Box turtles are back for the summer. Here’s how to help them survive another year Harvest Public Media
How One Rescue Mission Turned into the Global Record of Human Heritage Card Catalog
Climate/Environment
When The Fields Were Ours Earth Island Journal
Is this the moment to change the way we think about economic growth? The Conversation
‘Point of no return’: New Orleans relocation must start now due to sea level, study finds The Guardian
Federal cuts are leaving states and locals to pick up weather and flood monitoring responsibilities – are we OK with that? Balanced Weather
Hantavirus
A working timeline:
- Mid-March: Dutch couple possibly contract virus on bird watching landfill excursion.
- April 1: MV Hondius departs southern Argentina.
- April 6: Dutch man falls ill.
- April 11: He dies.
- April 24: St. Helena. Man’s body is taken off ship and wife flies with it to South Africa. The Dutch woman is already sick before boarding flight to South Africa.
- April 26: The Dutch woman dies in SA at a hospital.
- April 27: A British man who is sick is flown from Ascension Island to South Africa.
- May 2: A German woman dies on the MV Hondius.
Meanwhile, we have people leaving the ship and flying all over the world:
Some Hantavirus Cruise Passengers Are Back in the U.S. MedPage Today
Two British people self isolating at home after leaving cruise ship in St Helena BBC. “The UKHSA also said British people currently on the ship would be flown home on a charter flight, probably from the Canary Islands, as long as they didn’t have symptoms.”
Patient with a hantavirus infection being treated in hospital Switzerland Federal Office of Public Health (press release)
Passenger with hantavirus was briefly on board a KLM aircraft in Johannesburg KLM (press release)
***
Hantavirus on cruise ship confirmed as rare type that can spread human-to-human NPR. “…not entirely known how the Andes Virus transmits between people.”
Hantavirus-associated cluster of illness on a cruise ship: ECDC assessment and recommendations European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control
“On arrival, asymptomatic passengers are due to be repatriated to their home countries, despite possibly being infected & in the incubation period.”
Serious question:
Is everyone insane now. https://t.co/VQ972fCdyw— tern (@1goodtern) May 6, 2026
“At this stage, the overall public health risk remains low.”
6 years ago, I didn’t have the faintest clue how incompetent the WHO was and I believed them. I’ve been sick ever since. I don’t know how this will play out but I can observe that they have learned nothing. https://t.co/miRiCZazFa
— PACO (@PacoOnPause) May 6, 2026
Way too soon to say hantavirus will go pandemic, we have time to contain it. But don’t assume a 40% death rate means “it’ll burn out” that logic applies to isolated villages not ppl who get on international flights. The Black Death did, in fact, go pandemic w a 40%+ death rate
— Julia Marie (@julia_doubleday) May 6, 2026
The Koreas
North Korea drops references to unification from constitution Channel News Asia
Japan
Japan’s deep-sea quest for mineral supply security East Asia Forum
Japan’s Arms Export Shift Takes Shape in the Philippines The Diplomat
China?
US Fires Tomahawk Missile Using Typhon Launcher in the Philippines in Provocation Aimed at China Antiwar
Syraqistan
UN demands release of flotilla activists, cites ‘severe mistreatment’ Al Mayadeen
***
US’s Latest “Project Freedom” Boondoggle Sinks in Less Than a Day Simplicius
BREAKING: According to our analysis, ~$920 million worth of crude oil shorts were taken 70 minutes before an Axios report claimed the US and Iran were near a “14-point” deal to end the war.
At 3:40 AM ET today, nearly 10,000 contracts worth of crude oil shorts were taken without… pic.twitter.com/SZafvnZHHG
— The Kobeissi Letter (@KobeissiLetter) May 6, 2026
Iran’s parl. speaker calls US media’s bluff about pending arrangement with Tehran Press TV
Iran has hit far more U.S. military assets than reported, satellite images show WaPo
Washington Post Quotes Official About “Fresh Scrutiny” Over Israel’s Nuclear Threat Sam Husseini
Israeli Paper Admits That The Mossad Astroturfed The January Riots In Iran. The Dissident
It’s been over a month, and we still don’t know the name of that “downed F-15 pilot” who fractured his leg, yet managed to scale a mountain, walk 110 miles, and evade a brigade of Iranian troops, until the CIA could use an elaborate device that can hear human heartbeats 40 miles…
— FireFighterDev (@fire_starter457) May 6, 2026
European Disunion
Poland could host US troops Trump pulled from Germany, Nawrocki says Politico
Europe’s Russian Arctic LNG imports from Yamal hit record high in first four months of 2026 Intellinews
This deal is getting worse all the time Euractiv. On US-EU trade deal.
