A Storm in the West: The Liberal Intellectual Paradigm Is Broken Conference paper
Lessons From Singapore: If You Can’t Think Because You Can’t Chew, Try A Bannana 3 Quarks Daily
Cocaine Hippos, Monkey Copyrights, and a Horse Named Justice: The Debate Over Animal Personhood Reason
This routine is impressive 🤯
(via ashlynpinner/IG) pic.twitter.com/4fBb8iJMvx
— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) April 4, 2025
COVID-19/Pandemics
The Evidence That A Million Americans Died Of COVID Astral Codex Ten
Aspergillus: All about the fungus that could spark a pandemic like in HBO’s ‘The Last of Us’ The Economic Times
Climate/Environment
Penguin poop may help preserve Antarctic climate Ars Technica
Climate change could drive flood of foreclosures, study finds CBS News
Cocoa, coffee and wheat: The EU food imports threatened by biodiversity and climate crises Euro News
China?
How China Captured Apple Foreign Policy
Asian economies are the collateral damage of the US-China trade war The Hill
BREAKING:
🇨🇳 New Chinese unmaned drone carrier aircraft is entering the military in June
An unmanned aircraft developed by China, known as the Jiutian SS-UAV, is preparing for its maiden flight in June.
With a range of 7,000 kilometers, the platform is designed to function as… pic.twitter.com/qoFf4y2NN4
— Megatron (@Megatron_ron) May 19, 2025
China, Thailand agree to enhance level of cooperation in joint military training Andolu Agency
The Fortress That China Built for Its Battle with America MSN
South of the Border
As Trump focuses on his trade war, Brazil and China forge closer ties The Guardian
Invading Mexico to fight the cartels would be a huge mistake The Hill
Opposition politicians stand up for press freedom in Argentina MercoPress
European Disunion
Confrontation ahead: EU Commission demands that Hungary withdraws draft transparency law Euro News
Ireland Clashes with EU Over Hate Speech Laws as MEP Michael McNamara Denounces Brussels’ Legal Threats Reclaim the Net
EU unemployment hits record low — except for young workers Courthouse News
German defense minister teases possible conscription in 2026 RT (Kevin W)
Complex factors dictate Eastern Europe’s closer ties to Israel than rest of EU The Arab Weekly
The Eurovision song contest has become a woke circus Ian Proud
Old Blighty
UK hands over Chagos Islands to Mauritius in landmark sovereignty deal The Times of India
Yachts easy way to bring in migrants – ex-smuggler BBC
UK government withholding details of Palantir contract Democracy for Sale
Israel v. The Resistance
Gaza is not starving. Gaza is being starved by Israel.
How do you justify starving kids to achieve your military goals?
What a shame. pic.twitter.com/HUJIbebZXl
— Mohamad Safa (@mhdksafa) May 20, 2025
"You don't ask the perpetrator of genocide."
In a searing interview with the BBC, paediatrician Dr Tanya Haj Hassan condemned the broadcaster for echoing Israeli government talking points as she recounted her harrowing experiences in Gaza.
Dr Haj Hassan, who recently returned… pic.twitter.com/t9FlGNa6vb
— Middle East Eye (@MiddleEastEye) May 25, 2025
Outrage, horror after Israeli attack kills nine children of Gaza doctor Al Jazeera (resilc)
A biblical hatred is engulfing both sides in the Gaza conflict – and blinding them to reason The Guardian
Palestine and the Conscience of China Dissident Voice
Cooking in Gaza is now a toxic affair Al Jazeera
Hamas condemns US lawmaker’s demand to nuke Gaza as genocide incitement Andolu Agency
Israeli use of human shields in Gaza was systematic, soldiers and former detainees tell the AP AP
New Not-So-Cold War
The Ukraine ceasefire fantasy is over. Britain knows it. Euromaidan Press
Hectic two weeks leaves Russia confident – and peace in Ukraine feeling no closer BBC
Why Vatican Mediation in the Ukraine Conflict Remains a Long Shot Euro News
Big Brother Is Watching You Watch
Irish privacy watchdog OKs Meta to train AI on EU folks’ posts The Register
Privacy and hunger groups sue over USDA attempt to collect personal data of SNAP recipients Baltimore Sun
Anthropic’s Claude 4 Sparks Innovation and Privacy Debate Web Pro News
Imperial Collapse Watch
‘A national scandal’: US excess deaths rose even after pandemic, far outpacing peer countries CIDRAP
Gavin Newsom’s 37 Billion Dollar homeless solution meets Gavin Newsom’s 128 Billion dollar high speed rail. pic.twitter.com/ZRX82q4Zfa
— Kevin Dalton (@TheKevinDalton) May 14, 2025
The U.S. constitutional system is driving our democratic decline The Boston Review
Trump 2.0
Ten Sneaky Sleeper Provisions in Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill The American Prospect
Student Scapegoats Quillette
Trump Threatens Apple With 25 Percent Tariffs on iPhones Assembled in India Daring Fireball
Ivy League squeeze: How the Trump administration has hammered Harvard Axios
DOGE
Chief Justice Roberts temporarily halts discovery in DOGE case The Hill
Is Elon Musk really getting the hell out of DOGE? The Verge
Expert calls Musk’s ‘Doge’ involvement ‘one of the greatest brand destructions’ The Guardian
Democrat Death Watch
DNC vice chair is trolled after unveiling his bizarre candidate choice to lead the Democrats Daily Mail
Jon Stewart pitches 2028 slogan for Democrats: ‘Overcome the stink’ The Hill
Immigration
U.S. citizen with REAL ID handcuffed and held in immigration raid before being released NBC News
‘Unprecedented’: ICE Officers Operating Inside Bay Area Immigration Courts, Lawyers Say KQED
Mahmoud Khalil told a judge his deportation could be a death sentence. Here’s why PBS
Our No Longer Free Press
Pentagon bans reporters from certain areas of building without escort The Hill
Mr. Market Is Moody
