Japanese city captures black bear after multiday hunt DW. Black bears in the US aren’t much of a threat to people in the US (property is another matter). I wonder why they are so aggressive in Japan. Or (worse) are some rabid?
Good design is ruining American flags Works in Progress (Micael T)
How much should you talk to your toddler? Linguistic Discovery (Micael T)
CALCIDIUS THE LATIN PLATO Antigone (Anthony L)
A widely used joint-health supplement may have an unexpected dark side for the aging brain.
➡️ Researchers analyzing >12 years of health records found that glucosamine use was associated with a 25% higher risk of progression from mild cognitive impairment to Alzheimer’s disease,… pic.twitter.com/5PRtp1qJ50
— Vipin M. Vashishtha (@vipintukur) June 9, 2026
Why are so many young people getting cancer? What researchers do and don’t know Nature
Ebola
Man shot during protest against proposed US Ebola quarantine facility in Kenya Guardian
#COVID-19/Pandemics
Anguished Parents, Crying Doctors: Life Amid Utah’s Measles Outbreak Wired
As vaccination rates plunge in Pennsylvania schools, measles cases surge in largest outbreak in three decades Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Every social justice movement is impacted by the Long COVID crisis Sick Times
Climate/Environment
Climate Change, Pollution Push Oceans to Tipping Point, UN Report Says Insurance Journal
An invisible forever chemical rain is falling across the planet Science Daily (Kevin W)
Nino region 3.4 SST update for June 8.
By year's end: a global temperature spike, record floods & droughts, massive heatwaves & storms, global crop failures & famine, wildfires, dead coral and other marine life, inflation and infrasructure collapse.
Your mileage may vary. pic.twitter.com/BtirvDaWdu
— Prof. Eliot Jacobson (@EliotJacobson) June 8, 2026
El Niño will influence precipitation extremes.
A moisture connection from the tropical Pacific to the U.S. during fall could drive flooding rainfall.
Meanwhile, droughts are possible in the Caribbean, northern South America, West Pacific, India, Indonesia and Australia. pic.twitter.com/kAWtFh6yLq
— Ben Noll (@BenNollWeather) June 6, 2026
India prepares crop protection strategy as El Niño threatens monsoon rainfall TBS News
Drought forces wheat abandonment across parts of Great Plains Brownfield
Farmers For Action says biofuels, not diet cuts, must lead net zero drive Farming UK
China?
Macron reportedly to host video call between G7 and China amid trade divergences Global Times
Offshore oil is booming. So are the Chinese companies that make the equipment for it. Kevin Walmsley
This is extraordinarily rare.
In fact, according to a key figure in the German business community (who is a dear friend of mine), it's unprecedented.
An op-ed, two pages, centerpiece, in Germany’s most important economic newspaper (the Handelsblatt) that begs the German… pic.twitter.com/k7Uhv2HwaE
— Arnaud Bertrand (@RnaudBertrand) June 10, 2026
European Disunion
EU proposes entry ban for Russian Ukraine combatants DW
The US’ Reportedly Canceled Tomahawk Deployment To Germany Isn’t That Big Of A Deal Andrew KorybkoINTERVIEW: Iceland joining EU a ‘big step away from democracy’ Euractiv
“Burn for us!” Tarik Cyril Amar (Micael T). Important
Old Blighty
UK leaders call for calm as protests break out after Belfast street stabbing Associated Press
Israel v. The Resistance
Middle East crisis live: Iran launches broad retaliatory attacks after US strikes over downed helicopter Guardian. Much more in today’s Iran war post.
In south Lebanon, Israeli drones use the sound of crying children to lure civilians Middle East Eye
Did CNN just out Azerbaijan as Israel’s secret military partner? Responsible Statescraft (Kevin W)
The Iran War and the Future of American Empire American Conservative (Kevin W)
Balkans
‘Act without delay’: Brussels warns Albania over Trump-linked resort project Euronews
What’s Happening in Albania? Multipolar Press (Micael T)
Syraqistan
Pakistan carries out new deadly strikes on Afghanistan: government officials Reuters
New Not-So-Cold War
Dawn of Spacewar Events in Ukraine. I’ve only gotten a bit into this but it is a very good piece. Also identifies shortcomings with Russian drone operations, so much more objective-seeming than most assessments, which tend to cheerlead for one side.
Russian Battle Tank Attrition Completely Reversed – Top Western Analysts Simplicius
Russia Ukraine War: Wiping Out Ukraine’s Deep Bunkers (ft Mark Sleboda) Jamarl Thomas, YouTube
Tests Suggest Russian Satellites Can Jam GPS On a Continental Scale ars technica
No precise date for Witkoff, Kushner’s visit to Russia – Peskov and Putin-Trump phone call not on agenda for now – Kremlin spokesman Interfax
Big Brother is Watching You Watch
Meta Deletes Face-Recognition System From Its Smart Glasses App Wired
Imperial Collapse Watch
America’s Allies Are Starting To Panic Carl Zha and TIO Talks with Warwick Powell, YouTube. This is really quite the talk. It starts with AUKUS, which we said at the time was a dreadful deal for Australia, and proceeds to the current conduct of the US.
