Ancient DNA shared with Neanderthals may explain human language Science Daily (Kevin W)
Smartphones arrived just before the US fertility rate plunged. One study says it’s a direct cause CNN (Paul R)
Climate/Environment
Gorillas can learn to trust humans even after years of poaching pressure, research shows PhysOrg
How a record-high ‘energy imbalance’ is driving global warming Carbon Brief
We Are in the Anthropocene—Now What? AGU
Im still in disbelief.
Each new model that comes out – somehow – raises the expectation of a record breaking El Niño incoming.
If for nothing other than my own clarity, I need to plot it – just to see how 2026 stacks up “IF” the models are right.
Using @webberweather’s… pic.twitter.com/9pazHBkINQ— Jeff Berardelli (@WeatherProf) June 9, 2026
Amplified Arctic iceberg traffic reshapes benthic biodiversity Nature
Record winter temperatures in Antarctic raise fears over speed of climate breakdown Guardian
Wild temperature swings are becoming the ‘new normal’, EU agency says Financial Times
Colorado and Nevada negotiators throw cold water on parts of federal plan to manage Colorado River Wyoming Public Media
Fishers live in fear as looming El Niño and fuel crisis pile on pressure Dialogue Earth
China?
China cancels high-level meetings with EU Financial Times
China says Japan has torn off its so-called ‘peaceful nation’ mask CGTN
Sen. Slotkin: NDAA, AI guardrails, and banning China’s cars China Talk
Japan
Japan’s looming typhoon crisis threatens disaster defences and tourism South China Morning Post
Koreas
India
Fixed this for you @CNN pic.twitter.com/Znv4VSKuWu
— Wyatt Reed (@wyattreed13) June 12, 2026
Modi orders Indian officials to prevent water from entering Pakistan Independent
Why India’s deadly dengue crisis is now no longer confined to the monsoons Aljazeera
Southeast Asia
China Supplies Battle Tanks To Cambodia Amid Thailand Border Row FirstPost
A Princess Who Never Rested On Her Laurels and The Lasting Legacy Of Thailand’s ‘Lawyer Princess’ Bangkok Post. Princess BajrakitiyabhaI died at 47 after having been in a coma for years. She was very well loved for her interest in and dedication to the interests of ordinary people. Please no comments about the monarchy or Thai politica but condolences are fine.
European Disunion
EU to protect industries from future carbon costs if they invest in the bloc Financial Times
ECB raises eurozone interest rates as Iran war stokes inflation Guardian
Germany news: Recession looms as Iran war chokes growth DW
Germany pulled the plug on flagship FCAS fighter jet – the implications for European defence are worrying The Conversation
Switzerland to vote on plan to cap population at 10 million BBC (Kevin W)
Norway challenges EU to call US gas ‘safer’ than Arctic reserves Financial Times
Poor parents forced to steal porridge for their children Aftonbladet via machine translation (Micael T)
Old Blighty
Millions of homes in London, Essex and Kent at risk of sinking as climate crisis worsens Guardian
Gilt Traders Brace for UK Vote With Burnham Eyeing Starmer’s Job Bloomberg
Britain’s defence secretary Healey quits over defence spending Aljazeera (Kevin W)
Record numbers turning to loan sharks as cost-of-living crisis bites Centre for Social Justice
Met police chief calls for law to make stolen phones ‘unusable bricks’ Guardian (Kevin W)
Same sit, different day!
Arrested under terrorism charges for holding a sign saying “Saving Lives Is Not Terrorism – I support Palestine Action” despite the Government's ban being found unlawful by the High Court.
"How ridiculous!"
Support at: https://t.co/nOqO4QQdM5 pic.twitter.com/7Tni6bAZo5
— Defend Our Juries (@DefendOurJuries) June 12, 2026
Israel v. The Resistance
BREAKING: 'Regarding the text of the understanding, we are in the final stages of finalizing it in Iran. The place and time of the conclusion of the understanding have not yet been determined.'
Spokesperson for the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said.— IRIB (Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting) (@iribnews_irib) June 12, 2026
What Iran smashed and future of the deal Ryan Dawson:
So we know why Iran hasn’t been striking the UAE
And we know why the US air base in Saudi Arabia has also been left aloneThe UAE refuses to allow its airspace to be against Iran and the Saudis refuse to provide any further logistical support for an offensive against Iran.
The Americans have become over-dependent on their bases in Bahrain and Jordan. The bulk of US land-based air power being concentrated at just two bases is far too dangerous for the US to sustain in a renewed war. Trump is trapped under these circumstances and he cannot renew a general war.
guurst: “CENTCOM going blind”:
Bahrain 🇧🇭Jabal ad Dukhan Radar Facility hit by Iran 🇮🇷 ballistic missile spotted DESTROYED TODAY at
26.0380, 50.5421
BAE AR-327 RADAR capable of tracking ~470 km away.
Plays, I mean, played vital role in regional US 🇺🇸 missile defense & Persian Gulf shipping lanes monitoring. https://t.co/QQ2CWv5rzp pic.twitter.com/ZZnDF7EavR
— Tom Bike (@tom_bike) June 12, 2026
IRAN WAR BATTLING NARRATIVES //LT Col Daniel Davis YouTube
TRUMP: “WE’LL TAKE KHARG ISLAND” AS PEACE DEAL “NEARS” – w/ Geopolitics Expert Brandon Weichert Mario Nawfal. Important aside by Weichert, that Pakistanis are (apparently culturally) extremely optimistic.
Lt. Col. Anthony Aguilar: Iran Warns Israel – Leave Occupied Territories or Final Deal Is DEAD Dialogue Works, YouTube
Jeremy Scahill: Iran Fears Trump MENTALLY ILL Breaking Points, YouTube (flora)
Deal to end fighting would lead to Hormuz reopening, Iran says BBC. Which will pin the closure on Israel…
Iran demands $300bn to end war Telegraph. resilc: “How can the Israeli lobby allow this??????”
51st State, Imperial Proxy and Scapegoat Olivier Boyd-Barrett
Iran Attempts to Thwart Iraq’s Disarmament Efforts Alhurra
Israel launches overnight strikes across Gaza Aljazeera
New Not-So-Cold War
World Chess Federation suspends chess superpower Russia Sportschau via machine translation (Micael T)
US publishes docs on ‘dangerous’ Ukrainian biolabs RT (Kevin W)
Poland waits for crucial Patriot missiles, with no firm timeline for delivery TVP World
Imperial Collapse Watch
Remember When We Used to Take World War III Seriously? Washington Monthly
Reading the Times Tom Engelhardt. His first post on his new Substack
First look at the Global War on Terrorism Memorial design in Washington Military Times (Kevin W)
Trump 2.0
Judge indefinitely blocks Trump ‘anti-weaponization’ fund The Hill
Court denies emergency appeal to retain Trump’s name on Kennedy Center Guardian (Kevin W)
BREAKING- Very active rumor mill currently with specifics from senior USG (government) employees that RFKjr will be leaving as Secretary HHS in July, after the 4th. Meeting was apparently held last Monday. Oz to head transition team.
— Robert W Malone, MD (@RWMaloneMD) June 12, 2026
🚨 BOMBSHELL! Nicolle Wallace exposes a terrifying DOJ power grab.
She confirms the Trump administration is blatantly violating decades of policy to seize control over state elections.