Dollar Sinks as President Trump Threatens to Escalate Trade War Barchart.com
Rising bond yields give stock-market investors the yips. Watch these levels. MarketWatch
AI
Dance of the ocean waves
📹AI
— Science girl (@gunsnrosesgirl3) April 4, 2025
Oracle has reportedly placed an order for $40 billion in Nvidia AI GPUs for a new OpenAI data center Tom’s Hardware
Gen Z turn to trade jobs, ditch white-collar careers amid AI uncertainty, poor corporate wages NY Post
The Bezzle
SafeMoon CEO Found Guilty in Massive Crypto Fraud Scheme Tron Weekly
US should take Boeing to trial in 737 MAX fraud case, lawyer says Reuters
Medicare Scams: Experts Share How to Protect Yourself From Fraud Woman’s World
Guillotine Watch
Unboxing a luxury $40,000 bottle of Hennessy 8, one of the most expensive cognacs in the world
— Science girl (@gunsnrosesgirl3) April 12, 2025
Thread of 7 most expensive cats in the world:
1. Ashera Cat: $125,000
The Ashera cat is considered the most expensive cat breed in the world, with prices reaching up to $100,000 or more. This is due to its rarity and the fact that it is a hybrid breed, created by breeding an… pic.twitter.com/oPcJ2J87Oo
— Teejay Communication Hub (@teejanson) August 24, 2024
Class Warfare
At Amazon, Some Coders Say Their Jobs Have Begun to Resemble Warehouse Work New York Times (resilc)
Antidote du jour (via)
After the baby goat pic, some vocalization:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vll33KEoCcc
Alternate working link for ‘Why Vatican Mediation in the Ukraine Conflict Remains a Long Shot” article at-
https://au.news.yahoo.com/why-vatican-mediation-ukraine-conflict-130249986.html
The Russians don’t need Admiral Akbar to tell them that it is a trap. The Vatican has shown that they are on the side of Zelensky so the Russians don’t need to go to a suggested meeting where you will have Russia on one side and the Ukraine, the NATO powers and the US all on the other. Personally I would suggest Beijing because, unlike all the other countries that I have mentioned, they are not a party to this war. There or Pyongyang.
Putin would send the Metropolitan of Moscow to treat with Leo. Trump could send a US Cardinal.
Vatican should be keying on Gaza!
Not the US’ adventures in breaking up Russia.
I guess that offering mediation in conflicts that you are part of is what the Western “civilization” is all about, since the White House Pope is offering it too. No mediation offfer from London yet, for some reason.
It’s sort of like watching a football game and after half-time, you notice that the coach/trainer for one side that is losing badly has gone out onto the field after donning a referee’s uniform. Wait, what?
Rev Kev and ilsm: You are simplifying things too much.
First, there have been some articles here in Italy that explain the mechanism: According to the Lateran Treaty and other conventions, diplomats who are accredited by the State of the City of the Vatican (the legal entity) are allowed to pass through Italian ports / airports and, possibly, even stay in Italy. (If they can’t get a room at the Vatican Hilton, or whatever it is.)
The example given is that the Minister of Culture of the Russian Federation, Olga Lyubimova, attended the funeral of Pope Francesco as well as the installation of Leone XIV. No one tried to arrest her.
https://www.unionesarda.it/news/mondo/funerale-del-papa-putin-manda-una-ministra-israele-solo-il-suo-ambasciatore-in-vaticano-ny61psmw
There is a Russian ambassador to the Vatican, too, who has been quoted as saying that communication in general has been good and uninterrupted.
Also, to clarify: Pope Francesco often annoyed the Ukrainians. This plan wouldn’t have started floating around if the Russian government truly distrusted the Vatican as well as the Italian government. The Italians have been “doing” diplomacy a long time — they know not to screw up relations with Russia.
PS: The Vatican has been abundantly clear about the pope’s / popes / local patriarch’s impatience with the Israeli government and their sympathy for the Palestinians.
Thank you.
I cannot think of any mechanism where Putin can hop onto a plane and fly to Italy without some idiot getting the idea to ground his plane and arrest him but for a final conference, he needs to be there. Would you trust Meloni if he actually arrived? But when the Vatican let their holy site be used for that Trump – Zelensky dog & pony show while they were in the middle of burying the Pope, that was it. They could have done it in a hotel room or better yet the US Embassy but instead the Vatican let themselves be used for a background prop with all the cameras going. Trust is gone.
The only chain of events I can see is Trump recognizes renaming things America won’t make for a lack of ammunition and can use the Vatican “mediation” as cover for recognition of reality. Trump and other Western leaders will see Odessa change hands long before they would admit Western superiority might not be all its cracked up to be.
“Pope’s / popes / local patriarch’s impatience with the Israeli government and their sympathy for the Palestinians” is the funniest thing I’ve read all day. Almost as funy as that car media stunt.
mahna: I was trying to point out that Francesco and Leone, plus the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Pizzaballa, have all indicated plenty of displeasure at the Israeli government and its actions in Palestine.
I was trying to point out that the indicated displeasure is just the show for the plebs, much like the Pope-car-for-Palestinian-kids. A low-effort show, for that matter. I have seen people indicate more displeasure for getting one chicken nugget less at McDonald’s.
