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Links 6/28/2026

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The Year 536 AD Was So Bad It May Have Been the Worst Time in Human History to Be Alive ZME Science

Astronomers Catch the Glowing Shockwave of a Galaxy on the Move Universe Today

Women do not want male robots Ipsos

You Will Never Guess What Teens Are Doing in Waymos Futurism

COVID-19/Pandemics

Updated 2025-2026 COVID-19 Vaccine Nearly Halved ED Visits, Hospitalizations in CDC-Funded Study Pharmacy Times

Not if, but when: What could cause the next global pandemic? CGTN

Climate/Environment

Europe’s record heatwave: does the continent have a new climate? Nature

Environmental Defenders Remain Among World’s Most Targeted Activists Inside Climate News

South of the Border

Venezuela leader jeered as rescue efforts hampered Al Jazeera

Don’t Let Sanctions Strangle Cuba’s Transition To Markets Reason

Trump Claims Victory in Colombia as Right-Wing Populist Wins Presidential Election Drop Site News

China?

Global hydropower outlook report puts China at the head of the pack SCMP

Kill Chain Dominance: China’s is Producing More ‘Flying Radar’ Systems Than the World Combined Under the KJ-500 Program Military Watch Magazine

China’s tungsten export controls and AI chip demand collide, reshaping the global specialty gas supply chain Cryptopolitan

I Drove China’s Best-Selling Car. It’s On Top For A Reason Inside Evs

India

India’s late monsoon rains leave cities and fields parched SCMP

What is egocentric data? Will india become world’s back office for egocentric data collection? is it a good thing or a bad thing? WION

Protecting elephants helps safeguard India’s forests as powerful carbon stores: Study The Hindu

Africa

Who profits from Africa’s gold? Al Jazeera

As Ebola deaths top 300, African officials meet to boost regional readiness CIDRAP

A new wave of xenophobia is sweeping through South Africa, with migrants murdered, homes destroyed and thousands displaced El Pais

European Disunion

EU targets Amazon and Microsoft cloud services under new Digital Markets Act rules technobezz

Brussels ridiculed over plans to start allowing influencers to cover summits – but only if they’re Europhiles, with anyone anti-EU set to be banned Daily Mail

The EU’s Russia-veto problem has moved – from Orbán to Bulgaria’s Radev euobserver

EU gives US Trade Deal final approval ahead of Trump deadline The International Affairs

Old Blighty

Andy Burnham distanced himself from UK Prime Minister Starmer, but may be stuck with his policies AP

‘London cooking’: Why can’t the UK cope with the heat; when will it adapt? Al Jazeera

Israel v. Gaza, Yemen, Lebanon, Syria, Iran


Hezbollah chief rejects Lebanon-Israel deal, demands Israeli withdrawal Andolu Agency

Blame the War, Not the Peace Deal, for Iran’s Leverage The American Conservative

Could Israel’s coming election see an end to Netanyahu’s political career? Al Jazeera

The Executioner’s Noose, Not the Scales of Justice: Crime and Punishment in Israel and Palestine Fair Observer

UAW Divests from Israel Bonds Over Gaza The Analysis News

New Not-So-Cold War

Kyiv and Moscow trade strikes as Ukraine hits arms factory deep in Russia Euronews

Poland’s Tusk calls for ‘mutual respect’ during row with Ukraine BBC

Belarus’s leader is stuck between Kyiv and the Kremlin GZERO

Big Brother Is Watching You Watch

The U.S. Coast Guard put 33-ft. surveillance drones on the Great Lakes, and privacy fears followed them into the water techy44

Personal Information at Risk The Revolving Door Project

Imperial Collapse Watch

California city rolls out ‘glamping’ for homeless amid fierce criticism over costs NY Post

It’s Been Two Years Since the Supreme Court Made Homelessness a Crime. The Result Speaks for Itself.