Give Up on the Pursuit of Dominance Daniel Larison
Trump 2.0
A new low for Trump approval on the economy, expectations of a drawn-out Iran war, and more: June 5 – 8, 2026 Economist/YouGov Poll
‘Disgrace to our city’: Donald Trump sparks outrage for falling asleep at Game 3 Yahoo Sports (resilc)
Vance refers Gov. Tim Walz and Minnesota attorney general to DOJ for fraud investigation NBC
Immigration
ICE Eliminated Essential Medical Care for Detainees, Yet Continues to Expand for On-Site Medical Waste Capacity W. A. Lawrence. Um, so they can dispose of needles and condoms used by staff?
Democrats Suck
Platner sails through primary amid controversy: 5 takeaways from Tuesday’s elections The Hill
The Democratic establishment begrudgingly moves to embrace Graham Platner Politico
Economy
Small Business Hiring Plans Are the Lowest in Six Years Michael Shedlock
Mr. Market Needs a Therapist
SoftBank sinks 10% as Asia tech stocks tumble, tracking Wall Street losses CNBC
AI
DeepSeekV4 1.6T Day 0 to Day 43 Performance Over Time – Huawei, GB300 NVL72, MI355X, B200 SemiAnalysis. Over my pay grade :-). But an expert weighed in:
Summary: Deepseek slow on day 1 partly due to constraints contained in the nvidia device. Sped up 100x by removing the constraint and tuning the Deepseek model. What wasn’t mentioned is that Deepseek 4 was designed to run on Huwaie devices which have a different geometry (shorter conduction path with larger gaps between transistors). My feeling is that once the Chinese get smaller geometries (by using ASML machines) it’ll eat ChatGPT’s lunch at a FAR cheaper price.
As an aside ChatGPT now stops before it gives you the final answer and demands you pay up. “And the answer is… pay up and I’ll tell you”. Deepseek is getting better (I used both today to help with an engineering problem) and not only does it give you the answer but it gives you links to the sources so you can follow up on your own. ChatGPT is getting to be like the US arms industry, very flashy, promises a lot to justify its very high cost and then provides mediocre performance when it comes to be used.
This AI bubble burst is going to be spectacular.
Local Brand Realizes Customers Hate Its AI Ads, Switches to Charming Homemade Ones Instead Futurism
The revenge of Claude Mythos Gary Marcus
Ex-CIA disguise chief says AI elevates spy wars to new heights Asia Times (Kevin W)
Majority of US’s new AI datacenters to be built on drought-hit land Guardian
People Are Now Getting Plastic Surgery to Look More AI-Generated ZME Science (Dr. Kevin). Kill me now. I thought the Mar-a-Lago face was bad enough.
The Bezzle
An AI Trojan Horse Oligarch Watch
Class Warfare
The slot machine – when gastronomy becomes an assembly line Creative Cuisine (Micael T)
Antidote du jour (via):
And a bonus (Robin K):
Clearly, this is not the first time he's done this 😅pic.twitter.com/MHe43KwYB4
— Community Notes & Violations (@CNviolations) June 9, 2026
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
Wrt the bear in Japan, they are not the same species as North American black bears, but a subspecies of the Asian black bear (aka moon bear, for the crescent shaped patch of white fur on their chest.) They are bigger than the North American black bears, although not as big as grizzlies. Unlike their North American counterparts, they haven’t adapted well to human presence and are quite vulnerable conservation wise.
I think a lot of it comes down to physical geography. In Japan, almost the entire population live in either narrow plains or valley floors, with little of a buffer zone between them and forested mountains (either wild, or more commonly, commercial forestry). So even in densely populated regions there can be little geographical separation between urbanites and bear habitat. There are plenty of Japanese cities where quite densely populated suburbs directly abut very dense forestry at the foot of mountains. Often the only human intrusion into those mountain barriers is a narrow winding secondary road (an example burned into my memory is having to cycle between Hiroshima and the old Navy city of Kure, where I was thrown off a ferry for having the wrong ticket), so there is little or nothing to stop bears and boars wandering widely, even in the densely populated regions like Kansai.
I suspect that there are also behavioural issues – in Montana I was told that simply waving a red bear spray can was an effective way of persuading grizzlies to keep away, as most will have had a sniff of it at some stage or other. Similarly with handguns. Fortunately, despite seeing plenty of them along the Great Divide Trail I never had to test that theory out.
My thinking is here in the west we had grizzly bears that threatened black bears. Grizzles are extinct in the western sierra at the hand of the pioneers. We replaced the grizzlies for the black bears instinctual behavior. When I run into a bear in these woods I just clap my hands and they take off.
Yes, it’s easy to make a black bear scram in the Sierra…
A friend was a ‘bear tech’ for NPS in Sequoia NP about 35 years ago with her job essentially being to haze bears in campgrounds and elsewhere.
Now she’s in Denali NP as a ranger and she related to me that Alaskan black bears just look at you strange if you try and make them shoo away-
The last Grizzly Bear in California was killed just inside Sequoia NP in 1926. I held the rifle that did the deed, kinda chilling.
Herrero attributes the behavioral differences between North American black bears and grizzlies to the former having evolved primarily in forested environments where they could find refuge from competing predators, while grizzlies evolved in open country with nowhere to hide where aggression was key to survival.
The Asian black bear’s behavior, given it appears also to be a forest bear with the ability to climb trees would seem to contradict this hypothesis. Unless, however, the locus of its evolutionary history was the open plains or Asian forests are rougher neighborhoods in terms of competing predators than their North American counterparts, what with tigers, leopards and the like.