The White House is desperately trying to rig the midterms to maintain their grip! https://t.co/FXL59vaoDz pic.twitter.com/YOKy5f9uGb
— Furkan Gözükara (@FurkanGozukara) June 12, 2026
Washington National Opera sues to force Kennedy Center to turn over $17M in gifts Washington Post
GOP Clown Car
Federal Judge Blocks Paxton’s ActBlue Lawsuit, Citing First Amendment Retaliation Law Commentary
Economy
Global growth is slowing to lowest level since pandemic, says World Bank Guardian
The tanks in Cushing, Oklahoma, are hitting bottom. The oil market is about to hit a tipping point CNN. Not news for those paying attention, but this is a solid overview and the fact that this is appearing on a MSM site is noteworthy.
El Niño Slams Into a Global Economy Unprepared for More Chaos Bloomberg
Why Do the Best Leaders Fail at the Most Important Job? Derek Thompson
Mr. Market Needs a Therapist
Financial Engineering Is Resembling Pre-Crisis Era, Pimco Warns Financial Post
The next financial crisis could start with advanced economies’ sovereign debt Business Times
AI
A must read. Click through:
This broke TODAY — June 10, 2026. From News5Cleveland and the Ohio Capital Journal. Confirmed by the Ohio Farm Bureau. Backed by documents obtained directly from the Ohio Statehouse.
And what is being proposed in Columbus right now — quietly, while every eye in America was on… pic.twitter.com/cQagI9SLov
— 0️⃣BlackBetty ⚓️ (@BabyD1111229) June 12, 2026
You can’t get more 2026 than that Gary Marcus
AI bubble: ‘It’s approaching vindication hour for me’ | Ed Zitron YouTube (resilc)
Breaking news: US Commerce Department effectively shuts down Anthropic’s latest models Gary Marcus
‘Tell Him He’s a Piece of Shit’: Meta’s New AI Unit Is a Total Mess Wired (resilc)
How data centers are blowing a hole in state budgets Popular Information
You generated it, you own it: a Munich court has cracked the search-engine shield for AI answers ResultSense
The Bezzle
SpaceX IPO takeaways: SPCX closes at $161, jumping 19% after record debut CNBC. When I was at Goldman, IPOs were priced so as to seek to achieve a 15% gain at the end of the first day. You need to engineer a first day rise so as to get investors to buy the IPO in teh first place.
Why Musk Raced to Take SpaceX Public in the World’s Biggest IPO Bloomberg
Guillotine Watch
One man. One trillion dollars. Oligarch Watch
Elon Musk, Human Ponzi Scheme Paul Krugman
Class Warfare
Antidote du jour (via):
And a bonus. I think he wants a bigger pool:
Jaguars are one of the few big cats that actively enjoy spending time in the water pic.twitter.com/6p1l7eqxFs
— Nature Unedited (@NatureUnedited) June 10, 2026
A second bonus:
A man noticed neighborhood cats were coming to his property to drink water, so he set up a camera to see who else was visiting… pic.twitter.com/e3Ws3BxfO0
— Nature Unedited (@NatureUnedited) June 7, 2026
And a third:
Kindness is Everything pic.twitter.com/7DMO4Tjtl2
— Amazing Nature (@AmazingNature00) June 7, 2026
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
Tony Blair takes on larger role as US-led Board of Peace struggles to advance Gaza plan (Times of Israel)
…He has already been serving on the Board of Peace’s Executive Board, as well as the Board of Peace’s Gaza Executive Board, which is focused specifically on the Strip, but neither of those has actually been operating since they were unveiled by the White House in January, according to the three sources familiar with the matter…
Blair will also take on an elevated role with regard to the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza…
He has already been engaging regularly with the Palestinian Authority on a reform process, so that it can eventually take over Gaza and hold peace talks with Israel, as envisioned by the 20-point plan.
Blair will continue his contact with the PA as his Board of Peace portfolios expand, the three sources said.
Blair’s Institute for Global Change has also run training sessions for the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza, the technocratic panel that is supposed to replace Hamas in Gaza. The NCAG has been stuck in Cairo for months, though, as the Board of Peace’s progress has stalled.
The institute will continue serving as a resource for the Board of Peace, one of the sources said.
A public announcement regarding Blair’s expanded work is not expected, and his office declined to comment on the matter.
BP: Messiah-complex grifter shitbag.
Also: progress has “stalled” like a car that just randomly stalls. Nothing to do with Israel continuing the family-blogging genocide?
The Board of Peace is supposed to be broke already. So what happened to all that money that some countries kicked in from the get go? Don’t know. This Trump initiative to replace the United Nations is already dead on arrival. But if so, I am sure that Tony Blair will find another grift. Perhaps another institution to repair the damage caused to the Gulf State countries during this war.
It’s a billion dollar a ticket affair, why doesn’t E musk just buy up all the seats and proceed to ‘extend the light of consciousness’ to earth before he liberates the moon from its brutal environmental challenges.
It’s not like it was his money anyway.
From what I understand those were just promises to drop a cool billion in pocket change in Trumps latest grift. Then everyone waited until Trump saw a new shiny and forgot the last that started to look less shiny. At which point everyone forgot that they promised to spend that money on Trumps grift.
Someone needs to stick a stake through the demon Blair’s chest, cut off his head and burn the MFer.
Whoever does best wear a mask, the foul dust that the husk contains is toxicity itself.
I thought I could never hate a PM as much as I hate Blair until Stamer came along.
I’m old enough to remember when Biden deployed an entire pier to feed Gaza, which promptly collapsed into history and the sea.
I had already forgotten about that one.
Your remark reminded me of the demonstrative parachute drops of food over Gaza (which crushed some hapless Palestinians) and of the concentration camp-like Essensverteilungen organized towards the end of the fighting (which each time resulted in scores of Palestinians being machine-gunned).
“A Princess Who Never Rested On Her Laurels”
Saw her story on the news last night and she had a helluva resume. And most interesting of all, she earned it all and it was not gifted to her on a silver platter. She may have even ended up as the Queen of Thailand in her own right but now we will never know. But you cannot but compare her and some of the British royal family.
To add: Cornell, where she got her PhD in law, is a very good school. Not quite at the level of Harvard or Yale Law, but still rigorous and well respected.
I didn’t read what caused the coma? Very Sad.
A myocoplasma infection in her heart. Standard clinical labs don’t test for them, save for a subset of 3 pulmonary ones for HIV positive patients. My father had a rare autoimmune disease and there is a medical theory (there is evidence but not clinical trial level) that most autoimmune diseases are caused by mycoplasma.
My father wanted bloodwork to prove that up. It took a former med school prof 6 months to find a lab that could do the tests and get them done, partly ’cause it was out of state and it is remarkably difficult to send blood across state lines.
That prof said of the results, “Your blood is swimming in it”.
But at that point, my father was having so many terrible symptoms that he shot himself rather than try the protocol to treat a mycoplasma infection.
The point of that long-winded story is even top doctors would not have looked immediately for mycoplasma as the culprit in the princess, and by the time they figured it out, it looks to have been too late.
I finally found it.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/news/princess-bajrakitiyabha-dies-at-47-after-3-year-coma/ar-AA25u5f1?ocid=BingNewsVerp
2028 potential Dem and GOP Pres Candidates.
From TrackAIPAC:
https://www.trackaipac.com/2028
Kamala Harris leads the pack to date.
More from TrackAIPAC.
https://www.trackaipac.com/trump
So much for maga.
Not so much MAGA as MIEG – Make Israel Even Greater.
Make Amaleks Go Away
Trump may still have his many of his MAGA supporters, but he has totally lost his America First supporters.
So I am imagining a DNC primary race between three main contenders; K-hive Harris, Gavin Loathsome, and Sneaky Pete. Others might enter like AOC, but the Democratic Party political machine will once again make sure that their preselected candidate gets rammed down our throats for the presidential race.