Trump 2.0

America’s 250th Celebration Is Donald Trump’s Lost Cause The New Republic

The expensive twist in Trump’s campaign against wind energy Quartz

New U.S. Iran Strikes Show Trump Has Started a ‘Forever War,’ Exasperated Officials Say Zeteo

After progressive US primary wins, Trump takes aim at ‘godless communists’ Al Jazeera

Musk Matters

Elon Musk wants to build a city called Starbase in Texas Mashable

Tesla CEO Elon Musk Pushes Back After Ford CEO Calls BYD Best EV Rival — Points To Key ‘Limiting Factor’ In China Stocktwits

Elon Musk Teases X Money: Is Dogecoin Officially Left Behind? Bitget App

Democrat Death Watch

John Fetterman ravages Democratic Party’s ‘orgy of socialism’ after primary turmoil NY Post

CBC pushes back on Slotkin’s call for ‘new leadership’ among Democrats The Hill

Centrist Democrats Rebuke Party’s Left Wing: ‘We Are Capitalist, Not Socialist’ NY Times

Immigration

Two SCOTUS Victories: One for Trump on TPS, the Other for the English Language on Asylum Center for Immigration Studies

UN calls for ‘prompt investigations’ of deaths in US immigration custody The Guardian

Our No Longer Free Press

TikTok Doesn’t Want Us To Talk About the News Talking Points Memo

AI News Summaries Are Becoming the New Gatekeepers of Information LA Progressive

Mr. Market Is Moody

Trump’s economic pivot isn’t coming. He’s made that clear. (Opinion) Daily Camera

‘That’s going to push prices higher’: Oil expert warns of rising prices this summer KIRO News Radio

Stock market posts weekly losses as tech sell-off deepens over OpenAI IPO delay ECIKS.org

AI

The AI bubble has further to run despite the looming crash The Guardian

View / Hollywood shouldn’t fear AI Semafor

AI is creating America’s next underclass The Hill

The Bezzle

Tokyo Police Arrest Sanctioned Prince Group Exec in $15B Crypto Scam Probe The Crypto Times

Americans are inundated with suspected scams. New polls show why few victims report them PBS

Guillotine Watch

Antidote du jour (via)

See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here

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55 comments

  1. The Rev Kev

    “Tesla CEO Elon Musk Pushes Back After Ford CEO Calls BYD Best EV Rival — Points To Key ‘Limiting Factor’ In China”

    Elon Musk does not have to worry about this as he knows that the Federal government will stop low-cost EVs from entering America. Just a coupla days ago Polestar – a Swedish company – had its EV banned from the US because it could be a national security threat or something or other-

    https://www.carsauce.com/news/polestar-banned-from-selling-new-cars-in-the-us-from-2027

    This is why America can’t have nice things.

    1. Huntly

      FYI: Polestar is owned by Geely, a Chinese company. I don’t agree with the ban on Chinese cars, just clarifying.

      1. Tom Stone

        My Son in Law recently bought a Polestar rather than an ICE vehicle, it is well made.

    2. tegnost

      As discerning readers know, neither “free market” nor “capitalism” define the american economy.
      It’s a gigundus control fraud. Kind of like how pensions are required to invest in space x so the grifters can get out on top as just one of many examples.

    1. chris

      Well this is great news. Combined with what the Reverend shared above the path is now open for our government to crush the union and then bailout the car companies so that they can handle the transition to EVs…

      This is something Yves and others have discussed on NC for a while. People mention that investors have a say in what companies do and that the market will correct to accommodate their wishes but when shareholders attempt to do things that our elite don’t like the reaction from the government is often severe. I wonder how the Democrat party will react to a significant element of their support choosing to divest from Israel?

    1. The Rev Kev

      Why not? There was a proxy war between the CIA and the Defense Department in Syria a coupla years ago. Only difference is that both Vance and Rubio want the Presidency.

  4. The Rev Kev

    “TikTok Doesn’t Want Us To Talk About the News”

    Wasn’t that the whole point of Congress forcing the sale of Tik Tok so that the Ellisons could buy it up and censor it? You can watch all the cat videos that you want but as soon as the talk turns political on a social media platform, then out comes the censorship. I have to admit that it is a weird sort of censorship as a lot of hard right stuff is allowed to appear on those platforms and it is anything kinda lefty that is cracked down upon. I suppose this reflects the hard right views of the owners of those social media platforms like Musk and the Ellisons. What is certain is that no social media platform will be allowed to operate in the US unless it is US controlled and censored.

