People have an inherent preference for counterclockwise motion, study reveals Phys.org
X-ray scans reveal hidden Nazi symbols beneath postwar painting by Erich Mercker Archeology News
“The Odyssey” as Period Piece Hogeland’s Bad History
Climate/Environment
Record winter temperatures in Antarctic raise fears over speed of climate breakdown The Guardian
As El Niño develops, this city is seeing beach weather — during winter WaPo
U.S. Heat-Related Illnesses and Hospitalizations Expected to Double by 2040, Study Finds Meteored
Solar beats coal in the US electricity mix for the first month ever Electrek
Will Earth truly cool down after net-zero, or are we locked into millennia of Anthropocene heat? ScienceX
Super-rich’s assets cause outsized amount of climate harm, study says The Guardian
The Koreas
South Korea approves decree for $350 billion investment in US YeniSafak
China?
Taiwan test-fires US-supplied missiles towards mainland China RT
Taiwanese lawmakers spar over 12-fold budget rise for US joint defence programme South China Morning Post
Pentagon says BYD, Alibaba, Baidu and other tech firms aiding China’s military AFP. How dare they.
Was Xi’s stance on China-North Korea military ties also a message for US, Russia? South China Morning Post
India
India’s quasi-alliance with Israel and the UAE won’t have a happy ending Countercurrents
India summons US envoy over attack on ship carrying Indian sailors off Oman Al Jazeera
Syraqistan
Iran closes Strait of Hormuz, strikes US Fifth Fleet in Bahrain Al Mayadeen
HOW FAR WILL TRUMP ESCALATE THE WAR IN IRAN? Seymour Hersh. Paywalled, but scoop is in the lede: “I have been told that in a recent secret meeting in the White House, he began speculating, albeit vaguely, about a nuclear option that could perhaps bring a quicker end to the war.”
Nuking Iran: Why Israel and the US gain nothing from crossing the ultimate red line The Cradle
IAEA passes anti-Iran resolution, demands Tehran reveal location of enriched uranium The Cradle
***
Israel Prepares for Renewed Large-scale Gaza Offensive, Citing Hamas Resurgence Haaretz
Sanctions on settlers not enough: Target Israeli gov’t, say campaigners Al Jazeera
***
Old Blighty
Police clash with crowds in Belfast for second night as vehicle set alight Irish Times
Legal profession revolt against the UK judge whose job is to protect Israel’s genocide Christopher Cook
European Disunion
China cancels high-level meetings with EU FT
How the US embassy’s mega bash became the hottest ticket in Brussels Politico
EU countries weigh ‘tearing apart’ bloc’s diplomatic service, FT reports Economic Times
EU warns Albania’s accession process at risk over controversial Kushner-linked resort Intellinews
Why Europe’s labour needs clash with its migration policy Euronews
EU unemployment rate in 2025: 6.0% Eurostat
New Not-So-Cold War
Zelensky & Putin Both Mention How a U.S.-Backed Drone Swarm Targeted Putin’s Home and Family Matt Bivens
Ukraine says missiles hit military plant deep inside Russia BBC
Russia to release addresses of drone production sites in Canada, diplomat warns TASS
Russia says ‘possible restructuring’ of military facilities in Syria under discussion Anadolu Agency
The Caucasus
The Illusion of a Western Rescue Laura Ruggeri
The Great Game
U.S. Convenes Critical Minerals Dialogue with Central Asian Officials in Kazakhstan Times of Central Asia
South of the Border
TOP PENTAGON OFFICIAL ADMITS BOAT STRIKE MAY HAVE KILLED VICTIMS OF HUMAN TRAFFICKING The Intercept
Narcotics arm of U.S. State Department is in process of buying Clearview AI licenses for Colombian National Police All-Source Intelligence
Cuba Poised for Biggest U.S. Fuel Shipment Since Cold War Embargo Bloomberg
Imperial Collapse Watch
People Are Strange. Aurelien
L’affaire Epstein
Bill Gates tells Epstein panel he ‘never victimized anyone’ DW
Kathy Ruemmler helps search for her own replacement as Goldman’s top lawyer FT
Trump 2.0
Inside the White House Freakout Over the Epstein File New York Times. Positioning JD?
Senate wants to force US to share sensitive intel with Israel Responsible Statecraft
Judge warns DOJ not to ‘play possum’ with ‘anti-weaponization’ fund it says is dead NBC News
New OMB rule could break science in the United States Your Local Epidemiologist
Spook Country
David Rush Didn’t Breach the CIA’s Secrecy. He Exploited It. The After-Action Report
Democrats Suck
Why VA Labor Movement Missed the Warning Signs on Governor Spanberger Payday Report. We didn’t.
Big Brother Is Watching You Watch
Cops Keep Getting Arrested for Using Flock to Stalk People 404 Media
NEW: DoorDash has patented a system that lets companies offer promotional deals based on how stressed you are.
States are passing bans against surveillance pricing, and Big Tech is spending big to crush them.
We uncovered the $13K wine-and-dine that defanged Maryland’s ban. pic.twitter.com/ahpykN7YiM
— More Perfect Union (@MorePerfectUS) June 10, 2026
Healthcare?
Hospital closure slowdown masks a bigger threat ahead Becker’s Hospital Review
Sports Desk
The World Cup For Nobody Is Almost Here Defector
What if I told you the NBA Finals are about communism? Who Broke It
AI
Wyoming’s Data-Center Boom Meets the ‘Man Camp’ Backlash WSJ. Apparently affordable housing can get built quickly.
Breaking: Google liable for hallucinations Gary Marcus
Visa plugs its payment network into ChatGPT, letting AI agents shop and pay for users AP
Knowledge Collapse Boston Review
Beyond Literacy Countercurrents
Economy
Annual CPI inflation surges to 4.2% in May, the highest level since 2023, as energy prices rise Yahoo! Finance
Guillotine Watch
Hundreds of Billions in Loans Didn’t Make a Dent in Global Poverty WSJ. Brings to mind Thomas Frank’s “Nor a Lender Be” from 2016.
