Major quake off Philippines kills at least 15, triggers tsunami warnings Straits Times
Sunflower power: Inside Barry Callebault’s bid to win the chocolate alternatives race Food Dive
Get-a-Waymo: How a burglar used a robotaxi to flee the scene in a first-of-its kind S.F. case San Francisco Chronicle
Climate/Environment
We Are in the Anthropocene—Now What? Earth’s Future
Heatwaves Are Driving a Worldwide Surge in Air Conditioning OilPrice
Biodiversity loss will decrease the future creditworthiness of nations Nature
In the Smoky Mountains, a volunteer effort aims to document every species — before it’s too late Grist
Ebola
Ebola Cases Top 500 in Congo as Patient Escapes Add to Troubles Bloomberg
Chinese medical team arrives in DR Congo to help fight Ebola, ‘filling US void’ South China Morning Post
The U.S. Ebola Response Is a Harbinger of Worse Things to Come MedPage Today
Pandemics
Water
Pennsylvania Communities Are Beating Back a Wave of Water System Privatization Truthout
Water wars washing away South Asia’s fragile peace Asia Times
The Koreas
Thousands demand South Korea repeat local elections after ballot shortage Business Standard
Japan
Japan’s green steel transition faces a paradox Tokyo Review China?
China
‘Trusted and resilient’: Taiwan’s bid to position itself as a China-free drone hub Straits Times
Southeast Asia
Rupiah’s plunge pushes Indonesia’s manufacturers to the edge Asia Times
Syraqistan
What the Wounds Are Telling Us De Volkskrant. This September report on Israeli snipers and drones targeting children in Gaza just won the European Press Prize 2026.
Nine Palestinians Killed across Gaza as Israel Targets Khan Yunis Police Point Palestine Chronicle
***
Yves with a lot more in Iran War post.
IRGC announces Operation Victory, responds to Israeli attacks Al Mayadeen
Houthis declare ‘total’ ban on Israeli maritime navigation in Red Sea Anadolu Agency
Iraqi resistance warns US: Any intervention on behalf of Israel will set your bases ablaze Press TV
***
Treasury Department plans to use Iranian assets to help U.S. Gulf allies recover, source says CBS News
Saudi’s NEOM faces $16 billion bill to cancel NEOM contracts Semafor
European Disunion
Inflation beating pay rises in Europe: Where are workers losing the most? Euronews
Old Blighty
Trump considers buying Chagos Islands The Telegraph
New Not-So-Cold War
Joint E3 Leaders’ Statement with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine: 7 June 2026 Prime Minister’s Office, 10 Downing Street
Zionists and Banderites Events in Ukraine
Ukraine’s €90bn EU loan is ready to roll out. But where will the money go? Euronews
Explosion of Ukrainian naval drone in Romania’s Constanța port triggers fresh tensions Intellinews
How Exactly Did Finland Receive Advance Notice Of Ukraine’s Drone Attack Ahead Of SPIEF? Andrew Korybko
Latvia and Ukraine launch strategic drone and air defence partnership BNN
Momentum builds for Brussels memorial to victims of dictatorship Euractiv
The Caucasus
Armenian PM declares victory in June 7 election as opposition parties claim irregularities in poll Intellinews
L’affaire Epstein
The Cop who Epstein Couldn’t Stop The Epstein Files by Julie K. Brown
Trump 2.0
DOJ has other routes to payouts beyond Trump ‘anti-weaponization’ fund The Hill
WOW — Trump crashes out and cuts his interview with Welker short as she presses him on his lack of evidence for claiming elections are rigged
“You’re either crooked or you’re stupid. Let’s call it quits. Because I’ve had enough. Thank you darling,” he tells her.”
“I traveled… pic.twitter.com/qQaNIDnX4y
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 7, 2026
Are Latter-day Saints Christian? The U.S. Defense Department doesn’t appear to think so. Salt Lake Tribune
Only 12% of Americans Believe the Iran War Has Benefited the Nation Antiwar
Democrats Suck
Monopoly Round-Up: Graham Platner and Stock Market Democrats Matt Stoller
Wars Come Home
Days of intense military training exercises at empty buildings have Southern California on edge Los Angeles Times
Big Brother Is Watching You Watch
I paid someone to hack my Meta glasses New Things with Joanna Stern. “The goal: Remove the LED recording light that tells people in my vicinity when they’re being filmed…”
A Flock license plate reader linked a San Diego man to a violent crime. He was five miles away. Times of San Diego
MAHA
How sick is sick enough? New Medicaid work rule worries patient advocates, states. Politico. Work until you drop.
AI
Slop, productivity, and why the AI-fueled world is going nowhere mighty fast Gary Marcus
OpenAI is still working on that ‘super app’ TechCrunch
AI: just one big trade Michael Roberts
The political geography of AI exposure Brookings
And Since the red-blue breakdown isn’t all that illuminating:
Working class neighborhoods are resisting data centers at 5 times the rate of wealthy ones Blood in the Machine
Casino Nation
Kalshi asks paid influencers to delete posts sowing doubts over LA mayoral election Semafor
Our Famously Free Press
A Permanent Coup d’État – The Censorship Industry and the Exploitation Model of Digital War Capitalism (Part I) Forum Geopolitica
Economy
Things could get really scary, so why aren’t we preparing? Common Weal
Antitrust
A $500 billion reminder of how the duopoly wins the internetDigital Content Next. ICYMI Google and Meta now control half of the global advertising market.
The Bezzle
Texas grid flags risks as data centers, crypto sites fail voltage tests Reuters
The skeptic’s guide to humanoid robots going viral on the Internet Ars technica
If you don’t fall for these extortionists’ calls, they’ll show up with USB sticks The Register
Mr. Market
Oil market calm masks a host of unknowns Economic Times
Class Warfare
Algorithmic Price-Fixing in Health Insurance, Explained Boondoggle
Trucking’s Window of Opportunity Phenomenal World
The Peripheral Programmable Mutter
Antidote du jour (via):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
“Trump considers buying Chagos Islands”
‘US officials draw up proposal to bypass Britain and make its own deal to take control of Diego Garcia’
Abraham Maslow wrote in 1966, ‘it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_the_instrument
Trump has put his own slant of governing in that in having a real estate huckster as President, he treats every territorial problem as a real estate deal – see Greenland, Canada, Gaza and now the Chagos Islands.