Africa
Mali’s junta and Russia lose ground to jihadists and rebels Le Monde
Russia’s Tactical Pullback From Northeastern Mali Shouldn’t Be Spun As A Retreat Andrew Korybko
Old Blighty
MICHAEL MANSFIELD ‘EXTREMELY CONCERNED’ BY CASE AGAINST PALESTINE ACTION LAWYER Declassified UK
UK elites are scary disciplined & effective when it comes to crushing popular democracy. They successfully smeared Corbyn, a passive saint, as Pol Pot meets Hitler. And now they’re convincing Brits that an anti-fascist Jew is the new Oswald Mosley. https://t.co/FSk1EFRF2m
— Mark Ames (@MarkAmesExiled) May 6, 2026
New Not-So-Cold War
L’affaire Epstein
South of the Border
U.S. State Department tapped special ops contractor to vet Haitian police using controversial AI lie detector All-Source Intelligence
Trump 2.0
Insane Pre-Crime Strategy Unveiled for Leftist “Extremists” Ken Klippenstein
Justice department can keep 2020 ballots FBI seized from Fulton county, judge rules The Guardian
White House East Wing debris dumped at nearby golf course has toxic metals, report says AP
Imperial Collapse Watch
Resisting Sanctions and Economic Warfare The Anti-Empire Project
The Grand Illusion of Outsourced Sovereignty AGON
Why the World Bank changed its mind on industrial policy Jostein Hauge, Global Currents
Police State Watch
Exclusive: VA conducted internal investigations into employees who attended vigil for Alex Pretti CNN
Our Famously Free Press
FBI probing leaks to journalist who wrote explosive article on Kash Patel, sources say MS NOW
The Accelerationists
Google DeepMind workers in UK vote to unionize amid deal with US military The Guardian
Requiem for the Populist Decade Lily Lynch
Agriculture
California farmers to destroy 420,000 peach trees following Del Monte bankruptcy SF Gate
Mr. Market
The food inflation crisis will soon be all investors are talking about MarketWatch
AI
Don’t Reject Data Centers. Negotiate Harder. Progress and Poverty. No thanks. Even if localities negotiate to avoid steep electricity service increases, that can mean data centers building out their own polluting power supplies—usually with limited oversight. Plus the use of limited water supplies. And water contamination. And cancer risks. And the noise driving people crazy. And the whole idea of a bunch of circlular investing billionaires making our capital allocation decisions that help them further destroy labor, art, privacy, relationships, knowledge, and the planet while enriching themselves.
The AI Hard Drive Shortage Is Making It More Expensive and Harder to Archive the Internet 404 Media
AI Company Sued Over Chatbots Allegedly Claiming to Be Licensed Doctors AP
Kevin O’Leary’s Massive Data Center Project in Utah Gets the Greenlight, Locals Are Furious Gizmodo. “The project would be more than twice the size of Manhattan and could consume more electricity than the entire state currently uses.”
Violent Threats and Data Center Resistance Accelerate The Soufan Center
Nvidia’s New Partnership Wants to Put Mini AI Data Centers on Your House Inc.
Groves of Academe
Everyone Is Cheating Their Way Through College New York Magazine
Economy
The ‘K-shaped economy’ has shown up at the gasoline pump Yahoo! Finance
Shell tops profit estimates as Iran war boosts oil price, cuts share buybacks CNBC
Guillotine Watch
Shocking stuff from the CEO of Vornado Realty Trust on his latest earnings call: pic.twitter.com/XX2UoEtLUR
— More Perfect Union (@MorePerfectUS) May 6, 2026
The Work of Art in the Age of Shameless Ostentation Arthur Goldhammer, The Sense of an Ending
The Bezzle
Am I Meant To Be Impressed? Ed Zitron
Antidote du jour (via):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
76 comments
Comments are closed.