A $395 pineapple? How innovation is upending the popular tropical fruit Food Dive
Class Warfare
Brutal Oppression and Beautiful Humanity Exist In Every Grocery Store Hamilton Nolan. An interview with Ann Larson about “Cleanup on Aisle Five”.
Politeness is destroying us Kaimataara
Antidote du jour (via):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
“People have an inherent preference for counterclockwise motion, study reveals”
I wonder if there is an inherent preference for clockwise motion in the southern hemisphere then. Don’t know if it is true or not but I heard that as most people are right-handed that when they walk out of a door or entrance, they will instinctively turn to the right.
Good question. Or how about:
• Japanese cars use right-hand drive
• Counter clockwise is a positive angle in right-handed coordinate systems
• Right hemisphere dominance in the brain
• People are compensating for the long reign of clocks moving the other way
• They just feel like getting unscrewed when walking
• Because the Earth moves counter-clockwise around the sun
Only when viewing down from above the North Pole. [Same with the Earth’s rotation]
It is relative.
I suspect that predominant right-handedness is associated with this observation — throwing anything as a righty involves partial counterclockwise turn. Likewise golf swings.
I suspect also that ocular dominance is somehow involved.
The first thing I thought of when I saw the title was my early childhood experience in indoor skating rinks. Everyone would travel counterclockwise until the rink manager forced brief reversals (via a whistle) — offhand I would guess that the best part of 3/4 of skating sessions were counterclockwise. “Open” outdoor rinks are generally unmanaged in this way and the vast majority of skaters travel counterclockwise all of the time.
My two sons are both ambidextrous and have been so since they were toddlers. Write with their left hand. Play sports like baseball and basketball and stringed musical instruments right-handed. No one else in my family and my wife’s family are ambidextrous.
“one … are marked”, every one of it.
Most people are right-legged. When you turn left, you push off with the right leg. The simple test of leg dominance being the reason is to see if left-legged people prefer to turn counter-clockwise. Hand and leg dominance do not correlate perfectly. I am left-handed but right-legged. My father was right-handed but left-legged.
Horses and dogs are the similarly dominant on one side or the other.
Some say most horses have a sex-based pattern, with mares being right and geldings being left. Some say you can tell by the way the mane falls or whorls (like cowlicks) but I don’t know that any of that’s definitive.
I do always, since forever, make a point to train more on counter clockwise circles and turns and pivots with dogs and horses for them and me.
Similar to the change direction at the skate rink, this has been drilled into me as a kid.
There’s a Stephen King book about an abused wife who, on the run from the husband, remembered that he learned in cop training people are most like to always turn one way, and she makes a point to alternate and vary to avoid a pattern.
So this seems to be more proof of something that people have generally held to be true, like so many breaking science headlines.
Anyone know if this is taught in architecture school?
re: “most horses have a sex-based pattern, with mares being right and geldings being left”
OK. Never knew geldings were a unique sex category, but live and learn. Now, what about those darn stallions? :)
I think that is incorrect. Right hand people are always left legged. This is commonly understood in the marshal arts. When the strong leg is in front the strong arm is back and vice versa. They are always on opposite sides of the body.
I am left-legged and right-handed
I am wrong-footed.
Left/right is a spurious reduction.
Us humans are propelled by a nervous system, throughout the body.
When you are violently rejected, you feel kicked in the gut, not in the head.
My partner was condemned as ‘corrit fisted’ at an early age.
No sinister writing by the hand of the devil.
Didn’t enjoy it, but flourished in that adversity, unlike many.
The old brain in a tank fantasy seems to live on with the singularity folks.
If they want to see consciousness without corporeality, their space exploration dreams are their best bet.
A life without a body is no life at all.
The american health system understands that all too well.
the lancet article here
Perhaps people prefer counterclockwise motion BECAUSE of clocks, always driving time forward, here is a favorite fourteenth century poem, by a Welschman, cited from the work of the economic historian Carlo Cippola (Clocks and Culture, 1977):
Woe to the black-faced clock on the ditch-side which awoke me!
A curse on its head and tongue, its two ropes and its wheel,
its weights, heavy balls, its two yards and its hammer,
its ducks which think it day, and its unquiet mills.
Uncivil clock like the foolish tapping of a typsy cobbler,
a blasphemy on its face… A dark mill grinding the night.
In fact, Sufi whirling dervishes in Istanbul also spin counter clockwise as seen here:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ct29ND4lImA
When I first saw this I theorized that they were imitating the spin of the planets and natural order of the universe but then went down a whole rabbit hole after realizing that the counterclockwise rotation based on the North Pole of the Earth and Sun is subjective to the viewer, with reference to Rev point. I then looked up the old myth about toilets & sinks draining clockwise in the southern hemisphere. Maybe Rev can confirm or deny, lol.
Spiral staircases in castles are built clockwise going up, because this means an attackers sword arm is impeded and the defenders right arm is free. I wonder if defense maybe the reason for their observations.
Iain McGilchrist writes than humans and animals treat their left and right eyes differently due to differences between the left and right hemispheres of the brain. I’m not sure that covering one eye, as described in the article, would overcome the effect.
The right side of the body is connected to the left hemisphere of the brain, and vice versa. The left hemisphere sees the world in terms of objects to be grabbed and manipulated, hence the tendency for right handedness. Birds, McGilchrist says, will look at bugs and seeds with the right eye when aiming to peck and eat them. The right hemisphere, in contrast, engages in more holistic observation. Birds therefore use their left eyes when looking around to assess for danger. This seems correct: the local crows usually watch me from their left eye.
McGilchrist claims that this extends to hands. Most of us use our right hands to manipulate – but, he claims, when entering a dark space we will tend to extend our left hand to explore.
Another oddity. In cases of right brain damage individuals often refuse or are unable to acknowledge or see things in their left field of view. In some cases they have even believed that body parts on the left side are not theirs – “this is not my arm, please take it away” or “my left side is made of wooden shelves through which food falls when I eat.” Left brain damage causes no such bizarre behaviour: the right hemisphere may be less precise, but still sees the world as a coherent whole.
A wild guess: The right hemisphere sees the world in terms of relations with other living beings. The left does not. In group behaviour might this encourage counterclockwise movement?