So the Department of Defense doesn’t do LDS?
Moron’i’s!
Hegseth is a clown, but LDS is not a part of Christianity. They reject the Nicene Creed, just like Jehovah’s Witnesses, who are also not Christians, but far beyond that, are all the crazy doctrines that are unique to LDS like theosis:
JWs are a failed apocalyptic cult like the Millerites/Seventh Day Adventists. Rutherford said the world as going to end in 1914, and it didn’t, but at least the JWs can trace most of their beliefs back to the Arian heresy and the early church. LDS begins with the Book of Mormon in which the 10 “lost tribes’ of Israel make their way across the Atlantic to America after Assyria conquered the northern kingdom in 721 BCE. Current Mormon doctrine doesn’t make that crazy Joseph Smith claim, but still clings to the idea that a couple of refugees from the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem made their way to the New World. Then Smith and Young added theosis, the idea that the righteous can make themselves into gods and have their own planets.
These are not the sort of differences one finds between Roman Catholics and Protestants or Orthodox and Catholic. LDS may use the name of Jesus and claim to view the Bible as authoritative, but they’re no more Christian than the Gnostic sect known as Christian Scientists.
Weren’t the Mo-Mos related to the lost tribes of Israel, or so was claimed in the Book of Mormon?
That ought to be worth something in this pro-Semitic country we got going on?
Don’t forget that Bigfoot is also one of the Lost Tribes of Israel.
I am miffed that there was no mention of the Shastafarians. “Delve deep into the geology of belief!”
Stay safe up there in the Very Defensible Position.
No, they believe that the Indians are one of the lost tribes.
To be fair, it was popular in the 1700s-1800s to argue that Anglo-Saxons were one of the lost tribes. There was also a French and I think Dutch version of this. What’s his name, the Jewish guy who was close to the people around Cromwell, thought there might be some in South America.
Henry Moon Pie: I thought that the Mormons may best be described as spiritualists from the Burned-Over District. From what you have posted, it sounds as though they are definitely not trinitarians. I have also read that early LDS teaching was of a mother goddess and a father god — although these doctrines have since be suppressed.
On the other hand, I have read that the Mormons have a strong liturgical side, with eucharist every Sunday, which would make them thoroughly Christian.
Confusing indeed.
The Jehovah’s Witnesses are much in evidence in Italy. I’m beginning to think that they have devolved into a rather grim club, a twelve-step program without the fun.
PS:
I am also thoroughly confused because one of my favorite musicals (and I don’t have many) is The Book of Mormon, which is wonderfully cheeky and blasphemous. And is only tangentially Mormon. There’s nothing like that scene in hell after the theft of the doughnut.
As an old Seminary prof said, LDS is a quintessentially American cult: white; the real action takes place on American soil; tries to supersede millennia of history and tradition. It turns the Adam and Eve myth on its head by claiming that humans becoming gods is the whole idea.
Some Shi’a Muslims (Alevis, I think) also do weekly Eucharist. Also, Muslims, as rule, believe in Jesus Christ–they just think He’s just human and not Divine. There is a pretty “good” case (with a heavy dose of semi serious sarcasm) to describe Muslims as Christians if we loosen the definition enough (and, this was understood in the Middle Ages and the Rennaissance–in Dante’s Divine Comedy, Mohammed is in H*** because he’s a heretic, for instance.) Of course, anyone who insists on this would deservingly get smited from all sides.
About 20 years ago, someone wrote an academic paper argued that Islam was a Christian offshoot, quite possibly historically accurate, but it enraged Muslims.
The Muslim/Mormon analogy is a good one. Muhammad did not try to claim Islam was a better version of Christianity, but then he wasn’t trying to grow his new religion in 1830s America.
My mother told me a Christian is someone who imitates Christ. That is the only definition I need.
Too much knowledge blurs that truth.
(If you want to know what that looks like, read “The Imitation of Christ”.)
The LDS’s full name is “The Church of JESUS CHRIST of Latter Day Saints.” Capitalization added. If someone says the Mormons are not Christians I think they’re missing something. I’ve attended many LDS events and they always start and end with a prayer to Jesus Christ.
As Christian B says “Too much knowledge blurs that truth.” Since religions, including the LDS, are complex and each sect differs with all the others any idiot can pick and choose aspects and say anything they want. I’ve heard some people say that the Bible is pornographic because of the many references to sexual activities.
As for Hegseth’s “recognized religious affiliation” I’d like to know how our military is affiliated with religions. This appears to me to be a violation of the First Amendment and another enshitification on our constitution by our government.
A Chrstian, at least as understood by 99% of self-professed Christians who have ever lived, is someone who professes the Nicean Creed, which includes the Trinity. If Mormons are not Trinitarians (and I don’t think they are), they are not Christians.
This is getting ridiculously sectarian. I don’t think that any serious historian would claim that the Arians weren’t Christians. Nor did people at the time – either pagans or (what became) Nicene Christians – have trouble recognising them as Christians, even if the Nicenes called them heretics. It was Arian Christianity that the Germanic tribes were originally converted to, and the first Bible translation into a Germanic language was made by an Arian. I really see no sharp boundary between excluding non-Niceans and excluding non-Chalcedonians, i.e. the currently existing Oriental churches; it’s just an accident of history that no Arian churches happen to survive to the present-day. Even the Inquisition distinguished between heretics and pagans or infidels. From a non-Christian standpoint, it’s obvious that a person who worships Jesus Christ as a central figure of their religion and recognises the Gospels is a Christian, regardless of the theological subtleties.
Then there are the Unitarians – again, claiming that they aren’t Christians is a rather unusual position.
Re ‘A Chrstian, at least as understood by 99% of self-professed Christians who have ever lived’ – I really don’t think that most Christians even know what the Nicene Creed is, and I’m even more certain that they don’t think much about the specific doctrine of the Trinity and aren’t particularly attached to it (it’s not exactly an easy thing to wrap your head around). They usually just know they believe in God, in Jesus Christ, and they have some idea of the Bible stories. Nor do they spend time thinking exactly what criteria the definition of a Christian should include. In the past, most self-professed Christians (i.e. most of the population of countries where Christianity was the state religion) knew even less and easily combined pagan practices and ideas with Christianity.