You normally do much better than this, Mr C G.
Was this an AI effort, intended as a wry joke?
I assume this was a response to an early launched version of the page? Links look good to me.
Is your comment meant to be productive in any way? Show gratitude to our bloggers, please. They work very hard.
Links are great, thank you Conor!
Also appreciate your mini-rant about AI datacenters, couldn’t agree more, speaking as someone whose career enabled in a small way the technology dystopia we live in.
I console myself there have been upsides to information technology advances.
‘FireFighterDev
@fire_starter457
It’s been over a month, and we still don’t know the name of that “downed F-15 pilot” who fractured his leg, yet managed to scale a mountain, walk 110 miles, and evade a brigade of Iranian troops, until the CIA could use an elaborate device that can hear human heartbeats 40 miles away to locate him. We don’t know what he looks like, or where he is now.’
Some of the replies to this tweet are pretty funny and worth reading-
https://xcancel.com/fire_starter457/status/2052010268532838543
But how many people will recognize the guy in Ariel Gonzalez’s reply?
It was (supposedly) the weapons officer who (supposedly) hid in the mountains with an injured leg. He (supposedly) hiked along a 2000m ridgeline, but if he landed at roughly that altitude he needn’t have ‘scaled a mountain’. And why the big fuss over his name not being released? CIA agents were (supposedly) involved. Have their names been released? If not, does that prove they were never there? Have the names of those responsible for hitting the Minab school been made public? If not, does that somehow prove the school wasn’t hit, or was a military base and not a school? I don’t understand some people’s obsession with not knowing this name and not seeing a photo of him. It isn’t standard military, let alone spook, procedure to dish these things out willy nilly.
North Korea dropping unification. Is South Korea such a basket case nowadays or will be in the future that not even North Korea want it?
When you stop to think about it, North Korea is fully allied with both Russia and China. What that means is that North Korea will have no problem getting all the energy that they need from Russia with whom they share a border in exchange for say the mineral wealth that North Korea has. South Korea? Not so much in the way of energy options.
Indeed, and the DPRK and Russia just opened a brand new bridge/roadway to connect the two countries.
Maybe Kim Jong Un can set up his own live “Supreme Leader” web cam of a gas stove running 24/7 in Pyongyang with prices in ROK Won.
Very few people in either of the Koreas cared for unification for decades already. The fiction that they wanted unification has been maintained, even if not conscientiously, because that was the politically correct thing that nobody wanted to publicly contradict.
However, over the last decade or so, North Koreans have been more blunt about saying the quiet part louder. More recently, they have been fairly open about not wanting unification. Kinda weird given past history of propaganda (North tended to be louder about unification, although, in truth, only barely even if more colorful.) but not really.
At least as far as foreign policy making is concerned, it makes sense for each Korea to insist that they are their own nation, not subject to the constraints of the mirage of a “unified Korea.” The North wants to deal with US, Japan, even Russia and China, without tying things to inter-Korean issues. Back in 1990s, South quietly dropped a lot of symbolic nonsense about “unification” as it sought Nordpolitik, normalizing relations with former (or current) Eastern/Communist bloc countries (although with emphasis on “quietly”–still, North Korean propaganda at the time caught on to this).
South Korea’s TFR is so abysmal, the North can just pull off the “Do Nothing; Win” meme, and get unification by default.
turtles.
here in nw texas hill country, the box turtles are crossing the highway.
ive helped 3 make the crossing, so far…and i hardly ever leave the farm.
its also been very wet and humid…and frelling cold!…here.
currently around 55 degrees F, cloudy and damp.
such that i am wearing longjohns.
and my furry hat.
doesnt feel like may, at all.
We’re having a similarly cold April/May in NE Ohio, although not exceptionally wet.
The peas and spinach are loving it. I have some tomato plants that are large enough to transplant, but I’m going to wait another 10 days or so, just in case. I remember some flurries on Mother’s Day weekend a couple of time in the past 10 years.
Didn’t know this was a big annual thing. I drove through north Texas couple days ago, and managed to keep my tires off of a pie-size large turtle (so, not a ‘box’?), hope he/she made it the rest of they way. From now on I’ll know better and watch for the little ones.