Finally, if I recall correctly he says that the behaviour of left-handed people is not a perfect mirror of right-handed behaviour. The differentiated roles of the hemispheres are still the same, and lefties still have some right-hand preferences.
An interesting book that I read, must be at least 30 years ago, is “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain” by Betty Edwards. A quick check online shows it is still available. The book’s goal is to teach a reader how to draw better by seeing differently.
The basic premise (as I recall) is that the left brain is analytic, processing the world into symbols, concepts, that can be recognised and manipulated. The right brain is more visual, artistic. The left brain is dominant in most people so when they draw it tends to be a represenation of the symbols in their left brain.
The book gives a series of exercises to turn off the symbology and see the world as shapes and lines that are actually there and reproduce them on paper.
It really improved my ability to draw at the time. Probably some lasting effect now but I suspect the use it or lose it principle applies here.
Counter-clockwise leads with the dominant — for most — right side.
My right leg is longer than my left, with the result that, in the days when I ran, I was much more comfortable going round an athletics track counter-clockwise (i.e the normal way) than clockwise. Perhaps this is more common than the other way round?
re: Senate wants to force US to share sensitive intel with Israel
Vidkun Quislings in the US Senate? Putting a foreign country’s interests over the interests of the US?
I’ll just add this from Jame Li.
Inside America’s MOST SECRET Military Cover-Up
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIK24KkF9FE
Looks like Israel is going to be slipped through the back door to become the Sixth Eye-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes
Good thing that the Israelis will never use that shared info against us.
right….
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-pleads-guilty-to-shipping-us-made-avionics-to-russia-violating-sanctions/
and
The case against enhanced US intelligence sharing with Israel
New bill seeks to expand intel sharing while overlooking Israel’s many substantial threats to American national security
https://asiatimes.com/2026/06/the-case-against-enhanced-us-intelligence-sharing-with-israel/
“Any sensitive information, including intelligence secrets, shared with Israel entails a high risk of Israel passing it to other countries, including US adversaries. Israel has a long record of that, too, and not just because Israel probably passed some of the secrets Pollard purloined to the USSR, in exchange for Moscow allowing Soviet Jews to emigrate.
“Israel’s sharing of US-origin military technology with China has been an issue. That the partner may be a rogue state has not stopped Israel from military and technical cooperation, as demonstrated by its relationship with apartheid-era South Africa, which extended even to the development of nuclear weapons.”
I reckon that they should name this the Jonathan Pollard Act. Back in the day Pollard stole the crown jewels of American intelligence and gave it to Israel who sold that info on to America’s enemies. So this formalized intelligence sharing would be more of the same except that there would be no need of a middleman traitor.
Ya know, I’m starting to wonder if the UK, US, and France still think that somehow Isr is going to help them win back the Suez Canal from Egypt after the 1950’s Suez Crisis when Egypt’s President Nasser nationalized it.
Instead, the Strait of Hormuz is shut and the other strait, the Bab-el-Mandeb is on the verge of being shut.
The UK, US and France counting on Isr to be a reliable ally is wishful thinking, imo. It acts only in its own interest. It will sell out anyone for the right price. Obviously. It has never kept a ceasefire agreement.
/ my 2 cents.
I think they definitely do.
They have a robust, occulted bureaucracy, within which they and the jocastas and ruperts they expel can flourish.
An equilibrium of self serving bullshit and genetic landfill.
Israel Firster and fifth column traitor Chuck the Schmuck Schumer claims Pollard had suffered enough when he got that bloated piece of human waste pardoned to Israel.
I’m not sure Israel would fit in. In a previous life, as an active-duty intel analyst for the Air Force, we rather derisively referred to the Five Eyes as “The Anglo-Saxon Brotherhood.”
Sen Tom Cotton’s donations according AIPAC tracker.
https://www.trackaipac.com/states/arkansas
Selling US interests to a foreign power is treacherous, profoundly stupid and let’s not leave out self-serving on the part of all those congress critters. Are they brain dead as well as in the tank for Israel? I vote for both. Let’s not forget those who are looking forward to Armageddon etc. and will do all they can to bring it on. When Obama was president and he was tut-tutting Israel’s salami slicing of Palestinian territory on the West Bank, I made the point that Israel was not an ally but an unruly client state and were he wise, he would rein it in. He did not here we are. Where in this heinous act is the national interest? Where is the common good, the general welfare of the American people? Well, we know that the gaggle of morons, fools, and poltroons that infest the DC Bubble and Echo Chamber like Guinea worms do not, by their words and actions, give a tinker’s dam about anyone but themselves and their paymasters.
America’s Israeli Polyps Attached to Colon
I always assumed Israel had whatever sensitive US intel they wanted anyway, one way or another.
That’s good though; every senator who votes in favor is therefore guilty of treason and should be promptly executed.
That takes care of the two from New York State. I also humbly suggest the Senate traitors’ bodies be dumped in pig waste lagoons at North Carolina industrial pig farms in lieu of burial.
The Odyssey as Period Piece. By William Hogeland. Well, at least Mary Beard hasn’t shown up yet to lecture us wogs in the Mediterranean world. Hogeland, Beard, ahhhhh, Anglo-Americans with their special wisdom about race and authenticity.
Hogeland tries to deflect: “The Odyssey is categorically different, though. What period are we even talking about here? The period when gods involved themselves in the affairs of human beings and directed the day-to-day course of human events?”
Why not?
Further, Hogeland tries to pretend that there isn’t much factual basis for the Odyssey. I have a well-written travel / memoir by Luca Baldoni, entitled Itaca, in which Baldoni writes about the various sites uncovered on Ithaka (where he lives most of the year) that are contemporaneous with our ideas of when Odysseus may have lived.
Anglo-Americans enjoy making enormous assumptions about the Mediterranean world and Iran. There’s the leather-underpants film “300.” There’s the genocide in Palestine. There’s the assumption that the Iranians are a bunch of crazies who think that the gods are involved in the course of daily events — plus bejeweled surrender monkeys, per “300.”
The problem is getting people out of their prejudices and showing some respect for source material. The problem is taking other cultures seriously.
