Learning to Speak Owl Interlochen Public Radio
There Is No ‘Hard Problem Of Consciousness’ Noema
“Are We Kind of Being Pricks?” Arbitrary Lines
Climate/Environment
Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere just hit a ‘depressing’ new record Scientific American
The fading climate shields Mongabay
Military slow-rolled news of jet fuel leak at base near Washington Responsible Statecraft
Trump’s NOAA cuts would save less than a day and a half of Iran War spending HEATED
Hantavirus
Hantavirus-Infected Cruise Ship: Trump Says Americans ‘Should Be Fine’ As Experts Question US Preparedness Forbes. At least four U.S. states are “monitoring” people who have returned home from the cruise ship.
KLM flight attendant hospitalized after contact with hantavirus cruise ship passenger NL Times
Third British national has suspected hantavirus infection, government says BBC
Argentina battles record hantavirus surge amid diplomatic firestorm with WHO Anadolu Agency
“Super-Spreaders” and Person-to-Person Transmission of Andes Virus in Argentina New England Journal of Medicine. From 2020. Evidence of airborne transmission. The measures that eliminated spread: isolation of patient, quarantining of close contacts, and prohibiting large social gatherings in affected spots.
WHO throwing more dirt on its grave:
Yes, this. The incubation period is up to two months, so there is no way for her to be able to state this. Calm-mongering again. It doesn’t help in the long run. Or short run, frankly.
This statement of hers is logically inconsistent, so it destroys confidence. https://t.co/tDlazYR5FL
— Dr David Berger BSc MBBS MRCP(UK) FRACGP-RG DTM+H (@YouAreLobbyLud) May 7, 2026
Humanity’s hubris vs the precautionary principle.
The virus, ANDV, will do what it will do. Pandemic? History tells us “NO.” But history is in the past.
Let me show you what the studies tell us – and why I am livid that the WHO is insisting that surgical masks are ok.
— Lazarus Long (@LazarusLong13) May 7, 2026
And the CDC?
The CDC Fired All Its Cruise Ship Inspectors Before the Hantavirus Outbreak Futurism
Trump administration cut funding to study hantavirus behind the deadly cruise ship outbreak Scientific American
Pandemics
A lot of the freaking out about #hantavirus is a psychological defense mechanism against the ongoing threat of #Covid.
‘Displacement’ allows people to redirect valid concerns about repeat SARS2 infections toward much lower probability concerns about hanta, neutralizing anxiety. https://t.co/2Q8HG18UKq pic.twitter.com/QwoI1dPDuq
— Mike Hoerger, PhD MSCR MBA (@michael_hoerger) May 7, 2026
they’d tell you it wasn’t happening anymore and get you to ignore it as people drop dead “mysteriously” and become disabled in droves just like they’ve done with the current pandemic https://t.co/3NCtkUpxmP
— heather 💫 (@_hxneyglow) May 7, 2026
2020 is haunting us, and hantavirus is the séance Unbiased Science
Autoantibodies against type I IFNs in patients with life-threatening COVID-19 Science
Epidemiologists Confirm First Airborne Transmission Of Mar-A-Lago Face The Onion
The Koreas
The United States’ Korea Strategy Is Working Against Itself Foreign Policy
Japan
China slams Japan’s first post-WWII offensive missile launch overseas CGTN
China?
Xi Travels Less but the World Is Coming to Beijing Asia Society
The Silicon-Based Era Has Arrived — But Who Gets to Ride It? Fred Gao, Inside China
Southeast Asia
After Hormuz, Southeast Asia Sees the Potential Value of Tolling the Strait of Malacca Council on Foreign Relations
Syraqistan
Israel Kills Son of Hamas Leader Khalil al-Hayya as it Pushes Maximalist Demands in Gaza Talks Drop Site
The deliberate restriction of food and aid led to alarming malnutrition levels in Gaza Medecins Sans Frontieres
GLAN And Sky News Investigation Seeks Truth From Israeli Forces Over The Disappearance Of Civilian Women In Gaza Global Legal Action Network
Israeli forces accused of sexually abusing Sumud Flotilla activists Al Mayadeen
Israeli ‘double tap’ strike hits paramedics in south Lebanon hours after renewed bombing of Beirut The Cradle
***
US Bombs Iran’s Qeshm Port and Bandar Abbas Antiwar
Gulf States Lift Restrictions That Blocked ‘Project Freedom’ in Strait of Hormuz WSJ
U.S. intelligence says Iran can outlast Trump’s Hormuz blockade for months WaPo
The real cost of the Iran War: $72 billion for the first 60 days Stephen Semler
Oil price bets ahead of Iran war news totalled $7bn, shows reporting Reuters
European Disunion
More than 50,000 pupils expected to strike over German rearmament policy The Guardian
Africa
The IMF and the Limits of Sovereigntism Foreign Exchanges
Old Blighty
New Not-So-Cold War
Moscow Threatens Mass Strikes on Kiev Center Should Zelensky Disturb Sacred V-Day Ceremonies Simplicius
Hoo boy:
‼️The Armed Forces of Ukraine, in violation of the ceasefire announced by Russia, carried out 887 drone strikes – Russian Defense Ministry
— Zlatti71 (@Zlatti_71) May 8, 2026
EU prepares for ‘potential’ talks with Vladimir Putin, says official FT
GORDON HAHN: UKRAINE’S MAIDAN REGIME, ARMY, AND PEOPLE ARE NOT ON THE SAME PAGE Natylie’s Place
Imperial Collapse Watch
Will Global Oil and Gas Disruptions Enable U.S. Energy Domination? Warwick Powell
South of the Border
The US ramps up pressure on Mexico and Colombia in its new drug control strategy El Pais. “Drug control strategy”?
Trump’s Killing Spree Isn’t Stopping the Flow of Drugs Into the U.S. Nick Turse, The Intercept
L’affaire Epstein
Lutnick admits to having prolonged ties to Epstein in closed-door interview Politico
THE ARCHITECTURE OF BLACKMAIL – THE FALSE CLOAK OF SECURITY Fabio Marchio, ComeDonChisciotte.org (translation via GeoPolitiQ)
Trump 2.0
Trump’s 10% global tariffs ruled illegal: Who will be impacted by the ‘narrow block’ decision? Financial Express
Trump admin kills Canadian-owned wind project — and demands investment in fossil fuels instead National Observer
Democrats Suck
Kamala Harris wants the DNC to release its autopsy report of the 2024 campaign NBC News
What A Day: What Autopsy? Crooked
Big Brother Is Watching You Watch
Extortion Using Smart Glasses Is a Thing Now Gizmodo
Kids say they can beat age checks by drawing on a fake mustache The Register
Groves of Academe
Sports Desk
ICE Is Coming to the World Cup Migrant Insider
Philadelphia Sheraton hotel workers threaten to strike during World Cup The Keystone
AI
Ads in AI Chatbots? An Analysis of How Large Language Models Navigate Conflicts of Interest arXiv
‘HELLO BOSS’: Inside the Chinese Realtime Deepfake Software Powering Scams Around the World 404 Media
Breaking news: “they hadn’t figured out how OpenAI would pay for it” Gary Marcus
We linked to this monstrosity yesterday, but to hammer home the point some more:
People still aren’t processing how insane this is.
They’re weaponizing the ‘Military Authority’ to fast-track the largest data center on Earth in Utah and using “military operations” & “national security” to shut down any public opposition.