I’m sorry bad weather has settled in your spot, in my travels in the southern states I was relishing a lovely green and coolish spring rather than the humid heat I was anticipating.
I’ve seen a grand total of 2 native Western Pond Turtles here in 21 years, so not much chance of hitting ’em on the road, but we do have Tarantulas crossing the road for about a month or so, every year.
Yeah, I heard that some of them can get pretty big-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRPNrjrYpBM
A feast!
Re: Don’t Reject Data Centers. Negotiate Harder. :
In my more charitable moments, I’d like to think that my local officials could be hard-ass negotiators who could extract every last penny (and then another one) out of an incoming data center business in a way that actually improves local residents’ quality of life. But then I talk with them, because they’re my neighbors and live in my town, and they just don’t have the training, the skills, the killer instincts, and, perhaps most importantly, sufficiently advanced goals for the community that would make them come out ahead (hell, I’ll settle for equal) in such a negotiation. In the 4th poorest county in my state (NY) the motto seems to be “been down so long everything looks like up to me”, which is not the correct starting point against a rich and sophisticated adversary.
“Way too soon to say hantavirus will go pandemic, we have time to contain it.” [twixted Julia Marie (@julia_doubleday) May 6, 2026] But judging from the other reports Conor gathered here (thanks!) it’s clear “we” has so far done nothing to contain it, except the two in the UK who are, after traveling home, self isolating, which I assume means they voluntarily quarantined according to their own home-spun protocols.
Why should we expect that “we” will get its act together.
.Tom and johnnyme (below): I just did some further research.
— I read Portuguese, so I was trying to figure out what happened in Cabo Verde. At least one site claims that the authorities in Cabo Verde wouldn’t let the ship dock. Which seems reasonable.
—The Brazilian daily, O Globo, reports that all three of the early deaths were of people 69, 70, and 69 years old. The cruise is one of those Antarctica extravaganzas. So we are talking about a luxury cruise on a smallish ship — a floating college dormitory. Or, shared air.
—O Globo writes that the incubation period for Andean hantavirus is one to six weeks. So who knows what joy is being spread now in France, per johnnyme, below.
—Sky News (Murdochlandia) offers this: “The Andes strain of hantavirus – which is causing this outbreak – is most likely to be transmitted between household members, intimate partners and people providing medical care, he says.” [he = Tedros Ghebreyesus, WHO] Ahhh, yes, like the first weeks in Wuhan with Covid19.
Why am I getting a feel of vu jà dé all over again?
I did give thought to the “Diamond Princess”-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_on_Diamond_Princess
And the infamous “Ruby Princess” as well-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_Princess#COVID-19_pandemic
Great collection o’ facts, DJG. Thank you.
BBC radio reported several times yesterday (my time) that Cape Verde wouldn’t let the ship dock.
‘Or, shared air.‘ – don’t assume air is all they shared just because they’re getting on in years!
‘“The Andes strain of hantavirus – which is causing this outbreak – is most likely to be transmitted between household members, intimate partners and people providing medical care‘ – unless, of course, it’s a mutated strain which spreads human-to-human more easily. I’m not saying that is the case; just that very little is known about this outbreak (and, it appears, not a lot is known about hantavirus or this Andean strain anyway).
Thank you.
Thanks bro
It’s clear that nothing was learned from Covid! The world is run by idiots.
This has been a bonus year for mice–we caught 9 in one week, just in the kitchen–they ignore poison. The cat caught several and kindly dropped the still-live mice in our bed in the middle of the night. Last week, we tore out the kitchen sink to get at the hole we thought they were using to get in. Rats and mice seem to have years where they ‘swarm’ in vast numbers.
During my working career we occasionally had involvement with these cruise ships. One of the things the epidemiologist found was that the room services, laundry, waiter and things like that would frequently leave a ship and another person would take their place and return to the ship on the return trip.
The epi team did not think the ship crew had much knowledge/concern or kept any records of these changes.
So, this may be another hole in the net, but my information is 30 years old and that hole could have been patched.
Buckle up. Machine translated from French:
A French person identified as a contact case during a flight taken by one of the patients before his hospitalization
Le Monde is now running a live feed on the Hanta Cruise. Usually a sign that something bad is afoot. Apart from anything Russia-related, it is still a serious newspaper.
