Wednesday, October 15, 2025

Trump Team’s $500 Million Bet on Old Vaccine Technology Puzzles Scientists

Some raised eyebrows over a Trump Administration big spend for a possible flu vaccine.

Predictive Policing AI Is on the Rise − Making It Accountable to the Public Could Curb Its Harmful Effects

Predictive policing experiments continue, despite poor results to date. Can this approach be made non-abusive?

Links 5/7/2025

Links 5/7/2025

On the Practical Importance of Basic Research for Human Health

I was listening to the journalist Ryan Grim of Drop Site News last week as he talked briefly about his wife’s ongoing cancer treatment.  His short gloss was directly on point, and it motivated me to dig deep in my archives on the history of research on breast cancer and how one never knows what […]

Roaring Tariffs: The Global Impact of the 2025 US Trade War

A model of the economic effects of various tariffs war scenarios shows even the likley “least bad” outcome is stilll pretty bad.

Coffee Break: Armed Madhouse – U.S. Defense Racketeering

Our warfare focused Coffee Break: the defense contractor racket – what it is and how to stop it

Billionaire Blasts Private Equity’s Continued Grifting as Performance Falls Further

The once-above-criticism private equity industry is on the receiving end of long-overdue takedowns, some of them pointed.

Links 5/6/2025

Despite Last Week’s Nationwide Blackout, Spanish Government Takes Criminalisation of Cash to Whole New Level

Taking money out of the bank becomes a Kafkaesque nightmare. Anyone looking to withdraw more than $3,000 of their own money must notify the State in advance as well as explain the reason(s) why, or face fines.   

Distributional and Macroeconomic Effects of Trump 2.0: The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Poorer

The likely outcome of Trump policies are a recession, a rise in inequality, and a further fall in living standards of working and middle-class Americans

At Social Security, These Are the Days of the Living Dead

More proof at Social Security of the damage done by letting DOGE run wild.

Coffee Break: Across the Pond, Tyrants Edition

The leaders of the three largest countries in Western Europe (excluding Russia) are acting like tyrants as their economies implode.

Links 5/5/2025

Trump’s Neverending Tariffs War? Proposes 100% Tariffs on Foreign Movies; De Minimus Exclusion Ends, Hurting the Poor; Financial Times on Tariff Evasion, Official and Via Trans-Shipment

A battlefield update on Trump’s tariff wars.