When the Pope talks, even ever so mildly, people listen.
When an unhappy camper screaming over a missing chicken nugget screams, no one listens if they can help it.
A Pope does not have to be hysterionic to be heard.
Great! Than that problem is settled. I hope he will fix Ukraine right after that, and then the world hunger, not to mention pedophilia. Heil Pope!
Once upon a time coding was fun. A colleague and I had to learn Fortran for our PhDs if we were to stand a chance of getting our new ways of estimating Randomised Controlled Trials tested via simulations done before we grew old.
Comparing how quickly when being compiled the program crashed and how many errors it found became a kind of game. Crucially we also learnt from each other in terms of specifying all the kind of constraints you must put into the program and which “lesser” languages might ignore and give an answer that looked about right but was garbage.
I really can’t imagine having to learn how to code today. It’s like lego minus the fun factor.
Anybody who can think clearly can create software today with an AI servant. AI can tirelessly generate software at your direction in a variety of languages. This is an epochal breakthrough in the development of information systems. It is a little known fact that the normal distribution of human computer programming skill does not alter with the amount of training provided. If you are a weak programmer, you will always be a weak programmer, irrespective of training and practice. By contrast, all instances of an AI software bot are equally (highly) skilled and productive. The effects of this revolution in software productivity will be enormously beneficial, particularly in the area of software quality assurance, a weak point of current commercial software development.
The only problem is that an AI might write code that has a buried ‘rm -r’ in it that nobody knows is there because who has the time to read all that code?
Every organization I’ve worked at has had a code review process: people (plural) read the code, and different people test the code, from different angles.
Somewhat more likely than ‘rm -r’ embedded somewhere: libraries that don’t work, or deleted blocks of lines, or simple typos. In other words, nothing new.
You forgot the sarcasm tag.
My thought exacty.
reads like it was written by ai…detached, bloodless…exists in a blandly philosophical theoretical space.
adding, there’s a 1,2,3,4 quality to ai summaries and people don’t think like that, kind of like when a person who wants to be seen as a spanish speaker goes all william faulkner with a bad case of hukdonphonics when a real spanish speaker orders their nouns and verbs differently than an english speaker
“The effects of this revolution in software productivity will be enormously beneficial”
Productivity measured by what, exactly?
While the power of computer hardware has raced ahead on an exponential curve (about 40% a year), the productivity of software development has advanced at a much slower pace (3-5% a year). Software productivity is measured by the amount of sound, tested, and documented code produced by a resource in a given period of time. Today, I can ask an AI to write non-trivial code in Powershell, Python, C, or even COBOL, and it will generate working software 2 to 10 times faster that a proficient human programmer. By 2035, it is plausible that most literate adults with internet access will be able to generate software through AI agents, using natural language and voice. Because software increasingly empowers machines and institutions worldwide, significantly accelerating its production is an historically important development.
“Software productivity is measured by the amount of sound, tested, and documented code produced by a resource in a given period of time.”
So ultimately it is the amount of code that determines productivity. Which means that software developers, whose promotion, bonus, or even workplace are now dependent on those Ford-like-assembly-line productivity measurements, will soon learn how to game AI prompts to fatten the code they produce. As if we needed more bloated code in IT…
The word “sound” makes quite a heavy lifting here. Much is asked from code: performance, efficiency, robustness, standards-compliance. Even more fun: correctness (and there we are into mathematical properties and methods that AI just does not tackle at present); maintainability (with nasty constraints such as backwards-compatibility); and fulfilment of requirements (knowing how requirements specifications are done, this one will be a real mess). Being bug-free does not even touch was “sound” represents.
“it will generate working software 2 to 10 times faster that a proficient human programmer.”
40 years ago, I started using code generators that enabled me to write an SQL statement, or a description of a GUI, and the actual code (with all the function calls and loops and whatnot) was automatically generated thereafter. My productivity was easily 10 times higher than if I hand-coded everything.
In essence what is proposed is to promote AI as a kind of generalized code-generator — with two major differences:
a) developers do not use a domain-specific, semantically well-defined DDL or equivalent, but a prompt whose semantics are unknown;
b) whereas code generators produce their output deterministically, AI does not — the same prompt might result in different code at different points in time.
I feel a bit of trepidation at seeing tools with formally undefined semantics and mechanisms generating code that will go into production.
I suspect there will be plenty of pain when feedback from the first wave of AI-induced code returns from actual end-users.
More than a few years back I was in a programming team dipping into functional programming and for about a year we had this competition in which the weekly winner was the one who’s commits removed most lines of the code…
Fun times. Also taught me a lot about the difference between clever and “clever”. And also that in the end, programming is mostly all about manipulating data structures. Nothing more, nothing less.
Talk with enough old programmers and they may mention how all that abstract thinking messed with their English syntax. They could understand each other, but spouses and friends often looked on wondering if they’d stumbled onto some new dialect!
It is possible to be a recovering former programmer. :)
An older article, but still relevant. AI code bots aren’t nearly as good as promoters like to promote
https://www.computerworld.com/article/2077802/just-how-good-is-ai-assisted-code-generation.html
The FOSS project that I am involved with (in C++) hasn’t used AI to generate code, but we have added CoPilot as a reviewer for pull requests on our Github git source management. So far it seems not able to achieve a deep (or even moderate) understanding of the architecture or design. It does in general offer some constructive comments but to me it seems like mostly along the lines of “it might be better to name this variable like this —” and a few things that might improve performance or memory allocations.
Add it to list of things like CLang style-checkers.