I saw Madama Butterfly a couple of years back at the Teatro Regio. The director made (was allowed to make) mistakes that detracted from the opera. First, a car drove on stage. How edgy! (Lupita Nyong’o wasn’t in the driver’s seat, though.) Then, the director set the opera in a modern-day pleasure quarter of Nagasaki (well, at least he got the city right). Cio-cio-san by implication is a prostitute.
That contradicts the libretto, which indicates that Cio-cio-san is from a samurai family and has come down in the world, making her living as a geisha — a dancer, an entertainer.
Then, somehow, a revolver got on stage, awkwardly. If you know the end of Madama Butterfly…
Directors and their compulsions. It’s one thing to be Federico Fellini. But most directors aren’t Federico Fellini.
And for those who would cry “orientalism” about Madama Butterfly, try reading the libretto in Italian, which has some tart comments about Americans and race, as well as naming the child Trouble and introducing the thoroughly weird Kate.
All of which is to say that there can be innovations. There is the source, though, which has to be reckoned with honestly. And there is slop.
And, no, Cleopatra isn’t “really” “black.”
Personally I found that post as a whole bunch of very special pleading. Perhaps directors think that race-swapping is edgy or something but it is mostly a distraction whether it is Ann Boleyn, Severus Snape, Cleopatra or Helen of Troy. If they had presented Helen of Troy as black-haired with olive skin, I would have said yep, that was probably right. But directors have their own ideas of how they want things done. A minor example – in the recent film “Napoleon” they had the British troops in trenches at Waterloo. Nope. Never happened. Hollywood could make more films about black or Chinese or Latino people and tell their stories which would give more work to those actors but looking at the films coming out this year, that would be too adventurist and not white enough. I’m not demanding that epic films be made like documentaries but it would be nice to have Hollywood giving credit to their audiences being a bit intelligent and not demanding that those audiences accept current Hollywood values.
Re Napoleon Ridley Scott has lost more than a few steps as he has gotten older (he’s now 88). But movies have always faked those musket era battle scenes by having artillery projectiles explode on hitting the ground rather than what they really did which was mow down soldiers like a bowling ball (special guns did shoot fused shells).
Re the racial casting problem–I agree that it takes the audience outside the story even as a basic principle of filmmaking–at least of the Hollywood variety–is to distract the audience from the hidden presence of the camera. This is much more true in historically set films than contemporary.
‘mow down soldiers like a bowling ball’
A story from the Napoleonic wars. A young British officer in a battle saw a cannon ball roll slowly over the ground towards them and he got ready to stop it with his foot in a show of bravado. Luckily a nearby sergeant stopped him and told the officer that if he tried that, that the momentum of the cannon ball would have taken his foot off. They had some nasty stuff back then-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleonic_weaponry_and_warfare#Artillery
The worse thing? When you were in line, you were not allowed to duck or sidestep. Even if you saw it coming towards you. You had to stand there and take it.
an aside re: “There’s the leather-underpants film “300.”
Thanks for that description. lol. / :)
The film “300” was ridiculous and frankly I found the parody film “Meet the Spartans” to be better-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5u4TpQDhSA (32 secs)
As I enjoy ancient history, unfortunately my various feeds have been crammed full of nonsense about the Odyssey for a couple of months now. Hogelands article is typical of the smug sanctimonious rubbish produced by both sides of the argument. As you say, to dismiss the Odyssey as ‘just a story’ is… well… just wrong at so many levels.
Although I consider Nolan to be a bit over rated as a director, he is better than most modern auteurs. But from the trailers it looks really bad, from its Viking ship (yes, really) to its lazy casting. Its almost as if he called up all his celebrity Hollywood friends and said they could all have a fun holiday in the Med with the studio paying for it. Its possible of course that this is all just deliberate trolling by Nolan, and the film could well end up really good and nothing like the trailers, but it doesn’t look good so far.
There are of course any number of ways an artist can approach an ancient myth. My personal favourite, John Boormans Excalibur, treated the Arthurian myth seriously, as did the more recent The Green Knight (both, interestingly, shot in almost exactly the same locations). Or you can try to go back to the historic core of the story – Robert Eggers ‘The Northman’. Or you can take myths and update them completely or put them in entirely new settings – ancient Japanese stories of wandering nameless spirts arriving in villages in human form in order to stir up trouble morphed via Kurosawa to more than one Clint Eastwood movie. Kurosawa of course made perhaps the best of all Shakespeare adaption with Throne of Blood.
The sort of attention grabbing casting or deliberate anachronisms you describe are usually just tiresome, and strike me as just laziness by directors at best, and at worse deliberate distractions to disguise the reality that the directors have nothing interesting to say.
Just to chip in that excalibur, directed by John Boorman, was tip top work.
The optimism of the shining armour fading into the tarnished metal by the biitter end,
Nicol Williamson will always be Merlin.*
*Pretty good in a columbo episode
Some of us have even seen Troy which is mostly quite silly and seems to be intended to display Brad Pitt (as Achilles) in skimpy costumes.
Diane Kruger plays Helen in that one.
As for the Nolan, one shouldn’t review a movie not yet seen but in general this skeptic sees him as a promoter of showy technique over any claim to be a director of actors. Undoubtedly he used Damon because he’s used him before and regards casting a sidebar to photo innovations.
I think mr nolan accretes big names to bolster his inflated reputation.
I might be anecdata but, from every film he has produced and I have endured out of fairness, he’s a bust.
TENET : my review is that he got it all backwards
INCEPTION : my review is that dreams are not like james bond films
DUNKIRK: my review is that is was a catastrophe not an affirmation of national pluck
If classical antiquity is one’s thing, the fact that it is now (in the broad, public consciousness) a wholly-owned subsidiary of the alt-right is unpleasant to contemplate. It also more or less necessitated that there be a black Helen of Troy, or something functionally equivalent, by making the temptation irresistible to explode their heads like in Scanners. (This is not to say that Nolan is a radical, though I have occasionally toyed with an interpretation of Memento as an allegory for American foreign policy.)
I have generally avoided this story. My instinct is that a black Helen would be fine – if everyone wasn’t doing basically the same thing in a faddish orgasm of political correctness.