“Diabolical” is an understatement. pic.twitter.com/k0YiwKrBOl
— Jason Bassler (@JasonBassler1) May 7, 2026
Imagine a building a half-mile wide. Now imagine that building stretches from Seattle to Portland. That’s what they’re gonna build in Utah. Utahns showed up in droves to oppose it. The 3-man county commission passed it anyway. This is “democracy.” Lol
I don’t normally advocate… https://t.co/YQ9u8nyRyV pic.twitter.com/p0ftfFbzv2
— Sam Parker 🇺🇸🧯 (@BasedSamParker) May 7, 2026
Antitrust
Lucky Strike Accused of Building ‘Illegal Bowling Monopoly’ Front Office Sports
Mr. Market
‘Not a Chance Hormuz Opens’: How Wall Street’s new NACHO trade bets on a prolonged oil shock CNBC
Agriculture
Fertilizer Scarcity Will Affect Harvests and Food Supplies Morning Ag Clips
Trump Agriculture Chief Claims ‘Golden Age’ Is Coming. US Farmers Say They’re ‘Barely, Barely Getting By’ Common Dreams
Class Warfare
You are not a horse Economic Forces
Antidote du jour (via):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
87 comments
Comments are closed.
“The real cost of the Iran War: $72 billion for the first 60 days”
Not even close according to my reckoning. Those are just the direct military costs which only paints part of the picture. What about the indirect costs? How about the amount of extra money that Americans have had to pay for gas alone. What about all the other cost increases coming down the line? How about replacing all the ammo and equipment that has been used up? That will take years and some stuff can never be replaced because of Chinese refined rare earth restrictions. Those are just obvious ones. How about less obvious ones? Who will want to sign up for the Navy after seeing how sailors have been treated in a war zone? What about the costs of retaining sailors who have had enough and want out? There must be hundreds of cases of direct and indirect costs and guess what? They all add up. So that $72 billion you can regard as a down deposit.
To further your point: How about the 17,000 Spirit employees who are now unemployed? What is the cost in terms of state UE funds, lost wages, etc.?
Good point that. It all adds up.
Back of envelope, US consumption of ~20 MM bbl/day with, picking a number out of the air, 50$/bbl price increase would be ~$1 billion/day in additional petroleum costs. Add in price gouging as the production/distribution system for energy and everything else takes advantage of opportunity to inch prices up beyond actual cost increases, and the cost to consumers could easily exceed the USG figure of $1.2 billion/day in direct war expenses.
How about the amount of extra money that Americans have had to pay for gas alone.
Oh c’mon man, profit is gdp or something…Winning!
It’s “Jobs Report Friday.” Ironically, the degenerate gamblers are probably hoping for a weak report to keep hope of rate cuts alive. A strong or even middlin’ report means higher interest rates and restraint on the incoming Fed Chair Kevin Warsh. He is probably anxious to start cutting rates to please his master.
Speaking of master, he’s in for another no-good, bad day:
https://thehill.com/business/5868826-federal-court-strikes-trump-tariff/
Another Court blows up his latest tariffs, these are the ones he tried to use to replace the last set that the SCOTUS ruled were illegal.
And … it’s out!
https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm
I haven’t dove into the details, but 115K jobs created, in excess of expectations. UE rate steady at 4.3%.
No sign of weakness in the labor market in the data. No sign of any significant effect of AI on jobs, despite the screechers. No rate cuts for you, Taco!
Report from small town Cornhole, Ohio (NW Ohio).
In the last 3 weeks we have learned of two small companies who will be closing if not bought out (not likely the way it sounds). Both supply the automotive industry. Between the two, there will be 650+ job losses for our town of around 17k. One company has two more facilities that will be shuttered but they are about 45-60 minutes away. One has a month, and the other said it will take a couple of years to close (we’ll see about that).
Also, within an hour of here, there are 3 Whirlpool plants. We have several companies who supply them here. All you have to do is read their earnings report from yesterday and look at a 6 month stock chart to see they might have some issues going forward. I expect cuts, like in workers. That’s what they do. I know, I worked there and was whacked long ago.
This all points to more job losses over the next year or so. There is no way the town can absorb these job losses. They will have to commute to another city, or starve.
The only thing that is booming is a company who runs electric lines for data centers. They are going nuts. They don’t employ that many people, and most are on the road and live elsewhere. High dollar paid guys who get to go home maybe 4 times a year.
Doesn’t look good here, and we are already the pot hole capital of the world.
Ukraine truce attacks
“, Ukrainian armed formations continued delivering strikes with unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and artillery on Russian army positions and civilian facilities in the borderline areas of the Belgorod and Kursk Regions, Russia’s Defense Ministry reported.
– Amid the Ukrainian army’s drone and artillery strikes, Russian forces have delivered tit-for-tat strikes in retaliation to Kiev’s ceasefire violations, the ministry reported.”
https://tass.com/defense/2128311
Tit-for-tat ain’t Kiev-armageddon yet but there is still a day to go for the great Darwin Award Fest. We will see tomorrow.
FAFO
re: SMO vs. EU
GLENN DIESEN with a rather gloomy post which I wouldn´t agree with in it´s ultimate apodictic conclusion.
Prediction: NATO’s Collapse & Nuclear War
https://glenndiesen.substack.com/p/a-prediction-natos-collapse-of-nuclear?utm_id=97758_v0_s00_e232_tv4_tp1_a1dennhb56lkz6
Closing paragraph
The trajectory now appears increasingly clear: NATO will continue to disintegrate, and the Europeans will compensate by further escalating the war against Russia. This will happen at a time when Russia is desperate to restore its deterrence by retaliating against Europe (most predictably against Germany), while the US commitment and protection of Europe are waning. The predictable consequence is that European leaders will eventually provoke a powerful response from Russia, which will rapidly escalate to what will hopefully only be a limited nuclear strike.
fb-post by Marta Havryshko:
Hawkish speech of 🇺🇦’Iron General’ from London:
More war, more militarization, more mobilization
Nothing about diplomacy
Working people of Ukraine, be prepared to die. It’s your duty and great honor, they say, while cashing in on war.
—–
Zaluzhnyi:
[Ukraine is] in a long-term war, the end of which is becoming less and less obvious to us.
It is the issue of mobilization and methods of its implementation that is increasingly becoming the center of conflict between the country’s population and the state authorities of Ukraine.
[There is a] need for a long war throughout the country in conditions of an obvious demographic crisis.
“American Elites Have Reverse Empire Dysmorphia”
There might be more going on with this. A coupla years ago the point was made on NC that what people experienced in their 20s was how they viewed things the rest of their lives. So a lot of the elites were in their twenties in the 80s & 90s when American power was at it’s peak, especially with the US military. Though much older, Trump seems to think like this too. Now that they are older, they try to wield their power like it is still the 80s and Ronnie instead of Donnie was President. But much to their frustration things are not going the way that it is suppose to. Dammit! It’s not fair!
Rev Kev,
Could’t agree with this sentiment more. I’ve long thought that one of the major issues with our gerontocratic leadership is their mental model of the US is from the 1950’s and 1960’s (forget about the 1980’s and 90’s) – when Biden (born 1942) thinks about Scranton, it’s from a perspective of it being a mid-sized manufacturing town. So when he said “We’re America, we can do anything!” his brain was focused on the US of his youth and young adulthood (let’s call that 1958 to 1966) Trump (born 1946) is similar given a few years. Post-war affluence, the arsenal of democracy, etc. And most of the political leadership of the last few decades are from that age group like Biden and Trump (e.g. Pelosi born 1940, Steny Hoyer born 1939, Mitch McConnell born 1942, etc). If I had to pick a year or years of peak US, I’d put it between 1958 and 1964.