Some of our outside devs (being FOSS anyone can toss a PR in the hamper) might be using AI in their commits and I think it can slow the review process (where, since the dev is an unknown quantity has to be more thorough).
Coding is still fun but it has changed a huge amount. When I started coding my projects decades ago it was like making a sand paining. You had to specify how each bit moved around at specific times.
Now the modern languages (like Swift and others) allow marvelous expression of complex ideas. The hard part for me is that now coding relies a lot on making calls to the OS. I find it hard to find the correct call and figure out all the needed arguments. For this an AI assistant is very helpful. It can bring up examples of using the call which you can copy and test.
It still is awesome to string together a bunch of commands in software and see it result in an app that does something useful.
An architect I spoke to recently had an analogous comment. He uses an AI to search the city database of codes. He says it is very good at finding the correct section of city building code which saves him a lot of time.
It is amazing how AI and software has made calling customer service or a problem with your bureaucracy so much quicker and less time consuming. Whereas talking to a human slows things down so much Having a computer automated answering makes explaining your problem so fast.
I think that you left of the sarcasm tag.
My experiences with telephonic communications have had exactly the opposite result from that which you suggest.
My rough measure of this is to ask; how many millions of cross connections do these AI models provide compared with how many billions of cross connections does even the lowliest Terran human interlocuter possess?
Stay safe, factorial. (Where N equals infinity.)
As a structural engineer I will second what your architect friend said.
I recently reviewed and updated my firm’s code database, to cover all British and EU codes for buildings, marine structures, demolitions and temporary works, and then had this all cross referenced to US codes.
I used a 10+ yo £50 PC I keep under the desk for destructive testing purposes, loaded with Llama AI.
The AI assistant went on with its business by itself while I was doing fee earning work on my production PC.
AI job wasn’t very fast, although there was a 4ghz CPU, 32g RAM and the fibre connection was pretty good at ~700mbs up and down.
Heh, I can’t recommend JavaScript, er, TypeScript now. It gets new features annually, by committee, had “type safety” bolted on with the TypeScript “compiler” which is obtuse, includes synchronous and asynchronous functions where, if the latter is introduced, you must ensure that all code from that point up the call stack is properly asynchronous safe, and third party modules that you might use can be imported in one of two incompatible ways, CommonJS modules, and EJS modules. And any polymorphic code that you might write, necessarily executes somewhat differently depending on whether it runs on the browser, the server, or both.
Enjoy!
With love, A former JavaScript hobbyist.
Regarding Gen Z turn to trade jobs, ditch white-collar careers amid AI uncertainty, poor corporate wages: I also think that a trade job is often a better choice than a white collar one, provided it exhibits the following characteristics:
1) It deals with maintenance or reparation, not building new stuff. There is a considerable amount of legacy artefacts that must be kept running/standing, or transformed, or upgraded, while there are less opportunities and money to build entirely new ones (at least in our developed countries with an aging population).
2) It cannot be digitized. Counter-example: car mechanics once were distinguished by their ability to identify the problems (say in a motor) and solve (i.e. repair) them. Nowadays, diagnostic tools plugged into the car on-board management system perform the diagnostics, and a reparation is often just taking out an electronic component and replacing it with a new one. Same with plenty of apparatuses such as washing machines or ovens. In all those cases, the profession is getting deskilled — meaning less interesting, lower paid work.
Regarding At Amazon, Some Coders Say Their Jobs Have Begun to Resemble Warehouse Work: I strongly recommend that any person considering a career in software development takes care of the following:
3) Except in the case the person is a truly gifted developer, forget about becoming a programmer. Those jobs are either outsourced to India, or become an assembly-line work paced by AI tools. Make sure to have a full dual training — IT + biology, or IT + finance, or IT + mechanical engineering, or IT + medecine, etc. Those people become the interface between the end-users/customers and the developers (e.g. requirements specifications, project management, acceptance testing, etc), and this is something that cannot be readily outsourced to far-away places or replaced by AI.
As further thoughts:
a) People have basically one chance to learn a profession — and then must rely upon it for the next 40-45 years. Very few people are able to, or have the possibility to change tracks and take 3 years to learn a completely different profession (trade or white-collar). This is something those economists talking about “professional reconversion” studiously ignore.
b) There was a time when parents taught their profession to their children/nephews/nieces. Nowadays? I have a hard time thinking about any of my relatives or friends who has done or could do that.
There is no such thing as “human capital”; there are only “human resources” that are used, consumed, and then quickly thrown away.
Well said, vao. This was an excellent comment. And I’ll add a couple of notes:
3) “Make sure to have a full dual training — IT + biology, or IT + finance, or IT + mechanical engineering, or IT + medicine, etc.” Yes. I work in the “IT + engineering” world, and my better managers have always said they’d rather hire a good engineer with mediocre programming skills rather than a top-notch programmer who doesn’t understand the purpose of the algorithms and the overall higher-level product.
a) “Very few people are able to, or have the possibility to change tracks and take 3 years to learn a completely different profession (trade or white-collar).” Aye. I only know one person who has done this. She started in accounting, hated it, and went back to school to become an occupational therapist. But this was back in the early 90s, when college was much cheaper. If she’d tried it today, the costs would have been prohibitive.
I’m going to pile on with a big YES here too. Except I might phrase it as Engineering + IT.