    1. TimH

      It’s a 3 pronged attack against dissemination of information that governments don’t want spread.
      1. Ensure that the social media companies are owned by oligarchs happy to control information
      2. Remove social media anonymity by forcing registration to prove age, and making VPN traffic either illegal or transparent to governments
      3. Repeal Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA), so non social-media sites such as NC can’t afford the cost of checking every comment, or the risk of not checking

  5. tegnost

    I’ve been noticing this “centrist democrat” talking point lately and it is a burr in my saddle. They are right wing dems vs left wing dems. They’re only “centrist” in the sense that they agree with the republicans on the most vile issues. If one sees centrist dems v left wing (hello, one wing does not make a bird.) dem meme it is absolute bs propaganda full stop.

    2. Kurtismayfield

      Its propaganda to move the window so that only Center Right candidates can be considered. These people would lose their minds if an actual socialist ran. A quote from the article in NYP:

      Those wins came as DSA candidates made gains in the state assembly by running campaigns centered around the complete dismantling of western ideology and progress.

      Too late. This has already been accomplished by moving so far right the powers that be cannot think of a society without mass surveillance, complete corporate control, and the crushing of any political opposition.

    3. Dr. John Carpenter

      Well this talking point has existed for a long time and I’d argue it’s right wing dems vs slightly less right/center right dems but otherwise you’re speaking the facts.

    4. nippersdad

      One has to wonder how they think this plays with those of us who grew up with a New Deal/Great Society Democratic party. The virtual admission that they have all been essentially Republicans since the advent of the “New Dems” under Clinton answers a lot of questions they might not want asked.

    5. ambrit

      I have always taken the view that “centrists” are those people that get f—-d by both sides simultaneously.
      Politics ain’t beanbag bud.

    1. jefemt

      I guess I need to check this subject out.

      My first reaction was, “What about 2026?” 8 Billions, information at the speed of light, Anthropocene and Sixth Extinction, all bombarding the Monkey Mind with the Human Condition in a brutish, beautiful fundamentally inequitable closed loop system called spaceship earth?
      Seeing the unrealized potential of choosing a new sustainable path through Love and Sharing?

      What will the history books say?

      1. ciroc

        Without a doubt, this year will be remembered as one of the worst in human history because of what has happened. To be honest, I am more pessimistic now than I was during the pandemic because I have no idea what the future holds.

  7. DJG, Reality Czar

    Before you run out to see the Odyssey, this summer’s Barbie, you might reconsider participating in still another example of Anglo-American (Northwest Euro) projection of racial stereotypes, of colonialism, and of imperialism.

    Farya Faraji gets this organized and gets it right. Meanwhile, rather than approaching these epics from the point of view of the People of the Olive Tree, Usonians get treated to another Red Maga Blue Maga extravaganza:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFn1JfOd3b0&t=4379s

    Meanwhile, I’ll wait for the English to return to the Parthenon Marbles to Athens…

  8. TimH

    Per that link on scams:

    Most Americans are inundated with scam attempts on a daily basis — and about 3 in 10 have personally lost money or personal information to scams, according to a new AP-NORC survey.

    A separate survey conducted by Gallup and the Stop Scams Alliance that was provided exclusively to the AP found that last year alone, about 1 in 10 U.S. adults said they or someone else from their household was deceived by a scammer into losing money or providing access to a financial account, with nearly half saying they lost more than $500.

    I wonder whether Americans are particularly gullible due to culture and/or education…

    2. Lefty Godot

      Our local police log shows occasional visits to the police by citizens who got scammed by phishing phone calls or bad Facebook Marketplace transactions. There’s nothing the police can do other than record the details of the encounter. There’s no practical way for most people to get any redress if they’ve been scammed, just “Freeze all your credit and notify your banks.” Which besides being a giant pain does nothing to punish the perps.