Bear attacks have been big in Japanese media for at least a year now. PlutoniumKun’s summary, above, pretty much pegs the “why”.
There is already a “bear attack” horror film that also deals with “yami baito” a.k.a. desperate people looking for part-time work who get lured into crime. Highly entertaining:
『HIGUMA!!』
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83M147c4QrU
“Good design is ruining American flags”
If it is ruining American flags, then it is not good design at all. It could get worse, you know. You could have Republicans demanding that local flags should have a lot of red in it while Democrats would insist on blue being the major colour. Can you imagine? But maybe these people should calm down and watch first an information video on flags before they do anything-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IceJTXb7RI (8:37 mins)
the STL is the best
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_St._Louis
wrong link for this one
The “Big Shrink”: Over half of 50 largest school districts in US facing deep cuts as war on education escalates WSWS
Apologies for having been slow to get to this. Fixed!
correct link for The “Big Shrink”: Over half of 50 largest school districts in US facing deep cuts as war on education escalates
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2026/06/10/vahi-j10.html
‘Oh no. Public education is failing. Quick, we have to privatize those schools to save them.’ After the Russians sent up Sputnik, the US decided what was needed to revamp education to keep itself in the game. And here we are some seventy years later. Living in a so-called information society where education will be a critical need in the years to come so that the US can compete with countries that take education seriously and what happens? Education is being devalued as is research and development because reasons.
John Oliver just did an episode on New College of FL in Sarasota.
https://youtu.be/jFMc07F1UUU?si=B557Ul8ptYB7Dfbf
This was a very successful, modern approach to education that produced a high number of Doctorate and post-grad students.
DeSantis and the other christo-fascists destroyed it with their ‘anti-woke’ BS while simultaneously grifting the taxpayers for millions and enriching a few of his friends. It was designed to be a test case for the eventual takeover of the entire US education system.
As always, John enlightens in a comedic but sadly funny way.
Nima has a must-watch interview with John Helmer on Putin’s crisis of confidence. It’s about how he has misplayed his hand by negotiating with Trump and Europe, which has only strengthened Ukraine. Iran should learn from this as well.
They also discuss why Putin doesn’t think decapitation is an option, which is another mistake. So far, the only cost on its enemies that Putin has managed to extract is on the Ukrainian civilian population by depopulating it of men. This is a cost that both the West and the Zelensky regime is happy to pay. By limiting the analysis they’ll be replaced by even worse actors, they’re ignoring that they will have introduced a cost to the decision-making class which will force them to change the calculus.
I would put more stock in Helmer’s view if it had developed recently, but if memory serves he’s been saying that almost from the start of the conflict. He is a Putin critic and that is a valuable perspective. I don’t see his criticism as necessarily indicative of an inflection point within Russia.
Would US strategists prefer that Russia continue its current strategy or become more aggressive? I wonder.
Helmer has also been loudly claiming that the Oreshniks are duds. If the Oreshnik really had failed, as he says, one would expect the media in the West to be all over that like a cheap suit. As it is they are basically telling us nothing, which has been true after every Oreshnik strike.
More broadly, a faction within the Russian military has been increasingly hostile to Putin and the General Staff, especially since the Prigozhin affair. Many of these people either sympathized with Prigozhin or during the 2023 mutiny straightforwardly supported him. Unsurprisingly they have been out of favor ever since, and their resentment recently has been boiling over. Some of them have allies in the various Telegram channels (Rybar etc) who were also supportive of Prigozhin.
These people may be important sources to Helmer. If so, then since they have a political axe to grind, they would not seem to be fully reliable.
Haven´t watched it yet.
Russians are of course trying to stick to international law as far as possible.
Killing the leadership contradicts international law.
But Putin on the other hand has been saying for a long time now that RU is fine with how things go.
For them it´s the safest bet.
So far Russia apart from a few mistakes has done everything right.
And the leadership is aware of this.
So, frankly it matters very little if some people genuinely tell Helmer that not everyone agrees.
Dissent is normal in and part of any serious organisation.
What I found more interesting were Helmers findings last year how the RU government was bribing Trump Clan via Dmitriev. I don´t know who else was reporting that as original Western source.
“Local Brand Realizes Customers Hate Its AI Ads, Switches to Charming Homemade Ones Instead”
People are getting really turned off by AI slop and the fact that you have students booing AI spruikers at commencement speeches is a sign of this. There is potential for AI in some videos but certainly people do not want AI generated ads so I salute this company for original thinking and a huge dose of novelty. Here is that ad and I see that they even had a South Park reference in it-
https://www.adsoftheworld.com/campaigns/chookie-air (36 secs)
I had an interesting anecdote yesterday. Some customer support AI bot had given me the wrong advice about the cost of a service. Then a month later (yesterday) a human walked back on that and charged me full price. “The AI bot sometimes makes mistakes”.
I pointed out to them that if the company makes a deliberate choice to employ an AI bot instead of a human being, then the company should honour any promise that the AI bot makes, just as a promise by a human being should be honoured. They cannot hide behind AI.
After some discussion, they finally acknowledged that I had a point and they offered me 50% discount.
AI:
I use ChatGPT, Grok, Claude and Google AI (in browser) all on a daily basis. All for free. I use it for a broad range of subjects, but mostly computer/ coding related. I’m not an experienced programmer so the stuff I’m asking is usually not that complicated, but AI has helped me a lot.