Nvidia’s New Partnership Wants to Put Mini AI Data Centers on Your House
100M/8k=12.5kW data centre per house, installed outside. Cooling by that HVAC it would appear, so some noisy fans running 24/7.
No thanks.
“Calif. farmers to clear 420,000 peach trees after Del Monte bankruptcy”
They are talking about 55,000 acres which is a lot. Perhaps they could plant wheat there after the peach trees get ripped out. After all, with wheat you can make bread and no matter how bad the times get, people still have to eat and bread is a pretty basic food item.
Not the first time we’ve willingly wiped out large peach orchards…
Kit Carson killed around 3,000 peach trees in 1864 in order to deny the Navajo, our gig is different in that 420,000 peach trees got ‘canned’.
https://historynet.com/navajos-will-never-forget-1864-scorched-earth-campaign/
Have you ever been to Canyon de Chelly, Wuk? I know you’ve hung out at Chaco which is fairly close to CdC as distances go out West. The spouse and I camped there nearly 50 years ago as I waited for the results of the New Mexico bar. There were still hogans in the valley with the Three Sisters planted around them. A few of the recesses in the cliffs had small, Mesa Verde-like ruins in them. Quite a beautiful and quiet place, the latter being thanks to its remoteness.
Yes, i’ve been a few times, and what makes Canyon de Chelly amazing is the native people are still living there, as opposed to Chaco Canyon, which is a ghost town in comparison.
They endured the western trail of tears, in having to walk to NM, after subjugation in the 1860’s
“ US Fires Tomahawk Missile Using Typhon Launcher in the Philippines in Provocation Aimed at China”
That seems pathetic to me. What do we have, like two left? We fired one missile to scare this gigantic country. For those of you who grew up with Andy Griffith show, sounds like Barney Fife walking around with one bullet in his shirt pocket.
And then we have to say to China, by the way, can we get some rare earth magnets? Probably should have saved that missile, but we were feeling testicularly challenged.
I can already envision some clever charlatan fleecing the defense department with an “ai powered rare earth refinery” that is actually just another data centre and just attempts to dropship rare earths from China in like a reverse AliExpress-Amazon pipeline manner. It probably won’t work but the right people will make a lot of money
“White House East Wing debris dumped at nearby golf course has toxic metals, report says”
Reading this article, you can see that Trump has an obsession with Trump, errr, golf. I got an idea. In the Potomac River is the 88.5-acre (358,000 m2) Theodore Roosevelt Island which you can see on Google Maps-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_Roosevelt_Island
He could have the whole island bulldozed flat and a world class golf course built. It would be only a short distance from the White House, would be secure once you knocked down the public foot bridge and all sorts of private deals could be made at the 19th hole. I can see it now – The Donald J. Trump Memorial Golf Course Island. And Trump would tell you that Theodore Roosevelt is overrated anyway.
Benedict Donald killing golfing is the sliver lining to his Presidency-for he has the asbestos touch, sorry Midas.
Perhaps Trump will have a mobile golf course built on a USA aircraft carrier?
He could then spread golf, like democracy and freedom, around the world, one port at a time.
Shorter The Guardian article:
Our elections have been gamed well past the point of our being able to claim to be a democracy. It’s time to do a nationwide recall of ALL our leaders. No party line voting, simply vote for the challenger in every race. Or, better yet, simply stop voting.
I have a somewhat related voting strategy. We should vote for the candidate who is targeted with the most negative ads. That will be the candidate not supported by AIPAC, Big Data, Big Ag, Big Pharma, etc.
I wonder how long before we get to vote for AI reincarnations of past presidents or other historical figures, why not?
Imagine JFK vs Reagan or Teddy vs Freddy, heh heh.
Re: the contempt case against the lawyer in the Palestine Action trial:
The lawyer in question brought up Bushel’s Case, a big one, historically, for us jury nullification buffs. There is a plaque commemorating it down the Old Bailey. The jury is the democratic part of the common law system, which is why there is such an effort to degrade or fully do away with it. Juries have the right, as Bushel’s Case and others established, to make findings of both fact and law. Judges, with their instructions to juries, love to twist this, or, more frequently, hide and ignore it, including sanctioning lawyers who attempt to educate jurors on their rights. I recently read a fine book on the subject, Jury Nullification: Evolution of a Doctrine, by Clay Conrad.
