Links 6/30/2026

Subscribe to Post Comments

55 comments

1. .Tom June 30, 2026 at 7:12 am

   Hi Yves, Firefox allows to add a search engine. I haven’t tried it myself with Kagi but seems worth a shot.

   Reply ↓
   1. NN Cassandra June 30, 2026 at 7:49 am

      Yes

      Reply ↓
      1. NN Cassandra June 30, 2026 at 7:59 am

         Also if for some queries you can’t get what you want, it may be worth to try duckduckgo/bing, for example for this specific query duckduckgo gives the correct result.

         Reply ↓
      2. diptherio June 30, 2026 at 8:52 am

         I’ll just add that Librewolf is a fork of Firefox that is intensely privacy focused (and has a no-AI policy, unlike FF). In fact, it’s so secure that I had to reduce the privacy settings to get some social media sites working. I like it better than FF, personally.

         Reply ↓
         1. flora June 30, 2026 at 8:59 am

            Thanks for the tip. I’ll give it a look.

            Reply ↓
   2. Mark Gisleson June 30, 2026 at 8:29 am

      I use Yandex on Firefox as my default search engine BUT I am running on a legacy OS and browser and it’s been years since a browser upgrade actually improved anything other than cookie retrieval.

      Plus, of course, Silicon Valley and Hollywood’s obsession with turning the internet into cable TV. Streaming is for suckers, it’s grossly inefficient and massively compounds peak usage times whereas bittorrent distribution doesn’t stress the internet and when you get done watching your show, you still have it.

      Reply ↓
      1. Hepativore June 30, 2026 at 8:54 am

         I have two free-streaming websites I go to in order to watch stuff I cannot find anywhere else as official streaming services also routinely pull down shows making them lost media and many movies are obscure to begin with. You can also right-click and use “save as” to download the show or movie directly.

         I use goojara(dot)to for movies and shows and wcoflix(dot)tv for cartoons and animated shows. The only problem with the latter is that they have a lot of pop-under ads to offset server costs for hosting their massive archive, so I recommend a decent adblocker like U-block, or its even better fork, Adnauseam.

         Reply ↓
   3. FreeMarketApologist June 30, 2026 at 8:39 am

      I use Firefox on a PC, and have the UDM-14 block in place (by adding “&udm=14” in the URL of your google search it leaves off all the AI junk). I use the version that is an add-on to Firefox (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/udm14/) and it’s added as an ‘additional’ search engine in the ‘search’ bar. It almost makes search a joy to use again.

      Using it, I tried the site specific search (“site:bloomberg.com Oman Hormuz european fees”) you gave, and it returned a good number of specific Bloomberg-based pages.

      If you don’t want to fool with setting the udm14 parameter, or just want to experiment with the difference, this site will do a google search and add it on automatically: https://udm14.com/ .

      Reply ↓
   4. Jason Boxman June 30, 2026 at 10:19 am

      I’ve been paying Kagi $10/mo to support a search engine that doesn’t collect my data.

      They’ve got a post about the Google rulings and how they source their index. (Kagi)

      Because direct licensing isn’t available to us on compatible terms, we – like many others – use third-party API providers for SERP-style results (SERP meaning search engine results page). These providers serve major enterprises (according to their websites) including Nvidia, Adobe, Samsung, Stanford, DeepMind, Uber, and the United Nations.

      This is not our preferred solution. We plan to exit it as soon as direct, contractual access becomes available. There is no legitimate, paid path to comprehensive Google or Bing results for a company like Kagi. Our position is clear: open the search index, make it available on FRAND terms, and enable rapid innovation in the marketplace.

      In a non-trash country, Google and Microsoft would be required to make their search data feeds available to everyone for a reasonable fee. This data is a public utility.

      Reply ↓
2. TonyJ June 30, 2026 at 7:23 am

   Just FYI, the Walmsley US travel link is malformed (missing “<“ at the beginning, I think).

   Reply ↓
3. The Rev Kev June 30, 2026 at 7:26 am

   ‘moe tkacik
   @moetkacik
   Thread on the medical experiments conducted on at least a thousand Yemeni Jewish babies stolen in hospitals by the Israeli government in the early 1950s’

   Dr. Mengele to the courtesy phone, please. This was all going on right from the beginning of when their country was formed and seems to be an ongoing scandal that won’t go away-

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

   Reply ↓
   1. jefemt June 30, 2026 at 9:23 am

      If I recall correctly, Moe was the source of the shockingly revelatory piece on Israel, CIA, Mob, Russia, Kushner, Nutting-yahoo, Kennedy assassination, Epstein, yada yada yada. It is a wonder Moe is still alive.

