian and opposed to the SMO of coure!), you will find no other means than building up military supremacy. As all those laudable peaceloving activists who are still out there in Europe will not understand – EU is out for a kill. There is no negotiating.

      As Al Capone allegedly said (or maybe it was only pseudo-history in the person of actor Robert De Niro as Al Capone) “You can get much further with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone”.
      This sums up everything you need to know to understand the situation since 2014 at the latest. But more likely since 1917.

  28. johnnyme

    Hantavirus update:

    https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/sites/default/files/documents/TAB-hantavirus-06052026.pdf

    As of 6 May 2026, seven cases have been reported in a hantavirus-associated cluster of illness on a cruise ship, including three deaths, one critically ill, two symptomatic and one with unknown status.

    Person-to-person transmission of ANDV has only been documented following close and prolonged contact [8,9]. The current hypothesis is that some passengers have been exposed to ANDV while spending time in Argentina before embarking, where ANDV is endemic, and may subsequently have transmitted the virus to other passengers onboard the cruise ship. At this early stage of the investigation with limited available information, we consider everyone on the ship to be close contacts, due to the closed setting and shared social areas and activities, aligned with the precautionary principle.

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