Thanks for the tip, going to give Conrad a read.
No problem! It’s got a bit of a theoretical guide for how defense attorneys can shoehorn in the history in closing arguments, too.
There’s a plaque commemorating the Bushel case in the Old Bailey, but defence lawyers mustn’t mention the case (or, presumably, the plaque).
The jury has the right to return a verdict according to conscience, but they don’t have the right to know that.
Kafka meets Orwell meets Carroll.
re: Am I Meant to be Impressed – Continuing Ed
“Let’s start with the biggest, ugliest one: Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Meta are expected to spend between $800 billion and $900 billion on AI capex in 2026, and over $1 trillion in 2027.
By the end of 2027, big tech will have sunk $2 trillion into AI capex, with very little to show for it.”
All of these outfits were sponsored by the US military and Intel agencies, from the beginning. Making a profit is not their ‘prime directive’. The US govt will sponsor billions of wasted dollars on them if they think that a better “weapon” will result…. eventually. / imo.
And as for the numbers report, the SEC is doing its part to shield publicly traded companies from unwanted public scrutiny. / ;)
US SEC proposes allowing public companies to opt out of quarterly earnings reports
https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulation/us-sec-proposes-allowing-public-companies-shift-semiannual-earnings-reports-2026-05-05/
(Nothing to see here. Move along. / ;)
Utilizing Gorka-nomics, longer wars require longer appendages?
Apparently self-dealing and cronyism by defense ministers isn’t tolerated in China.
China Sentences 2 Former Defense Ministers on Bribery Charges NYT
The US treats its civilian and military elites much more humanely with generous opportunities to cash out.
‘US’s Latest “Project Freedom” Boondoggle Sinks in Less Than a Day”
Most of the way down that page is a video of a talk given by an Iranian officer talking about asymmetrical warfare and this was back in the 90s. Worth while listening to and it shows you that the Iranians were war gaming their options out because they knew that sooner or later they would be in a fight with the US. It’s only 3:07 mins long but lots of what he says is familiar.
When The Fields Were Ours Earth Island Journal
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
We bought a new house in LA in 1968 that was one of the first subdivisions, with nothing but open hilly land around us as new construction occurred and suburbia roared eventually over the course of my childhood.
The land was truly wild and I remember this one salient feature, a large oak tree on a steep slope had a rope swing hanging from one of its stately branches that was about 3 inches wide in diameter, and knotted at the bottom. Some grownup must’ve put it there, and I can still see myself dragging the rope as far back as possible up slope, and then launching into the air, be your own Tarzan!
I’m drawn to the wild, and living cheek by jowl next to the National Park is perfect in that nothing really changes, and I can dial up as much wild as I’d like, especially by traipsing off-trail.
re: anti-Katchanovski campaign
Volodymyr Ishchenko has issued “An Open Letter in Support of Academic Freedom and Ivan Katchanovski”:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Dv5ee5OK_MutZeXGIRyHBZ-REyEH0zOB-MnCjjaV0Uo/edit?tab=t.23b0su5jf3mm
re: Zionism
via fb-post by Einat Temkin
“(…)
Gideon Levy of Haaretz.com critiques Omer Bartov’s cockamamie, nonsensical argument that Zionism is unsalvageable, while the State of Israel is “here to stay” (!), as explicated in his latest book “Israel: What Went Wrong?”.
In spite of Bartov’s late-to-the-game concession that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, and for all his criticism around that, he was, and remains, the ultimate Liberal Zionist, par excellence.
In his latest op-ed, Levy says: “Bartov’s approach is different than the anti-Zionist trends now flourishing around the world. He is convinced that something went wrong in the pure and innocent country that used to be his, and that something got twisted in its pure Zionist ideology. There was an ideology that led to the establishment of a highly moral state, and suddenly, something went wrong.
This statement may perhaps ease the agonies of Bartov’s painful farewell to Zionism, but it’s doubtful that it is the truth.”
I cannot help but feel incredibly vindicated that Levy agrees with me on this one, as I rather – ahem – vehemently expressed in my FB post on 23 April at facebook.com/share/p/1DUPgP2Jb9 . Sorry if I’m being petty and self-centered.