In any case, the argument based on the majority is irrelevant. Most swans are white, that doesn’t mean that black swans aren’t swans. The overwhelming majority of people who speak English nowadays pronounce ‘wine’ and ‘whine’ in the same way – that doesn’t mean that dialects that distinguish them are not English. And a majority can easily change.
I wouldn’t disagree that many professing Christians are poorly or completely uncatechized and have a mythic-literal “faith” that believes the opposite of what the church they attend teaches. That’s the fault of their church and its pastor, but it doesn’t change the content of the religion any more than a schoolboy’s belief the Moon is made of green cheese changes the Moon’s composition.
And you’re quite wrong about the Nicene Creed. The overwhelming majority of Christians recite it together in their congregations on a regular basis.
Your swan example means exactly the opposite of what you contend. A creature’s identity as a swan is determined by its DNA, not a superficial characteristic like its color (the same is true of humans). A religious body’s identity is determined by its core beliefs, not superficial characteristics like whether “Jesus” appears in their confessional documents and liturgy. I can make up a new religion that teaches that humans must make an annual pilgrimage to Cleveland in order to be saved, and I can claim my religion is “Christian,” but that doesn’t make my religion Christian. It makes me a liar.
Re your claim that people’s knowledge of the religion’s doctrine is irrelevant for its essence – well, Chris’ argument was based on the assumption that it was relevant, so I responded to that. Personally, I think that both the official doctrine and the actual ideas and practices of the believers need to be taken into account to get a full picture.
Re most self-described Christians’ knowing the Nicene creed – I trust that they repeat it, just as they repeat many other things, but I doubt that they understand it, are particularly attached to it, and I would be surprised if most of them even remember its name. Most Christians, like most religious people in general, are such by convention and formally, as members of a community, not because of personal attachment to a doctrine. I have lived most of my life among self-described Christians and that is my impression.
Re the swan example – the boundaries between species are actually fluid. This is also the case with religions. I don’t think a religion being centred on Jesus and the gospel narrative is a superficial feature. The difference between Arians and Niceans is objectively very small. This is like taking some kind of extinct early bird lineage (with feathers, wings, a beak etc.) and declaring that it is not a bird because it differs in some subtle ways from all currently surviving birds.
(The Fowler stuff is, IMO, a wishy-washy attempt to excuse the baselessness of religious faith, rather cheekily proclaiming such wishy-washiness and hand-waving as a ‘superior stage’ compared to unbelief. The ‘literal’ and ‘mythic’ interpretation of the religion is generally the original one; pretending that it means something else is an attempt to excuse continued adherence to it in spite of its obvious falseness.)
That’s inside baseball — semantics about where you draw your boundaries.
Since Jesus came out of the Nazarene movement, part of the Judeo-gnostic Essene sect who were allied with Philo of Alexandria, we can rest assured that Jesus wasn’t a trinitarian. It appears that the closest religion to the Proto-Christian movement are the Mandaneans, who from their earliest literature call themselves Nazoreans. (Btw, they consider Jesus a false prophet who messed up John the Baptist’s message)
So the question of whether the LDS is Christian, is what is the question? What is the goal of setting these boundaries?
It’s false advertising. Why did both Joseph Smith and Mary Baker Eddy create new religions and then choose to affiliate them with Jesus and Christianity, a religion whose boundaries had been set at Nicea in 312 CE, boundaries that survived the Great Schism of 1054 CE and the Reformation that commenced in 1529? Was it an attempt to blunt the reaction in a culturally conservative Christian environment? That didn’t seem to work too well for Smith.
Here are links to the backgrounds of Smith and Eddy. They’re quite interesting.
You have some interesting ideas about the historical Jesus. Back when I was more engaged in the topic, Dominic Crossan was selling a Gnostic Jesus out of the Gospel of Thomas, perhaps an almost defensible effort to make a Jesus more supportive of Liberation Theology, a worthy cause. If such an effort requires a complete unraveling of Christian theology, however, what’s the point? If someone doesn’t like the Christianity as it has developed historically, fine; I have my problems with it. But don’t invent a new religion and claim it’s somehow Christian because it will make it easier to sell.
“interesting ideas” = “extremely tentative speculations”
This brief discussion reminded me of Hugh Grant’s character’s spin on religion in the movie “Heretic”.
Not making any claims myself…just reminded me of an amusing presentation. (Watch the movie and one of the other characters has a comeback not included in this clip).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tJ9fz0_d4A/
Fair enough, if that’s the question you want to answer.
I just have a different question to answer, which is what are the historical transformations that lead ultimately to nicea. And that lead me to Enochian Judaism and it’s deep Proto-Christian theology, particularly documents like the Melchizedek Quran fragment, and the evolution of alternate Orthodoxies like the ebionim.
Which left me with a shock — theology appears to be frozen in underlying assumptions about what is good and bad evidence from 2kya because the apple cart teeters.
And if so, our understanding of history is somehow an inversion – a Roman empire propaganda campaign of some sort or cultural transformation that sort of looks like the LDS attempts at making themselves look respectable that transformed themselves and the greater society in unexpected ways.
How great movements work and how our beliefs evolve seems a critical issue — how do we understand a Jesus of debtors becoming a Jesus of creditors? What other similar transformations have happened?
There does exist an academic colloquium interested in the area, even if not with these sorts of radical conclusions, I expect: https://enochseminar.org/
Quran = qumran
If the LDS are Christians, are Muslims Christians, too? (Intentionally obtuse but quasi serious question as well.). Islamic Christology is analogous to the more extreme version of pre-Chaceldonian monophysites. Of course, many monophysites went east in face of Chalcedonian persecution, to regions where Islamic theology would be eventually crystalized, not to mention the disaffection of the remaining monophysites in Egypt and Syria (don’t forget that the Coptic, Assyrian Orthodox, and Syriac Orthodox Churches were monophysites–although they call themselves miaphysites now: you have to distinguish yourself from those Muslims if the big difference is the recognizing the divinity of Jesus.) facilitated the Muslim conquest of these regions.