  9. tegnost

    I used to live in boulder so I ventured to the daily camera link…
    Trump recognizing an economic risk is not the same as pivoting his agenda to address an economic condition, like excruciatingly high prices for gas, groceries and other consumer goods. A healthy majority of voters have considered those issues a reality for most of the past year. If Trump was intent on fixing the economy, he wouldn’t spend all his time and political leverage attempting to convince congressional Republicans to pass legislation that has nothing to do with economy.
    Yawn.

    Right, because the other guys didn’t do the same damn thing.

    1. flora

      Maybe they want us dead. Think of how much money that would save govts.
      From Redacted: (guest has poor audio mic)

      Canada’s MAID Program Is More DEMONIC Than We Thought

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCQ1DvEsA9I

      In the US, of course, elderly people with covid infections were discharged into nursing homes where presumably could infect all the residents.

      1. flora

        Then there’s the push in the US to allow transitioning of minors. Sterilizing minor children.

        What is this nihilism in the modern West? Where did it come from? Who benefits?

        1. ambrit

          No one benefits, but the extant elites imagine that they are immune to the fallout resulting from their policies.
          I would also add the continuing degradation of the health care of the general population. This appears to be regulated by the material wealth and power of the individual involved.
          The other “transition” I am watching is that of the American Republic into a formal American Empire. That seems to involve the emasculation of the American public. American politocos have been “clipped” for years already. Let us refer to it as “The Gelded Age.”

      2. Carla

        AND, as a free bonus, those patients discharged to nursing homes also infected nursing home workers, overwhelmingly underpaid people of color in the prime of their lives… until then.

  10. jefemt

    Sad news under the morbidly curious category: just saw a headline that three fire fighters perished, and two were seriously injured, in a ‘blowover’ in far eastern Utah/ western Colorado conflagrations. Not even July.

    The whirled news for the armchair- riding Gizmo-at-hand crew!
    Screw oil and Ploymarket(tm) — it’s a Popcorn Futures kinda summer!

    More on fires– linked yesterday, worth a read: from High County News https://www.hcn.org/issues/49-6/

  11. pjay

    – ‘CBC pushes back on Slotkin’s call for ‘new leadership’ among Democrats’ – The Hill

    A fitting story for the ‘Democrat Death Watch’ section. The Congressional Black Caucus defends Establishment shill and Zionist champion Jeffries from CIA Democrat war defender Slotkin. I don’t know who Slotkin has in mind in terms of “new leadership,” but I’ll bet they’re not anti-war, anti-Zionist socialists.

    Jeffries, Slotkin, Fetterman, “centrists” like Tom Suozzi and Josh Shapiro – now that’s what I call a Democrat Death Watch!

    1. John Wright

      It appears Nancy Pelosi will exit with a whimper, not a bang.

      When I mention that we haven’t hear much from Pelosi on Gaza, Iran or Ukraine, people respond with “but she’s not in office”.

      But she is until January 2027.

  12. TomDority

    Democratic socialists – the term is being used divisively by the Dems and Republicans…why even Joe Biden said there will be no socialism when he was campaigning. I prefer progressive as the more appropriate note.
    What is socialism? why do we not call the republican party the Republican Fascists?
    Are we talking in stark terms when it should be on a continuum? Is it too hard to imagine, outside the binary, that the nation is composed and operated with a mixed socio/economic dynamic which has, many times, swung through different compositions?
    Are both parties in lockstep where any shift towards progressivism is deemed a threat to their own power? If yes, then it is an example of abusive power – ‘where they wield the peoples authority for their own interests or for a narrow faction……’- “A Resistance History of the United States
    by Tad Stoermer” (the best read in my opinion – well, also Thoreau)
    Was it socialisms (progressive) dominate mix that brought us the electric grid? The dams and infrastructure? Social Security, landing on the moon? the atomic bomb? the declaration of independence? the constitution?….I digress and overstate the point.
    A few days ago – I heard that Trump was supposed to sign a ‘the most biggest change in housing affordability legislation .. bipartisan bill ever. -21st century road to housing act.
    After reading that…I thought, that the bill has a hole in it so large… an entire interstate highway for the FIRE sector could be built with all the on ramps, exits, highway robbers and toll takers to make bank -with a final offramp on this road called serfdom via the Genius Act with the stable coin toll booth shakedown.
    Maybe it was a good thing that it was not signed….even a blind squirrel finds a nut – .
    Anyway – thanks for your tolerance