I predict an easy victory in 2028 by JD Vance or Ron DeSantis, with nothing fundamentally changing for the next eight years for better or worse. If the Democrats win, we will get Nothing Will Fundamentally Change (D) Edition for the next eight years.
Re: PE buying up trailer parks
Some states allow residents a right of first refusal when their parks go up for sale. This has been used successfully by orgs like ROC USA and Neighborworks. There are a lot of resident-owned parks around the country – it’s a great alternative where people can figure out who to wrangle the money to buy the place. Fortunately, the previously mentioned nonprofits and CDFIs can often take care of that bit. The other aspect is running a trailer park collectively, but from everything I’ve read and heard from people, they almost all work far better (and operate far cheaper) than when an outside owner had it.
PE buying up parks is a big problem, but we do have a opposite movement as well, thankfully.
Family Blog PE and their habit of bringing financial misery on Joe and Jane Citizen in any and every way their evil little brains can concoct. They are a plague on our house and need to be put to the curb.
I’m glad some people have an out. But I’m pretty sure many residents of parks are in no shape to buy their lot, even with financing. It’s a despicable industry that preys on people with no better options.
‘Nature Unedited
@NatureUnedited
Jaguars are one of the few big cats that actively enjoy spending time in the water’
All members of the feline family are renowned for their relaxed and reflective nature-
https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/1u4n14b/a_leopard_watches_the_sunset_perched_high_in_a/
Nice example of the “dangling leopard paw”.
I can’t help but feel awful for big cats kept in captivity. Your link exemplifies why.
It’s nice to have confirmation that it actually was a Jaguar-
https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/1tdnwid/differences_in_the_spot_pattern_of_the_cheetah/
Regarding “Germany pulled the plug on flagship FCAS fighter jet – the implications for European defence are worrying”: there is the joke that FCAS actually meant French Combat Air System because of the demands set by Dassault. One possibility for Germany is to join the Global Combat Air Programme (GCAP), led by the Japan, Italy, and the UK — but there is the joke that Germany would come with enough demands to turn it into the German Combat Air Programme.
Apart from that, another big French-German programme, MGCS (Main Ground Combat System), is also lying on its deathbed. It would not be the first time those countries fail to design a common battletank: the joint French-Italo-German project to develop one floundered in the early 1960s (France went on to develop the AMX 30, Germany the Leopard 1).
And then there was MAWS (Maritime Airborne Warfare System), another French-German programme, which collapsed a bit over a year ago when the Germans decided to buy the Poseidon P8A from the USA instead. Another French-German endeavour, CIFS (Common Indirect Fire System), is now to be suspended sine die — the typical stage before the abandonment of a programme.
There are other cases: the programme MALE RPAS (European Medium Altitude Long Endurance Remotely Piloted Aircraft System, dubbed Eurodrone), involving France, Germany, Italy, and Spain, is facing difficulties and France is reportedly wanting to get out of the project. Germany had already exited in 2023 the joint French-German-Spanish project to overhaul the Tiger attack helicopter.
Despite all those solemn declarations about a “Europe of defense”, the EU is hopelessly hampered by diverging national military and industrial interests. With other problems related to deindustrialization, I expect Europe to face a cliff in half a dozen years where it will not have the resources and the time to replace the older equipment (armoured vehicles, aircraft, vessels) from 40 years ago, neither even to sustain them and prolong their useful life with spare parts and ammunition, nor to develop novel kinds of equipment required to wage modern warfare (such as missiles and land-based, aerial, and seaborne drones).
France and Germany working together was always going to be a hard sell-
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/dUPJuSZF1Is
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/china/real-problem-global-trade
https://archive.ph/vh4eE
>The G-7 and its partners should offer China a clear choice. Beijing can elect to face coordinated tariffs against its exports, or it can allow a coordinated appreciation in its currency—to the benefit of all.
Isn’t this just a rebranded Plaza Accords? Isn’t this a little crazy to try against China?
China’s “All your manufacturing belong to us” against the entire rest of the world is inherently unbalanced and was going to produce push back sometime.
Of course the elites in the were perfectly happy to beat their plebes and send some of the only decent paying jobs around to overseas, mainly China.
Nobody asked the plebes what they thought.
A Saturday morning rabbit hole from James Li. / ;)
I didn’t believe Butler was STAGED… until I saw this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QK89xy_DmU
Tucker Carlson has a more recent and more detailed take on the topic – https://rumble.com/v7azs44-the-attempts-on-trumps-life-why-he-shut-down-the-investigations-and-how-it-.html
I think “staged” is too strong of a term since one man was shot and two others were wounded, but given Trump’s narcissism, his apparent lack of interest concerning the attempts on his life does make one raise an eyebrow.
The lowering of the flag is astonishing.
Sometimes cinema can be informative. See the Nashville treatment of a political shooting on a stage for the contrast. Sorry for the distortion of the image. This is the only YT with the full scene:
“India ensuring ‘not a single drop of water’ flows into Pakistan after suspending major river-sharing treaty’
And with that the next Indian-Pakistan war will be on before too long. Pakistan is right – this is an act of war and India is being spiteful here. In geopolitics, if you push hard on a country, you must always ensure that they have a ledge that they can step down on so that country does not strike back having nowhere else to go. If India acts on this stupid idea, then there will be a war for sure as Pakistan cannot afford to do without that water.
Or, India is playing its part to draw Pakistan’s support of Iran away from Isr’s ongoing war against Iran and force Pakistan’s attention on India.
Didn’t Modi go to Isr to make friends right at the start of this “2 week” war – now lasting 3 months and counting? From Hindustan Times. First para:
“Barely 48 hours after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi wrapped up a state visit to Israel, where he addressed the Knesset and declared that India stood with Israel “firmly with full conviction”, the United States and Israel launched a major joint military operation against Iran on Saturday, raining missiles and airstrikes on Tehran and other Iranian cities.”
https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/modis-israel-visit-under-fire-as-us-israel-launch-strikes-on-iran-congress-jairam-ramesh-says-moral-cowardice-101772267290947.html
Thing is, actual military support went to Saudi Arabia including 8,000 combat troops, a squadron of fighter jets and air defense systems and not Iran. Modi has bolted himself at the hip to Israel which means siding with the US as well who would seek to ransack India and reduce their political clout. Trump officials have stated this. India was once a rising power that would join countries like the US, Russia and China but now are dropping down the list with the Global Majority of countries now rejecting India being their de-facto leader. Maybe Modi’s idea is to make his country Fortress India and isolated from it’s neighbours.
India is still the “I” in BRICS.
Playing both sides isn’t unheard of. / ;)
I understand that India in BRICS was really only trying to help itself without giving or sharing anything with the other members. The pity is that they were on their way to being a great power but now that will not happen anymore. Hard to say if this was just Modi or whether it was the Indian political establishment that did this.
Maybe someday Iran can replace them as the ‘I’ (and maybe someday BRICS can demonstrate clear, concrete benefits).
an aside, call it a half-baked thought. / ;)
I do think this is the begining of the 3rd World War. I think of it like this:
WWI was a pivot point that pitted the northern European countries and their allies against each other. After which the old European aristocracies were diminished or eliminated. New country boundaries were drawn, particularly in the ME.
WWII ratified the redrawn boundaries, but the old colonial subjects of European powers were still virtual colonies and they wanted their freedom, too. (FDR wanted Europe to free all its colonial holdings after WWII, but FDR died before the war ended.)
The nationalist drive for real independence in African and the ME countries has been an ongoing struggle for 70 years.