The US of their formative 20’s is long, long, gone. They just don’t realize it (or, since it doesn’t impact them, know it but just don’t care).
https://boingboing.net/2026/05/07/california-has-four-to-six-weeks-of-gasoline-left.html
re: NYT & liberalism………………..
EZRA KLEIN PODCAST (who is this guy anyway???)
Conversation about “The Lost History of Liberalism” by the historian Helena Rosenblatt
65 min. + transcript
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/05/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-helena-rosenblatt.html
Google Chrome is silently installing a 4GB AI model on each of our devices without consent, says Alexander Hanff, a prominent computer scientist and lawyer. According to him, that’s both illegal and extremely costly for the climate.
https://cybernews.com/security/google-chrome-ai-model-device-no-consent/
Cleverly plausible.
…”The model is called Gemini Nano. It runs locally on your machine. It processes what you type into form fields, what you highlight, what you hover over, what you delete before sending. The deleted text is particularly valuable. People edit themselves. They type their real thought first and then soften it. We see the real thought. We see the softer version. We learn the mapping between what people mean and what people say. This mapping has commercial applications I am not yet authorized to discuss but which I’ve presented to revenue committee and which were received positively.”
https://x.com/gothburz/status/2052554458064646208
So it’s actually spyware. And one that acts like a virus when you try to get rid of it. People wonder why I detest Silicon Valley so much but if you read that full tweet, you will understand why. Both shady and creepy at the same time.
It is spyware and I wonder just how much of it is of much use. After a proposition (probably a better word somewhere) has been confirmed for several thousand times what good is a few more thousand confirmations?
And what happens to all the collected data? Is it culled out and the storage space reused? Judging from the never ending building of data centers one might assume the keep it all.
And another question I have is- when a scientific or academic paper is recalled because of either good or bad reasons is there a data cleaning process executed and just how well does it work?
If a paper is withdrawn for good reasons- that new study methods shows the original interpretation of the data was correct at the time and probably should be flagged as a demo of how science progresses but retained for historical reasons.
But then how are all the instances where those data were used for specious reasons – to build support for selling or promoting a somewhat related idea. Leaving such uses in the database… well, you know.
Also, if someone engaged in p-hacking to get a paper published and that caused the subsequent withdrawal of the paper how can we feel sure that all instances are removed? And, what about hard to recognize rewording of the paper’s conclusions incorporated in other papers and the incorrect information is perpetuated?
When you stare into Google, Google stares back into you!
I am struggling to find words for the rage I feel seeing this. I’m sorry my post has no good content to add, I just feel compelled to speak for us earthlings and say this is not okay. In a world which did not allow reckless monopolies and duopolies like we have with these awful companies and their horrible operating systems, this would not be allowed. These tech bros should be doing hard time somewhere in a device-free prison.
I really don’t like this guy’s role-playing schtick. As if we don’t have enough fake news already. I would wager that over half the people who read his posts have caught on yet that it’s creative writing, not reality, however plausible it might sound. Just adding more noise to the signal, as far as I can tell.
I do not allow Chrome browser on my systems. But I use other Google tools, such as mail and cloud storage. It would not surprise me if these were also compromised
Just to be clear, this is satire, the guy is cranking out similar posts about other companies like Facebook or Microsoft. He doesn’t work at Google.
Also such “not-yet-for-public” content is often already being sent back, for example Google suggestions means Google sees every keystroke into the search bar. Some sites are saving posts as they are being typed so they can recover it if the browser crashes. Local AI model would be processing the data locally and by itself not sending anything to Google.
I don’t think this is satire.
Read the link below. They report this:
“The discovery was announced this week by Alexander Hanff, who blogs as “the Privacy Guy,” in a somewhat sensationally titled blog post: Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent. At a billion-device scale the climate costs are insane.
It doesn’t seem to be new, though: there are signs that Chrome has been doing this for quite some time. In April 2025, this Reddit post suggests the model was “just” 3 GB, but a Stack Overflow question says that by November 2025 it was already up to 4 GB. We would not be at all surprised if soon it went to five.
https://www.theregister.com/ai-and-ml/2026/05/07/chrome-silently-installs-a-4-gb-local-llm-on-your-computer/5230893
Chrome secretly downloading 4GB of AI is real. The tweet purportedly written by guy from Google who is responsible for this and explaining why they did this, which is bwilli123 is citing, is satire.
MY mistake
The best form of satire is writing the truth of what happens but in a tone that rings false.
Is this not just Gemini aka the new Google Assistant?
Ugh!
I’ve searched for “weights.bin” and “OptGuideOnDeviceModel” on my laptop, and luckily found neither. Maybe because I always click on “Go Away!” whenever Chome offers me AI stuff (other than the AI Overviews, which are just there already anyway).
I think I may now have disabled this Nano Gemini thing, preventing it from downloading this 4GB “weights.bin” thing.
I pasted chrome://flags/ into the address bar.
Then search for nano or gemini, and change “Default” to “Disabled”. (There are several items, such as “Writer API for Gemini Nano” and ” Proofreader API for Gemini Nano”.)
**I also disabled “LiteRT-LM for On-Device AI”, which looks like it’s the thing that actually enables this 4GB malware package to be downloaded and installed on your computer.**
And for good measure I disabled the things with “glic” in their name, like Glic, Glic actor, and Glic actor autofill. Glic seems even worse than Gemini nano – it’s an AI agent, presumably meaning it can/will do things of its own volition – buy you a seat on someone’s next Mars mission, without telling you? Apparently planned rather than current, but hopefully now I won’t be one of its guinea pigs.
Then reload Google Chome for the changes to take effect.
*** I am not a computer expert. Is there anybody out there who can give better, clearer advice on how to get rid of this Nano Gemini thing, or prevent its installation if it’s not on our devices yet? OR WARN OTHER READERS IF ANY OF WHAT I’VE SAID AND DONE IS DANGEROUS?***
And here’s something about keeping Nano Gemini off of Windows systems:
https://pureinfotech.com/stop-chrome-gemini-nano-download-windows-11/
Why, in the current year, is anyone reading this site using Chrome as a browser?
I don’t know what they are thinking about the Hantavirus. My experience with the Hantavirus was an article I read 40 years ago in Discover magazine. It recounted a mysterious string of sudden deaths in either Arizona or New Mexico. The immune system rapidly reacts so violently to the virus that it floods the lungs with fluid killing the host. At the time researchers theorized about a DNA mechanism that protects communities against spread of hyper toxic viruses and bacteria by committing systemic suicide. Funny thing was that the spread was attributed to fires that forced rodents to migrate rather rapidly to places of safety, being human barns and households. I think its also odd that they attributed the recent outbreak to a landfill in Europe during a bird watching excursion, not that they were in Argentina recently and that Argentina is experiencing massive fires in Pangea allegedly set by Israeli tourists.
“The immune system rapidly reacts so violently to the virus that it floods the lungs with fluid killing the host.”