We once had to pull in some programmers when the lead engineer got a better job to help us complete a big software project (test software on custom designed automated test equipment) so I took the programmers down to the factory floor to show them the equipment, how it interfaced to the product under test, how it was used, etc, only to be corrected by one of the programmers – “we don’t read drawings, understand schematics or even have any idea how our product works, much less this test equipment”. While I stood there somewhat dumbfounded, I realized it was a very important level set on the tasks these guys could be given. They could re-write older software to make it more efficient as long as we kept them away from the key parts of the software that did real time control and measurement – they muffed that part up badly. They eventually became good at all of it, but it took over a year of working with us to get there.
Plus, most of the best engineers I worked with had started out “in the trades” as welders, or CNC techs, or even just as kids of farmers that learned how to keep everything running with whatever was on hand. Nothing beats working hands-on to get a good background on engineering.
I have known several guys who retired from the military then joined a union apprenticeship program. I only recall instances in carpentry and electricians and ride mechanics (Disney.) Northern states pay the best, but everywhere unions bend over backwards to keep apprentices employed until they graduate the program. Earn while you learn with good benefits.
IBEW Local 265 in Lincoln, Nebraska has a big parking lot, which I pass regularly, and on many, many evenings that lot is absolutely packed. The Local has to be one of the most successful organizations in the city. It offers job contacts, training, and apprenticeships for electrical workers.
Vao,
Thanks for a very nice write-up. I support youngsters going into skilled trades, and have recommended so many times. One caveat: such work usually involves putting quite a bit of stress on one’s body, with chronic problems surfacing much later. Many colleagues had to stop working after twenty or so years in the trade. Instruction on ergonomically-safe work practices would be helpful, but these are not common. Unfortunately tradespeople are also considered ““human resources” that are used, consumed, and then quickly thrown away.” This perspective must be changed.
My son is a programmer with a background on big data processing and he is working for a Spanish utility company where I guess his –and other’s– skills are used in 1) modelling both the wholesale market, and 2) the “technical restrictions” market (real time adjustment between demand and generation which involves pricing of reactive energy plus some more stuff), plus 3) modelling renewable generation as well. My guess is that such work will not be outsourced to any other company being part of the core of the company business.
Perhaps one more thing to add.
If one has a chance to work for a somewhat vertically integrated company, one might get experience in many different areas.
I started working in Silicon Valley in the late 1970’s and worked in manufacturing, marketing, product development, design for manufacturing, component qualification/testing and employee training over the years.
However, the push to outsource in companies now allows fewer on-the-job training opportunities as companies focus on their “core competencies” and tasks are moved outside.
Expecting that a college degree will set one on a smooth sail on economically troubled waters for many decades is wildly optimistic, in my view.
The USA need to move to an educational system that teaches new skills over their citizens’ lives rather than pushing the “must get a an expensive college degree to succeed”
More vocational Ed, more community college involvement in lifelong training seems like a good idea.
Agreed to all your points. Indeed, a firm with diverse activities allows for more learning, more varied work, more career paths.
As for lifelong learning: yes, this is sorely needed, but who will pay for it? Firms no longer want to invest in training their workforce. Private educational institutions are expensive, since they are there to make money, not really to train or educate. The State(s) are reluctant to put money into training or education. So?
For the young SW engineers I have mentored, my advice is continuing education is their responsibility as a professional.
No one else is going to take charge of their career. University was where they are supposed to learn how to learn. That does not stop when you get your piece of paper.
Some get it, some do not.
Flexibility is also valuable.
I remember interviewing a potential firmware (software for embedded systems) engineer, probably in the early 1990’s.
I showed him a schematic for the digital control of the target hardware (Motorola 68000 with 512Kbytes of EEPROM + 256k bytes of RAM as I recall).
These is a laughably constrained hardware complement now.
It was important to be parsimonious with this extremely limited hardware, as low cost was appreciated.
After looking at the schematic, he responded with “I don’t do hardware.”
He didn’t get a job offer.
Seems so; I was lucky to accidentally get into a new profession, but from there I never succeeded in getting into software development. There’s no entry level developer role, and hasn’t been for decades. You have to get very lucky and get hired into a mid-senior role or have completed a successful internship and get hired thereafter by Big Tech, to get in. Or slog it out as an independent developer on UpWork or whatever or pitching Web development/design locally in your region.
I’d be curious to learn whether software development as a profession has suffered since the late 1990s with the death of entry level positions, in terms of quality of software. Is code worse, better, or the same today as it was back in the 1990s?
The lazy transition to “fake” native clients, based on Electron/JavaScript, is a huge disappointment. And software today is a pig. Any computer that’s 10 or 15 years old ought to do run anything that’s available today. No exceptions virtually. Instead stuff runs so badly, you need a new computer just to keep up with it all.
Wasteful.
But hey, keeps the upgrade cycle going.
There’s so much wrong in software development.
And who’s even left to maintain the Open Source connective tissue that makes so much of this possible, that companies (ab)use without contributing to?
Wow, this gem, from an Obamanaut:
(bold mine)
So that dude’s brain has left the station, clearly.
And as far as AI coding goes, the are some choice threads from Experienced Devs:
AI Slop PR’s are burning me and my team out hard, anyone else experiencing this?
Trying to use AI to write code is absolute misery. Is anyone actually being productive with this crap?
On AI success measurements:
And of course:
This stuff is gonna be a debacle, without a doubt, because lemming-like corporate CEOs are high as kites on this stuff. It’s not gonna end well.
11+ years in the “pro” software world, my current position is developing/engineering a custom ERP system for a consulting company.
All of it built from scratch in a modern js/typescript framework.
I can also attest to bloated AI generated code with thousands lines of code added by our manager in the last couple of weeks or so.