The India Independence movement lasted 90 years until India did win it’s independence from the UK in 1947. (Oddly enough, 1947 was the same year the UN granted the partitioning of Palestine, followed in 1948 by the creation of Isr.)
In 1951, Iran’s elected president Mosaddegh nationalized the Iranian oil industry, removing its control from British Petroleum. This was known in the West as the Abadan Crisis. Mosaddegh was overthrown in 1953 by the US and the UK secret services.
There was the1956 Egyptian Suez Crisis fought by the UK, France, and Isr to recapture control of the Suez Canal. Egypt’s then president Nasser had nationalized in early 1956.
The nationalist in ME and African former colonies is human nature and understandable. The West’s fear that RU or China will move in dominate and to acquire the resources of these countries, resources the West once had sole access to, is also understandable. I don’t see any diplomatic resolution to this larger picture.That’s why I think this is shaping up as WWIII.
I also wonder if Isr’s creation was to act as an enforcer of old Europe’s empire and later US empire resource holdings in the ME. “Poor little Isr is too small to defend itself against its neighbors so we US and UK and France will have to go to their defense every time they attack a country whose resources we want.” What a coincidence.
sigh… / too cynical?
I’m also beginning to see the current conflicts as different fronts in one big world war. If you think of WW1 & 2 as basically about challenging the British control of the sea lanes, underpinning an economic empire that spanned from Hong Kong to Malacca to Sinai, through the Mediterranean to Gibraltar and the Atlantic, then the current WW3 is all about McKinder’s heartland developing an interior counterpart to those sea lanes, and the Anglo-American empire’s attempt to shatter it. Pipelines, canals, and rail links run through the Black Sea, Kazakhstan, the Caucuses , Central Asia from Azerbaijan to Afghanistan to Kashmir, all connecting China to markets and natural resources across Eurasia. China pursues the Belt and Road Initiative, and the West tries to destabilize every nation it touches.
The UN did not “grant the partition of Palestine “.
They put forth a proposal, which heavily favored Israel since it was written by thr UN and Israel with zero Palestinian input.
The proposal had no force of law but the zionists running the terror gangs almost immediately accepted it then commenced trying to steal as much of the Palestinian allotment as they could.
Why do I get the funny feeling this is about China? Is the US/ISR trying to maneuver China off of the sidelines and into a hot front?
This caught my eye,
The water flowing from the Indian-origin basin is a lifeline for millions of Pakistanis relying on it for hydropower generation, drinking supply and irrigation for the agriculture-dominant country.
According to the treaty, India is required to allow 43 million acre-feet of water to flow into Pakistan annually. That makes up roughly 80 per cent of Pakistan’s total surface water, a crucial lifeline for its agriculture, cities, and hydropower generation.
Eighty percent. If this is acted upon there will be war. China will have a say. Much/most of that water originates from Chinese territory. They cleared their throat last year when Modi went down this road, and I expect they will do so again.
The artificial construct of Pakistan will cease to exist. This must be.
Who will get its atomic bombs? Iran?
Before or after they are used?
Of course California Elections are sometimes rigged, the 2016 Primary is a fine example.
It wasn’t Voter fraud, it was then Secretary of State and now Senator Alex Padilla deciding not to count the 3,000,000 votes cast by those of us with no party preference, guaranteeing Hillary the win.
All done “According to the Rules”.
Provisional Ballots instead of Crossover Ballots, Crossover ballots are always counted, Provisional Ballots are counted, or not, at the discretion of the Secretary of State.
Padilla exercised his discretion and is now a member of the US Senate.
Bless his heart.
Didn’t the Supreme Court say primaries couldn’t be rigged as matter of law (via the nature of it being a primary and not a general election)?
“World Chess Federation suspends chess superpower Russia”
The World Chess Federation getting set to suspend Israel in five, four, three…
Any major int’l body of anything suspends USA in five, four, three…
1) re: Catherine Liu & Western Marxism
JACOBIN
Putting the Marxism Back Into “Cultural Marxism”
Interview with Catherine Liu
The Palm Springs School for Social Research wants to revitalize historical materialism, revive ideology critique, and ask big questions about social life. We talked to one of its founders, Catherine Liu, about gangster capitalism and the future of socialism.
https://jacobin.com/2026/06/liu-cultural-marxism-liberalism-ideology
2) Same context different angle:
Doug Henwood conversation with Moira Weigel on why the Right hates Left theory.
As far a I remember Henwood is rather likely to mock Catherine Liu´s talk about the PMC than to agree with her. However both would be defending some core insights of the Frankfurt School.
The conversation is interesting.
TC 27:50- 52:00
https://shout.lbo-talk.org/lbo/RadioArchive/2026/26_06_11.mp3
Thanks for the link to the Liu and Weigel interviews. Liu’s approach is more or less consistent with what I’ve believed over the years. The CIA cutout line Weigel goes after is ignorant and vicious, failing to take account of the impact of mid-20th c Keynesian triumphalism and the Stalinist regression that made a Marxism stripped down to simple class determinations seem inadequate. Marxism was never not in cultural marxism, it was a matter of overestimating state management capacities.
I see that they’ve got Chibber as one of the speakers at Frankfurt. He’s good arguing against “intersectionalism” that basically does a Weber and demotes class to just another interest alongside “status” interests. But he tends to doggedly interpret working class consciousness in rational/calculating terms and is downright phobic when talking about psychoanalytic takes on authority and conflict suppression.
– ’51st State, Imperial Proxy and Scapegoat’ – Olivier Boyd-Barrett
I like Boyd-Barrett’s Substack observations a lot. They are informed and informative. But I think he misses something important here. After summarizing the current controversy over Sec. 224 of the 2027 NDAA that would further “integrate” US and Israeli defense industries while reducing oversight, and *also* the recent Defense Intelligence Agency’s “critical” assessment regarding the Israeli espionage threat, he then goes on to defend Brian Berletic’s “the dog wags the tail” argument that Israeli is but a proxy for the US imperialism, like Ukraine and Taiwan. Though there is much to this perspective, it neglects a crucial feature of this relationship, indeed each of these relationships. As Boyd-Barrett indicates in his opening paragraph, though the US and Israel are “deeply intertwined,” they are not the same. US strategists certainly see Israel as a mechanism to maximize US interests in a crucial region of the world. But Israeli strategists (and their lobbyists in the US) also see the US as the crucial mechanism for maximizing its interests. The two worldviews are not identical. Each faction uses the other. But *because* the “Israeli lobby” has been used by our National Security Establishment to manufacture consent for Middle East policy, and *because* our military and intelligence services have become so integrated over the years, this “tiny statelet,” through its massive lobbying machine and billionaire champions in the US, has achieved a greatly outsized influence over US policy. When “the Lobby” is able to capture a Presidency, buy off most of Congress, and influence much of the media, you get the situation we have at present: a series of actions that correspond to the interests of Israel but *clearly* undermine the strategic interests of the US in the region, and are *clearly* opposed by a significant percentage of our rank-and-file military.
Like Berletic, Boyd-Barrett points to plans laid out by “US” officials in documents like Brookings’ ‘Which Path to Persia’ or the PNAC’s ‘Rebuilding America’s Defenses,’ while not acknowledging that such documents were written by pro-Israel neocons who defined “US interests” as identical to the project for Greater Israel. By the way, this current plan for US/Israeli military “integration was also laid out in a strategy paper, ‘Israel 2048: A Blueprint for a Rising Asymmetric Geopolitical Power.’ And guess what?