      …I said a nyuk nyuk nyuk. Hey Moe Hey Moe…

      Reply ↓
4. Judith June 30, 2026 at 7:28 am

   The final quote in the mountain lion link says it all:

   “ Humans remain the leading cause of mountain lion deaths, whether through hunting or vehicle collisions.

   “Clearly, we exert our own ecology of fear,” she said. “Humans are the ultimate predator on almost every landscape.”

   Reply ↓
   1. jefemt June 30, 2026 at 9:29 am

      I recall reading a piece where the writer was following Doug Peacock around in the San Juan Mountains in southern Colorado. They were trying to run to ground the rumors of a remnant grizzly population. The writer (Cahill/ Outside Mag?) made the point that Peacock appeared to think and behave like a surviving endangered grizzly. The minute he heard a plane, or a human voice (back/ horsepackers) Peacock BOLTED with all haste off- trail into the deepest hidey he could find.

      Humans are undisputedly THE biggest threat to life on earth. I say that in the first person singular.

      Reply ↓
5. .Tom June 30, 2026 at 7:29 am

   > ‘No one believed it’: how a YouTube video accidentally proved Libya’s sand cat really does exist Guardian (Rolf A)

   The 18 second YouTube video shows a cat carefully choosing a shaded spot and arranging itself to rest in it. So understandably no one believed it :P

   Reply ↓
6. dearieme June 30, 2026 at 7:43 am

   “2 bomb threats from this clown”: surely “clown” is much too kind a term.

   Anyway why shouldn’t Israeli-Americans fake racism incidents? Other sorts of hyphenated Americans seem to do it all the time.

   Reply ↓
   1. The Rev Kev June 30, 2026 at 7:52 am

      You had the same sort of thing happening here in Oz but I doubt that it will be mentioned during the ongoing Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion. Such claims would be called antisemitic. /sarc

      Reply ↓
7. DJG, Reality Czar June 30, 2026 at 7:47 am

   Coffee Lost in Translation, by Camilleri at Nimble.

   In fact, Camilleri gets something seriously wrong throughout. What the big chains like corporatized Costa and Starbucks *do* not want to do is import Italian coffee culture.

   Camilleri gets this right: “Costa is caught between these two forces without a clear answer to either. It is too expensive to compete on price, and not good enough to compete on quality. That is not a marketing problem. It is a product problem. And product problems do not resolve through restructuring announcements.”

   In Italy, the price of a caffè normale (espresso) is the source of controversy. Here in the Chocolate City, I pay more or less 1,40 (one euro forty, which is USD 1.50). Italians are highly sensitive to changes in coffee prices.

   Then there is the custom at some caffès that a coffee at the “bancone,” bar, is less than a coffee at a table.

   Then there is the tyranny of choice in Anglo-America that has ruined coffee. Starbucks is pumping out the pumpkin-spice ice-frothy whippyccino at 9 dollars a pop. Here in the Chocolate City, there is a big Starbucks just off Via Roma. It is for the gioventù dorata. Regular Italians consider it pricey and snotty.

   I recall early Starbucks (around 1990). The barista could still make an espresso coffee, served in a tazzina. By the time I was living in Edgewater in Chicago near the famous Berwyn Avenue Starbucks, they couldn’t make a proper espresso coffee — and the single tazzina, yes, the one demitasse, was kept locked in a cabinet. And a caffè macchiato at Starbucks is a milkshake of misguided foam.

   It’s the tyranny of consumer choice and the endless bullshit of Anglo-American “marketing.” Here in Italy, the vast majority of orders at the places I frequent are caffé normale, caffè macchiato, and cappuccino. And why would one want to deviate from perfection? (Well, there is the marocchino.)

   Italians will simply limit the menu: At one place I frequent, they don’t have whipped cream, which normally goes on a hot chocolate. So I go elsewhere for hot chocolate. The same place experimented with a U.S. style self-service container for caffè americano. I knew it wouldn’t work. The experiment ended in about a month. What followed undoubtedly was misuse and waste, which Italians won’t tolerate.