Hmm, seems that I’d been mixing up elements of Nicaea and Chalcedon quite a bit. That’s rather embarrassing….
Neither Monophysites nor Miaphysites have ever disputed the divinity of Jesus. The Monophysites proper said that he had a single divine nature, so their position was, if anything, the opposite of the Muslim one. Accordingly, it was more, not less different from the Muslim one than the Chalcedonian view. As for the Miaphysite Oriental Churches (Coptic, Syriac, Armenian, Ethiopian etc.), they recognise a single nature that is both divine and human. As far as the humanity vs divinity of Jesus is concerned, this is no less distinct from the Muslim view than the Chalcedonian claim of two natures, a divine and a human one.
At most, it could be argued that the Miaphysite doctrine indicates a slightly greater eagerness to avoid polytheism – and, of course, Christianity’s trinitarianism and its view of Jesus also seem, at best, dangerously close to polytheism from the point of view of Islam, which is emphatically monotheistic. Nevertheless, I doubt that some sort of greater aversion to polytheism in the population or intellectuals of the East has played much of a role in the shift to Islam. While it may be true that the pre-existing hostility between Chalcedonians and Miaphysites contributed to it – or rather that both the Christological split and the conversion to Islam had a single common cause in pre-existing tensions and alienation between West and East – I don’t think that the substance of the doctrines involved has been very significant for their social function. Also note that the Armenians, while Miaphysites, have shown no significant tendency to convert to Islam.
Re ‘JWs are a failed apocalyptic cult like the Millerites/Seventh Day Adventists’: Christianity is a failed apocalyptic cult. See Matthew 16:28, Luke 9:27. Attempts to explain away these passages as referring to Jesus’ brief appearance after his death are lame excuses. The overall original orientation towards ceasing reproduction, economic activity and normal life in general is aligned with this.
As for ‘but far beyond that, are all the crazy doctrines that are unique to LDS like theosis:’
First, why ‘crazy’? All religions are crazy if you aren’t used to them. Theosis could be said to bring ‘imitatio Christi’ to its logical conclusion. In general, bridging/blurring the distinction between human and divine is quintessentially Christian, it’s what all the Christology debates were about. Smith’s theosis might also mean that LDS is the most American version of Christianity (apart from the whole ‘Ancient Israelites migrating to America’ story): America is the land of opportunity and social mobility – you can start from humble beginnings, polish apples and eventually become God. No glass ceilings there, very fair and egalitarian in a way – I actually find this somewhat likeable.
FWIW, I don’t recall anything in the Hebrew Bible that definitely precludes Smith’s theory. It doesn’t exactly give God much of a backstory. The theory that he used to be a mortal man at least chimes in with the fact that he still acts a lot like one. If he isn’t used to that God business yet, that would explain a lot. The problem is that I have some trouble imagining that YHWH bloke having ever been Jesus before, for all the things you could say against Jesus. It would have been quite the deterioration, personality-wise. But I wouldn’t say it’s out of the question, unfortunately, judging from precedents in (other) humans.
“All religions are crazy if you aren’t used to them.”
No they aren’t. They tend to have considerable structural overlap, and the reason that Mormonism is perceived as crazy is because it violates the structural overlap considerably, precisely because it has a basically secular structure and not a religious one.
“Christianity is a failed apocalyptic cult”
I’d put it a little differently. Christianity is the religion of two copes. The first cope is monotheism, which Second Isaiah uses to resurrect YHWH. The second cope is the empty tomb.
Adela Collins, who was my grad school teacher along with her husband John, would probably agree with your statement. Crossan, who wanted emphasize other things, would probably demur.
Between new world screwworm effect on supply and alpha-gal tick effect on demand, I wonder what the long-term equilibrium will be in the beef consumption market. Production and consumption seem likely to be lower, but what will the price be?
Poor outlook for dairy, perhaps, too.
Alternative econometrics- from The Field in former flyover bum-phuc:
(at our pricey boo-teak-ey guru certified hand-chewn expeller pressed Oregon Tilthe local food Coop)
I bought non-organic ‘Smart Chicken’ thighs, three pack (foampac/ cellophane wrap, and butchered- eastern WA–so value-cost added) just over a pound of meat and bone $6.52
Previous day: added value local ‘natural’ non-certified Organic pork producer Sweet Italian sausage,
$11/lb…
Pound of 80/20 grass fed Montana so localish non-organic beef was at $10.99.
I wonder if freeze dried screw worm larvae and / or tick will become an alternative protein source, and whether freeze drying kills pathogens? Clever ag producers are always looking for that next niche non-commodity angle…
Heady times!
I’ve heard that the trick to tick and screwworm sauté is lots of garlic and oregano.
I have it on good authority, (I know, I know, another appeal to authority,) that the trick to preparing tick and screwworm is to marinade them overnight in ‘food grade’ acetone. You can find it at the better Food, Feed and Seed outlets. (Sticker symbol FFS.)
Similar here at the Ashland Coop; I ride my bike 10/16 miles round trip for the 5% discount (not offered when driving); stack the 3% cash rebate (no credit cards); utilize my senior 10% discount; every other month is a 10% coupon on one shop, capped at $100.00. The brand Hills pork, Eastern Oregon, and for the grass fed beef, small farm up hither way. Nope, not a fan of beef, rarely, even less as the “worm” will price the 80/20 grass fed out of reach. Current price: 6.99 daily. Pork and fish, fish as in Oregon caught fish. Strange but true. All will be as it shall be.😳
> Rates of infection with other pathogens after a positive COVID-19 test versus a negative test in US veterans (November, 2021, to December, 2023): a retrospective cohort study The Lancet
>> significantly increased rates of outpatient diagnosis of infectious illnesses (RR 1·17 [95% CI 1·15–1·19])
And there it is. (RR is Relative Risk, a ratio of the probability of an event occurring in the exposed group versus the probability of the event occurring in the non-exposed group.’)