“That paper was co-authored by David Wurmser, who served as an adviser to Dick Cheney and an assistant to John Bolton. In 1996, Wurmser and a number of fellow neoconservatives, such as Richard Perle and Douglas Feith, authored the infamous “Clean Break Report,” which called for an end to the Oslo Peace Process, the removal of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, and the military containment of Syria. The infamous document was prepared for Israel’s new Prime Minister: Benjamin Netanyahu.”
https://mondoweiss.net/2026/06/congress-is-pushing-to-integrate-the-israeli-and-u-s-militaries-on-behalf-of-netanyahu/
David f**king Wurmser!
So yes, we have “used” Israel. But in allowing the Israel Lobby to grow so powerful, we have unleashed the possibilities for serious unintended consequences when our “proxies” leave the reservation and slip from our “control.” And though Israel is a leading example, we have plenty of others, whether anti-American jihadists whom we armed and trained to fight our “enemies,” or fascistic Ukrainian “nationalists” whose actions may go a bit too far toward igniting a larger European war.
I largely agree. But I would add one other consideration. I think if you look upstream from both Isr and the US you will find the old British Empire. It virtually created Isr with the Mandate for Palestine and the Balfour Declaration.
from Wiki:
In Palestine, the Mandate required Britain to put into effect the Balfour Declaration’s “national home for the Jewish people” without prejudicing the rights of the existing non-Jewish population living there;[2] this requirement and others, however, would not apply to the separate Arab emirate to be established in Transjordan. The British controlled Palestine for almost three decades, overseeing a succession of protests, riots and revolts between the Jewish and Palestinian Arab communities.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandate_for_Palestine
Then after WWII, the rising US empire in some sense merged – the CIA and MI6 are joined at the hip, imo – with the declining UK empire to become the Anglo-American empire.
The “special relationship”?
Who is doing the “return on empire” calculations of this “special relationship”?
Does the American public benefit in excess of the cost?
The Iraq/Afghanistan operation had a loaded cost of 8.8 trillion USD, about 26k per capita or 104k for a family of four.
At $5/gallon, that represents about 20800 gallons of gasoline for a family of four.
The assumption that the USA public benefits from the USA empire may be invalid.
While the USA Military Industrial complex, think tanks, NGOs, lobbyists and some in academia schools of government make a good living promoting USA empire, maybe the USA public and the world are net losers.
When did the USA “democracy” vote to have an empire?
Your vote did not have to be necessary. The electoral system is largely a façade that decides what color curtains to put on the windows of the same crumbling building. The people who’s opinions shape the country’s real policy are various lobbying groups who use our politicians as proxies to get what they want behind closed doors.
The opinions of the citizenry do not matter as the financial and political elities that our political class really answer to cannot be voted out of office because they were never elected in the first place as they are basically defacto aristocrats.
Alex Krainer is good on this flora.
He brings everything back to the City of London and the evil Brits.
He is a bit crazy on some things (Covid) but is very plausible on this subject.
Please do not recommend Krainer. He is not sound on banking and finance, in fact that is why I never link to him.
He said multiple things about the 2008 crisis that were not merely wrong but 180 degrees wrong.
Teetotalitarian Leader felt compelled to disguise his name being removed from the Kennedy Center For The Arts, so an Irony Curtain descended on the land in front of it.
He demanded a lot more dignity with that curtain than he was willing to afford those Miss Teen USA contestants.
re: Gaza – Finkelstein´s new book
kind of really important
A first book review linked by Finkelstein with the comment “He clearly read the book so I can’t complain”
Cleaning the Stables
Gaza’s Gravediggers: An Inquiry into Corruption in High Places by Norman G. Finkelstein (OR Books, 2026)
by Anti-Capitalist Musings
Jun 09, 2026
https://simonpearson1.substack.com/p/cleaning-the-stables
I guess now the global online community has to get as many people read it as possible.
final paragraphs
“(…)
Which returns me to the question I started with, and to the thing the book cannot resolve about itself. Accountability work has a long horizon. The archive Finkelstein has assembled will matter when the political conditions that currently make accountability impossible eventually shift, and in that sense the book is a deposit against a future reckoning. Archives have their uses. They do not have strategies. The epilogue knows this, and says so without flinching: “This book was written to expose lies and restore Truth. It will not save lives. The genocide in Gaza is too far gone.” He reaches, finally, for Rousseau, and frames what is left as a “purely spiritual act,” justice pursued for its own sake regardless of result.
The narrowing this represents is not Finkelstein’s alone. It belongs to a tradition. The most serious responses the left has produced to Gaza have taken the form of the legal brief, the commission report, the forensic monograph, and now this book, all of them addressed, explicitly or not, to institutions the same documents prove cannot act. That is not an accident of temperament. It is a statement about where the left, after decades of retreat, still imagines power to lie, or more exactly about where it has stopped imagining it can build any of its own. The alternative to documentation is organisation, and organisation asks for a social base, a theory of power and a willingness to act outside the frameworks that have already failed. Those are harder to assemble than a meticulous record of betrayal. Finkelstein is not the author of that deficit. He is its most eloquent symptom, and Gaza’s Gravediggers is the most exacting account we are likely to get of how the high officials of the international order behaved while a people was destroyed in front of them. What it cannot tell us, because nobody can yet, is whether anyone will ever be in a position to use it.
(…)”
I haven’t read the Pearson essay beyond your excerpt, but this struck me:
I’ve been, shall we say, “non-plussed” by Finklestein’s and Naomi Klein’s “warnings” about Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, etc. Tucker is not addressing himself to those institutions the way that Peason says Finklestein’s book is. Carlson’s talking to the people who used to listen to him on Fox News, people who’ve been fed the Zionist line in its most odious form for decades. The precipitous decline in warm feelings toward Israel is almost entirely due to people like Carlson on the right and Hasan Piker on the left. The young people are hearing them and rejecting Business As Usual between Israel and the USA.
There are going to be some big debates about tactics in the coming days. Peason’s point about the failure of the mandarin approach is valid. Out of curiosity, a time machine what-about game, I’ve un-propagandized myself about the Weather Underground.
Myth #1: the Weather Underground killed innocents.
Not true. From Wiki, where I’m sure there have been some battles over this:
Myth #2: The Weather Underground were a bunch of crazy f-ck-ups.
After the disaster in Greenwich Village, the WUO pulled off s long string of symbolic bombings of extremely high risk targets without inflicting casualties. Each bombing was accompanied by a communique that explained why the target was selected. This documentary, spot cut to the list of bombings, explains the process. Good ol’ Walter leads us into the story.
Trump debuts the newest War Department TV ad-
https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/116739176330480134
Why yes, Hegseth and Trump do appear in it.
Re: You generated it, you own it: …
Excellent overview of the case, and well explained for the non-technical reader. A must-read in my view.
Zitron says you can’t measure roi for AI. The Munich ruling gives a path: search for prompts that give you an answer you can sue the AI company for.
AI in law and medicine!
Driving around this AM, the local AM radio station “business moment” was about how good AI is for medics. Far too much selling!!
Early April I had my annual Medicare covered wellness check, with my MD’s PA. She has great patient presence, informed me AI was recording our conversations and that she not AI would make any conclusions!
The radio report had no disclaimers and stated that it made the patient facing medic more efficient so they can slight more patients per week.
LLM’s do “matching” and make inferences!
In law and medicine, the human professional should be doing what AI does with mistakes and hallucinations!
I wonder if OpenAI and/or Anthropic will be defendants in malpractice suits concerning harm where the medic “relied” on their AI inferences?
A judge somewhere has dismissed both sides’ attorneys who were caught over depending on AI.
anecdote: About 15 years ago or so, a brilliant young computer science prof I knew at another uni was working with their school’s medical school nursing department to develop a way to capture patient-nurse conversations during an office exam.