   So nothing in the fate of Costa surprises me. Camilleri gets this right: “The original Costa brothers understood something that three decades of institutional ownership have quietly eroded: that coffee, properly made, is one of the simplest pleasures available to a human being, and that the job of a coffee business is to get out of the way of that pleasure rather than to complicate it with volume, milk, and the economics of throughput.”

   In short, enshittification for the sake of high profits and de-skilling the workforce. Think of how hard it is to find a decent piece of pie in the U S of A.

   The culture of coffee is a ritual of fleeting sensuality, and a few moments of repose, which are just what one needs and what Calvinism won’t tolerate.

   Reply ↓
   1. The Rev Kev June 30, 2026 at 8:23 am

      Much agreement with your comment. Oz is lucky in that after the war a helluva lot of Italians came over here and they introduced the country to a lot of their food & drink culture, especially the coffee culture. The result is that when Starbucks tried to move in on Oz, they flamed out because their coffee was trash compared to what you can get in an ordinary suburban cafe-

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FGUkxn5kZQ (6:49 mins)

      And as I have said before. Coffee is not a matter of life or death – it is more important than that.

      Reply ↓
   2. JohnA June 30, 2026 at 9:19 am

      While high streets in Britain have plenty of chain and independent coffee shops, Costa seem to have gained a monopoly of coffee shops in hospitals. Last time I entered one such costa, and prepaid by machine for an espresso I was handed a cup that was luke warm, most likely a misorder that was sitting around. I politely asked for a fresh hot espresso and the ‘barista’ lied claiming to have just made it. (I could see he hadn’t.) I left it on the counter and sent a complaint via the Costa app. Never received as much as an acknowledgement, let alone a response. I will live with any espresso craving in hospital in future rather than enter a Costa ever again.

      Reply ↓
   3. .Tom June 30, 2026 at 9:51 am

      Consider the USA coffee situation when Starbucks arrived. The supermarkets had tins of Folgers and Maxwell House so big that even if you liked that coffee you’d be drinking it stale half the time. Gas stations and convenience stores had long lines of pump vacuum flasks of usually stale coffee, many of these with vanilla or hazelnut food flavoring added that made the store stink.

      The situation was similar with beer, a drink Americans are equally thirsty for. On my first trip to the USA in the early 90s I asked the charming Dallas waitress what beer she could offer, she well knew the answer “BudBudLightMillerMillerLiteCoorsCoorsLight”. I lived in Munich back then. Baffled I look around the table at my colleagues and asked if any were good. So, as with coffee, the situation was so bad that something had to change.

      You, DJG, described how things changed with coffee. I was initially relieved that Starbucks arrived but quickly lost interest. I was among the first to get a Rancilio home machine when they were introduced and got coffee from Trieste. With beer things got even more silly. Now the shelves in the bottle shop are all goofy packages of what tastes like bad homebrew with each too much alcohol, sugar and a flavor so strong that leaves me needing a palate cleanser. There are some respectable exceptions but we mostly get our beer from Czechia and Germany.

      You can perhaps blame some of this on the supply side but I don’t. I think the market expresses what Americans prefer. Similar patterns are evident in the wine market: California chardonnay is like vanilla ice cream and merlot is like chocolate ice cream. Again with cakes, cookies and doughnuts etc., which are so overwhelmingly sweet and large that they are frequently the topic of conversation among grumbling expats suffering culture shock.

      The pattern is clear, it seems to me. Young children’s favorite food after mother’s delicious milk is ice cream. Makes sense. It is not espresso coffee, green olives, Barolo or Czech pilsner. These are known as acquired tastes. The process of their acquisition is cultural (and, btw, pro-social). The USA doesn’t have much in the way of that kind of culture, for the obvious historical reasons. It has consumerism. Give them what they want: ice cream, which is not unlike what Starbucks serves.

      Reply ↓
8. Joel June 30, 2026 at 7:56 am

   I can and do use Kagi as the default search on Firefox https://help.kagi.com/kagi/getting-started/setting-default.html

   Reply ↓
   1. Yves Smith Post authorJune 30, 2026 at 8:05 am

      Cool! Thanks a ton!