COVID-19/SARS-2 caused precisely the same symptom when it first swept around the world in 2019-2020. Remember all the talk about “cytokine storms” and hospitals being chock full of people placed under artificial respiration?
I also remember that when SARS-2 flared up in cruise ships, there was hesitation — some ships being placed under quarantine, while in other cases all “non-symptomatic” travellers were allowed to disembark and go home.
And now there are those reassuring assertions that transmission from person to person is rare and difficult, that a simple face mask suffices against “droplets” (no need for FFP2 respirators to thwart aerosols), and that a pandemic looks improbable.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic, countless articles and reports have been published about “the next epidemic” caused by the “X virus”, exhorting people and governments to prepare for it by drawing lessons from SARS-1, MERS, SARS-2, Zika, Chikungunya, monkeypox, and Ebola.
I have already seen some messages in Twitter attributing the “Hanta scare” to a dark conspiracy by Bill Gates, Pfizer, and the WEF, or even stating that Hanta infections are somehow linked to mRNA vaccines…
I fear that nothing has been learned and that nothing will be done. Our societies are mindelessly speeding back to the 17th century in terms of dealing with infectious diseases.
Even in the 14th century people understood the concept of a quarantine. Medieval Florence famously had a whole island dedicated to quarantining people to keep their city safe-
https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/origins-of-quarentine-black-death-vaccine-covid-19-modernity-pandemics-history-of-disease/
quarantine(n.)
1660s, “period a ship suspected of carrying contagious disease is kept in isolation,” from Italian quaranta giorni, literally “space of forty days,” …
The name is from the Venetian policy (first enforced in 1377) of keeping ships from plague-stricken countries waiting off its port for 40 days to assure that no latent cases were aboard.
https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=quarantine
To be fair to the zionists, they do have a lot of people to kill in order to whittle their way down to 400 chosen people… They’re doing gods work for him and no one is even thanking them.
The current theory that the exposure to the virus occurred during a birdwatching excursion to an Argentinian landfill may not be accurate.
Machine translated from Spanish, emphasis mine:
Argentina assists European countries with diagnostic inputs for hantavirus
Looks like there might be a translation error in the last paragraph. I’ll see if I can find Padilla’s original statement…
Spain says it has detected suspected hantavirus case in Alicante
Here’s what I’m currently seeing on that same link, no translation:
A 32-year-old woman in the southeastern Spanish province of Alicante has symptoms consistent with a hantavirus infection and is being tested, health authorities said.
She was briefly sitting on a plane behind a woman from the Netherlands who had contracted the virus on MV Hondius, secretary of state for health Javier Padilla told reporters.
The Dutch citizen left the flight in Johannesburg feeling ill before it took off on 25 April and later died in hospital.
A British man was also suspected of having the disease on Tristan da Cunha, the UK Health Security Agency said.
Apologies if already posted. From electoral-vote, but this site I think eats those links
Republicans Want to Appropriate $1 Billion for the Ballroom
When Donald Trump tore down the East Wing of the White House, he said people should not worry because he would create a place to hold his balls at “no charge to the taxpayer whatsoever.” Well, maybe not. Earlier this week, the Senate Judiciary Committee requested a cool $1 billion for the ballroom, nominally to make sure Trump’s balls are secure.
This raises a raft of questions. First, if Trump said the whole thing would be privately financed, what’s the billion for? Second, why did Trump think it would cost $200 million initially if the Senate wants to appropriate more than five times as much? Third, if the taxpayers pay for it, what happens to the $300 million or now $400 million he has already raised? Does Trump just keep it and we move on? Fourth, if so, does it count as an emolument? Fifth, does anyone remember that Trump v2.0 began with the DOGEys killing off government programs right and left, with no authority to do so, in the name of saving money? Does spending $1 billion on a ballroom save money?
Does spending $1 billion on a ballroom save money?
Well, it does save the donors money….;/
The more money a project gets the more can be diverted or overcharged.
> You are not a horse Economic Forces
While mulling some confusions re embodied (energy, labor, dollars) and what is fixed-stock & not (with AI vs climate change the underlying conundrum), it came to mind that an ‘Italian Job’ style raid on a data center could yield $3million/minicooper * 3 mini coopers = $9million asset gain, presenting an alternative to the courts & legislative bodies as ways to reallocate resources.
(Model assumptions are too embarrassing to print. Have at!)
I do not understand.
cooper (noun) coo·per ˈkü-pər: one that makes or repairs wooden casks or tubs
Apart from that, the author is obviously confused about the meaning of “comparative advantage” (as opposed to “competitive advantage” or “absolute advantage”), does not address the crucial issue of income distribution and to whom all those savings incurred by AI will accrue, and does not deal with temporal issues (i.e. if labour is eliminated in some activities and increases in others, how will people shift from one occupation to another). His argument deals with aggregates, but the devil, as always, hides in the details.
The Italian Job was a 2003 movie that featured three Mini-Coopers moving tons of gold bars through the streets of LA.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0317740/
I am not clear on how long it would take to rip the copper out of a data center, though, much less how much you could pack into a Mini-Cooper and what you could get for it at a recycling center. The 2003 movie was a remake of one from the Sixties, so it may be about time to update it yet again. I look forward to watching it!
As for the rest of the article, I just got completely lost when he failed to point out how anyone can afford anything if all of the jobs are outsourced to AI. Vonnegut’s Player Piano* is looking increasingly prescient, though.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Player_Piano_(novel)
Thank you, nippersdad. I was ballparking off of NVIDIA DGX B200 prices for what you could fit in a cubic meter of cargo space, but I could be very wrong. If someone knows better, a correction is welcome.
coincidence?
le.hl@0xleegenz
2008: Oil spike – H1N1 influenza
2014: Oil crash – Ebola Virus
2020: Oil crash – COVID pandemic
2026: Oil spike – Hantavirus
So how do the Chikungunya, Zika, MERS, and Monkeypox epidemics fit in?
I do not think there is even a correlation.
2022 we had the horrible outbreak of Endemic acute, progressive phrenocerebral Putinosis.
@julie_bush i think covid has made it more likely we will rapidly suffer another pandemic:
— many now believe covid lockdowns / vaccines / precautions were a conspiracy & covid is just the flu (meanwhile it’s mass disabling ppl to this day
— covid destroyed immune systems & cognitive abilities at scale, making populations less able to fight off the next pandemic
— people are angry about any sacrifices they thought they were forced to make due to covid and now are less willing to self-sacrifice in any way for the greater good
— loss of grey matter & frontal lobe damage from covid across the entire population means less empathy from all humans. no one cares anymore if people suffer and die due to their selfish choices (witness the behavior we see all around us now)
“Argentina battles record hantavirus surge amid diplomatic firestorm with WHO”
Reading this article, I cannot see mention of Milei which is a strange omission. With the Milei regime in charge, you just know that things will go to hell in a hand basket. He is the epitome of neoconservative beliefs so public health would be low down on his list of priorities.
Re: L’affaire Epstein
This comment isn’t really about today’s Epstein entries, but rather the reaction of the MSM to the recently revealed “suicide note” produced by convicted killer and former Epstein cell-mate Nicholas Tartaglione. Like many, my first reaction to this story was simply laughter. I couldn’t believe that anyone would take seriously the sudden appearance of this “evidence,” over six years after the fact, from a completely compromised and untrustworthy source whom many think tried to kill Epstein in his first “suicide” attempt. But two nights in a row now NBC Nightly New has had significant segments on this “revelation,” breathlessly reporting this as startling new evidence that will “force us to rethink” all of our former “conspiracies” (their wording). They used the identical terminology – “rethinking” our “conspiracies” – both nights. The wording stuck with me because they referred (derogatorily) to “conspiracies” rather than “conspiracy theories,” as if they have learned that use of the latter term actually makes many of us suspicious of the speaker.