  13. Deb Schultz

    For quite some time now, I have felt that most of the bills that manage to receive “bi-partisan” support sufficient to pass both House and Senate are poison pills for the left, however you define that. Perhaps this is because there are far too many Democrats who believe in some sort of mythic common sense practicality where all interested parties can get a fair shake and no apple carts get turned over. I’m thinking here of Democrats like Chris Coons, Glenn Ivey, Wes Moore, etc etc. I wouldn’t include Fetterman in this group; he’s just a useful shill for them, an excuse.

    These Dems think of themselves as very knowledgeable and unfairly attacked for their pragmatism. These are the sort of politicians whose pragmatism got us the ACA. They are Rube Goldberg machers who always hand-wave toward a better future that can only be assured by sticking with the patchwork make-do bullshit they and their friends across the aisle pass. And they always tell you how HARD it was.

    They are either personally very wealthy or taking big donations from the likes of AIPAC and big tech/pharma/ag/finance/federal contractors. They are corrupt without actually being criminal. They are power-hungry and responsibility-averse. They are not adult except in size.

    1. Jason Boxman

      As I’ve been fond of saying, whenever anything in Washington is bipartisan, hold on to your wallet: You’re about to be robbed.

  15. johnnyme

    Vatican accuses EU of double standards on war

    ROME — Opening Pope Leo XIV’s closed-door conference of the world’s cardinals on war, the Vatican’s doctrinal chief accused the European Union of applying international law selectively, sanctioning some military invasions while treating others differently.

    Introducing the discussions on Friday, Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, argued that governments increasingly apply moral and legal principles according to political convenience rather than universal standards.

    “If a country is an enemy, it is condemned as undemocratic and sanctioned in various ways; but if it is an ally, the fact that it lacks freedom of expression, human rights or democracy is ignored,” he said.

    “The European Union, in fact, imposes economic sanctions on one country, and sends financial aid and weapons to another; yet fails to do the same in the face of other, even more serious invasions with even more brutal consequences for entire populations,” he said.

    “These contradictions … suggest that, in practice, concerns boil down to the political and economic interests of different regions of the globe,” Fernández said. “There is no longer a real and stable framework of truth and values.”

  16. Jason Boxman

    From AI is creating America’s next underclass

    John Mac Ghlionn is a writer and researcher who explores culture, society and the impact of technology on daily life.

    John needs to explore a little more deeply what LLMs actually are: stochastic parrots.

    The tools improve at a punishing, exponential pace. Work that recently required a specialist and a six-figure salary now requires one person and a clear request. The walls around professional expertise are being demolished in real-time.

    Outside of limited domains where we can validate the output rigorously (not law or medicine) such as coding, and where the project is simply a one-shot, I don’t think so. Have fun maintaining the technical debt from an LLM authored and managed code base. What’s more, after people lose those skills, no one is even going to know how to manage these things. You’ll have to “trust” the LLM to get it right.

    There was a post from Eric Elliott, a popular JavaScript software engineer, that’s deep into LLMs and said once that he was an early tester of ChatGPT. Anyway, he’d said that agents, you need rigorous tests for the output and multiple adversarial agents testing the code base, or something similar, and my reply was wow that must be really expensive! It’s going to be cheaper to have humans.

    When the token subsidies finally end, we’re gonna see just how much cheaper humans are. As a bonus, you can reproduce your own profession. (Not particularly relevant to elite, but ought to be for the rest of us.)

    John’s another dutiful idiot that’s singing Jensen’s tune.

    1. In Cold Chud

      I didn’t see your comment while I was plodding along on mine, below. But I should probably clarify that I only granted the technical argument in order to address what I saw as the core stupidity of the piece.

    2. Alphonse

      My nit-picking supports your overall point.

      limited domains where we can validate the output rigorously . . . such as coding . . . you need rigorous tests for the output and multiple adversarial agents testing the code base, or something similar . . . that must be really expensive!