      Reply ↓
9. Brian L. June 30, 2026 at 7:57 am

   Yves, I don’t know if it is a firefox on apple thing that prevents adding Yandex or other search engine, but on Firefox in linux, I can add a search engine in the settings and make it default. I can add “https://yandex.com/search?text=%s” as the URL and once added, select it to be default in the drop down menu above where I added it. I get a “are you a robot” complaint the first search but then it works fine afterwards.

   Reply ↓
   1. The Rev Kev June 30, 2026 at 8:03 am

      For what it is worth, you can simply make Yandex an ordinary bookmark-

      https://yandex.com/

      Once you click inside the search box, all sorts of options appear above it.

      Reply ↓
10. DJG, Reality Czar June 30, 2026 at 8:05 am

    Mauricio Berman. War and Peace. Highly recommended.

    Exactly: “This is why peace, for both the individual and society at large, is so threatening: it brings us face to face with issues that are painful, even scary, to confront. Better the carnage of war than the carnage of the psyche, is the idea; in reality, a sad state of affairs.”

    This is why peace is the only path. And this is why the warmongers are so obviously so lacking, the kind of people who think that setting the dinner table as you wait for guests is nothing compared to glorious loose talk about bombs. Three of such specimens: Mark Rutte, Ursula von der Leyen, Lindsey Graham.

    This is also why I keep this poem in mind:

    The Anactoria Poem

    Some say thronging cavalry, some say foot soldiers,
    others call a fleet the most beautiful of
    sights the dark earth offers, but I say it’s what-
    ever you love best.

    And it’s easy to make this understood by
    everyone, for she who surpassed all human
    kind in beauty, Helen, abandoning her
    husband—that best of

    men—went sailing off to the shores of Troy and
    never spent a thought on her child or loving
    parents: when the goddess seduced her wits and
    left her to wander,

    she forgot them all, she could not remember
    anything but longing, and lightly straying
    aside, lost her way. But that reminds me
    now: Anactória,

    she’s not here, and I’d rather see her lovely
    step, her sparkling glance and her face than gaze on
    all the troops in Lydia in their chariots and
    glittering armor.

    From The Poetry of Sappho (Oxford University Press 2007), translated by Jim Powell.

    But, heck, Sappho is just one more Dead White Man, to be played by Jennifer Lawrence in the upcoming biopic.

    Reply ↓
    1. .Tom June 30, 2026 at 8:51 am

       Interesting how Berman emphasizes the word ecstatic. The dissolution of the self into the collective is a powerful experience, attractive and many people seek it out. The best of musical performance, religious ritual, sports and so on afford it. Political protest can too. Our hierarchical societies it would, I suppose, generally be in the interest of the ruling class to direct the object of political protest away from themselves, right Hr. Merz?

       We live close to the location of the Boston Marathon bombing and were subject to the restrictions of movement as the (Keystone) cops attempted to capture the perps. At the climax, street celebrations spontaneously erupted with people waving flags and shaking fists in the air. It looked ecstatic. Reminded me of the up-swelling and outpouring of blood lust as the USA got ready for and executed GW2.

       Reply ↓
       1. jefemt June 30, 2026 at 9:37 am

          If the USMNT manages to prevail over Bos-Herts Wednesday night you can bet we will see much OOSA OOSA OOSA chanting and fist pumping. The build up and the release. With some breaks to feature our paying sponsors…

          Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeenauseating. Gag a Maggot.

          But I will be there, streaming it, burning electrons and demanding data centers to feed my habit.

          How unsustainable am I, really? Quite !

          Reply ↓
    2. pjay June 30, 2026 at 9:19 am

       I did appreciate this post. But as a complimentary companion piece I’d strongly recommend Van Jackson’s post: ‘Steven Spielberg’s Moral Equivalent of War’ from his Un-Diplomatic blog. In it he reflects on the same thing, but does it more effectively. He also links to William James’ very relevant essay “The Moral Equivalent of War” from which he derives his title. To the psychology of dopamine hits he adds the necessity of *empathy* if we are to understand war and peace. But he goes beyond emotions or psychology or neurology by making this point in criticizing Spielberg, and liberal myth-making in general:

       “Liberals are a diverse bunch, but the best of them would have us look inside ourselves for solutions to the world’s crises. That’s necessary but insufficient. Personal reckonings cannot be mutually exclusive with seeing and analyzing the structures that produce our crises. That produce our lack of empathy. The individual, as the unit of analysis, is an insufficient answer to a system-level problem.”