Yesterday I started working together with Claude to modify a certain open source project, make some changes to make it work for my purpose. We discussed the options how we could achieve what I want with the least changes and risk. Claude analysed the code and rewrote the parts that needed to change. I test it and report back. Still working on it, but it is going well and I’m really quite impressed. This is going to be a threat to many expensive subscription based sofware, because who doesn’t want a locally running, open source, privacy protecting (no cloud), FREE software that does the exact same thing as the expensive subscription software?
However, I totally expect the AI bubble to collapse pretty soon. It is ridiculous that I get this all for free! I have never paid a penny for all this. So I’m a bit in a rush to finish a bunch of projects NOW, before the party ends!
You mean like this?
https://x.com/cgtwts/status/2063707051642200570#m
But yeah, the party is coming to an end so we will see who gets stuck with the bill.
The Too Big To Fail backstop ‘collective wee’ ?
‘What you mean we, White Man.’
It would be better for you and for the planet to learn how to do the coding yourself. Learning something new is really good for your brain and the data centres required to power AI eat up water and energy
Agreed, particularly since, if you don’t know anything about coding, your primary option is to trust that the AI’s code is not only effecient, but safe (hardly knowledgable wrt programming myself, but what’s to stop LLM generated code from setting up some kind of malware buried in the code they generate).
Perhaps, as a middle ground, persons could still ask for the code, then reading up on what each command does themself, before revisiting the output. You may even be able to catch bugs yourself, before testing, and of course, you’ll be more likely to be self-sufficient (at least moreso than before) in a future project.
May be tedious, but also should be less abstract/generally tedious to work on than fully learning a programming language just to make one or two, personal apps.
I can code, but I’m only a casual hobby programmer, so I’m not very good at it and I have to look everything up (=slow). I think the intelligent work is in the system design, not the translation to actual code. You basically design it how it should work, then offload the tedious tasks to the AI. “I want a function with these inputs and these outputs. Recovery should work like this… ” etc. Most of that stuff I could code myself, but why? I would rather spend that time on a smart system design.
You can actually learn quite a lot from the AI, if you use it interactively. Ask it to explain stuff. “Why you do it like this and not like that”. “Would it not be better to do it like this?” etc etc. There is probably not much to learn from it if you are an excellent programmer, but it is quite useful for a beginner or casual programmer.
Also outside of coding, I regularly have surprisingly interesting discussions with AI bots about all kinds of subjects. I see the negative aspects of AI, but at the same time I make really good use of it in all kinds of ways.
We have expert programmers using AI, when you’re maintaining old code and have little insight into the original design AI is good at analyzing, though it will make mistakes from insufficiently deep analysis. (I think how the architecture partitions tasks goes a long way to make AI analysis successful or not.)
Of course for lower-level tasks (conforming to style guidance, avoiding typos) it’s a no-brainer.
This moment is a brief window to acquire functional copies of all the open-source software projects you want, disencumbered of pesky copyright restrictions. Proprietary software may take a bit longer.
Commercial vendors who incorporate this laundered code into their projects, and admit it, may find themselves in a legal quandary, once the law catches up with the tech. Litigation futures anyone?
On the other hand, if you do abscond with a claude-regurgitated code base, and start to rely on it, you will either be saddled with the huge technical debt of maintaining a codebase you haven’t worked on, or be saddled with financial debt paying claude to keep changing the code.
I’ve read many stories about people spending months using AI for a programming project only to scrap it in the end because it just gets to the point where things start breaking when trying to add something new. One guy was not a programmer at all and wanted to make a game. After about a year it became impossible to do anything because every new change broke 10 other things.
Like others said, you’re better off learning to program than learning a tool that is only increasingly becoming more expensive and unreliable.
Anthropic TOS assigns all rights in outputs to the user. Thus open source projects using a “copyleft” license (we use GPLv2) can incorporate source code generated via Claude and that code is subject to our license terms.
So if Claude ingests a GPL repo, and returns a functional equivalent to me, I own it! If the license holders want to sue, they have to come through me to get to Anthropic?
I watched today for the first time a podcast by The Econoclasts (Y. Varoufakis & W. Munchau) hosted by Unherd. Quite interesting.
Germany just got a brutal reality check + other episodes.
thanks
With dubs available nowadays this is even something for my parents.
re: Ukraine PR
This is the argumentative bedrock of European policy towards the war – a “response” to Jeffrey Sachs´s open letter to Merz.
A dishonest spinning of the events as presented in German BERLINER ZEITUNG yesterday:
Rebuttal to Jeffrey Sachs: One-sided indictment against Germany
Our author disagrees with Jeffrey Sachs: Diplomacy with Russia is necessary – but giving in to the aggressor would be a grave mistake.
by Tonio Nielsen (pseudonym)
Jun 9
https://archive.is/uocrL
The “facts” as presented are known. And what is being omitted.
What makes this entry so especially embarrassing is the disclaimer in the end, turning reality of freedom of speech onto its head:
“Tonio Nilsen is a pseudonym. The author works for the government of a European country and on projects with Ukrainian refugees. For reasons of personal safety, he prefers not to appear publicly under his real name. The author is known to our editorial team.”