We went maskless (N-95) a week ago, annual family grill from our son Jeff, and post-high school graduation of the eldest grandchild. Over a dozen people, but no guarantee we’ll all be together again in the same space. From the Feynman piece yesterday:
>> One is that the optimal math depends on the number of meals that you have left
As the number of future gatherings becomes less, we’re willing to take a chance on the cumulative risk, increasing the quality of the time together as the likelihood of those events drop. I did a similar choice in refusing immunotherapy after cancer, with about 1:4 risk it would wreck my thyroid, choosing quality over quantity to guide future discounting decisions. But we skew toward fewer potential opportunities as we get older; if I was a pup, I’d choose different.
Today’s article confirms: wear the mask.
“Chinese medical team arrives in DR Congo to help fight Ebola, ‘filling US void’”
China playing it smart on several levels. It is a demonstration of Chinese soft power because the locals will compare it with the reaction of the US. It serves a humanitarian purpose which is a good in itself. It helps confine Ebola to that local region so that it does not spread to other regions and continents. And finally, if Ebola breaks loose and goes to Asia and maybe even the Chinese mainland, China will have medical staff experienced in the treatment of Ebola.
Gooooooood Mooooooorning Fiatnam!
Initial worries that the World Coup might not go off as planned were dashed today when Fifi (er, Benedict Donald) was a good poodle and played along…
…someday this war is going to end
https://indi.ca/the-nazi-world-cup-2/
This says things are not going well including the US insistence on calling football “soccer.” In other words if they can’t even get the name right then why is such a tournament being held here?
Personally I don’t spend a lot of time watching either football but know that when something happens in soccer, er, football you are supposed to shout “goal!”
Most soccer injuries are fake, while football injuries are all too real.
Saw a video yesterday saying how fans are being denied entry to the US just as the games are about to start. These Scottish fans were all approved and set to go about the beginning of the year but now have been notified that they are being denied entry to the US with no reason being given why. I hope that they can get their deposits back again.
Its an understandable response to the celtic football club fans rejecting robbie keane ,ex maccabbie telaviv, as their new manager.
Any criticism, however rooted and popular, must be bombed (culturally, financially and fiscally) of the enormity of the empires’ fading indulgent behavior.
When someone complains simply remind them that the name “soccer” was imported from Britain, where is was coined in reference to the letters “s-o-c” in “Association Football.” That term was put into use to distinguish the game from “Rugby football.” Yes, it can get confusing.
Besides the U. S., the game is “soccer” in Canada, Australia (their national team is called The Socceroos) and Ireland. Each has its own native version of “football.”
Indeed Steven A, I came here to write the same.
My archetypically English grandfather called it soccer in contrast to rugger.
Football was never really just one thing. Rugby emerged when a posh kid cheated at soccer. Soccer itself was stolen from informal intra-village pig-bladder/mudfight competitions.
As the Victorian craze for structured brisk ball sports as teen onanism prophylactic spread to the colonies, new forms of football emerged. In the USA a rugby game without enough players birthed the American version. In Australia, winter cricket pitches became arenas for feisty young men to shove each other a lot and Aussie rules was born.
As a Brit, I find few things more pathetic than fellow Brits b*tching about others calling it soccer. It’s post-empire impotence in a nutshell. There are many football games, and all can be glorious.
(My personal research indicates that it didn’t work on the onanism front though).
Thanks for the link to The Independent Ben Panga. Halfway through reading it Monty Python’s Every Sp*rm is Sacred drilled into my brain and remains there now as an ear worm.
Some of my British friends call the American brand of football “hand egg” — the shape of a ball that is carried with the hands and occasionally kicked. I ask them for their term for rugby — same shape, carried with the hands. So far haven’t gotten an answer.
In the UK, rugby is sometimes (without rancour) called egg-chasing
Phenomenal world…
That’s great about the unions and all but the PTB don’t like or want unions.
Much more likely is a move fast and break things disruption where .gov money will fund amazon/fed ex/ups (not the usps, that must be destroyed) self driving electric trucks which will justify electric grid expansion which while mostly for the AI will be for patriotic trucking behemoths as well.
Clearly currency manipulator bessent knows the catastrophe that is unfolding and has plans for wrapping things up while making a tidy sum for his cronies on both sides of the aisle.
Disruption leads to consolidation
The American experiment is on life support.
Thanks for posting Henry Farrell’ (repost of his) review of Gibson’s “The Peripheral”. I like this aside from within the observation that much of Gibson’s tale explores the lives of the 99% who are trying to navigate their post jackpot existence,
America’s comparative advantage turns out to be in meth, not music, coding and pizza-delivery
Music, coding and pizza delivery are the main cultural offerings of Stephenson’s futuristic version of America in “Snow Crash”.
Meth, of course, is everywhere you look.
I read Snow Crash last year to gain some insight into certain actors on the right and in tech. Do you think it’s possible that that book is the origin of the idea to blow up these boats in the Caribbean?
Heh heh, good morning. My impression is that there are not many readers of books amongst our current mis-leadership class.
Snow Crash was an enormously popular book among tech bros at one time. Whether or not it was actually read,I don’t know.
I couldn’t get into it.
As someone with experience in the pizza delivery department I was hooked from page one.
As to Vicky’s idea, I think that Stephenson’s clairvoyance is the more likely connection.
“America’s comparative advantage turns out to be in meth”
The Heisenberg Principle?
Good morning. Regrettably, I have yet to watch “Breaking Bad”, but I wager Trump has, lol.
I came to Breaking Bad very late, and was mighty impressed. Jesse’s redemption arc in the final series is profound and enlightening.
I would say its comparative advantage is planting, the american establishment has bought many areas at knock down prices.
Politicalish GMO’s, a monoculture resulting in merz,starmer and macron, dissatisfying enough to induct the asset strippers to finish the job.
I recently found a copy of The Peripheral on a stoop. I read ten pages and put it down. Too real.
The Peripheral is my favorite Gibson novel, and the idea of a Jackpot seems all to real
It’s fitting that The Jackpot Blog is Lamberts new hangout
Jeff Currie thinks we are sleepwalking into one of the biggest commodity shocks…cash trade confirmation
StockMarket.News
@_Investinq
·
Jun 6
Jeff Currie thinks we are sleepwalking into one of the biggest commodity shocks since Covid and the market is still pricing it like a headline risk instead of a physical crisis (Save this).