       For me, the function of feel-good stories like those provided by Steven Spielberg is precisely to distract us from “seeing and analyzing the structures that produce our crises.” And one may add, the interests who benefit from these structures. That is also the deficiency of appeals to “ecstatic desire” in providing non-rational “psycho-logical” explanations for war, even though this may be an important element in the process.

       Reply ↓
       1. .Tom June 30, 2026 at 10:13 am

          I guess this is the one. https://www.un-diplomatic.com/p/steven-spielbergs-moral-equivalent. I’ll read it later.

          Thanks for your comment, pjay. I think it’s important to understand the psych and neuro-oriented views but I get uncomfortable with arguments that seem to set up a telos from objective science to the inevitable fate of violent, unequal societies. It’s almost the same thing as using science to explain/justify Western Civilization/supremacy. History and archeology show that we have choices and there were alternatives to the Western modes of social organization in which the most sociopathic are given the greatest power and rewards.

          Not all of use believe that our top priority is to produce as many grandchildren as possible. Some of us believe we have the freedom to choose over biological determinism.

          Reply ↓
    3. hemeantwell June 30, 2026 at 11:05 am

       This line of analysis tends to slide into headwagging about human nature in a terribly simplistic way, so much so that I’ve come to see it as part of the phenomenon it describes. That Russell would draw conclusions about the nature of support for the war by submerging himself in prowar pep rally itself becomes a source of dismay to me. You’d think he might have been capable of looking beyond the “ecstasy” at the political forces compelling support for the war. It’s certainly true that antiwar pledges by socialist parties were not carried out, but that was significantly determined by fear of government repression, e.g. Jaures, leader of the French SP, had been assassinated on July 31. We really don’t need to get distracted by this socially blinkered funkmongering.

       Reply ↓
11. Brian L. June 30, 2026 at 8:10 am

    … I can add “https://yandex.com/search?text=%s” without the quotes as the URL …

    Reply ↓
12. ChrisFromGA June 30, 2026 at 8:41 am

    Re: Supreme Court rulings

    Losing the battle over Lisa Cook (“Cook-gate?”) had to really stick in Donnie’s craw.

    Here is a link to the full decision:

    https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/25a312_5468.pdf

    These cases can be confusing; Taco was asking the court for a stay on an injunction. Piecing the facts together:

    1. Taco tries to fire Cook, under sketchy allegation of mortgage fraud that occurred before her taking office; no actual indictment, just a referral to the DoJ
    2. Cook sues, asks the trial court for a temporary injunction to allow her to stay in the job while the suit plays out
    3. Court grants injunction
    4. Taco appeals;
    5. Appellate court upholds lower court injunction and denies stay
    6. Taco appeals to SCOTUS
    7. SCOTUS denies Taco in a 5-4 decision

    The issue is whether Cook deserved due process in the matter, also what does “for cause” mean? As usual the merits were not decided here, only whether Cook can stay on the job while the case against her proceeds.

    Justice Thomas wrote the dissent … it appears that he would deny Cook due process because her claim stated that under the 14th amendment the government can’t deny her interest in “life, liberty, or property”. In this case the office she occupies is her “property.” And Thomas interprets property as not including a job.

    I found the majority more persuasive. Allowing any President to fire a Fed governor on cooked-up charges converts their employment to at-will, rather than the higher standard of needing to find a “cause.” Yet the decision only gives Cook more time to fight, and the carve-out for the Fed is a special case.

    Also worth noting that this is another case of Taco scoring an “own goal” on himself. It’s been over a year since the initial attempt to fire Cook; had he not wasted all this time tying up the courts fighting the injunction, the case could have proceeded to the merits at the Trial Court level. Now he’s stuck with Cook for the foreseeable future.

    Reply ↓
    1. Darthbobber June 30, 2026 at 9:20 am

       But didn’t Roberts mention that there was nothing to prevent Trump doing it again, with “proper notice”?

       More important to me was that this was the only firing they had a problem with.

       Reply ↓
       1. ChrisFromGA June 30, 2026 at 10:02 am

          Yes, I did read that. What’s to stop Trump from giving her a hearing, with some random marsupials as the deciders? I think that Cook can litigate that, though. With an injunction now in place, she might get to stay in office until that plays out all the way to the SCOTUS. Go-aLLLL!!