From this Tonio Nilsen’s article. (The truths hidden by Sachs)
It starts with something that can be checked and is correct about Putin (example here) and one cannot contend that Ukrainians are Slavic like Russians, their languages very similar and traditionally orthodox. Which is not the same as writing that Putin has ever said or suggested in the slightest way that Ukraine has not the right to exist as the author claims. Is this true? Please, show proof of it. What Putin has stated is that current (by 2022) Ukraine’s territory was a product of the Soviet Union when regions were joined that were diverse and some of them not very much Ukrainian (for instance Crimea and the Donetsk basin but not only). This was a social reality in 2022 with, among other things, confrontations of Ukraine with the separatists in DPR and LPR. But it is not in Nielsen’s article the intention to do fine analysis but to go here and there distributing blames at his will.
There’s no such thing as a legal “right to exist as a sovereign nation”. Tonio Nilsen starts with a straw man.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_exist
Russia controlled Crimea from the 1700’s until 1954 when Khrushchev gifted it to Ukraine. There were various political reasons for that, one being the military commander in charge of Ukraine being helpful to Khrushchev ascending to power after Stalin’s death. It’s hard to argue that Crimea is or was Ukrainian territory as Russia Black Sea fleet never left after the Soviet Union collapsed.
I’m also sure Poland, Romania, Hungary and the Czechs would like their territories back that were annexed for Ukraine
See the “Medvedev Map” for specifics.
https://uimg.pravda.com.ua/images/doc/8/d/8d3e9e1——-2-original.jpg
I suspect that the abused Hungarian minority in Western Ukraine would be happy to reunite with the Motherland…
related (I don´t know what to expect):
The Real Origins of the War, and Why It Matters Today: with Prof. Ivan Katchanovski
Tue June 23 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm EDT
https://masspeaceaction.org/event/the-real-origins-of-the-war-and-why-it-matters-today-with-prof-ivan-katchanovski/
Online registration necessary it seems.
“Prof. Ivan Katchanovski, a historian at the University of Ottawa, has taught in the U.S. and Canada for many years.
He will discuss his most recent book, The Ukraine-Russia War and Its Origins: From the Maidan Massacre to the Ukraine War. His research into the Feb. 2014 Maidan protests, massacre in Kiev, and its aftermath refute much of the dominant narrative of the Ukrainian and U.S. governments about the causes of the war. He’ll also discuss his research into the military realities of the past four years of war, and the prospects for a negotiated peace settlement to prevent Ukraine from suffering even greater losses of soldiers, territory, and economic infrastructure.”
re: Israel
The Mizrahi Perspective
Normalize (Voicing) the Demand to End Israel
The time for mincing words, selling fantasies and allowing for duality is so fucking long over. We need to unapologetically, unequivocally demand this horrific anti-human endeavor be terminated.
by Alon Mizrahi
Jun 08, 2026
https://alonmizrahi.substack.com/p/normalize-voicing-the-demand-to-end
We featured that prominently in our Iran war post yesterday and even put it in the headline.
Sorry. Usually I am trying to avoid posting duplicates.
“Russian Battle Tank Attrition Completely Reversed – Top Western Analysts”
After reading this article, I reflected how the Europeans are gearing themselves up for a war against Russia but that they would not stand a chance going by this post. They are years behind what the Russians and the Ukrainians are doing and truth be told, I don’t think that they would stand up well to the Ukrainian army. Not in equipment, not in logistics, not in tactics, not in doctrine and not in strategy. But at least a lot of western military industrial corporations are making a lot of money.
I am trying to look into Russian military publications like MILITARY THOUGHT.
It´s a difficutl research as I need to translate of course and internet blocks some sources.
Anyhow.
Last night it went through one expert text also published by TASS, from 2024 about the Kursk disaster.
The Collapse of Citadel 2.0: Why Kyiv’s Counteroffensive Failed
An article by Konstantin Sivkov, Deputy President of the Russian Academy of Sciences for Information Policy and Doctor of Military Sciences, for TASS.
Febr. 2024
https://archive.is/zG2u5
“(…)
To conduct this operation, the enemy created an impressive strike force, comprising 160,000 personnel (110 battalions), 2,100 tanks and other armored vehicles, 960 field artillery pieces,and 114 aircraft. This amount of artillery allowed for a density of up to 10 guns per kilometer of frontline along the main attack axis. Significant ammunition reserves were created: over 500,000 155-mm shells, over 150,000 shells of other calibers, 560,000 mortar rounds, and 50 Storm Shadow long-range precision-guided cruise missiles. This artillery density and ammunition reserves allowed the Ukrainian Armed Forces to carry out up to 190 fire missions daily.
(…)
Western countries had donated approximately 600 tanks, over 2,000 armored combat vehicles, and over 1,000 artillery systems of various types. Of course, as the composition of the strike force suggests, not all of these were deployed. However, it is reasonable to assume that almost all of the Western-made combat equipment was included in the force. This included 60 German Leopard 2 tanks, 14 British Challenger 2 tanks, 109 American Bradley infantry fighting vehicles, 50 Swedish CV-90 infantry fighting vehicles, 40 German Marder infantry fighting vehicles, and 90 American Stryker armored personnel carriers. A total of 363 tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, and armored personnel carriers.(…)”
RU preparation and forces:
“(…)Over 3,000 platoon strongpoints, 45,000 dugouts, and over 150,000 vehicle shelters were constructed along the entire front line. Approximately 2,000 kilometers of anti-tank ditches were created, and over 7,000 kilometers of minefields were laid, containing approximately 5 million mines. The depth of the minefields was twice the accepted norm, reaching 600 meters.