He calls it molecular contagion and last week, jet fuel shortages were concentrated in Singapore, where prices spiked to roughly 230 dollars a barrel.
This week the same pattern has shown up in Rotterdam at around 220 dollars and in Thailand, the Philippines, New Zealand, and Australia which means the dislocation has gone intercontinental.
In his words, there is no longer any meaningful spread between Singapore and Rotterdam, no spare barrels to re route, and no policy lever that can solve the problem in the short term.
Currie’s core point is brutally simple, you can print money, but you cannot print molecules.
The futures curve, the paper market is still trading around 100 dollars a barrel.
The physical market on the other side of the Strait of Hormuz is telling a completely different story, with Oman crude spiking to 173 dollars and Asia bound blends effectively clearing around 130 dollars a barrel.
Refined products like jet fuel and diesel are already spiraling north of 200 dollars a barrel in multiple hubs.
That is the tale of two markets he is talking about.
On one side you have screen prices that look volatile but manageable, helped by algorithmic trading, cross commodity hedging and the lingering belief that high prices fix high prices before anything breaks.
On the other side you have physical supply chains that are already breaking, tankers being diverted, refineries bidding against each other for the last uncommitted barrels, and regional shortages that cannot be solved with central bank liquidity.
If a deer blinks in the glare of tractor-trailer headlights, what is the sound of a global economy crashing?
If the tractor-trailer is out of fuel, the deer is safe.
I looked at @_Investinq and do not see that tweet.
Update: I found it but on June 7.
“Momentum builds for Brussels memorial to victims of dictatorship”
So of course it is the Baltic States that are mostly behind the push to build this thing. Thing is, will it include memorials to the thousands of people killed in the Donbass and Lugansk regions by fascist neo-Nazis from 2014 to 2022? Asking for two former Republics.
Whenever I read that some Baltics pol’s “grandfather was sent to Siberia after WWII” I picture a guy who got caught burying his Nazi uniform in the garden.
I will not respect them if they do not find gravestones for hoysun dogru or jacques baud.
They have been declared bureaucratically inconvenient, unworthy of existence.
Get in the queue. It’s all some kind of mistake.
Political Geography…
Blue counties may have anxiety re ai job loss, but not mentioned is red counties are expected to host the data centers and they don’t like that either. This article is is just sneakily trying to deliver this punch line
As to what all of this means, it’s important to note that this analysis does not imply that blue counties and states are facing immediate job dislocation from AI automation, or that anxiety about AI automation in these places is by itself beginning to make more people vote Democratic. (Indeed, Antoniades, Balcazar, Chatzikonstantinou, and Kern present evidence that AI adoption generates jobs, attracts educated workers, and actually benefits Democrats.) What’s more, many longer-standing factors such as education levels in these places clearly prompt Democratic voting.
Don’t worry, be happy.
“Everything will be just fine, we’ll be back to normal in just a few weeks”.
There’s no messaging to prepare the populace for what’s coming in the USA, which is not surprising given the facts…and the corruption.
Blaming ANTIFA!!! for the unrest seems likely, along with a brutal crackdown on the populace.
It’s going to be a lively Summer.
No messaging, heh heh, and you know the dems are supposed to be working on their messaging.
God forbid we should expect some planning, maybe even a strategy. Unified, this nation sleepwalks into the end of this act and whatever comes next.
An update from American higher education: a student in my program emailed the entire department, accidentally, to ask about a multiple-choice test. We’d had none, and so I referred back to the materials the student mentioned. It turns out that this student was looking at a document which had sub-paragraphs and mistook them for possible answers. The a) b) c) confused this person.
I gave up teaching a year ago after 6 years. College STEM class. Over the course of 6 years I was involved, which started before COVID hit so I lived through the lock down days, until last year the students got progressively worse. Lack of skills. Reading, math, logic, you name it. Also, it seemed, much less interested and motivated.
I became too difficult and depressing. I know a life long high school teacher who have it up this year and couldn’t be happier. They have been counting the days. We are not alone by any stretch of the imagination.
Going forward, I expect our students to be less ready for life, and a teacher shortage at some point. And then of course there is the administration who sure doesn’t make the all star team either, but I will spare them for now.
When I was a kid, the age distribution of teachers seemed fairly representative of the working-age population, or at least not obviously skewed. I had a few teachers who were almost certainly over 65. Also of note, there was a handful of science teachers for whom teaching was a second career, after having been in industry.
Today, I would guess that the median age of the teachers I work with is somewhere between 30 and 35. Most younger teachers do it for a few years, and then get out. Almost no one chooses teaching as a second career. The school systems where I have observed this are not particularly bad.
That is the desired output, a lumpen who is adapted through force, as desired by an increasingly impatient elite.
Work harder, faster, but never smarter or organised
Despite being seeped in the atrocities of Gaza, “what the wounds are telling us” broke something in me.
On Rates of infection with other pathogens after a positive COVID-19 test versus a negative test in US veterans (November, 2021, to December, 2023): a retrospective cohort study
So Ziyad Al-Aly, MD has been seen not masking at conferences, and given all the research he’s done on the negative effects of COVID infection, I kinda want to slit my wrists.
What even is this timeline?
COVID researchers are immune somehow?
Re the Smokies–the biological diversity is well known. But for those wishing to examine this good luck simply finding a place to park these days. In response the NPS has started selling parking permits but that doesn’t seem to help much at busy times. The park is also promoted (or cursed) by the major tourist traps of Galinburg at one end and Cherokee (with it’s casino) at the other. Those not fit enough to tackle the Appalachian Trail can find access a chore in an 1930s park with a single main road passing across it.
So to those documented the species: work faster!
Leftover sunflower powder to make ersatz choco-something. Scrumplizioso!
“ChoViva’s reliance on sunflower powder, a byproduct leftover after the oil is extracted from the seed, helps companies improve their sustainability footprint.”
Gosh, that sounds an awful lot like cottonseed oil, which is what is left over when cotton is processed for fiber. Then it became a food for humans — Crisco. And EKGs.