So, um, do you think that helps your cause or harms it? I believe that in politics this is always the question that needs to be asked. The failure to ask it is the characteristic feature of virtue signalling, a failure that reveals that the aim is not political success but something else: namely, solidarity with the in-group and exclusion of the out-group. You’re with us or you’re against us. To which my answer will always be: I may or may not be with them, but I’m definitely not with you.
I think you have cause and effect reversed when it comes to the ownership of history by the alt right. When you leave history and culture lying on the floor you shouldn’t be surprised when someone picks them up. Because that’s what has happened. From a YouTube video, Why Gen Z is Becoming Brutally Obsessed with WW2:
I hope he speaks truly. In another of his videos a comment said roughly “Epstein proves the artist was right.” I hope he didn’t notice that comment and would have deleted it if he had. But that has no bearing on the soundness of his analysis. This is the inevitable consequence of pointing at a big chunk of the population and doing the Donald Sutherland thing from Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
Catherine Alexander argues argues in The War that Killed Achilles that the Iliad is an anti war epic. It gives me chills. The climax occurs when Priam sneaks into the Greek and meets with Achilles to beg for the return of the body of his son:
If you look for anger and hate, you will find them. Listen closely. Behind them are pain, sorrow and loss.
Some of them, but it has been produced between profit and loss, look at the professionalized architecture of slave ships
A selection
I was reading a translation of the odyssey today, so far it looks like good guys win if they have the blessings of their betters, otherwise, however noble, you are fucked.
The antics of the 108 suitors of penelope ring truer than telemachus’ melodrama
One of the thing that strikes me about the odyssey so far that it presents itself as self satisfied romantic history.
There was an arabian princess and and suadi journalist
Maybe the work of the gods, maybe not
I don’t know about Great Britain, but, in American public schools, history is not any more woke than it was 30 years ago. And the crimes of America in particular have been out there in the culture for half a century, at this point. If young men today are angrier than usual, it’s more because they have no future than because they’ve been made to feel ashamed of their heritage or who they are (though it is true that, in the context of having nothing, cultural slights tend to sting more).
Both the Hogeland piece and several commenters here mentioned the 2006 film 300. The only way that movie ever could have worked was if the audience was primed for it, as ninth grade Western Civ* had in fact primed Americans to see Ancient Greece as the repository of all future good, threatened by the other. At least with respect to classical antiquity, the alt-right did not fill a vacuum, it built on consensus.
*Pennsylvania in the 90s; mileage may vary.
And they expect chatbots, (sorry LLMs,I’d hate to miscategorise them) to learn.
Like little children, they can only do what they are told.
I don’t think there was any need for historical priming for the male power fantasy of 300. I didn’t like it (nor the comic). The depiction of the Persians was atrocious. I’m guessing it had more to do with 1979 AD than 480 BC.
My public school in the 80s/90s claimed to be one of the best in Canada. There was virtually no history outside electives – not even the World Wars. The idea that progressives are rebutting widespread beliefs about Western history seems ridiculous. How can you rebut what no-one knows?
Regardless, I don’t think it would much matter whether history was taught or not. Like the hypodermic theory of communication, the idea that schools can make children who you want them to be is a liberal delusion. Few would pay attention, fewer remember, and many of those who did would develop a positive aversion.
These days history is all Indigenous all the time. Clear wrongs were done. But I hear highly educated 50+ white women (in particular) talk passionately about Canada’s crimes against natives as though the evil was unique. One was surprised when I mentioned in passing that the natives went on slaving raids. My guess is that they react with dogmatic passion because it’s the only history they know. They are ignorant or avert their attention from the continuous tragedy that has personally impacted nearly every generation that ever lived – except perhaps theirs.
We don’t live in a culture with a rosy view of history: we live in a culture with no memory before yesterday. When Mark Carney came in the Canadian flag went from the white supremacist symbol of a genocidal regime to national pride in less than a week.
Why? The same reason as planned obsolescence. You could be right that young men are angry more because of a lack of opportunity than woke shaming – though in many cases the two are inseparable. Meaning and relationships are the true necessary conditions for a good life. Material conditions are means to those ends, not ends in themselves.
I used to dismiss nationalism. I still don’t sing the national anthem. Isn’t it silly to take pride for what one has not done? No, for the same reason that meritocracy blames the poor for their condition. Should honour be reserved for only those of accomplishment? What a neat way to keep the unwashed in their place!
Solve the economic problem and I will wager that the explosion is even bigger. The poor don’t make revolution. They are working too hard to survive. It’s not enough to integrate men economically. That’s an empty, nihilistic life. They must be integrated socially. But the establishment doesn’t want to integrate them. It needs an enemy. As they say, the demand for racism (and sexism) exceeds the supply. Darned if progressives aren’t doing everything they can to increase supply.
Alexander’s book was quite good and she makes a strong argument which is a bit difficult to do for a narrative whose first word in the original Greek is literally ‘wrath’.
As it should be. Here, I believe, is the best thing ever written on the matter. Simone Weil via the Anarchist Library:
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/simone-weil-the-iliad
I might be influenced by writings on the Odysseus and the Journey to Ithaca by people who have read and commented the Greek poet Kavafis (Cavafi in written English I believe) who wrote the poem “Ithaca” or “Journey to Ithaca” depending on who writes about it. The important thing about it being the Journey itself and not Ithaca which plays only the role of desired journey destiny. Many like to find parallels between the Journey to Ithaca to their own lives as a constant Journey to Ithaca, a never ending Odysseus to ever reach our dreamed Ithaca with its experiences and the lessons we learn being the main motif of the story.
In this sense I agree with Hogeland that one can make a reading of the Odysseus in Cavafi’s style, not as a period piece, but as a story of the experiences we need to pass, feel and interact with before finding our final harbour in this journey called life. Using a “new” Ulysses played by Matt Damon or whoever. It really doesn’t matter here the colour of the skin or the eyes but whether you stick to the spirit of the poem. Yet, why not selecting the Mediterranean landscapes of Greece which provide for a beautiful environment that suits the spirits of the poem. I think of Indonesia as a country that would provide for several good places to film such story, then played by Asian characters if one wishes.