(…)”
“Some Hantavirus Cruise Passengers Are Back in the U.S.”
In many ways our financial overlords are taking us back to the early 19th century such as working conditions, no unions, little public health, etc. except for one thing – quarantining. So I had some ancestors that arrived in Oz back in 1853 aboard the “Beejapore”. Fever was rife and there were dozens of deaths so they hauled that ship to North Head and dumped them on the beach with tents. Soldiers were posted around them so that none could flee. After a month they were free to go after the sickness passed.
They could have done something similar here. Landed the whole lot someplace and give them everything they need, especially medical care. When the incubation period was over, then you can let them go. It’s not a new concept. Instead those passengers are scattering to the winds and who knows how many of them might be sick-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quarantine
Hantavirus: “Dutch couple possibly contract virus on bird watching landfill excursion.”
I have probably been to the same landfill site just outside Ushuaia in 2015. It sounds ridiculous, but landfill sites are often the best places to see certain birds of prey. (I went there by myself, not on an excursion).
It’s downright rude how often wild animals leave picturesque habit for places where eating is easy. Won’t they think of our Instagram needs!
Birds of prey also show up when buildings are being demolished.
re: Palestine displacements history
The Gaza Doctrine: Implications for International Law and the future of the Middle East
Neve Gordon from the School of Law at Queen Mary University of London
lecture on May 13
online registration
https://uwaterloo.ca/arts/events/gaza-doctrine-implications-international-law-and-future
“The Work of Art in the Age of Shameless Ostentation”
Looking at that photo of Lauren Sanchez Bezos, including her face, I am going to go completely sexist and say “Nope!” Her face no longer resembles that of a woman anymore and is a complete turn off. She had access to the best plastic surgeons in the world and it looks like they botched the job. At least John Singer Sargent’s Portrait of Madame X looks like a real woman.
caricature: “grotesque or ludicrous representation of persons or things by an absurd exaggeration of what is characteristic,” 1748 (figurative), 1750 (literal), from French caricature (18c.), from Italian caricatura “satirical picture; an exaggeration,” literally “an overloading,” from caricare “to load; exaggerate,” from Vulgar Latin *carricare “to load a wagon or cart,” from Latin carrus “two-wheeled wagon” (see car). The Italian form had been used in English from 1680s and was common 18c.
The resemblance to Laura Loomer is disturbing
Why is this bimboesque aesthetic so popular among the American elite? Extremely uncanny
Perhaps because the ultra rich are so infantilized by their belief system that they are attracted not by a feminine face, but by a sexual service module. Neither Laura Loomer nor Lauren Sanchez Bezos appear to me to have faces, instead they offer a swollen service module to the world. These are people who have so much contempt for civilization and culture (their ideology forces them to reject ANY common good) that that they can have no access to a cultivated (by tradition or by art) understanding of beauty. In this way, they too belong to the Epstein class, whether or not they actually molest children.
This comment might be in bad taste, not one of my better days, but does express my visceral response to a weird idea about women that begins with the Kardashians. Are these women “pre-battered” so as to appeal more to “strong” men?
Re: Every student using AI to cheat their way thru college
The author seems to think college education self-destructed before AI arrived on campus. Students are using AI to dodge a
Do we think an AI wrote the school’s brag sheet?
Later, essayist James Walsh reflects
Elsewhere in my morning reading (not in this New York magazine essay), I saw some teacher defensively assert that learning in grade school could be attributed to “quality classroom teaching”. It set off my cynicism about teachers and teaching, which found plenty to feast on here.
It is telling in its way that we don’t see feature articles on teachers creatively using ChatGPT to devise superior lesson plans or progressive fill-in-the-blank exercises and the like. No, it is only Luddites falling back on bluebooks filled in, in class, and banning phones or laptops, who get written up.
I am sorry but not surprised that author Walsh did not choose to be more analytic about exactly how college-as-credential-factory failed to educate, as opposed to sort the corporate and professional office caste. He does touch briefly on the challenge to grading-on-the-curve that AI-generated prose poses to the fumbling, disorganized efforts of students struggling to learn. But, he doesn’t question the premise of grading-on-the-curve, which is that the teacher is providing feedback to the student and the world about how good a writer the student is, before teaching the student to write well. Is this really how we should organize college instruction?