          Part of my point is that the Trump administration is full of idiots. If they were cleverer, they would have done this first, and not wasted the court’s time on procedural stuff. it is highly suspicious as well that Cook has not been formally indicted in the year since this controversy started. It makes it appear that they have no case.

          Reply ↓
13. LawnDart June 30, 2026 at 8:55 am

    Re; War and Peace

    The author sets the framework with some choice quotes:

    “The world is not logical,” wrote the great German writer; “it is psycho-logical.”

    And later:

    If our brains get used to high stress and constant dopamine and cortisol spikes, it will make the sudden declaration of peace feel like an emotional vacuum…

    Both statements may appeal to experience, but I would disagree in general with each; first, much in this world is logical; second, I believe that an escape from stress– especially extreme stress– is less often an emotional vacuum than it is a relief.

    The author concludes that “a life that makes sense is perforce lived as a balancing act, between a rock and a hard place. Perhaps this is no great intellectual breakthrough, but wisdom consists of knowing when to go with Scylla, and when with Charybdis, if you’ll permit me a classical allusion.”

    But isn’t wisdom not having to go with Scylla or Charybdis? Isn’t wisdom the balancing itself and knowing when to pull away from their grasp? Or, is knowing when not to be wise wisdom too?

    Reply ↓
    1. amfortas June 30, 2026 at 9:30 am

       From 16 til i was 26, and landed way out here and found Tam, my life was a constant churn of threat and escape, hardships and overcoming, only to be set upon with more hardships and craziness…little of which was due to my initial actions….altho, many times, due to my reaction to various and sundry crazy instigations. ten years of being under the gun, as it were…sometimes quite literally.
       when i got out here…isolation and extreme silence…then with Tam…it took a while to…catch my breath, and to stop jumping at loud noises and to finally stop having panic attacks when id see a cop.
       for 31 years, i have not for a moment missed all that.
       ive only really been able to talk openly about all of it(the beatings, bein buried alive, etc) for the last dozen or so years.
       so while i am certain that there are many people who are as Berman describes…i have known them,lol…it aint everybody.
       i reckon that most of the mostly on-line posturing and larping as various manifestations of revolutionary badasses is only possible because 1. on-line’s perceived anonymity, etc and 2. because most of these folks have never experience extreme hardship, to say nothing of persecution and being on the run for years and years.
       it is not a romantic story…even though thats how i often present it when asked to tell my tales.
       rather, it was extremely traumatic, and took years of talking through it, and writing about it, to come to terms with.
       during those ten years, i would often stop…when i’d find some safe out of the way place to hide out and recuperate for a week, or 9 months,lol…the magnitude of my situation would hit me…is this really happening? this is all crazy!
       lol.

       Reply ↓
14. leaf June 30, 2026 at 8:58 am

    https://www.amerikanets.com/p/pr-war-ramps-up-in-ukraine

    The ongoing PR campaign in Ukraine

    Reply ↓
    1. Detroit Dan June 30, 2026 at 11:06 am

       Thanks for that, leaf. Very good article!

       Reply ↓
15. leaf June 30, 2026 at 9:04 am

    I think some tags were not closed for the Walmsley substack link above

    https://kdwalmsley.substack.com/p/not-even-the-world-cup-can-save-the

    Reply ↓
16. The Rev Kev June 30, 2026 at 9:12 am

    “I’m an American living in Europe during the Great AC Wars…”

    There seems to be a lot of schadenfreude about Europe being hammered by heat waves and not having AC to cope with it. I would go so far as to say that if you asked these same people if these massive heat waves are climate change in action, then you would see a bit of backpedaling. People forget but it was only the introduction of AC that opened up regions of America that suffered from excessive heat. I have been reliably informed that the South experience a lot of heat and humidity but AC let a large part of the population move down south to live. If the massive build out of all those data centers causes the grid to fall over, people will be reminded of what the natural climate is like. I have also heard that without AC, that few people would or even could live in the UAE for example. Thing is, European buildings are not really set up for such excessive heat and it may be OK for some people to say get AC but you have to have the electrical grid in place that could support it first.

    Reply ↓
    1. jefemt June 30, 2026 at 9:45 am

       This makes me recall the NC post featuring high-heat environs and the sublime beauty and lived experience that is evolved Iranian architecture.

       Lets go destroy it! Jeepers…

       Some buildings are indeed functionally obsolescent…. amny too many. Sunk Cost? Stranded Capital? Overly-costly retrofitting? The oxy-morons of “sustainable building”

       Lotta pain and suffering in the Anthropocene.