(…)
Such a powerful system of engineering and fortification structures made it possible to create a stable defense, despite the enemy’s superiority over the defending troops in the directions of the main attack in personnel by 1.5 times, in armored vehicles by 1.2 times, and in artillery by 1.3 times.
(…)”
Eventually what happened as we know today – NATO used their airforce superiority doctrine which was the core condition to achieve anything. From day#1 however this was complete delusion. AFU was seriously trying to achieve this with drones.
So as Martyanov said recently again, after losing tens ouf thousands of soldiers and hundreds of tanks they breached 15km.
After the initial attack:
“(…)However, it failed to even reach the forward edge of our forces’ main tactical defense zone. During this time, the enemy lost 12,575 personnel, 12 aircraft, 4 helicopters, 810 tanks and other armored vehicles, 167 field artillery pieces, 13 MLRS, and 227 UAVs. Among the armored vehicles destroyed were 15 German Leopard 2A6s, 5 French AMX wheeled tanks, and 7 Bradley IFVs. Compared to the initial force composition, personnel losses were not particularly high—less than 10%—while armored vehicle and artillery losses were quite significant—approximately 40% and 20%, respectively.
(…)”
The Russians therefore tried to understand how this botched operation could be justified in NATO and in time understood that all these men, all this equipment would be explained away as a diversion to Prigozhin´s drive onto Moscow. Of course the operation itself was designed by complete idiots regardless of the other idiot, Prigozhin.
The text is very factual but considering that here a Russian officer is soberly comparing the operation with Kursk 1943 is frankly shocking. Even more the fact that both, the sacrificed lives now and the repetition of Nazi history went down the memory hole in the West.
People Are Now Getting Plastic Surgery to Look More AI-Generated – ZME Science (Dr. Kevin)
Michael Jackson was a trailblazer. He was the first that I remember going for that “anime” look.
That was an anime look? My first impression was just that he looked strange.
I thought it was the Janet Jackson look, and he nailed it.
Nah. He wanted to look like Diana Ross.
Nope…it was anime. Because kids liked the look and he was an early fan of it.
Also, once the nose was gone…it was an open canvas.
Re; bonus antidote, dog/carwash
At :40 in video, who else noticed the motorcycle as it passed in the background? And with the volume up, what’d you hear?
Yeah, not normal but could have been worse…
Would that fit the term, “Easter Egg”?
Alzheimer’s is a metabolic brain disease, and the fact that glucosamine increases glycosylation and increases Alzheimer’s risk proves it again. Alzheimer’s is diabetes of the brain and it is a metabolic disease, not neurologic.
Just watch how much sugar Dementia patients crave. Two people I know who died of dementia, huge sugar cravings. And just look up photos of Joe Biden eating ice cream!
Could you provide your sources for this Christian? I’m genuinely interested, but my understanding until recently was that the jury is still out on the actual pathophysiology. I briefly scanned through some articles put out over the last year that I just found, and have not seen an academic consensus.
There certainly has been an association noted between having cardiometabolic diseases and developing Alzheimers, but I would hesitate to declare that the question is settled. The articles I have found so far are also only narrative reviews, untested theories, though they do provide very interesting information to consider. Additonally, I can’t say that, as a practicing Psychiatrist, I’ve seen sugar cravings in patients with Alzheimers.
I do believe that there is quite likely a metabolic component to the disease, but I personally still think of inflammation as the common pathophysiology, whatever the underlying cause is for it.
You’re right there’s no academic consensus, yet. But in my opinion, this is where it will undoubtedly lead.
I’m surprised you don’t find any sugar cravings in your patience because it’s an old well-known part of the symptomology. This is from 1992, for example.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1504133/
This is from 1990
https://agsjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1532-5415.1990.tb04423.x
The fact that they’ve been overlooking this for 20+ years is the reason there’s been no progress in slowing the disorder.
Inflammation is there, of course, but it’s secondary to the metabolic disorder.
And it’s a mistake to compare a metabolic disorder in the brain to a metabolic disorder in the body. There will be no link to cardiovascular disease because the reduced sugar transport occurs only in the brain. They’ve nicknamed it type three diabetes.
They’ve been finding a lot of evidence for glucose transporters as being a part of the metabolic risk
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8173065/
“The fact that they’ve been overlooking this for 20+ years is the reason there’s been no progress in slowing the disorder.”
What if any treatments or regimens such as diet and exercise might this understanding of the disease suggest?
It could end up being that you’re absolutely correct, but it could also turn out that glucose metabolism is not the primary cause of Alzheimer’s, after another 20 years of dismissing other theories.
I think it’s important in cases like these, where there’s so much we still don’t know, to be open to all avenues of inquiry while we steadily eliminate those that are proven wrong overtime. I certainly can’t say with any confidence that, had this been focused on, outcomes today would be much different than they are, or by extension, that glucose metabolism is the definitive cause for any downstream inflammation implicated in the development of Alzheimer’s.
I’m also not sure what you’re trying to say regarding metabolic disorders of the brain specifically, vs. any other organ, could you please explain? As I said, there is a known association between cardiometabolic diseases and Alzheimer’s disease, but that doesn’t mean that only people with those diseases will develop Alzheimers, so I am also not sure what you mean by saying ‘there will be no link’, even if Alzheimer’s is solely due to impaired glucose transport through the blood brain barrier.