      In narrow cases it is possible to prove code correct, but in the general case it is not possible. E.g.:

      In computability theory, the halting problem is the decision problem of determining, from a description of an arbitrary computer program and an input, whether the program will eventually halt (finish running) or continue to run forever. Alan Turing proved in 1937 that the halting problem is undecidable, meaning that no general algorithm exists that can correctly solve the problem for all possible program–input pairs.

      If one can’t figure out whether the program will halt on specific input then it’s clearly not possible to know whether it performs correctly on all potential inputs. Testing can increase confidence, but (again, except in narrow cases) it cannot exhaust all possible inputs and behaviours. You can’t test every input, so you have to have insight into which inputs might cause problems. Did you test the code on February 29? On 2000-01-01? When 32-bit Unix timestamps overflow on 2038-01-19?

      Computers excel at repetition. If you’re coding the same thing over and over it’s only because you haven’t gotten around to implementing it in a reusable way. DRY, as they say: Don’t Repeat Yourself. A lot of programming is rote, probably partly because it maps neatly onto repeatable industrial practices making managers feel that the work is predictable and under control, when in fact it’s wasteful, and because of a belief that hiring interchangeable mediocre programmers is preferable to being dependent on excellence.

      The real challenge in software is a negotiation between requirements and capabilities. Requirements seem easy, but no-one really knows what they want until they do it: in part because you can’t have exactly what you want – the limitations of the technology (or of reality) force trade-offs, which in turn require judgment. Then there’s the problem of implementing it in a maintainable way. As Dijkstra pointed out, the problem of programming is not communicating with the computer – it’s happy to accept machine code. The purpose of programming languages is to communicate with humans, not machines. Programming is in this sense a lot like writing. Clarity, concision and structure and structure are as important as correctness. Understanding someone else’s code is hard, but if you can’t understand what it does you are liable to have difficult knowing whether it does it correctly, which edge cases should be tested, how to maintain or extend it, or the subtle understanding of the problem domain that may be embedded in it. (Question: is AI any good at understanding what code does or is for?)

      I haven’t done any programming recently, but I been told that AI can be very helpful for programming – within limits. Programming is not like an industrial process. The part that matters is the irreducible core of originality and relationship to real world practice. Jevon’s Paradox may apply. Even if it did replace coders the problem of requirements would remain. By reducing the cost of programming AI could increase demand for developers.

  17. In Cold Chud

    Fear of falling double feature

    “AI is creating America’s next underclass”

    If you think avoiding AI makes you a noble purist, just wait until you find out your salary is being eclipsed by a middle schooler who treats ChatGPT like a calculator.

    Yes, because when automation replaces skilled labor with de-skilled labor, the de-skilled labor is always paid more, and is super secure, too!

    I’m no fan of our new algorithm overlords either […]

    O RLY?

    “It’s Been Two Years Since the Supreme Court Made Homelessness a Crime. The Result Speaks for Itself.”

    Somehow the liberal chestnut Donald Trump embodies the American id, dutifully rolled out for his routine displays of racism and misogyny, never applies to his attitude toward the homeless,* even though, unlike those other prejudices, it’s almost universal, and universally acceptable.

    It can’t be repeated enough that homelessness is our society’s mechanism for keeping everyone else in line, the real kicker in the late Alan Greenspan’s favored worker insecurity.

    *This is probably the best-established manifestation of his tendency to perceive suffering and those who experience it as a hygiene problem for others, though not the only one–see Gaza. Trump could read “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner,” and his response would be: Ehh, yeah, hose that shit out.

  18. Rabbit

    NC in violation of the peace agreement following the Civil War. States are prohibited from displaying the flag of the Confederacy. So, now we’re talking treason again.

  21. thoughtfulperson

    “Centrist Democrats Rebuke Party’s Left Wing: ‘We Are Capitalist, Not Socialist’ ” NY Times

    Just wanted to improve accuracy of headline: “Centrist Democrats Rebuke Party’s Left Wing: ‘We support welfare for corporations, Not for people!’ ”

    See for example, AI bailout, the start of which is already underway with bipartisan support! Not to mention the ever growing Military Industrial Congressional Complex, Prison Industrial Complex etc etc

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