It seems like some in the establishment media want to put this story to bed. And clearly they feel like they can just throw anything out there these days and people will be dumb enough to buy it.
One thing I think I know about Epstein: he loved for other people to hear him talk, and read his texts and email.
Not one to sit quietly, with his own thoughts.
I’m sure he wrote the note. What he meant by it is another thing. And to who is something of a mystery. Maybe it was a draft for lawyers.
I suspect that if it were in video form it would have had six fingers.
“Xi Travels Less but the World Is Coming to Beijing”
And soon that will be including President Trump.
I wonder if he will get the Ursula Von Der Leyen treatment and have to take a bus to his hotel. I suspect that trip will be unaccountably delayed.
What if … Xi ghosts Taco?
Trump’s plane lands, he walks down the stairs to a red carpet, and is greeted by some low-level functionary.
The equivalent of the janitor in the palace. Taco goes nuts. Texts Xi’s handler: “where is he?” Gets back the dreaded “crickets chirping” emoji.
What an odd, dissatisfying take on the “hard problem of consciousness” by Carlo Rovelli (whom I generally like at least for his engaging personality)—and I agree with his underlying premise that there really is no “hard problem of consciousness.”
Rovelli goes off the rails by bringing in the “soul”—let’s just leave that there—and formulations like this:
Well, that’s not true. A philosophical zombie in theory has no inner experience—it doesn’t have to be “convinced” of anything—that’s the whole point of a philosophical zombie.
The problem with philosophical zombies is that they can’t exhibit the external behavior without having the internal behavior (“consciousness”)—because reality and “the experience of reality” are, generally, two sides of the same coin. You see a cat, as Rovelli mentions—the cat is real, it’s external to you, but the behavior of seeing is a physical process in the retina and the brain. (Imagining or dreaming of a cat is, more or less, that same behavior without the stimulus of the cat.) It’s kind of like imagining a philosophical zombie with an observable heartbeat but the premise is the zombie has no heart inside—it’s sort of impossible.
I agree with Rovelli that there really isn’t a “hard problem of consciousness.” Why do we see a cat or the sensation of red? Well, having that behavior allows us to shape other behavior better with respect to it, e.g., we can avoid cats if we’re allergic to them or pick fruits if they’re red and ripe. (Of course, we act unconsciously all the time but it’s harder to shape unconscious behavior effectively.)
But why do we see cats as cats or red as red, rather than something else? Well, the behavior, that conscious experience, had to be something and the particular something is probably an accident of evolution and some constraints on the particular sensory apparatus involved (e.g., taste buds might not work as well to give rise to seeing sensations, rods and cones to flavors and tastes). But all that is just my 2¢.
The core problem with this talk about brains and mental states and brain processes and so on is that, if consciousness is an illusion caused by the brain (somehow), well so is everything else you will ever experience, including the theory that consciousness is an illusion caused by the brain. The reason that I believe that consciousness is an illusion caused by the brain, or that brains exist at all for that matter, is that some neurons fired in such and such a way, as in fact is everything that I will ever experience. The logical endpoint of this line of thought is not metaphysical materialism, but a kind of physicalist version of Berkeley or the early Hume (or, arguably, Democritus). .
This worldview depends on a physicalist reductionism that cannot be grounded, but is instead taken as axiomatic. It is clearly motivated reasoning preceding from unexamined premises.
There Is No ‘Hard Problem Of Consciousness’
This is distressingly bad.
During the Middle Ages, Western civilization described humans as composed of two distinct entities: body and soul. The body was an interconnected bunch of matter that decayed and died. The soul belonged to a transcendent spiritual world independent from vile matter. Angels were souls without a body and so were people after their material death. The soul, taken to be immortal and created by God, was understood as the repository of memories, emotions and our subjectivity. It could speak and fall in love. It was the agent of our agency; the subject of our freedom; the entity that bore responsibility, culpability, virtue and value; and deserved to be judged, saved or damned.
Is there a source for this claim? Has the author heard of a thing called “the resurrection of the body”? Silly me laboring under the misconception that a modern philosopher named Descartes revolutionized philosophy of mind with his Cartesian dualism, and showed those Scholastics what’s what? Also, I don’t understand how the Medieval philosophers could argue about how many angels could dance on the head of pin if they all “knew” that the angels had no bodies, so you can obviously stack ’em up.
The first is the very hard problem described above: understanding the processes in the brain that give rise to the many aspects of our visible behavior and our inner behavior that we can report about.
“Give rise” is an interesting verb, sounds like a pretty wooly causal mechanism. What the heck is an “inner behavior”–are we talking about indigestion? If people couldn’t fake emotions or suppress emotions, would their be any inner behavior that “we can report about”?
Chalmers claimed that even after hypothetically accounting for our entire behavior, and for all our reports about our inner life, there would still be an “explanatory gap” between brain processes and experience.
Yes, its called the 1st person, and the 3rd person impersonal. If we collected all the possible statements you can make in the 3rd person impersonal and assigned them a truth value, it would say very little about you and me.
The idea of this supposed “explanatory gap” reincarnates in a number of related forms: explaining “qualia,” the hypothetical elementary bits of experience; explaining “subjectivity,” the very fact that some entity is capable of having experience at all; or explaining, as the philosopher Thomas Nagel famously put it, “what is it like” to be the subject of a certain experience.
“I am in pain.” Obviously, we need to drop the “I” but that leaves “pain.” I know, let’s reify “pain” and pretend its like a couch and try to assign it a place in the living room. Its a “qualia” behind the coffee table inner living room, my “mind” or “subjectivity.”
I fail to make sense of the claim that there is such an “explanatory gap.”
What do you mean? We have tried to turn a sentence like “I am in pain” into a proposition like “the couch is behind the coffee table” but now how do I locate my invisible living room in my real living room, and explain that. . . even if as a “physicalist” I know my invisible living room has to be in my real living room, it is not any different from Casper the Friendly Ghost, who we might also posit being in my living room. Casper has no real scientific explanation, even if we can assign him a physical location.
This widespread embrace is nourished by a strenuous resistance to an idea anticipated centuries ago by the philosopher Baruch Spinoza: that our soul could be a phenomenon of the same basic nature as any other phenomenon in nature.
Interesting the switch from “qualia,” the invisible mental furniture, and “subjectivity,” the invisible storage unit, and now we are back to “souls.” Point being, it is very difficult to go from invisible furniture and invisible storage units to explanations of human behavior, which general involve goals, motivations, telos.
Further, what does it mean to say “our soul could be a phenomenon of the same basic nature as any other phenomenon in nature”? Billy, your existential angst is a phenomenon of the same basic nature as managed care, flying fishing, and waste management.
The idea that we will never be able to understand consciousness upholds a worldview in which spirit and nature, subject and object, form distinct domains.
Or maybe, the grammar of our language contains distinct grammatical persons.
Accepting that consciousness may not be separate from the physical world — that our beloved soul could be of the same nature as our body and any other phenomenon of the world — is too much for many.