As I said, I found the articles on glucose transport and its relation to Alzheimer’s pathophysiology interesting, but this theory isn’t confirmed. There is evidence that amyloid overexpression occurs in Alzheimer’s disease, but, similarly, that did not mean that amyloid buildup was causing Alzheimer’s.
To take a stab at Lee’s question below – diet and exercising is already recommended due to significant physical and mental health benefits in general, but also to persons with Alzheimer’s (if possible) and those at risk for it. That doesn’t mean that it will eliminate the possibility of Alzheimer’s developing, and exploring the possible reasons for that (which could still lead back to glucose transport as the primary problem) is important.
Regarding the sugar cravings mentioned, I appreciate the information you (and lcm below) provided. I certainly haven’t noticed that trend, but it sounds like a a good question to investigate. I wasn’t finding recent scientific articles about it on a brief search, but I did find articles describing persons with Alzheimer’s disease being prone to overeating on a whole, so they may be related. At least for now, though, I’m not seeing evidence for this as a classic feature increasingly being recognized as such, versus a symptom appearing in a subset of patients.
Another thing to consider, if you want, is whether what we are calling Alzheimer’s is really a collection of distinct disorders, one expression of a ‘larger’, unifying disorder, or a syndrome with multiple aetiologies (ie, one outcome that several different aetiological factors independently put you at risk for). The multiple, different, genetic mutations associated with the disease for starters, in my opinion, lends some amount of credence to the latter.
Dr. Robert Lustig has written extensively on the problems associated with sugar.
Here’s one essay.
Is sugar killing your brain?
https://foodforthebrain.org/is-sugar-killing-your-brain/
He looks at mitochondrial health.
One para:
But what is it about a ketogenic diet that is good for your brain? Is it the ketones, the lowering of insulin, the type of fat, the elimination of carbohydrate, or specifically the elimination of sugar? We don’t yet know – I ask this question of every Alzheimer’s and metabolic researcher I know, and no one can tell me – just that it works.
I am a scientist, so I am never right, never settled, always unsure, unknowing.
Let me be more clear, while glucose transport is the issue it may be another dietary/environmental factor that causes the faulty transport. Low or high omega 3 let’s say.
APOE, the clearest genetic risk for Alz APOE is a core component of plasma lipoproteins and is involved in their production, conversion and clearance.
https://www.nia.nih.gov/news/study-reveals-how-apoe4-gene-may-increase-risk-dementia
One of APOE highest expression is in the brain:
https://www.proteinatlas.org/ENSG00000130203-APOE/tissue
IMHO, APOE dysfunction is linked to excess neuronal cholesterol, so what I meant by reduced cholesterol transport is much more complicated and individualist. As all these late stage diseases are, it is a polygenic risk.
One recent study put all of this together for me:
https://scitechdaily.com/omega-3-supplements-linked-to-cognitive-decline-in-surprising-new-study/
To finish, and go even deeper, to me Alz is really about low intracellular ATP. Which is why I call it a metabolic, and very individual, issue.
https://helpdementia.com/atp-synthesis-impairment-in-alzheimers-neurons/
Anecdotal for sure, but the three people in my family with Alzheimer’s type dementia all began eating more sugary foods. It was especially obvious with my mother when Little Debbie’s boxes started turning up, never having been bought before.
We threw parties in my dad’s retirement home with many end-of-the-roaders, and marveled at their appetite for sweets. We thought they just didn’t care anymore.
File under: ‘To no one’s surprise….’
From Jimmy Dore:
Isr CAUGHT Spying On Trump & HERE’S WHY! w/ Max Blumenthal
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1T9IYAJFDj8
SoftBank sinks 10% as Asia tech stocks tumble, tracking Wall Street losses
So, if I’m reading this correctly, based upon its OpenAI investment Softbank initially tried to borrow $10B from some unnamed deep pocket creditors. The money-men balked at this, and don’t appear enthused about lending Masayoshi Son even a token $6B. Why would one of the supposed richest men in the world need this sort of chump-change? And if he is such a genius investor, why won’t the money men front him the cash? Or is OpenAI about to become a cautionary tale in hubris? Is global liquidity undergoing a slow transformation from a liquid to a solid? Inquiring minds want to know?
Masa lost his shirt with WeWork. Will OpenAI take his pants, socks, and underwear, leaving him with a barrel strapped around his torso like those cartoons?
Arm would be the barrel. Arm China is an unreliable shoulder strap that does as it pleases. RISC-V is a beetle leisurely gnawing through the other strap. [slide whistle of sudden embarrassment]
WeWork was one of the most transparent scams I have ever seen, anyone with a background in commercial office space knew that after a brief look.
They did, IIRC, put each location into a separate LLC.
Neumann (?) made out like a bandit, which he was.
Turning a commercial short term leasing business into a “Tech” stock took brass balls and I nearly gave myself a hernia laughing when I talked about it with a Broker friend.
0931 PDT
Postal Service won’t deliver mail ballots for states that don’t hand over voter lists, under plan for Trump directive | CNN Politics
https://www.cnn.com/2026/06/10/politics/postal-service-deliver-mail-in-ballots
0936 PDT
‘We call it the P-word’: Chicago professor suspended after assignment mentions Palestinians
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jun/05/professor-suspended-assignment-mentions-palestinians
0940 PDT
Fully autonomous, AI-controlled drones have killed human soldiers for the first time, according to a senior figure in the Ukrainian defence industry
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2529849-fully-autonomous-drones-have-killed-human-soldiers-for-the-first-time/
Swiss media report Jean Ziegler died.