The idea was that patients were more likely to tell nurses about health related problems than they might tell doctors. Patients saw Nurses as more sympathetic and less authoritarian than doctors, less intimidating. So capturing those conversations could add important information to the medical record, information a patient might not tell their doctor on a regular exam.
It made perfect sense to me….at the time.
Fast forward to this AI thing. The doctor might be intimidating but the AI might be hallucinating.
“Iran Attempts to Thwart Iraq’s Disarmament Efforts”
The US wants the troops of the Popular Mobilization Forces dispersed and their weapons seized by Iraq so that the US military can have freedom of movement in Iraq and that there will be no threat to kick them out. You have the same sort of demands made of Hamas and Hezbollah. of course if PMF did do that, it would be only a matter of time until those individual members would be taken into custody and sent to prison for fighting ISIS too effectively.
The tanks in Cushing, Oklahoma, are hitting bottom. The oil market is about to hit a tipping point
CNN, obviously, misses the plot
Or we could encourage or demand radical conservation, right now.
Oh noes, you don’t mean that! That would be too… well, radical, now wouldn’t it ?
Let us splat on that wall instead.
0815 PDT
How to kick SpaceX out of your retirement savings account — “Right now, just a handful of A.I.-related stocks represent almost half the value of the total stock market index. If A.I. stocks collapse, so will the worth of your index fund”: economist
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/13/opinion/spacex-stock-ipo-ai.html
GOP has a new plan to kill off Medicare and Social Security
https://www.salon.com/2026/06/13/gop-has-a-new-plan-to-kill-off-medicare-and-social-security/
Thanks for the second link.
People wonder why the olders vote in much larger numbers relative to the younger age groups. They’re voting as if their life depends on voting …. which it does.
From the article:
“One of the least remarked-upon chapters in the Republicans’ ghastly Project 2025 document dealt with their plan to cut Social Security and Medicare, ostensibly to fix the impending trust fund shortfall and eliminate the national deficit all at once. The reason hardly anyone talked about it is that if there’s one thing we know about Republicans, from the so-called moderates to the most extreme MAGA true believers, it’s that they want to do away with those commie pinko programs once and for all.
“But there’s a problem: Nearly all Americans depend on those commie pinko programs to some extent, including many Republican voters. ….”
adding: I wonder if younger voters know this part of the plan? If they did then they too might come out and vote in large numbers in the primaries, vote as if their lives depend on voting in the primaries as well as the general.
From the same article:
” By the next year, when Project 2025 was unveiled, it was all there. Among other things, they proposed to raise the retirement age to 69 or 70, alter the benefit schedule and cut disability payments. “
The underlying reason for cutting disability payments is to cut the disabled population. In other words, eugenics.
These are truly evil people.
Welcome to the New Dark Ages.
Didn’t Germany in WWII put disabled people in the same category as Jews and therefore they needed to be placed in concentration camps and/or disposed of?
https://theconversation.com/disabled-people-were-holocaust-victims-too-they-were-excluded-from-german-society-and-murdered-by-nazi-programs-198298
So, there is precedent.
The Nazis drew inspiration from American Eugenicists–names like Harry Laughlin and Madison Grant show up highly praised by the former.
It’s hard enough to get hired much over the age of 55 or so already. Where exactly are all these grandmas and grandpas supposed to find work?!?
It’s the Golden Age of entrepreneurship, l a b. Make artisanal pickles and sell them online. Start a Youtube channel about one of the many vicissitudes of growing old and go viral. “He not busy being born is busy dying,” and all that.
Pushing the overton window to the right continues apace, now the dims can say “hey! Great Idea! Instead of paying down the debt why not invest it all in AI? We need to be responsible!
0825 PDT
The Dutch Army is testing a new prisoner-of-war camp design, preparing for the possibility of holding up to 2,000 captured Russian soldiers in the event of a large-scale conflict
https://nltimes.nl/2026/06/13/dutch-military-tests-camp-design-russian-war-prisoners-marnehuizen
Only 1 in 4 F-35s is fully mission capable, GAO finds
https://www.defensenews.com/industry/techwatch/2026/06/12/only-1-in-4-f-35s-is-fully-mission-capable-gao-finds/
Kushner project being developed on disputed land, Albanian villagers say
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/kushner-project-being-developed-disputed-land-albanian-villagers-say-2026-06-13/
Rubio tells India ‘ships violating US blockade in Hormuz won’t be tolerated’, days after Indian seafarers killed
https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/all-commercial-vessels-should-immediately-comply-with-us-orders-in-hormuz-rubio-tells-jaishankar-101781357565223.html
The Dutch Army is testing a new prisoner-of-war camp design, preparing for the possibility of holding up to 2,000 captured Russian soldiers in the event of a large-scale conflict
https://nltimes.nl/2026/06/13/dutch-military-tests-camp-design-russian-war-prisoners-marnehuizen
BS. If they are really testing beyond paper documents the driver must be different. Think of controlling the Netherlands populaces, migrants or Belgians. Why 2000?
Why 2000? Perhaps due to optimal size holes for mass graves? (This is irrespective of the source of the “compost materials.”) Maybe someone in the Ministry of Agriculture is planning ahead for fertilizer shortages.
Stay safe.
2’000 is perhaps the size that is still manageable given the available Dutch military manpower and its (probably limited) experience with such establishments.
For comparison, countries such as Kenya, Uganda, or Tanzania have camps for refugees (mainly from Sudan, Somalia, or Congo) that easily host 200’000 persons… Those camps are usually heavily militarized and raise daunting issues regarding supplies (food and water) and health care (avoiding epidemics, among other things). I doubt the Dutch would be able to deal with such dimensions, and I believe they would already have serious problems with guarding 20’000 prisoners in a single camp.
Poking the bear seems to be an even bigger sport among European elites than pickle ball.
Apparently fase one medical trials are done somewhere around three times as fast in China. Does anyone have any insight into the quality of medical trials in China?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Hh667L3XQo
Musk being a trillionaire sounds quite efficient. One chop of a guillotine can free enough wealth to end US homelessness forever! /s
0840 PDT
Anthropic CEO Says Government Should Be Able to Block New AI Models
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-06-10/anthropic-ceo-says-government-should-be-able-to-block-new-models
Anthropic suspends new AI tools over US government security concerns
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c932g3v3e13o
Mediator Pakistan says US and Iran expected to sign initial deal within 24 hours
https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/iran-peace-deal-looms-while-new-military-action-flares-near-strait-hormuz-2026-06-13/
Outgoing US Intelligence Chief Revives Claims About Ukraine Biolabs
https://united24media.com/world/outgoing-us-intelligence-chief-revives-debunked-kremlin-backed-claims-about-ukraine-biolabs-19788
Donald Trump accuses Iran of attacking Indian ships; Tehran rejects charge as ‘baseless’
https://www.thehindu.com/news/international/donald-trump-accuses-iran-of-attacking-indian-ships-tehran-rejects-charge-as-baseless/article71096477.ece
I found this unreadable because of AI slop alarms among other things. I could only skim it without more coffee. Does anyone else have a take on it?
The bill would allow eminent domain seizure plus start of construction before value is determined.
In other words, farmers would be left overnight without compensation or ability to derive income from the seized land. All of that would be determined at some unknown later date, and if the data center company were to go bankrupt before that later date that farmer would never be compensated at all.
Agree with all your points, except the last one–possibly. There’s no mention in the long tweet, but if this Business Roundtable recommended change actually becomes Ohio law, it should probably include an escrow requirement for the condemnor. If it doesn’t, then the Fifth Amendment “takings clause” issues raised by the law would be more serious for the reason you mention.