Why I believe the film will not catch up with such expectations!
quite by accident, the penguin classics paperback version of the Odyssey happened to be in the van when i hit the road, beginning my Wild Years.
(among several other books(vol 4 of Campbells Masks of God))
so i read it several times during those years.
and it certainly felt germane to my circumstances.
main road buddy Sam…long dead, now…who at first followed along in his hulking monte carlo(roomy, like a house, he’s say), with his wife Rose….ere they joined me in the van when that car died…well, he actually read most of it, too…since i was forever going on and on…”that casino/bar is like our siren island, sam…lash me to the mast!” .
i didnt read Kerouac til well into that whole adventure, when i was already On the Road.
and i didnt read Fear and Loathing until i had already done just a whole shitload of stuff mentioned in that one,lol.
it was Homer that was our spirit animal during that 5 or six years.
(Sam had also stolen a Gideon Bible from one of the motels we splurged for to ride out storms, and we kept sheets of acid in that, for to finance our perambulations…i still have that one,lol)
I’m reading the same edition, taking away myself from the breathless heroics so far, I turned the book over and I reminded myself that the gods had allowed me to read this for GBP2.99.
That was the price when we could imagine a rosy fingered dawn.
I think it costs rather a lot for what are now called ‘A list actors’, there are no movie stars these days.
Burt Lancaster as Odysseus, Kirk douglas as Poseidon.
Think of the ‘The Thin Red Line’, a red carpet line up hampered by a movie.
“South Korea approves decree for $350 billion investment in US”
I think that South Korea ships about $130 billion worth of goods to the US ever year. Assuming that they had to pay a 15% tariff on that lot, it would work out to be about less than an extra $20 billion – to be paid by Americans. So it would take about 17 year’s worth of tariffs to add up to that $350 billion. Yeah, great deal. But that means that South Korea as a country has $350 billion less to invest in itself which would be a major hit and investing in a country that is doing a shake-down of it. And at the end of the day Trump will sooner or later will hit up South Korea – along with other countries – with yet more tariffs so was it really worth it?
“Hundreds of Billions in Loans Didn’t Make a Dent in Global Poverty”
Well, duh — anyone familiar with rural usury of the Bronze Age could have told you that. Slow learners?
(link at archive.md threw an error, but the headline suffices)
I think that California spent twenty or thirty billion dollars not that long ago to solve homelessness in that State but all that happened was that it made a bunch of consultants richer. Funny how that works out.
Govt jobs program for the PMC class. / ;)
I’m from the government and I’m here to help myself.
Pay peanuts, get monkeys.
Pay gorillas, they can’t solve problems, but sort of pay property taxes (and promote gorillas who understand their tax problems)
re: RU satellite interference with EU-GPS
A new item in the Russiaphobic propaganda suggesting Russian satellites necessary for ICBM-comm. are used to interfere with Western GPS.
Perhaps knowing people could look into this CORNELL UNIVERS. PAPER and compare it to some of the allegations quoted in the Austrian newspaper that reported this story, see below:
Chasing Lightning: Detecting, Characterizing, and Identifying a Powerful Space-Based GNSS Interference Source
by Zachary L. Clements, Argyris Kriezis, Todd E. Humphreys
https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.03673
“(…)abstract:
This paper analyzes and identifies a space-based Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) interference source that has caused scores of powerful transient wide-area interference events over continental Europe, Greenland, and Canada since 2019. While terrestrial or near-terrestrial sources are primarily responsible for the recent uptick in GNSS interference worldwide, space-based interferers are of special concern given their potential for vast geographic reach and their portent of a qualitative escalation in GNSS interference. Based on data collected between 2019 and 2026 from a network of terrestrial GNSS reference stations, this paper (1) develops a received-power-based detection framework; (2) details the spatial, temporal, and spectral patterns of wide-area interference events caused by the source; (3) presents and analyzes identification techniques that blend received-power and time-difference-of-arrival measurements; and (4) applies these techniques to confidently identify the GNSS interference source as a constellation of Russian early warning satellites in Molniya (“lightning”) orbits. (…)”
The story as reported by Austrian anti-RU daily DER STANDARD:
Russia can disrupt navigation systems in Europe
For years, ten seconds long interference signals have been registered. Now, a team of researchers has pinpointed the source of the trail leads directly to the Russian satellite
https://www.derstandard.at/story/3000000324001/russland-kann-navigationssysteme-in-ganz-europa-stoeren
(unfortunately Google´s auomatic link-translator wouldn´t work)
“(…)
EU keeps the investigation report secret
But there is another theory as to what the mysterious signals could be used for. According to Richard Bowden, a researcher at the Spanish defense company GMV, one cannot be absolutely sure that the signals from Russian satellites are part of electronic warfare.It is entirely conceivable that these are short communication signals. This theory is supported by the fact that the affected satellites are Russia’s only early warning system for a ballistic missile attack in space. According to the director of the Russian Strategic Nuclear Forces Project Pavel Podvig, it is unlikely that such valuable satellites will be tampered with and a side mission added.
The European Union has conducted an investigation into the incidents. However, their results are under wraps.
(…)”
Because it’s not spelled out in the excerpt above, the alternate explanation in the ‘another theory’ above is that since the recorded signals are offset in frequency from the actual GPS carrier frequency, they could be a backup downlink communication channel for use in case the west (us) attempted to jam the primary comm frequency prior to an attack. The thinking is that the GPS signals are too important for the west to jam, so they’d be a more likely place to find clean air in a jamming environment.
(happened to watch a YT interview with the principle investigators a few days ago….)
That´s great. Thanks.
Internet age, after all…
p.s. As far as I understood in other context RU would jam GPS in case of war. Why GPS is not used by them. But I have idea how those things could or could not correlate.
But it´s typical by now that scientific studies as this Cornell piece are abusde in such a way by people outside Cornell. Even picking out this very study in itself is not coincidence.
“Bill Gates tells Epstein panel he ‘never victimized anyone'”
The story that appeared on NC some time ago made clear that it was Bill Gates chasing after Epstein so that he could be included in his circle of friends. After I read that story, I wondered if Bill Gates’s wife divorced him not for his infidelities but for his taste in, ahem, younger girls.