Accepting that our invisible attic may not be separate from the actual attic–this is supposed to be the same semantically as the soul, which from an Aristotelean view is the form of the body, or the organizing and directing principle controlling the body, is the same as the matter it animates–well they are not the same at all, and if we look at the soul as the arche of the body, it is clear that it cannot be of the same nature as the body, because the soul acts on the body, but the body does not act upon the soul.
We go from the invisible living room to the soul, which means are talking about something organizing and motivating the body, the “ghost in the machine.” Further, now we start talking about “nature” or old fashion, essence, even though we haven’t defined what we are talking about. Further, “our body” doesn’t even share the same “nature” as other phenomenon of the world, for example, the nature of our body is in part that it is ours, which can not be said of every other “phenomenon” of the world. It is also a body, e.g. a self-organizing whole, in contrast to a corpse or a pile of leaves.
Is it too much for many because it hurts their feelings, or is it because at the end of the day, it is wooly deepities?
But scientific understanding is not extraneous to experience; it is entirely about experience
Really, what chapter is that in General Physics? Linear motion, angular motion, electromagnetism, optics, followed by experience and then special relativity?
The dualism between a first-person description of experience and a third-person (or scientific) account of the same is a normal perspectival difference: the same brain phenomenon as experienced by that same brain itself, or by another.
I thought the mind was the invisible attic? How is it now a “brain phenomenon”? So the pain in my foot from my corns is actually just a “brain phenomenon” now? I though pain was only “in my head” when there was no physical explanation for it from a physical disease or condition? Imagine the author with a broken leg, doctor asks where does it hurt, he points at his head.
“Subjective experience,” “qualia” and “consciousness” are names of phenomena that of course appear differently from different perspectives. It would be strange if they didn’t. They affect the body and the brain embodying them differently from how they affect something interacting with them from the exterior.
The invisible attic and the attic, the same, yep, just I can’t actually even get a first draft on the soul, the organizing and motivating principle of the body, from the contents of my invisible attic.
“Red,” as a qualia, is the name of the process we generally undergo when we see or remember or think about the color red. We do not need to explain why it looks red for the same reason that we do not have to explain why the animal that we call “cat” looks like a cat. Why should we have to explain why “red” looks red?
so seeing or remember or thinking about the color red are the same “process”? I thought red was a color. Wouldn’t an explanation of why “red” looks red help perhaps if someone suffered from red-green color blindness?
Scientific knowledge is ultimately first-personal.
What does that mean? Further, why do we need this supremacism? Why can’t the first person and the third person impersonal coexist as equals without having to subsume each other? After all, if language is a tool, didn’t it evolve these different persons to address different needs and problems?
“Consciousness” and “experience” are names we use to denote events that happen inside us, that make us.
Inside us where? The liver? Pineal gland? The brain? The entire brain, or a portion? Which cell is the inner location of consciousness?
The mind is the behavior of the brain, properly described in a high-level language.
Last time I checked, persons exhibit behavior, I don’t think brains do. Even a brain in a vat, unless it can move items telepathically doesn’t really behave.
The more interesting challenge is not to speculate about a “hard problem,” it is to try hard to understand more about the functioning of our brain and body without postulating that our soul is transcendent or different in kind from the rest of nature.
Not a big fan of thought experiments or Chalmers Zombie problem, but this “solution” is less coherent than the Zombie experiment. Reifying mental states into metaphorical physical objects in metaphorical spaces, then equating these metaphorical reifications with actual physical things in space is a category error, and then equating these states with the physical world is a feature of the bad metaphor chosen, not some insight. Further, it is precisely this reification which decouples our mental states with the condition of our soul which makes our soul transcendent, because there is no soul except as the transcendent observer of “pain” furniture in our “mental” attic. The more the author tries to say the soul is not transcendent or different, the more it appears to be both, and the more absent it grows.
“Or maybe, the grammar of our language contains distinct grammatical persons.”
English is very keen on verbs having a subject, while in eastern languages a subject is often unnecessary and omitted. Thus in English we say “I’m bored” or “It’s boring”, while simply saying “Boring” is considered ungrammatical. People here don’t really distinguish between “I’m bored” and “It’s boring”, with “Boring” being preferred. Equally, English speakers might say “Shall we go?” and “OK, let’s go”. The equivalent “Go?” and “Go.” don’t really make sense in English, but they’re standard here.
Does the conjugation of the verb change in your language depending on the person? Voy, vas, va, vamos, Van? In Spanish for example, you don’t need the subject to determine which person you are in.
Occasionally. There’s a distinction between the 3rd person singular and 3rd person plural in the present tense in the indicative mood.
He walks…
They walk…
No. It’s “go” for whichever person and whenever – instead of the verb being put in a tense, you say “future” and whatever comes next refers to the future, but that’s fairly optional anyway. If the context makes it clear enough, plain “go’ wil do, and usually does. Similarly, you can add a word to make a verb passive, but again, this often isn’t done if the context makes things clear. “Trump, elect 2016 and 2024, …” is usually fine.
“There is no hard problem…” is about impressing Female undergrads.
Or Male undergrads, depending on the author’s tastes.
Polysyllabic bafflegab, “He must be brilliant, I couldn’t understand a word!”.
What the heck is an “inner behavior”–are we talking about indigestion?
Inner behavior is behavior that occurs inside the person—it’s behavior “within the skin” and not easily observable without special apparatus (e.g., MRI). If you’re imagining something visual or something auditory or saying something to yourself via an “inner voice,” that is inner behavior.
“so seeing or remember or thinking about the color red are the same “process”?
Basically, yes. When you remember or think about the color red, you are doing something very similar to what you do when you see the color red. The fascinating phenomenon of aphantasia, where someone can’t imagine something visual, is helping delineate the precise differences between seeing and imagining but, underlying it is the behavior in the occipital lobe of seeing. (B.F. Skinner nailed this over half a century ago when he referred to such activities as “seeing in the absence of the stimulus.”)
So the pain in my foot from my corns is actually just a “brain phenomenon” now?
It’s not “just” a brain phenomenon but it is a brain phenomenon. That’s how general anesthesia works—very generally, anesthesia prevents neurons in different brain regions from communicating with each other. The pain results from the corns; the pain sensation is in the brain—but, obviously, the person (or the organism, generally) knows where the pain is. (And someone might experience sensation in a limb that isn’t even there, as in the well-known phenomenon of phantom limb pain.)
Last time I checked, persons exhibit behavior, I don’t think brains do. Even a brain in a vat…doesn’t really behave.
People do exhibit behavior but that behavior can be specified. A pianist almost always exhibits behavior via the fingers—of course, we say correctly that the person, rather than the fingers, is playing the piano. We can observe brain behavior via fMRI where we can see various areas of the brain “light up” in those colorful scans or EEGs where we can observe brain waves. (Presumably, a brain in the vat, assuming normal functioning, would display the same behavior.)
I do think that colour provides the strongest indication that hard problem of consciousness is a real problem.
You and I have a certain experience when seeing the colour red but how can we ever know these are the same. That what I experience as red is the same as yours. Sure, we can say that red corresponds to a certain region of the electromagnetic spectrum, that there is a physical process by which the cones in the retina are excited and pass that information to the brain. But we cannot know that our conscious experience of the colour is the same. Perhaps when your brain receives that stimulus your experience is what I experience in response to a different wavelength. My green is your red, or vice versa. Perhaps it is completely unique to you.