Here in Piedmont, the issue of what happens when a major component of chocolate making goes missing has been addressed in a much tastier way. The story goes that in the aftermath of the Napoleonic wars, the Piedmontese couldn’t import enough cacao. Yet the hazelnut was here, waiting, the “totem nut” of Piedmont, which can easily be made into paste and also produces a delicious oil.
Hence, the gianduiotto, which is still a “trademark” and tradition of the region, a flavor that turns up in all kinds of ways. It’s great in a corneto. And in gelato.
https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gianduiotto
The hazelnut has many advantages — productive, local, a tree of legends, it has been bred into some particularly tasty varieties here.
Sunflower oil is highly regarded in Italy. After olive oil, sunflower oil is much in use for products preserved in oil as well as in cookery. I don’t see corn oil, soybean oil, or that inedible cottonseed stuff.
But sunflower powder, for “sustainability”? Just like “Save a tree,” which wasn’t about saving a tree. ChoTricksy sounds like Orwell’s description of chocolate in 1984.
Note: Gianduiotto isn’t that exotic. Usonians know it as Nutella, which is a pop form of gianduiotto. The Ferrero family of Alba invented Nutella after WWII because cacao again was difficult to procure.
The classic hand-made gianduiotto, still available here, although expensive indeed, is a true revelation in tastiness.
Re: What the Wounds Are Telling Us
The European Press Prize is well-deserved.
Despite how well-written the article is, emotion makes it a tough read.
It’s beyond my comprehension how anyone who has ever loved a child cannot be screaming to stop these mass murderers of children.
This underscores what sociopaths Israel’s backers in Congress must be, why this must be the priority litmus test for ridding ourselves of the depravity running our country.
The 1931 Fritz Lang film “M” kept coming to mind. https://mubi.com/en/films/m/trailer
In that film, Germany’s criminal underworld feared for its reputation and took action.
Less so our criminals in Congress and the White House. And in too many other countries’ governments.
The moment of judgement I always found a little tricky, and I think lang’s real question.
Is it left to the underworld to deal with deviance?
What would the jurors have perpetrated as part of their normal life?
That, despite being B&W and absent a h zimmer soundtrack, it’s still valued and has a great affect
RE: the Press the Meat clip: at the risk of giving someone more credit than they deserve, it’s truly refreshing to see a member of the US press corpse push back against someone in power when they’re peddling garbage. I’m skeptical it would have happened had it not been Trump at this point in time with this set of absolutely stale malarkey, but still you love to see it, even if it ultimately means nothing.
Monopoly Round-Up: Graham Platner and Stock Market Democrats
Yep, full-court media press (no pun intended) against Platner in New England. The hedge-fund billionaire owned Boston Globe, the paper of record east of the Connecticut River, has a daily feature that they should call “Platner Hates Women”. Never anything about his very pointed anti-plutocrat opinions. And here we have pluto-scion Jake Auchincloss (D) Mass., speaking out of the side of his mouth not firmly lodged on his silver spoon, saying that Platner is not qualified for the august office of US Senator. The Repubs. will stab you in the face in a minute, and you can always count on the Dems. to stab you in the back.
Taibbi’s latest, pubic excerpt.
Britain’s Great Self-Loathing Crusade
American and European liberalism rightly campaigned against ethnocentrism once upon a time, but both versions ultimately went way too far
https://www.racket.news/p/britains-great-self-loathing-crusade
Matt’s mentions “the setup 40 years ago.” My thoughts: 40 years ago the West was busy outsourcing its industrial might to foreign countries that had much cheaper labor costs but no particular interest in the West’s well being or in the Wests long term continuation. Wall St was busy abandoning Main Street. What could go wrong? Now that things are going very wrong in Western economies the “great thinkers” of neoliberalism – the Davos set, the Epstein Class – turn even harder and crueler against most of their country’s citizens. The citizens who are “witnesses” to the the oligarchs’ crime of destroying Main Street must be silenced. The witnesses must be destroyed. / too harsh?
Due Dissidence about the murder. (Killer is now in jail.)
Zio Oligarchs SOW CHAOS in UK After Henry Nowak Tragedy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLWlIzARx_I
an aside: I worked with two Sikh tech experts at my uni who did carry-display a very small, unbladed, curved handle of a knife in a curved sheath as part of their religious expression. I once asked one if it was a real knife. He pulled the handle from the sheath to show me. There was only a maybe 2-inch shaft of unsharped flat metal to keep the knife handle in the sheath. No blade. That was apparently fine as an expression of faith; an actual blade wasn’t required.
Most ‘religious expression’ is more about show than substance. What religious weight does the cross chained around many necks actually carry?
The Kirpan, meant to stand against injustice, protect the vulnerable, and uphold righteousness, is ‘allowed’ to be blunt which I suppose actually represents the stance certainly of the US and much of the West when it comes to standing against injustice, protecting the vulnerable, and upholding righteousness!
Hmmm. I don’t know. What if the show is meant to demonstrate the substance of what is in the heart?
Ther is pretty ample evidence that the family involved were known nutters and kept pushing things as far as they could get.
That they could get as far as random murder is the shame of the state and their family.
Visit the golden temple and pick up some of their polemical leaflets and it’s easy to understand how some sociopaths could be lead astray into their own,very modern, derangements.
They don’t read that different from the manosphere, just search and replace hindus for difficult women or men.
Mind you, hindvuta/RSS leans that way as well.
All the uk government need to do is reclassify symbolic knives as acceptable is to mandate that they have certain dimensions and no cutting surface.
They might need them in india, but other than ritually, not in the uk.
Might lose a few council seats, but Sikhs, in my experience, are quite practical.
Re: Kristen Welker interview
I realize that the median dissenting American is heavily inured to this kind of thing, but check out the set this interview was filmed on: The artfully placed farm equipment and bales of hay, with a rustic wooden crate in the lower right corner, completing the framing; the rugged yet pristine walls; the delightful baskets, which I guess are meant to moderate the rather jarring effect of those chairs. Yes, I love having West Elm furniture for when I need to work in the barn, so that the bats, barn swallows,* and mice can shit on it.
I’m not even sure it’s the insult to intelligence; it might be the taken-for-granted-ness of the insult to intelligence. (And yet, someone, somewhere may indeed be saying: That Donald Trump is a man of the people. Or perhaps an actual farmer is ruminating: At least he tried. Mission accomplished.)