Because he wanted to do some “vibe coding” and try out some “cool stuff”, he basically crammed a couple more features into an already overloaded sprint.
You want to know the best part?
He’s also just skipping the routine of having his PRs reviewed by other people and even skipping the automation tests in the pipeline, just because he has admin rights to the code repository.
In the meantime, my tests started to fail the other day and I spent a handful of time busting my head until I realized that I now had conflicting dependencies in my code, added by all this “vibe coding” bullsh*t.
I haven’t even gone thru the trouble of reviewing all this or raising the issue in upper management just because my work plate has been so full lately.
I’m not even sure that upper management can even grasp the consequences of all these shiny AI toys.
Sure, let’s raise productivity, but what’s the end game here? Productivity for who?
Who is going to test, debug, refactor and maintain all these vibe features when they go to production?
Definitely not my manager who just wants to “vibe” these days.
Oh God I hate this word. And my manager.
To my eyes, all this AI generated code coupled with PMC delusional / magical thinking will probably be the “final boss” of coding horror.
You might find some inspiration in the BOFH-
https://www.theregister.com/offbeat/bofh/
Those cat prices seem inflated! A Bengal kitten sells for £700-800 at best (height of pandemic price).
On the topic of Ireland, an equal important issue as re the EU as the free speech fight is the Irish legislation this week to abandon the Triple Lock, the previous law adopted that Irish troops can only be deployed abroad by the Irish executive where the Dáil, EU and UN Security Council all authorise force. The UN has been removed (and possibly the Dáil, one article I read said only the EU authorisation was required for the Irish executive to authorise deployment). Irish troops are UN peacekeepers in places like Lebanon.
The problem is that while the EU is joined at the hip to NATO, Ireland is not a member and pursues armed neutrality (although heavily Western aligned). This change is clearly aimed at Russia in the short term, to give the EU a free run to provide troops to conflicts which UNSC members oppose with a veto. And perhaps China in the future.
This change is a backdoor to deploy Irish troops on / in support of NATO missions but there is a lot of opposition to NATO and to EU militarism in Ireland but the government is pushing it through over the electorate….
“Kyiv suffers night of hell with explosions and apocalyptic fires as Putin unleashes ‘record number of Iskander-M missiles’ on Ukraine”
Well, yeah. They effed around and found out. The past coupla days the Ukrainians have been sending hundreds of drones towards Russia, including Moscow-
‘According to the Russian military, 776 drones and 12 missiles were intercepted above the country’s territory between Tuesday and Friday morning, while 12 drones hit their targets. On Saturday morning, the Russian Defense Ministry reported that another 104 UAVs had been intercepted inside Russia overnight.’
https://www.rt.com/russia/618105-western-backers-kiev-blame-lavrov/
So what did they think would happen. They found out and because of all these attacks both Putin and Lavrov these days sound more like hardliners.
US is in the V-1 (zero strategy terror in 1944-5 over Britain) phase of the conflict, trying terror…….
Seems to be the US’ go to operational plan.
Maybe I’m too picky, but I distrust any article that starts off with “Putin does X” unless it’s about something actually personal like giving a speech. Putin isn’t Russia. Ascribing everything Russia does to Putin reinforces the trope about him being a lone madman who has absolute power to do any crazy thing he wants. Rather he is a leader of a large nation with its own interests that happen at the moment to differ from ours (U.S.) but deserve to be taken seriously.
I would say that “night of hell with explosions”, “apocalyptic fires”, locust drone swarms, and other Biblical calamities would be a red flag too, especially when the reported number of dead puppies and kitties is about zero.
I can only imagine that fine expensive bottle of Hennessy being made available to only the finest, most wise highly capable, and brightest of our day…like a visit to an infamous island resort where the late Epstein would have hosted exclusive galas or soiree events….
For myself I’ll stick to basic mixes like, by example a splash of some Crown with a diet coke.
that Hennessy did its job…
LMVH got more than $40,000 of free advertising.
Most luxury goods are like Hennessy (Vuitton bag)..,the big profits are not in $40,000 bottles (USD100,000 bags) sold once in a blue moon, they are in the $100 bottles (400 to 4,000 USD bags) affordable for the petite bourgoisie.
Jeff Bezos is not on his yacht drinking $40,000 bottles…..probably more like a Peroni and Diet Coke, lol
An Atl some time radio guy that I knew wrote the song “PBR and Peanuts.” His other big hit was “Backing Up to Biloxi.”
On a higher plane in the course of things I also met a poet/lush who said he only drank Pabst Blue Ribbon because after the first three you don’t care what it tastes like. These are the tips you remember.
I’ve lived on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Pro tip: You never turn your back on Biloxi. Ocean Springs, maybe. Bay Saint Louis, done all the time. But Biloxi? Never.
Since casinos Biloxi is no longer Biloxi. Thinking back to the days before the I-10 when US 90 was how you got around.
On beer, growing up in Milwaukee in the 50s/60s you were either a PBR drinker or a Schlitz drinker. Miller wasn’t much on the map then. I think in the 60s the big 3 went to the “good, better, best” model with Andeker, Erlanger, and Thousand Dollar at the top, and for “gut wash” Red, White, and Blue, Old Mil, and Gettelman.
Though if you had a summer place in the Wisconsin north woods up there it was Hamm’s. In those days the corner bar/tavern was an institution and you could follow trends by what lighted beer sign they hung out front (which I would say they ALL had).
But Miller Lite was a revolution.
And that huge box is not recyclable mind you. The whole thing is a huge waste of everything involved.
Musical Interlude: Hennessy and Gingerale. Have a lovely afternoon!