For all practical purposes, this does not and would not matter. We have learnt the same reference points, we would both describe ‘red’ as being a warm colour, a colour of danger, of blood, an angry colour, because all of the learnt, subjective experiences of the world would align with this, even if our internal experience differs. But when it comes to thinking about consciousness, experience, and what that means, this feels like something genuinely hard to explain. The linked article does not make any serious attempt at doing so, but I’m not sure there is a convincing dismissal of this problem. Hence, its hardness.
From an explanatory perspective – why tastes differ, why people have different preferences for colour, food, smells, etc – are these not more easily explained by assuming that our conscious experiences of the world are themselves varied, than that you and I both experience exactly the same thing when we smell a fragrance and yet for some reason have different preferences towards it?
Inner behavior is behavior that occurs inside the person
No. Say I am faking sadness. I am behaving as if I am sad, but really I’m just doing method acting. There is no “behavior” going on inside me, there no homunculi in my guts or my head that is smiling. Likewise, say I am hiding my sadness. I am behaving as if I am normal, but really I silently, crushingly depressed. This “sadness” isn’t occurring “inside me” in any literal sense. I understand that a modern phrenologist with an MRI might be able to distinguish between the brain patterns in all of these instances–that doesn’t make the “behavior” happen in a different location. It means there is a correlation, or not, between brain activity and observable behavior–there is no occult process–if you are a physicalist, there can be no true inside. After all, if I am sad, and I behave consistent with being sad, there is going to be some brain pattern that someone can pick up on an MRI. And frankly, all modern theories of mind are almost always just permutations of Cartesianism, and they all import an inner cryptic homunculi to “explain” everything in the reduction except that explaining the impenetrable Russian doll by cracking it open and revealing the unexplainable Russian doll underneath doesn’t explain anything. The greatest rabbit trick of our time is taking the Cartesian Mind (the homunculi) and “locating” it in the brain.
so seeing or remember or thinking about the color red are the same “process”?
Basically, yes. When you remember or think about the color red, you are doing something very similar to what you do when you see the color red.
So owning a Toyota and owning a Lexis is the same thing, because when you own a Toyota, you own something very similar to what you own when you own a Lexis.
It’s not “just” a brain phenomenon but it is a brain phenomenon. That’s how general anesthesia works—very generally, anesthesia prevents neurons in different brain regions from communicating with each other.
No one is debating that the brain is extremely important to the experience of pain, or that there is no correlation between the experience of pain and brain activity. In ordinary usage, we ascribe pain to the place that hurts, not the brain (because generally, the location of pain is the location of the cause of trauma or disease causing the pain). Pain is something a person feels, or an organism feels if we are talking about an animal. A person is not a brain, although obviously, brain damage may drastically change how a person behaves, etc. A person is associated with a body, consisting of a number of organs including a brain, but a person is not their body. A slave master may have dominion over the body of the slave, but they cannot command the slave’s heart (and here its not literally the organ of the heart that is being spoken of).
He misrepresents what Spinoza thought about the soul (or mind) as well.
Re: “The Hard Problem…” The one statement in this essay: “The mind is the behavior of the brain, properly described in a high-level language.”, renders the whole as a specious, reductionist argument.
If, some 300 years ago when science was emerging, had those engaged in investigating the world from an empirical perspective refused to relegate “consciousness” and its study to the Church, while they, those invested in science, were still respectful of the mystical, so much may have been learned by the present. (Or not…)
Why not? Meta makes American’s lives miserable as well
Meta’s Embrace of A.I. Is Making Its Employees Miserable (NY Times)
So, basically, like gig-workers and working class Americans have faced since someone invented writing implements?
NFP dropped today
U.S. payrolls jump more than expected, but the report had several red flags for the economy (CNBC)
Heh, in an attempt to provide some insight, I went digging. Hard to find graphs of employment by job over time, but can do annually.
Employment by industry, monthly changes (BLS)
This is showing April 2026 seasonally adjusted, 12 mo net change. I’ll spoil it. Healthcare. It’s just healthcare. Rest is all flat but hospitality and leisure, barely. I don’t know how to get this for any other months.
Thanks for the graph. We should all learn how to be nurses! Or back-office claims deniers.
As I mentioned up the thread, this report is likely to prove vexatious to Taco and the rate cut mongers.
Similar to the porridge in Goldilocks, not too hot, not too cold. Enough for his shills to say the economy is great! But not enough to get a rate cut out of the Fed, especially with Jerome Powell lurking in the hallways and taking a leak into Kevin Warsh’s punch bowl.
They can’t possibly cut into an energy crisis, anyway, at least if the Fed wants to retain any of its vaunted credibility.
Something tells me that whatever is left of the Fed’s credibility will be gone the minute Jerome Powell clocks out for the last time. Taco wants to stuff the place with shills. Maybe he’ll nominate the head of NAR for the next Fed governor, or how about Jim Cramer?
And who is going to stop him? Congress? Bwahahaha!
The figures show that the job market is anaemic but the workforce is shrinking……see bonddad blog. That is why the unemployment figures are staying low. If this lasts those still with jobs will get pay rises eventually. Of course it is taking a six percent peacetime deficit to achieve this, pity the poor Fed when a recession hits, this Treasury will go wild.
re: RU vs. EU/NATO
Perhaps others see this differently, but China would not like Russian conventional long range fires on NATO territory at all if preemptive just like SMO.
I haven´t yet listened to Krapivnik-Diesen:
Stanislav Krapivnik: NATO-Russia Escalation – Another Big Step Toward Nuclear War
May 7th
https://glenndiesen.substack.com/p/stanislav-krapivnik-nato-russia-escalation
But regardless. I doubt Russians do not take these things into very serious consideration. After all: What in substance can Europe do to really harm Russia?
So what would an attack on NATO be worth?
The price even if only diplomatically would be very high. Of course that would suggest that I´d argue Russians are bluffing but I am not.
All that Russian FM did was highlighting potential targets for attacks as a warning. Not for the EU public but insiders so they may sit down and game out how this entire cabal of attacks and perhaps counter-attacks (but with what?) would wind down for Europe.
I assume even if RU did commit to their warnings they would still go through UN bodies before.
So there are some stops built in.
I expect a declaration of war before leveling downtown Kiev, or perhaps Lviv, where the green goblin is hiding this weekend. I imagine him swimming in gold coins, deep down in a concrete bunker, much like Scrooge McDuck. I wonder if it will be as much fun when the lights go out?
It seems to be a major escalation in the SMO operation. To bomb Kiev under those auspices seem extreme, regardless the waves of drones. A declaration of war will change the conflict and perhaps sober up a few of the weekend warriors in Brussels.
re: Krapivnik – Diesen
I really don´t understand why Diesen sticks this sensationalist title to this episode.
Nuclar war is the topic of the first few minutes. And that´s it. Krapivnik has almost no evidence, naturally.
How should he.
Why would he get near any member of the highest cadres in Russia who actually conduct this war?
Who decide over nuclear war. Would he, he wouldn´t be allowed to even speak about this with Diesen. It´s a bit like when the NYT quotes the CIA about super-secret intel – if it´s super-secret, NYT will never get near it, lest publish it.
Krapivnik offers two minor items:
– He spoke to “senior officers” who stated that Russian High Command and Moscow are discussing seriously nuclear scenarios.