If he “never victimized anyone”, it wasn’t for lack of trying.
The first thing that came to mind was Bob.
Followed shortly by Vista.
Honorable mention: Windows ME.
What i remember over the years, was that bg the third was a persistent sex pest and the old fashioned board suggested he would like to spend more time as far away as possible from the publicly limited company.
Their loss was not the public’s gain.
Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has sparked controversy after referring to India as “a kind of laboratory to try things” during a recent podcast with LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman.
What did cool hand luke say:
Global warming is going to cause so much misery. In my place feels like temperature dips below 100F only for 3-4 hrs during the night. But one weird thing is I can pretty much spend entire day without AC but its the night when I need AC the most. Worst time for power requirement to surge with all these renewables.
Worse case scenario there is always this solution-
https://www.sciencealert.com/this-awesome-lamp-works-without-batteries-electricity-or-sun
Read about it here on NC and have never forgotten it
Thanks for this, Rev!
Yup. I bought one of the early models to assist them with their development.
A few weeks into a drought, we received a flash flood warning. For almost a whole week, the office was quiet, because three quarters of the patients couldn’t make it in. I even ended up in the ethically awkward position of dropping one home, after catching them being dragged by their umbrella, soaked from the rain.
During that week, several persons were without power for a total of almost two days, to the point where I wondered if this was electric’s way of silently rationing oil. Now it’s nearly become parched again, and I fear that we are, likely, well and truly screwed.
Most newly installed solar PV systems have batteries now. It shouldn’t take too many to supply the power to the AC for the 3 to 4 hours needed.
Antidote- what a cutey! Charismatic midi-fauna. The jovial parasite.
And his name is Spencer which suits him-
https://xcancel.com/dog_rates/status/2056442233499623695
Working WSJ links that don’t timeout, to MSN
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/wyoming-s-data-center-boom-meets-the-man-camp-backlash/ar-AA25ber1
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/hundreds-of-billions-in-loans-didn-t-make-a-dent-in-global-poverty/ar-AA25lnrZ
the archive link was timing out.
A demonstration of how world events can add a toxic cocktail to local politics.
Three days ago on social media video circulated widely showing a Somali man on a Belfast street doing a determined job of hacking off another mans head with a kitchen knife. The latter’s life was probably saved by another man arriving with a hurley stick (used for the sport of hurling) and beat him away. It took a good 12 hours or so before mainstream media on either side of the border worked up the courage to actually report on what happened.
Turns out the Somali man was a refugee who had arrived in Dublin, and decided that he had a better chance of asylum by crossing the open border into Northern Ireland (one unintended outcome of the Brexit negotiations). For whatever reason, he decided Belfast was a better option. It seems he befriended a local with a very long criminal record for drug dealing and they had some form of rather dramatic falling out.
So, on cue, social media, or to be precise X, went ballistic. The location of the violence made it worse. In the late 1960’s and 70’s in transition areas between catholics and protestants many catholic areas were burnt out by loyalist mobs, these areas becoming buffer/no mans zones, with often huge walls built to ‘protect’ each community. Over the past two decades these have gradually been redeveloped for housing. Due to demographics, its usually catholic or immigrant families who move there, and usually get a greeting in the form of unpleasant materials through the letterbox or occasional a petrol bomb through a window from their protestant neighbours. So often they become convenient places to house… refugees and drug addicts as nobody sensible would actually buy a house in those locations.
Outside media has always loved to send an occasional reporter into those communities to tut disapprovingly about the growth of racism in Northern Ireland cities and communities. In truth, they have to struggle very hard to find some examples in the catholic areas – it is in protestant loyalist areas that long time links to far right groups across Europe. To be fair, this has created an interesting situation where someone can enthusiastically wave an Israeli flag while sporting neo-nazi tattoos while singing songs about a Dutchman who became English King, but that’s the world we are in now. But in nationalist areas there are growing strains as cheap and plentiful housing has attracted incomers with little or no interest in the historic conflict.
This has created an odd dynamic, whereby loyalist communities have enthusiastically gotten involved to riot in defence of their catholic, drug dealing neighbour against any refugees. The catholic/nationalist side, being generally left wing and more tolerant, but also as upset about having various immigrant communities introduced, have been to one side, if not clapping them on, then not actually stopping it. So you have the peculiar sight of a sort of mutually agreed rioting, with one side waving Irish tricolours and Palestinian flags, the other waving Union Jacks and Israel flags.
Conspicuously absent are the main elected representatives. Unionists don’t want to be too closely associated with the more obviously fascistic elements on the street. Sinn Fein are in a huge bind, as they are supposedly the defenders of local communities, but have also been strongly pro-migrant and immigrant, despite the misgivings of their own constituents. The situation is what might be described at best as ‘dynamic’.
Jimmy Dore and guest Garland Nixon have quite a bit to say about the establishment using divide and rule to keep the shared anger over rising fuel prices and and other economic stresses pointed away from the real causes of the problems in Ireland – and elsewhere.
What They’ll NEVER TELL YOU About The Belfast Anti-Immigration Riots! w/ Garland Nixon
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Moc07fTsJT4
Thank you PK for providing context to the events. At first glance I had interpreted this as some kind of f&c%d reaction driven by our new found (in general in the West) fascistic turn, here against migrants or refugees, but more generally to whatever we find suits as target to to our dissatisfied egos. According to your reporting my gut feeling was not very much misled.
The attacker was from Sudan, not Somalia.
PK’s “interface neighbourhood” narrative, about the redevelopment of streets destroyed by the pogroms and evacuations of the Troubles is neither relevant nor particularly accurate. The attack did not take place in an “interface neighbourhood.” Nor did any of the rioting or last night’s less violent demonstrations take place anywhere near where the knife attack occurred nor in interface neighbourhoods. The vast majority of the city, and the city centre, was quiet. Photos of lonely tourists standing with cops in city centre locations are a social media feature today. The destruction of homes, burning buses, the blocking of traffic choke points, and the threatening of dark skinned hospital workers on their way to work all occurred in or adjacent to overwhelmingly protestant working class neighbourhoods and in protestant suburbs.