That last point was my interpretation. I see that as inevitable if it passes.
States can pass laws that are patently un-Constitutional. Courts can invalidate such laws. This proposed Ohio law will go nowhere.
Perhaps on the grounds of lack of due process.
Data centers over food for the masses.
And we’re supposed to think people in authority that allow this to happen are worried about the bad effects from what is happening in the Persian Gulf? They just might think they have scapegoat for what they already have planned.
(Late morning rant before coffee).
Peter Thiel, good Christian that he is, relies on these verses from Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians to back his Antichrist theories:
In his interview with the NYT‘s Douthat, Thiel takes the bolded portion out of context and attributes a “peace and security ” message to Greta Thunberg, which, Thiel says, marks her as the Antichrist.
Thiel is claiming that the Antichrist will be an enemy of “progress” (i.e. Thiel doing what Thiel wants to do) who will be preaching “peace and security” in order to freeze human progress before Thiel gets his flying car.
The actual motif in Paul’s letter, the theme that Thiel is turning upside down, is more interesting. The kind of turning or phase change or revolution that approaches is unique in many ways, but it also shares some important things with other turnings in the past. One characteristic that seems to repeat over and over again is the one described in the Bible as “as in the days of Noah.” Genesis 6 recounts an impending catastrophe of civilizational–no, biospherical–proportions, yet there is no description of how people reacted other than Noah’s obedience to YHWH’s command.
A recounting of the cluelessness of Noah’s neighbors had to wait until it is put on the lips of Jesus:
Luke 17:36-44 (NRSVU)
It’s pretty clear that Paul is thinking of this saying–and Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians dates to well before these Gospels appeared in canonical form–as he’s explaining to the Thessalonians to be watchful rather than complacent. Thiel wants us to be the opposite of watchful. He considers the precautionary principle to be evil. The “peace and security” that Paul is warning about is not a call for caution in the face of threats of planetary proportions as Greta has delivered; it’s an exhortation to go about your business, go to Disneyworld, pick up your Chipotles’, show your smile.
The first appearance of the Noah story historically in the Hebrew bible is arguably in the exilic prophets, Ezekiel and Second Isaiah. That’s not surprising since flood stories are endemic to the Tigris-Euphrates valley, most famously, the Epic of Gilgamesh. What’s interesting is the prominent use that story gets in Ezra’s Genesis. Next to Abraham, Noah is the main man, the second father of mankind.
Now the quote attributed to Jesus in Matthew and Luke would seem to be pretty old, as old as 1 Thessalonians, but did it come from Jesus? Questionable. The text itself says only the Father knows the day, but Jesus knows all about this, before the crucifixion is staring him in the face? More likely, it’s an apocalyptic saying of the very early church, something Paul is very interested in, and upon which he elaborates.
Paul got his point across to the Thessalonians about being watchful. They were so enthusiastic about the coming of the Son of Man that they quit planting crops and making any provision for the future. Paul had to write them another letter telling them to cool it. But no one seems able to get the point across to people today. People don’t so much party and dance as push through with their lives as catastrophe looms larger and larger. No wonder several of the people I listen to for climate information are talking about meditation and spending time in nature. Quite a bit of cognitive dissonance up ahead.
“Thiel is claiming that the Antichrist will be an enemy of “progress” (i.e. Thiel doing what Thiel wants to do) who will be preaching “peace and security” in order to freeze human progress before Thiel gets his flying car.”
It’s sad and crazy that feeding people is considered anti-progress by some.
It’s all a matter of priorities. They have theirs, and our welfare is nowhere to be found on any of their lists. In fact, it appears that attacking our well being is toward the top of many.
The Dead Kennedys would kill it with a song titled “Bari Weiss is the AntiChrist!
If Jello is reading you can have it gratis
I am Spastiweiss?
WRT bonus antidote #2, I didn’t expect the last guest (not spoiling what it is)! :O
0845 PDT
US, Venezuela say Tren de Aragua leader killed in strike
https://www.dw.com/en/us-venezuela-say-tren-de-aragua-leader-killed-in-strike/a-77534071
‘Iran committing indefinitely to never procure or develop nuclear weapons’: Senior US Official
https://www.aninews.in/news/world/us/iran-committing-indefinitely-to-never-procure-or-develop-nuclear-weapons-senior-us-official20260613091607
US blocks global foreign access to Anthropic’s most advanced Claude AI models over national-security risks
https://www.reuters.com/technology/us-blocks-foreign-access-anthropics-most-advanced-ai-models-axios-reports-2026-06-13/
Israeli and Palestinian groups urge world not to abandon two-state solution
https://www.france24.com/en/middle-east/20260612-israeli-and-palestinian-groups-urge-world-not-to-abandon-two-state-solution
0853 PDT
‘Spy turtles’ and ‘spy fish’ being used to monitor Chinese waters, Beijing claims | China
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jun/12/china-spy-turtles-spy-fish-monitor-waters-claims
These lat/long coordinates are at “///yeti.wharfs.horsehair” in the what3words coordinate system.
IMO this is one of the most beautiful engineering accomplishments of the last half of the 20th century, though I wish it would get a bit more traction. what3words has given every 3 metre square in the world a unique address made of 3 random words. It’s a very simple way to communicate precise locations everywhere, and is actually vital in places where street addresses don’t exist or are not useful (like Antarctica or Tokyo).
Last I heard they were trying to get mail and package delivery services to accept these word triads as a delivery address, though this is probably a heavy lift considering how many such services exist. (Even nomadic people, and college students, could have an “address” using this arrangement).
Nice to see there are workers doing fundamental, creative technical thinking even in the age of Trump.
So, there is an agreement on something though there is disagreement on the content of such agreement? Can international relations go more surreal?
Have Iran and the US come to the mutual understanding that they disagree on mostly everything?
I mean, the entire MOU is about agreement on starting negotiations, not what the parties agree about in substance…
This was one of the most horrific discoveries coming out of Ukraine. Gabbard is doing yeoman’s work bringing this to light despite her personal circumstances.
And of course:
Seriously, is there anything too inhuman or savage for American investors to get behind? We can imagine the reaction if the Russians were found to be doing something like this in Texas.
The Russians were initially talking about holding “monkey trials” over this whole matter, which seems very appropriate. Hopefully they will.
Since this was in the RT, I have to guess no US media covered it. Imagine that! If true. It should be front page news on every paper and news outlet in the US of A. But we have more important things to worry about like taking the Trump name off the Kennedy Center.
My social media feed was full of that yesterday and today. I read there was even a live feed so you could watch. Not sure if that’s true, but it was a huge thing that people were overjoyed with. It was the outrage of the day, but on the good side. I’m no fan of Trump, but the amount of people who are totally, and I mean totally, consumed with the guy is off the charts. Their entire life revolves around hating Donald Trump. To the point NOTHING else matters. Everything is about Trump. Everything. It’s insane to watch.
I can’t believe it’s healthy. And I know people who went to the doctor for happy pills to deal with their trauma. That’s probably not good either. What a world.
This is right along the lines of the schemes hatched by the bad guys in Bond movies. I am wondering if the real world is being influenced by movies or if the movies are catching up to the real world.
Great that Gabbard has confirmed the original Russian claims, which for months I thought of as propaganda. By itself it would be a stretch to justify the invasion, but as an indicator of hostile intent works pretty well.
To go out in grand style she could bring out the truth about the Bucha massacre.
Or release the entire Epstein file collection unredacted.
Hopefully the Kennedy Center will hold on to the words being removed from its facade for the time being. I’m certain the American public can find something else to serve as a suitable memorial for Trump, and taxpayers already paid for the letters.