It seems like something exclusive clubs, upper class vacation rental or rent-a-yacht firms would order. The guillotine watch aspect is that there is indeed a market big enough for LVMH to industrially produce this hideous product.
“Outrage, horror after Israeli attack kills nine children of Gaza doctor”
I don’t see why anybody should be surprised. This is what Israel is all about. They started off this war by waiting until Hamas personnel were home so not only could they kill them but their wives and children as well which is actually a war crime. And right from the start they have bombed every hospital and clinic that they could find which by the way is also a war crime. Hell, a coupla days ago they bombed the place where prosthetic limbs were issues and fitted. So murdering the families of medical doctors is just par for the course. There is now no depravity that they will not indulge in. It is their nature.
How they are using AI is a horror. The Gospel, Lavender, and Where’s Daddy? The latter being used to target families. Reported by +972 Magazine.
A lot of would be Nell’s living la vida homeless way too close to those railroad tracks, Bullwinkle!
Can’t wait to take the HSR from Pixley to Manteca…
I’ve not visited Las Vegas in nearly 15 or so years so this is old news, but during the suddenly precipitous drop to GDP and the subsequent Great Recession circa 2009 I can recall having a chuckle that the Las Vegas Monorail entity had filed for bankruptcy, thus rendering those muni bonds issued by same as less appealing in value.
https://www.ktnv.com/news/whats-next-for-the-las-vegas-monorail
For myriad reasons that scene depicted above reminds me of that….instead of the functional HSR many of those citizens can see the albatross of CA state government largesse. It’s truism in Texas as well, all those myriad toll roads where at least one outside or nearest to Austin went bankrupt. Probably a good place to shoot chase scenes for films though (!). \sarc
Though I think there are high hopes for Brightline. Not so sure the start location in Rancho Cucamonga is a big plus.
Sorry for the rant, but ‘The Last of Us’ is not HBO’s but Naughty Dog’s. Watching a playtrough of the first game on Youtube is something that I would recommend more than anything that came after.
– ‘Aspergillus: All about the fungus that could spark a pandemic like in HBO’s ‘The Last of Us’’ – The Economic Times
Kudos to the headline writer here. Even though I *knew* that “like in HBO’s ‘The Last of Us'” would be completely irrelevant to this story I was forced to click on it anyway, just to find out whether the author(s) actually provided some rationale for this simile in the text. Nope. Just clickbait. But it worked!
Well, in fairness it did discuss a fungus and a potential pandemic. No vegetable zombie apocalypse though.
This is the kind of article that literally drives me nuts.
I have carefully logged 35 years of medical practice. In all of that time, I have been involved with an entirety of FOUR cases of aspergillosis. 3 of them were in AIDS patients before the advent of HIV drugs, one of them involved a patient with a really bad lymphoma. Precisely zero of them were “clickers” or anything remotely similar. Instead, they were patients who were already very ill and then had yet another painful and difficult-to-treat mess heaped upon them.
Unless something radically changes in the constitution of that fungus, that is not the kind of thing that will even remotely spark a pandemic. It would require a reservoir of hosts with profoundly damaged immune systems.
The “fungal” organism that should be worried about much more is called mucormycosis. It does not require near the immunosuppresion in the host as aspergillosis. Just a simple case of poorly-controlled diabetes is all that is required. The next time you are in a Wal-Mart, just look around. I would dare say that 40% of the customers there would be ripe for an infection if exposed correctly.
I am not even sure where they were going with the “clicker” “The Last of Us” title. The only things I can remotely think that would alter the host in that kind of way are parasitic infections like toxoplasmosis. They really can get into a host brain and really alter their entire behavior patterns. In many species, this is actually part of their life cycle. But turning into a “clicker” – not so much.
I wish these outlets would knock it off with the hysteria. These problems are already serious enough without this ammunition and disinformation to make people laugh them off.
First, regarding your point ” It would require a reservoir of hosts with profoundly damaged immune systems.” Would the Long Covid cohorts qualify? As with many other diseases, opportunistic infections piggyback on a prior debilitating infection to “finish off” the host.
Secondly, regarding ” ammunition and disinformation to make people laugh them off.” If one were even remotely cynical, such an outcome would appear to be optimal for the eugenically minded. Also, those in the grip of hysteria are prime candidates for “being led by manipulators.”
Stay safe.
Aspergillosis, the infection caused by Aspergillus in a human body, almost killed me 2 years ago.
Radiation treatment for lung cancer earlier had left much necrotic tissue in my lung cavity. Aspergillus, which is all so present and common in our environment, found a buffet and began eating me alive. Over a hundred days of fever as well as a white blood cell count out the roof.
My Drs were dogged but candid—“get your affairs in order”.
The same aerosols and particulates causing the Climate Crises are not making our lungs any healthier. The Long Covid 19 of the Pandemic is just pile on.
Be careful with both your house plants and your gardening.
https://news.uga.edu/multidrug-resistant-fungi-in-soil-compost-flower-bulbs/&sa=U&ved=2ahUKEwibz7ftmr-NAxVPMdAFHW9QIb0QFnoECAMQAg&usg=AOvVaw1omr3y1UW57VjkEWWPb7NH
url didn’t work for me, trimmed it & got the page:
https://news.uga.edu/multidrug-resistant-fungi-in-soil-compost-flower-bulbs
Link Surprise huh?—Sorry it went to moderation and became inaccessible to me…
Thanks much for fixing it and then following it.
Paddling several days in the upper Edisto River’s swampy basin to celebrate my treatments conclusion seemed to correlate with its onset…who knows??