By the way, Israeli flags have not been seen flying in these neighbourhoods since the onset of the Gaza genocide. This is what passes for progress in Belfast.
One may speculate about the root motivations of the rioters. To suggest that it was in “defence of their catholic, drug dealing neighbour against any refugees” is far fetched. Ignacio’s first impressions are therefore possibly more accurate than PK’s “context”: aggressive, proto-fascist, racist young men with no life, no political leadership, doing what their fathers did, with no particular objective beyond obstruction and violence. Not to make light of the violence, but these types of outrages are a traditional part of the Belfast summer. The difference now is we have Elon Musk tweeting about it and hair-on-fire MSM global coverage. This will die down in a few days, there may be a gathering at city hall in support of tolerance, and then the rest of the world will have to find other distractions from the ongoing poly-crisis.
Contra PK, I would say it’s a demonstration of how local politics can spike the toxic cocktail of world events.
If the reports are correct and it occurred in newtownards, then it is not an interface neighborhood, its pretty homogeneous and it probably will be after I’m gone.
72% identifying as great british according to latest census (2021).
Always unreported is the wonderful pallet burning season which is just coming up (12th july).
As far as street parties go, its pretty grim.
No archive, NY Times blocking it.
Democrats Once Vowed to Stop Oil and Gas. Now They’re Not So Sure. (NY Times)
The Democrat Party has an irreconcilable position; you cannot both be a party of Capitalists, and tackle the Climate Crisis. These are not compatible. You can’t be for business as usual, and support radical conservation efforts. We’re way past the point where we need to be 100% work from home where we can, mandatory 4 day work week, an overwhelming advocacy program to buy less, consume less, reuse more. An immediate end to 90% of what’s on store shelves, just plastic junk and trash foods. A return to local vegetable gardens, home cooking, and eating much smaller portions.
I mean, no one’s swallowing that message, even if the Democrat Party were sincere.
We’re cooked. Like the incoming energy shock, we’re going to hit the Climate Wall and then adaption will simply become mandatory; adapt or starve or burn alive. And it’ll be much too late.
Happy Thursday of year 7 of the Pandemic and counting.
Quoted in the above:
Oops! Google is accidentally proclaiming the quiet part out loud here, to wit: Their business model is to just print any weird shit they happen to make up, and then it’s your job as their customer to discover whether it bears any relation to reality or even has any value for you at all.
I learned as a youngster (Ed Herman and Noam Chomsky were my seminal influences on this in the late sixties and seventies, FWIW) that this has been the business model of the western media since the early 20th century, when subscriber-funded media died and advertiser-supported media took over, at which point selling readers’ eyeballs to other businesses became the media’s mission.
Unusual to hear this stated so forthrightly. It’s apparently no secret to the workers inside the industry itself.
The Space X and Anthropic IPO’s are looking more dicey by the day, when the USA hits the wall on Gas/Diesel how many people will be taking a flyer on companies with no path to profitability?
And how will Trump react as the economy goes in the shitter?
My guess is panic and rage, more extreme than anything we have seen to date.
It’s going to be a lively Summer, temps are predicted to reach 99 degrees Fahrenheit today.
In early June…
Stay safe and enjoy the show, it’s going to get very weird indeed.
UK legal professionals article is misattributed to Christopher Cook.
Jonathan Cook.
Bill Gates tells Epstein panel he ‘never victimized anyone’ – except his wife Melinda, or doesn’t she count as a victim considering Bill – per the publicly available information – was a serial cheater who perhaps infected her with an STD?
Clap for the
WolfmanGates-man.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uX8Nj8ABEI8
RE: Preference for Clockwise Movement
These folks must have earned an “F” in Physics 101.
The physics of the natural world is clear: spin a suspended bicycle wheel by a cord attached to its axle (axis) as if it were traveling forward on the ground and the wheel will rotate COUNTER-CLOCKWISE. The counterclockwise vector (force) is proportional to the mass and rotating velocity of the wheel. That is why race cars and track meets are performed in counterclockwise motion. The turns of the track accommodate physics.
But of course
Can’t Pay Medical Bills? Trump Officials Suggest Getting a Loan (NY Times)
All possible thanks to Obama and The Democrat party bailing out the health insurance industry. Instead of universal Medicaid, we get this.
What a sick country.
Injured and sick Palestinian children are also seen as profitable sites of value
Sy Hersh on nukes must have triggered something in my brain: pretty ironic when T is contemplating using nukes to prevent Iran from building any. Because who is the bully of the Middle East again?
US FIFA games ticket sales not going well. From Due Dissidence.
Wonder why? / ;)
World Cup FIASCO: Empty Seats, Visa DENIALS, Sniffer Dog Searches!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66fUM3Hfcos
Good to read of the $395 pineapple. I live on top of an old pineapple field in central Oahu, Hawaii. Hawaii Pineapple (founded by Dole who was a cousin to our only President during the brief Republic era) had been absorbed into “Big 5” sugar producer Castle&Cooke. Castle&Cooke got bought out by David Murdoch as sugar and then pines were winding down and C&C is mostly a developer (sold off Lanai which was all about pines to Ellison). Murdoch then created “Dole” to spin off the remaining ag operations.
Separately on Maui, Maui Land & Pine was a creator of the “Maui Gold” variety which is marketed as a premium product. ML&P was owned by another “Big 5” company, Alexander & Baldwin, which also is mostly about development these days since sugar is pau. ML&P was going to shut down operations, but the workers there negotiated a deal to lease the land and facilities to continue operations. I guess next week they are announcing a new brand as “Maui Pineapple Farm”.
I thought the $395 was missing a decimal point and should have read $3.95 as I had just purchased one at the grocers for $3.95 – up from $2.00 a couple of weeks ago.
File under more research into possible mRNA vax long term effects on the immune system.
PhD John Campbell and Prof. Dr. Angus Dalgleish
Vaccines activating cancers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYqvCbM82bw
re: Class War
Nel Bonilla´s Substack
long read
Where Has All the Class Analysis Gone?
A short meta‑commentary on the current anti‑imperialist discourse
Jun 05, 2026
https://worldlinesletter.substack.com/p/where-has-all-the-class-analysis