“Trump says Bill Pulte will ‘execute the immediate downsizing’ of intelligence community in temporary role – live”
Oh no!
That would be terrible…
In 1995, a now-infamous study claimed that young children in higher socioeconomic status (SES) homes hear up to 30 million more words over the course of 4 years than those in lower SES households (Hart & Risley 1995).
Does this mean that the more you speak to your child, the better they eventually become at language? Should you be speaking to your child as much as humanly possible?
In 1995, a study claimed that young children in higher socioeconomic status homes are wealthier than kids from poor homes.
Does this mean that the wealthier children will grow up with more money?
This no longer tracks in the US. Middle class are barely literate, their kids are illiterate.
Say what ?
Let me tell you about how a lot of these uni studies on children are conducted. First, the researchers canvas for child subjects from their fellow academics. (Households with several uni credentials where reading and words are ‘tools of their trades’, etc.) That is often set as the standard average of childhood development. Set as the control group. Then children from a wider cohort are measured against this “standard”.
You see the problem.
The middle class are not illiterate.
(Would you be surprised to learn academia has a great deal of snobbery?)
As a former long-time K-12 academician (less snobbery; not none), I can say that K-12 “achievement” (however defined) has forever been more strongly correlated with SES (socio-economic status — we love 3 letter acronyms) than any other variable, regardless of country or locale.
Which to me just about says it all.
I say this as an unrepentant class-traitor.
I love your thoughts and contributions.
https://youtu.be/svQ8SH-BpOc?si=RcpoLMc37hbLifp3
Maybe my recollection is not great but always wanted to see the two giants Richard Wolff and Bill Black together and this interview is great and terrible, since it pulls back the curtain on the many deceptions of crypto and implosion of global economy.
At least as of yesterday, stock market was crashing pretty good. Is the bubble already bursting?
Early signs of stress in credit markets:
https://archive.ph/dMARV
(Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-06-10/global-junk-debt-flashes-warning-on-growing-risk-of-stagflation?srnd=homepage-americas
If credit starts to crack, look out below.
Poor CALPERS. They bet the farm on PE.
Now I see why the Narcissist-In-Chief ventured to NYC earlier this week (with wars waging). He just had to get in on this feeling:
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/10/nyregion/new-york-city-knicks-watch-parties.html/
(not paywalled)
I think “Biofuels, not diet cuts” misses the point.
Responsibly managed rotational grazing on less prime ag land does provide good food and climate/Carbon benefits. Also a fair number pigs, chickens, goats etc, can subsist on the waste stream from farms and preparing/wasted human food. I fear there is a disconnect, however, in the logic behind solving climate issues with more biofuels instead of looking at meat centered diets. More biofuels means more acres of crops for the tank. An animal centered diet is also wasteful of farm land since Cows etc eat far more calories and protein from the crops they eat to make the meat and milk we eat than we get from eating them. Almost all of that animal feed (in our modern economy) is provided from crops grown for them, not by them eating waste products. If we want farming to be a Carbon solution we need to reduce fuel consumption first and foremost. Then some Biofuels may make sense in moderation but the only land for that use to be found would be by growing less soy and corn for Cows etc.
We could grow hemp and use the seed protein for human consumption and the seed oil for biofuels and the woody central parts (the Hurds) for biochar to improve the soil and sequester Carbon (and provide a bit of a lower energy natural gas replacement). Cows can eat what is left over like the leaves and seed hulls and the soil building crops that are grown in rotation for fertilizer but that is not too much compared to the standard American diet.
Our over harvested forests can certainly also play a constructive role since they desperately need thinning for fire hazard reduction and those thinnings can also be used for biochar/energy (though that is not what the timber industry does when they are in charge of fuel reduction projects). It would be a good activity for a Jobs Guarantee to tackle.
You do get more agricultural productivity by including animals in a well managed farm but they are a byproduct and require experienced farmers managing reasonably sized acreages.
I totally agree with them that solar panels are a horrible use of farm land. Solar on every sunny structure, yes! Solar stopping sun from feeding plants, some of which could end up becoming sequestered Carbon, Hell no!
A lot of people will be watching Musk’s IPO, my WAG is that there will be a little pop up due the “Must buy” and the Musk as Messiah groups.
I don’t see the credulous optimism lasting very long.
Elon might be a Trillionaire for a few Months, but not much longer than that in my estimation.
It might be a question of days or weeks rather than Months because people are beginning to ask “Where’s the Money”.
Mostly about AI, but Grok is part of the deal.
And Anthropic is next in line for an IPO
Where’s the Money going to come from?
There is not enough $ in the Market for both of these, and when one goes down (Probably Anthropic) it is likely to take a few others with it.
Interesting times!
I am trying to track down a new study Martyanov is quoting by Russian MILITARY THOUGHT MAGAZINE about the performance of the Ukrainian forces but I can´t get my browser to show the homepage.
MILITARY THOUGHT according to RU Wiki at:
https://vm.ric.mil.ru
The Russian article in question is shown in Martyanov´s video at TC 30:45:
https://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/2026/06/paper-tigers.html
Using the only English text, the abstract, didn´t get me further on any search engine.