It is theoretically possible to organize instruction in many subjects and skills around getting students past pre-defined thresholds of competency. Everyone who crosses the finish line wins the race and gets an “A”. And, everyone can get enough instruction to cross the finish line of competence.
It is not how we are conditioned to think about education in a society that defines “good school” by how well it selects “good students”. But, if the college model has broken, maybe we could apply our remaining critical thinking skills to a redesign.
“Everyone Is Cheating Their Way Through College”
‘ChatGPT has unraveled the entire academic project.’
Have bookmarked this to read again tomorrow. Higher education is now officially borked. When these kids leave college, what happens when the internet falls over and they actually know nothing? If I was a CEO, I would test any new potential hires by getting them to write an essay – but in a room where there is zero signal to see what those kids actually know.
ChatGPoTemkin
It is and it isn’t. There are definitely college students, even graduate students, who agree with Altman’s line about it being a calculator for words. But a number of disciplines require practical knowledge and psychomotor skills that ChatGPT cannot assist with. Many profs are also doing in class work to show that they have a basis for accepting or rejecting a student’s work.
I think these kind of services are going to push schools to innovate their teaching approach. I think it is going to become increasingly obvious who relied on LLMs to cheat their way through school. I think the humanities might actually see a resurgence due to the adaption required to operate in this kind of environment. I also think this is coming at a time where there will be fewer and fewer people of traditional college freshman age to go to an institution which means this will be a diminishing revenue stream for OpenAI.
Just last week, I completed my first semester back in a dozen or so years in pursuit of an undergraduate degree. I am convinced that my university has collapsed, but it is not yet profitable to admit it. The level of checked-out, on the part of both the students and the professors, is demoralizing, as is the level of … “difficulty” would be the wrong word. I recall when my age cohort started graduating from college and I gained the realization that these people, who cheated and skipped classes, and with whom I got drunk more nights than not, were the incoming professional class, and how this made the institutional incompetence one encounters in the real world make a whole lot more sense. At least that generation had to be creative about their cheating, which arguably built their problem-solving skills more so than simply inputting prompts into a chatbot.
Students rightly see college as a credentialing process, and probably correctly assume that any job that will hire them will train them in the practical tasks of which it consists, but in doing so they miss out on the learning, the questioning, and the growing. Oh well, I had to do that at the public library in my own time; maybe the kids will to, when it suits them.
What Are ‘Teen Takeovers’ and Why Are Police Struggling to Stop Them? (NY Times)
Brain damage; COVID damages empathy and aggression control. Also.
(bold mine)
Yeah, things just happen.
Anyone in the Commentariat receiving email spam from the newly resurrected New York Sun? They have sent me a significant amount of spam in the last two weeks or so, begging me to subscribe for as little as 0.01$ to hear something that Alan Dershowitz claims is an essential component of the US media market that is missing without the Sun. Yes, that Alan Dershowitz.
I’m not sure where the new editorial voice will position itself. I imagine somewhere between New Gingrinch and Atila the Hun. A new place to find what twisted opinions pass for conventional wisdom perhaps? Anyway, off to figure out how to get off all of the lists and ad spam that made them think I was a good mark for that dreck.
Funny that you mention this.
No email, but I did see a New York Sun twitter profile post something on my feed as I was scrollin.
File under AI. From Due Dissidence, utube.
sraeli Agents TRAIN AI To LIE About Hind Rajab K*lling
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDo4eOQQCK0
Yep. This is what I think will be the most likely application of AI style tools with respect to search. LLMs won’t create a walled garden or an echo chamber, they’re going to build an intellectual prison. You won’t be allowed to ask certain questions and answers contrary to a specified point of view will be hidden/censored. People will see their imaginations and memories shrink as opposing viewpoints and truthful recounting of events are silently destroyed.
Man, our oligarchic betters are some of the biggest cry babies in history.
Hoo boy
Canvas Online Learning Platform Disabled After Breach by Hackers
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/07/education/canvas-hacked-down-data-breach.html
And the ransom note from “ShinyHunters” …
And this is happening during finals week for many schools.