       Reply ↓
    2. joey_n June 30, 2026 at 10:38 am

       Some Schadenfreude* is emanating from not just the US, but also China as well. One’d expect the latter to know more in general than the former, if that even factors into anything…

       (* Can’t be certain about Russia, most of which shares the same latitude as Europe but with lower energy prices. Other than that, such smug moralizing attitudes from the US are how I began picking up anti-NATO, pro-BRICS media in the first place (back in the onset of Trump’s first term), but that’s another story!)

       I have been reliably informed that the South experience a lot of heat and humidity but AC let a large part of the population move down south to live.
       …
       I have also heard that without AC, that few people would or even could live in the UAE for example.

       I’ve been wondering how populations south of the US border (from Cuba/Mexico to, say, Colombia) could get around before the invention of air conditioners. In fact, and case in point, if we factor in topographical aspects of each region, how much does one need A/C in Mexico?

       Reply ↓
17. Michael Fiorillo June 30, 2026 at 9:40 am

    Regarding the high country of the Colorado river drying up and impending reductions in water use in the Southwest, I traveled through California’s Imperial Valley – a prime recipient of Colorado River water – in February, and was astounded to see how much irrigated farmland was devoted to growing alfalfa.

    Growing grass for dairy cattle in what, minus irrigation, is a parched moonscape seems like a DMS-grade level of insanity. It didn’t help matters to see the contrails of jet fighters prepping for Operation Epstein Fury in the distance.

    If you want to get a foretaste of the Southwest’s/USA’s apocalypse-in-the-making landscapes, check out the Salton Sea region… crazy s*^t.

    Reply ↓
    1. The Rev Kev June 30, 2026 at 9:44 am

       Man, that’s nothing. Here in my State here in Oz they were growing cotton in the middle of a desert and draining a major river to do it. Madness.

       Reply ↓
    2. Jason Boxman June 30, 2026 at 10:41 am

       The groundwater pumping is even greater madness. That bell cannot be un-rung.

       Reply ↓
       1. The Rev Kev June 30, 2026 at 10:50 am

          But wait. It gets worse. As that water is pumped out the caverns compress together which means that the level of the land falls. Check out the image of Joseph Poland illustrating this point-

          https://californiawaterblog.com/2015/12/27/the-earth-is-falling-land-subsidence-and-water-management-in-california/

          Reply ↓
    3. Eclair June 30, 2026 at 11:07 am

       Great comment, Michael. We lived in Southern California for 30 years and visited all those arid places, mostly by bicycle. Salton Sea, Central Valley, Death Valley (a foretaste of the future Southwest?). Crossed and recrossed the California Aqueduct.

       Then, we moved to Denver in 2007 and happened to camp for a few days at a state park in the eastern edge of Colorado. The campsites, originally lake-side, were a a good 10 minute hike to the much diminished lake, which was part of an agricultural irrigation system.

       So I started reading up on settlement of the West and Southwest. John Wesley Powell had it right with his publication of Report on the Lands of the Arid Region of the United States. In 1878. Like, really, guys, trying to agriculture west of the 100th Meridian is NOT a good idea. But if you must do it, at least arrange the states/districts so they follow the natural watersheds. And, BTW, Congress and Land Developers: Rain does NOT follow the plow.

       The ranchers and corporate agri-growers have been living a delusion for the past century. They have to have known their exploitation would have to end.

       The irrigation systems drilled into the Ogallala Aquifer have been draining it dry much much faster than rains can regenerate it. Like centuries faster.

       And our Denver suburb HOA sent us regular letters regarding our brown lawn. And even nastier letters when I replaced part of the lawn with tomato plants. (OK, I was trying to push the boundaries!)

       So, when my spouse retired, we moved back to western New York. We have snowy winters, but we have water. Muck boots are a fashion accessory.

       The strawberries grown in Orange County and up north in the Salinas Valley area are transporting little globes of water from these arid regions to the water-rich Great Lakes states. Our local strawberries here in Chautauqua County, NY are available only for one delicious month, but the fragrant memory (and the hundreds of jars of jam) lingers all year.

       Reply ↓
18. flora June 30, 2026 at 9:52 am

    re: Kids Are Flying Into Lunatic Rages When Their iPads Are Taken Away – Futurism.