*In fairness to the barn swallows, much of their excreta ends up accumulating on the outer rim of the nest itself, a structure that, in the absence of moisture, has properties similar to those of concrete. As with the bats, their diet of insects make them the landowner’s friend (though in spring and early summer it doesn’t seem to make a difference), and their curving wings, long tail streamers, and pale reddish-orange underparts make them one of fixtures of country life to be missed.
Merging the US Military with the IDF would be a “Clusterfuck” for the ages.
These are very different cultures and anyone who has witnessed other large corporate mergers will be impressed at how many novel ways this will be fucked up.
It’s going to be spectacular, to put it mildly.
File under AI, from Malwarebytes:
Meta’s AI support bot happily handed Instagram accounts to hackers
https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/ai/2026/06/metas-ai-support-bot-happily-handed-instagram-accounts-to-hackers
From the article:
“Meta has been shedding headcount and pouring money into AI, and rolled out its AI-powered support assistant earlier this year to help handle account recovery and other support requests.
“The downside is that the AI appears to have been given the ability to perform actions such as email changes and password resets without applying enough safeguards to confirm the user’s identity first.”
Malwarebyte’s advice to protect yourself and your accounts:
“A perennial piece of advice still holds: turn on multi-factor authentication (MFA). According to veteran cybersecurity reporter Brian Krebs, the attack failed against accounts that had MFA enabled, including those using SMS codes.
“That doesn’t make MFA perfect, but it adds an important layer of protection.
“So the practical advice is unglamorous:
” Open Instagram’s Settings
Navigate to your Meta Accounts Center
Turn on Two-factor authentication. An authenticator app is better than SMS, but either is better than nothing.
“Do it now, because this might not yet be over. TheCyberSecGuru reports that another attack is circulating, this time using an Android emulator called BlueStacks running a modified version of Instagram to send new prompts with hidden characters designed to manipulate the AI.”
Open Instagram’s Settings
Delete Account
fixed it for you ;)
Stoller on Platner
Shorter: you will be known by who your enemies are (and what they are not), q.v. narrative manipulation. Moi…
I’m trying to remember how many men I’ve known who were perfection (or women for that matter).
I’ll keep trying.
Alice, you need to get out more, I have met more perfect assholes than I can shake a stick at, without trying.
“Hunt not for the Perfect, but for the Good.”
I wonder how Diogenes would do in present day America?
Alas, personally I have lost several, maybe three good, as I am not perfect and could not interact. One may remain, but I am old and so time will tell.
Probably the hardest thing I have had to try and learn is to forgive myself for my shortcomings. We are our own worst enemies. Those of us with fairly ‘stable’ and ‘normal’ personalities that is. As for the psycho and socio paths, I find it is best to give them wide berth. Life stays much simpler and happier without those sorts of “Imperial Entanglements.”
Stay safe. Prepare for Winter.
Indeed…
I look to understand, and maybe even learn from where I have fallen short.
Back to the thread, even unto those who would seek political power, as their adversaries will certainly try to advantage any personal fault; lest it be known of their own sinister adverse motives. Who can say, the people?
Too true. As the fictional detective Philip Marlowe says to the District Attorney when said Officer of the Court tells Marlowe that he must speak up unless he has something to hide; “Everyone has something to hide.”
That scene was in the “original” version of the 1946 film but was cut after the studio decided to chase dollars from the public’s ‘fascination’ with the Bogart and Bacall “romance.”
Where oh where is Cincinnatus when we need him? At this point, I’ll settle for Spartacus.
I doubt he would get out of his bathtub for us, let alone for the elite.
Marcus aurelielius’s stoicism is what we need more of (according to every business book quack); enjoy the joyful and enjoy the shitful, its all the same in the long run.
His bathtub? Do tell. David’s painting of Marat’s death. (David pronounced Dah-veed).
https://www.britannica.com/topic/The-Death-of-Marat
The French Revolution, don’t cha know.
A few notes about Real Estate in Santa Clara.
My Daughter and her SO have been leasing a small tract home (1200 Sq Ft, small lot) in Santa Clara for $4,500 per Month.
Two homes on that block with Identical floor plans sold this year, for a little more than $2MM each.
Property taxes are 1.25% and the rule of thumb for maintenance on a home in “As New” condition is 1% per year.
Call the home price $2MM even and the rent $5K per Month, that’s $60K per year…
less $25K in taxes.
On a $2,000,000 “Investment”.
I’m not sure what leasing means in the us, in uk it means end of lease, it all goes back to the freeholder (owner of the plot).
Obviously things are a little more nuanced, but its just rent + devolved maintenance burdens
They Were Serving the Longest Federal Sentence of Any 2020 BLM Protester. Then They Vanished in Prison.
https://theintercept.com/2026/06/08/malik-muhammad-prison-oregon-south-carolina/
Trump, Musk, Lutnick, and Bezos Hijacked Infrastructure Bill Broadband Grant Money, Causing A Giant Mess
https://www.techdirt.com/2026/06/08/trump-musk-lutnick-and-bezos-hijacked-infrastructure-bill-broadband-grant-money-causing-a-giant-mess/
AI Data Centers’ Water Consumption Breaks 264 Billion Gallons in 2025 as Devastating Drought Hits Nearly 63% of U.S.
https://www.barchart.com/story/news/2339834/ai-data-centers-water-consumption-breaks-264-billion-gallons-in-2025-as-devastating-drought-hits-nearly-63-of-u-s
Total lockdown reported across parts of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, intelligence inputs suggest over 300 dead
https://sundayguardianlive.com/world/total-lockdown-reported-across-parts-of-pakistan-occupied-kashmir-intelligence-inputs-suggest-over-300-dead-203153/
Trump administration launches largest-ever effort to denaturalize U.S. citizens accused of fraud or other crimes
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/denaturalization-us-citizens-fraud-crimes-trump-administration/
Already I have experienced a fat fingered police crash report leading to an insurance adjuster hounding me. And my parents receiving a toll booth violation due to a license plate reader failing at interpreting a license plate in a different corner of the country.
Three Flock cameras have appeared close to my residence. I can’t wait for more dystopian consequences.