We could have a national contest. Maybe the Epstein Ranch in New Mexico?
1145 PDT
Anthropic CEO Floats Tax on AI Firms to Fund Universal Income
https://news.bloombergtax.com/daily-tax-report-international/anthropic-ceo-floats-tax-on-ai-firms-to-fund-universal-income
Does Amodei believe in Hell?
Thanks for the laugh. You probably nailed it.
I think he’s only doing it to rehabilitate their ‘ethical AI’ image, knowing his friends wouldn’t let this proposal fly. He’ll become the altruistic billionaire who fought for the little people, and squeeze Altman out of the way until Claude becomes something too ubiquitous to break away from (like Whatsapp), then peel the mask off.
The talking point I’ve heard is ” I’m just trying to do good>”
Dovetails nicely with Abundance.
No pushback is appreciated
1150 PDT
Trump says Iran deal will be signed Sunday, Strait of Hormuz to open immediately after
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/13/trump-iran-deal-strait-of-hormuz.html
To resilc: What would be worth $300bn?
Just spitballin’…
Don’t know where this fits, maybe Life Under 2.0
Something I did not expect: A thoughtful note on “belonging” from my state (MA) representative. Here is a portion of it. Worth sharing, I think:
“As the justices explored the implications of overturning a principle that has been settled for generations, my thoughts kept returning to a more fundamental question: belonging. Beyond the legal doctrines and constitutional interpretations lies a deeper issue about who gets to claim membership in the American story.
What does it mean to tell millions of people born here that the place they have always called home may no longer fully recognize them as its own? If they do not belong here, where, exactly, do they belong?
So many of the debates playing out around us are, at their core, arguments about belonging on a smaller, more personal scale. Who can afford to remain in a community, and who is pushed out? Who gets to participate in civic life, and who is too exhausted from working simply to survive? Who receives care at a health center, and who is turned away because “we don’t offer that care here” or “your insurance isn’t accepted”?
These questions may seem distinct, but they all ask the same thing: who is included, and who is not?
In the end, I am not sure most people want to spend their days thinking about government. They simply want it to work. They want it to see them. They want to know there is a place for them within it. They want to belong. Yet too often, our politics is shaped by the assumption that belonging is a scarce resource: that if one group gains recognition, another must lose it. That if some people belong, others cannot.
Lindsay Sabadosa, State Representative 1st Hampshire District.
havent seen this anywhere else, yet…and i have never been able to access israeli press(for some reason,lol):https://x.com/academic_la/status/2065891425536090186
Amazing. All I can say is, “Let’s hope.”
for me it’s kayfabe until time proves otherwise…
A good cop bad cop set up for a decap.
The terms are unacceptable to the “polite” company.
Agreed, sadly. IMO, this, from point number four, is confirmation,
“The real test of the deal is removing the uranium and destroying it. If that doesn’t happen, the sense of a bad deal will turn into something more concrete.”
Text of that tweet:
Netanyahu has decided to accept the Iranian deal. Security officials are despondent and see it as a disaster. Ynet brings some high level quotes from them:
1) A senior Israeli official said “Nobody is happy with this. We understand it is not good for us, and that it harms Israeli interests. What is troubling is that Israel cannot influence it. Its voice is not being heard.”
2) The anger at Trump is palpable.: “Trump screwed us, we took the hit. We’re no longer in the loop and can’t really influence anything.”
3) Israelis fear Iran will be economically revived: “They’ve blown money on the Iranians, who are getting everything they want. They’ll build a missile corps, and we’ll have to pour money into interceptors.” Israel sees oil revenue flowing back into the exact capabilities the war was meant to degrade.
4) They don’t believe a deal will adequately deal with the nuclear issue: “The real test of the deal is removing the uranium and destroying it. If that doesn’t happen, the sense of a bad deal will turn into something more concrete.”
5) They fear this will embolden Iran: “Iran has smelled that it can achieve things by force, and it will use that against its neighbors and against us.”
6) The deepest worry is not military. It is perception. After months of direct fire, Iran is seen across the region as the side that took the pressure and did not fold: “the regional working assumption will be that it was signed under Iranian pressure and American capitulation, rather than the reverse.”
Israel is concerned that Iran will be stronger, the US will be weaker and that the future for it will be bleak in the region. This war has been a disaster for Israel [BP: yayyy!].
, and we’ll have to pour money into interceptors.
Stop whining, it’s good for GDP?
I mean it works us usians, but then we don’t have free college and universal healthcare so why should we americans think we’re equal?
Bleepity bleeping bleepity bleepers…
And via Fars Telegram
Possibility of stopping Zionist ground operations in Lebanon
🔹The Israeli Radio and Television Organization, citing security sources, reported that the regime’s army has prepared itself to receive an order to halt ground operations and advance in Lebanon; a move that is said to have been proposed within the framework of ongoing agreements and consultations between Washington and Tehran.
🔹According to this report, the Zionist regime does not intend to withdraw from the buffer zone in southern Lebanon, and the status of this area will be one of the focal points of the upcoming negotiations and talks.
🔹The Zionist media outlet stated that perhaps the remaining days and hours could be a decisive opportunity to expand military operations and dominate new areas in Lebanon.
@Farsna – Link
—-
Can Israel be pushed out of the “buffer zone”?
And whither Gaza?
Cheapest gas station here in western NC is 3.30 with cash. Down 50 cents. We’re so screwed.
Another Bidenomics sighting on the way to deal with estate mail. She might have been in her 40s or 50s. Two lane back road. Fast. People go fast. Not much traffic though. No shoulder. Just the road and grass. Peoples homes off the main road. Maybe she was going to Walmart. I don’t know.
Ambulance on the side of the road on the way back. She’s gone. Hit and run I assume. Was hit moments after I went by probably, maybe 10. Not far from where i saw her. Must have been down for 10 or 20 minutes.
Stay safe out there.
We have money for trillionaires but not for a living wage for transportation or sidewalks.
Iran Rejects Trump’s Deal-Signing Claim, Calls Sunday Deadline a Birthday ‘Propaganda Event’
https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/iran-denies-trump-diplomatic-agreement-claims-1802571
1550 PDT
House Democrat slams US-Iran peace deal as ‘basically a surrender document’
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/5923043-iran-deal-criticized-moulton/
This guy is on the armed services committee. And fucking stupid.
What exactly do you not understand about Iran having escalation dominance? You think you could get a better deal?
I guess Moulton is a vote for a global depression. Thanks bro, for nothing!
1554 PDT
Trump administration eliminates health care programs for LGBTQ+ veterans
https://www.advocate.com/politics/national/trump-abandons-lgbtq-veterans
In many developments people don’t want sidewalks. Because very few people walk. In a northern Virginia community I visited late last year there are no sidewalks. The lots are large as are the houses on them. There are drainage ditches off to the sides of the roads, but no sidewalks. I took daily walks and often got strange looks for doing so. I decided that I would not like to live in such places. Others prefer such places. People who are out walking are considered threatening. America is a strange place. Americans are a strange people.
scahill interviewing an iranian professor:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbgoJTR1GX8
1640 PDT
Five killed as Israel hits south Lebanon, issues forced displacement orders
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/6/13/one-killed-as-israel-hits-south-lebanon-issues-forced-displacement-orders
Re: Smartphones and the fertility drop
Uh, what is this recovery of which you speak? Did it extend beyond the top 10%? Hey, let’s just blame iPhones!
I’m on mom patrol in a 10% area and the delusion is thick.
Obama really does have a summer home in Trump’s mind-
https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/116743815454221461