    Remember all the studies conducted by Google and others on different computer screen visual effects on very young children?
    Basically, the studies were-(are?) to find subliminal screen patterns that would keep the children’s attention glued to the screen for long periods of time, aka ‘addict’ the kids to the screens by providing constant visual dopamine hits to the brain.

    If kids are throwing tantrums outside the normal range of strength and duration of little child tantrums then it sounds like the kids have been purposely addicted – that is, purposely had dopamine hits designed in to the screen visuals by the screen designers. When the screens are removed a mental/emotional withdrawal happens. Excessive tantrums ensue. (Lots of articles about this effort to make smartphone and tablet interfaces additive were in the press a few years ago. Even some law suits.) The longer the engagement with the device the more money the device/operation system manufacture is likely to make on an ongoing basis.

    From Psychology Today:

    Hooked on Screens

    https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/addiction-outlook/202506/hooked-on-screens

    And from Safe and Sound:
    https://www.nicklauschildrens.org/campaigns/safesound/blog/why-are-kids-so-addicted-to-screens

    And from Focus on You Child:

    Tech CEOs Ban This For Their Kids
    https://www.focusonyourchild.com/tech-ceos-ban-this-for-their-kids/

    I’m not a psychologist, but it seems like a young child learning that a screen gives instant dopamine hits (stimulation of the brain’s reward center) without effort, then the usual old-school learning about the world gets short circuited in a bad way. / my 2 cents.

    Reply ↓
19. DJG, Reality Czar June 30, 2026 at 9:53 am

    I’m a Usonian living in Tuscany and I want to reinforce the stereotypes about Usonians.

    Sheesh. Don’t even get me going. Three summers in Florence and the pontificating has already started: Under The Tuscan Air Conditioner.

    “Me? I’ll keep enjoying my Italian life, my Florentine summers, and my apartment set to a glorious 71 degrees.”

    Italy has very high rates for electricity. Which the writer neglects to mention. I’ll assume the person is rich. Airconditioning my 85 sq meter apartment to 21 C would cost me 400 or so euro a month.

    To further reinforce Usonian stereotypes of stupidity, there’s this: “More Europeans die as a result of the heat than all the US gun deaths, combined.” Then the dolt compares absolute numbers, neglecting to do the proportion, which would involve factoring in the much larger European population (549 million) against the US population of 340 million. It doesn’t take much to figure out that the rate of U.S. gun deaths is higher than heat deaths in Europe. In other words, doing the proportion indicates that the U.S. gun-death rate in a population the size of Europe would be about 66 000 cases.

    Or that Italy has the lowest murder rate in Europe.

    I will leave it to our Tuscan correspondents to handle the usual Usonian boorishness. And keep this person away from Lucca.

    Reply ↓
20. flora June 30, 2026 at 10:02 am

    re: The Trillion-Dollar Borrowing Binge Lifting the Stock Market to Risky Heights – Wall Street Journal

    Borrowing? Buying stocks on margin?? Stock market rising to new heights???

    Wait. Haven’t we been here before? Like, 100 years ago?
    /smh,

    Reply ↓
    1. The Rev Kev June 30, 2026 at 10:12 am

       But flora. This time will be different. Pinky swear.

       Reply ↓
21. Patrick Lynch June 30, 2026 at 10:11 am

    Regarding search engines, in Firefox at least for Windows and Linux, there is an extension that returns DuckDuckGo to a no AI version and it has been basically a breath of fresh air compared to the AI version.
    https://noai.duckduckgo.com

    Reply ↓
22. The Rev Kev June 30, 2026 at 10:35 am

    “The finance curse is devouring the UK”

    A pretty good article and what it talks about could be extended for many other countries. The financial industry has pushed aside the industrial economy and has in fact devoured as much of it as could be done. That is why so many countries cannot make things anymore or even know how to do it. All that knowledge & skill – along with the machinery – was outsourced to countries in Asia under prodding by the financial industry for short term profit. The title of a book that the renowned Michael Hudson wrote says it all – “Killing the Host.”

    Reply ↓
23. Stephen Gardner June 30, 2026 at 11:12 am

    Has Trumpian math invaded France? 1000% mortality? So, 10x more chickens died than existed in the first place? What is this guy trying to say? Why is that NOT the same thing as Trump’s 1000% cuts in pharmacy prices?

    Reply ↓