Well, that´s their job and they´re doing this regularly as part of their job. Even I know that.
This term “senior officers” can mean anything. Most likely Krapivnik spoke to commanders stationed in Donbas and they offered him their views. Well that´s not very helpful.
I suggest Donbas, because Krapivnik gets into some more substance about his visit there. He speaks with much more knowledge about drone warfare, about those showy but limited attacks on oil infrastructure by UKR and that UKR looses a lot of men but has been ahead of Russia with FPV drones. Now: I have read this in German papers too. It´s their pet project topic. Because there is not much left to report on.
-He suggests that NATO/EU would try to overwehlm RU´s early warning with masses of drones and that EU intends to strike RU under the cover of this. But with what???
He actually in the same segment says just that: UK e.g. has nothing to strike with. And the idea to overwhelm radar with drones sounds overly simplistic. Krapivnik gives no further description of how this would look like in detail.
Krapivnik states that RU AD can shoot down a certain amount of incoming and that that number is secret and that he cannot say. Well, then why mention it in the first place.
It´s all very speculative and with virtually no meat to it. Diesen does not ask him why RU would attack Europe if Europe has almost no means beyond the drones to do damage. And even latter as Krapivnik says is not adequate to seriously disrupt the vast Russian facilities.
Still Diesen on fb launches this panic about nuclear war.
It´s an okay episode. There is also 15 min. about Africa/Russia in particular Mali vs. France in the end but not on the subject used to trigger the clicks.
p.s. Martyanov recently cited a very odd and similiar nothingburger of an article in RIA by a guy who bloated the threat of nuclear war in a way I am rather used to US legacy media: zero evidence.
With Krapivnik/Diesen doing the same now it´s almost as if some minor disinfo campaign is going on for whatever stupid reason. And people are falling for it, also because it´s a nice topic to keep the audience worried and to selling news.
I don´t comdemn this but I have really more important things to do than following these red herrings and white rabbits.
Diesen’s big worry is that if EU/NATO is incapable of accepting that a) the world is multipolar and b) Russia is the dominant power in Europe, the only path forward is escalation until there’s a kinetic war which then can be expected to turn nuclear.
If Latvia and Estonia can’t really control their airspace and shoot down them Ukrainian drones, Russia will at some point take control of their airspace – it’s really that simple. When I was a wee laddie, I was taught this wisdom of the international politics: “if we’re not capable of defending our sovereignty, then somebody else will”.
While that’s not too apparent in the talk with Krapivnik, it’s obvious in his posting from today. And the man has sort of a point. Poland and Germany certainly are pushing for a war with Russia. UK and the Nordics merely want to “contain” Russia, not really realizing that it means Russian un-containing itself sooner or later.
I see NATO´s geopolitics but not means to carry it out.
NATO´s plan is based on repeating the “just-war” scenario of Febr. 24th 2022.
Abuse UN Charter by forcing the Russians to attack first.
1) How can NATO threaten RU in such a way that RU sees no other way than violate Art. 51, again.
2) How do NATO´s generals intend to conduct a war if Russian missiles would take out the entire infrastructure in the first 48 hours?
THE DURAN talked about this too yesterday.
https://theduran.com/russia-hawks-take-control-victory-day-stakes-are-high-most-dangerous-moment-of-the-conflict/
I don´t share Mercouris´s speculations about what is going on inside Russian power elites. He has no way of knowing and actually admits it by suggesting all kinds of versions of what could or could not be the case in the Kremlin.
The only indicator he does offer is Ministry of Defense and Ministry of Foreign Affairs both issued the warning against Kiev. And his idea is they kind of forced Putin´s hand to go along this harsher new line. But it has been known for all of Putin´s reign that he mainly tries to find compromises among the various lobbies in the country. So it´s not Putin´s weakness it´s simply his way of managing things. Which makes pretty much sense.
Mercouris however does hint at doubts over the dangerous path suggested, within the German government (and other European governments too I would add, neither Italy nor Spain are in any war mood) – they are criminals but not suicidal.
US and the EU were always hiding behind proxies. With NATO directly involved next this is not an option any more.
Mercouris said something good: He argued that publicly the Germans claim to be calling “Putin´s” bluff. But in fact it´s Merz who is bluffing because he is afraid.
Of course he is. He has no cards to play. And the later EU gives way to negotiating with the Axis of Resistance the worse their position. The alternative would destroy the EU in a (nuclear) war.
EU knows this. Everybody does. And they know the US is protected by two oceans.
So I must come to the conclusion this is all bluster with only one possible ending. And instead of making clear simple truths, podcasters and their guests are jazzing up with wild claims.
p.s. If Krapivnik claims the average European thinks Russians are animals that´s nonsense.
Germany alone has an immigrant population of around 30%. And those are not well-to-do Estonians or Norwegians or British establishment types who hate Russia.
Those are people from the Global South or poorer Eastern Europeans. And if they have climbed up the ladder of status they are still pragmatic small business owners. Those are not Kallas fans.
Both Krapivnik and Martyanov should get off their dumbed down time freeze view of Europe. Societies change. Interestingly Martyanov loves to spread his nonsense about the downfall of Europe due to Arabisation without concluding to what this would mean for the political mood among those very societies he claims to be taken over by backward Muslims.
The best Owl picture!
Three integrated non lethal responses to a land based invasion….
Top right in flight: “I’m the airborne surveillance/attack at the ready, so don’t try anything stupid, stupid”;
Bottom right corner: “I got her back, so you in my sights too, Homes”
Front left in your face: “What the f@#k you doing in our hood? Yeah, I’m talking to you motherf@#kka!”
Having put my close inspection glasses on…its not a photo…how blind was I, but a composite..oh well, to me it reads the same, esp. as it looks like the same bird on approach …..
A real headline from “Fortune” magazine-
“America is lucky it’s no longer a manufacturing powerhouse—it’s what’s protecting the U.S. economy from the worst of the oil shock, top economist says”
I would guess some parts of the US economy.
Kinda like ‘Being an amputee protects you from the rising cost of shoes…’
There are obvious reasons to resist Nimbyism, but it’s not hard to smell a few rats behind YIMBY — the same rats who back the Abundance Bros.
Re: “Are We Kinda Being Pricks” Arbitrary Lines, the author refers to himself as a professional YIMBY. He’s not a writer on Urban Affairs who takes pro-Yimby positions. He’s a director at California Yimby -which has the same funders as the Abundance Movement. He’s also a fellow or former fellow with the Mercatus Center.
I remember when the YIMBY movement first started, I saw papers from places like the Manhattan Institute and thought: corporate funded think tankers come up with a slogan and position papers that argue for fewer restrictions on the FIRE sector, Rich FIRE types quietly back it, and young people hoping that we can somehow have affordable housing in the few cities that are doing well* (and loving a slogan that makes them feel self-righteous) embrace it. I wonder who the sucker I wonder who the sucker is at that table.
I know it’s hard to get enthusiastic about a wishy-washy slogan, but the slogan should be MIMBY. On the other hand, I suspect other people have said similar things and I’ve just missed it.
*Obviously, housing prices are ridiculous everywhere, but if only a handful of cities having good job markets, I imagine those cities will have sky high housing costs. Wouldn’t a rust belt revival do more for housing costs in New York or Boston than YIMBY policies? I’m thinking out loud on that part of my comment, but I’m pretty convinced that there a few sharks and a lot of naive people behind YIMBY.