The Edit option on Comment postings seems to have vanished for me…
Thanks again
Noting says “entering the military in June” as unrealistic and low-effort animation in May.
China is notoriously tight-lipped about new weapons systems until they are very ready–the US boasts (or bombasts) years in advance, e.g., hypersonics that the Russians {/s} stole {/s} from the US.
And recently, the US president boasts (or bombasts) about weapons systems that are amazing, awesome, will win the war, etc., with no actual description of what he is talking about. And yet on the Ukrainian battlefield, they fail and fail and fail.
I really thought this was clickbait slop until I looked it up. Then this timeless wisdom of the ancients came to mind:
“Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.”
‘SportsCenter
@SportsCenter
This routine is impressive 🤯 ‘
They made a great team. Her being so small had a good power to weight ratio that let her put in a great effort while the big guy was a solid dynamic platform that let her make all those moves. Kudos to the both of them for a great effort.
I loved the sheer elation on her face as she nailed each move, and the obvious mutual admiration between the two of them at the end.
Would the nations deploring the bombing and starving of Gaza kindly stand up, threaten action and then take it. Israel is not going to stop. I am not at all certain that even an existential threat to its existence would cause a course change, but then no such threat has been made. But of course such action might interfere with Trump’s big beautiful real estate deal.
Have I mentioned that we live in an age of monsters?
“Take Action” ? That’s a euphemism.
What you mean is that you want to wage war on Israel. I understand, because I think about it, too. But I have decided that I don’t want to wage war on Israel.
I’ll ask you a question I asked myself: how many Israelis are you willing to kill, in order to get your way in Gaza?
Here’s another question: having gone to war, on what conditions would you stop killing the Israelis?
And a third question: if, during this war of yours, the Israelis should hasten to complete their massacre of the people in Gaza, would you still think of yourself as waging a war to save those people?
What we always do in war is kill people and destroy things, and threaten to kill even more people and destroy even more things, until, hopefully, the people whom we’re killing and threatening agree to do as we tell them.
But that choice is always the enemy’s, never ours. In war, what we get to choose is whether to keep killing and destroying to try to get our way, or to give up trying to get our way. That might mean choosing to do the enemy’s bidding, if we should find the war has gone badly enough. When war is decisive, which is seldom, that decision is always made by the vanquished.
If you should get your war with Israel, don’t be surprised if you face the same problem with the Israelis, that the Israelis face with the Palestinians. You’ll be stuck, slaughtering and starving your way endlessly onward, trying to reach a decision that will never be yours to make.
Your former humanity will be counted among the sunk costs of the affair–a sacrifice that you will have made, that will make you hate your enemies even more. You will become the man or woman of your time, which, you insist, is a monster, not a person.
There are plenty of actions that can be taken short of war. UK can stop abstaining on UN Security Council votes, which would prevent US vetoes from blocking UN actions. Countries can individually take actions to impose full sanctions on Israel and permanently divest Israeli assets. They can stop their actions against their own citizens who are protesting and taking actions against Israel. They can stop providing all military shipments, technical aid, and use of their facilities to assist the IDF. They could use their military ships to escort aid convoys to Gaza. None of this require military action.
And your projection of what Palestinians would do against Jewish Zionists is disgusting and untrue. Palestinians have consistently asked for peace and are willing to accept the two state solution or one state solution that allowed Jewish settlers to stay in the new single state, they just don’t get to keep their privileges.
In short, you are repeating false Zionist talking points to such a degree that you’re indistinguishable from a Zionist.
complete sanction
No Making Shit Up. Any one of the five permanent members can veto a UN Security Council resolution. The US is one of those permanent members. Whatever the UK does with its vote will not reverse a US veto.
https://main.un.org/securitycouncil/en/content/voting-system
Okay, my bad for not checking on this before posting. I had read that UN vetoes require at least one veto and one abstention to take effect, which was why US vetoes on Israel are accompanied by UK abstentions.
I stand by the rest of my points. The West could stop Israel by simply fully withdrawing its military, economic, and diplomatic support for Israel. What Roland said is strawmanning and false projections based on common Zionist talking points.
Doing nothing when you know genocide is being committed is already monstrous. Mouthing Zionist talking points to gaslight others into inaction is worse. Strawmanning and lying about what others actually said and twisting it into something that just happen to match what is already done to Lebanon, Syria, and Iran is … very Israel of you.
Given the explicit and oft-repeated belief that everyone who is not Israeli is Amalek and therefore should be slaughtered, and apparently the more cruelly the better, the Zionist exterminators have made themselves unworthy of protection, like rabid dogs.
A biblical hatred is engulfing both sides in the Gaza conflict – and blinding them to reason
Jonathan Freedland
We have been at this stage for some time: But, but, I am a good German.
Freedland makes some fatal mistakes, fatal to the idea that he has much of a moral compass other than as an apologist for slaughter: the fury that drove Hamas to slaughter around 1,200 Israelis on a sleepy Saturday morning nearly 20 months ago
Since disproven. Again and again. It is the lie that is the casus belli, and it won’t go away. At least he had the sense not to repeat the “babies in ovens” trope.
I’d wait for more evidence before dragging in that charge:
The pair were staffers at the Israeli embassy, but all the evidence suggests they were struck at random. Even if he was heard chanting “Free Palestine” or “I did it for Gaza”, the gunman’s target was a Jewish institution filled with Jews. That makes it an antisemitic act.
And that old and convenient — and now immoral — 50,000 dead. The estimate of 50,000 is from more than a year ago.
https://www.france24.com/en/middle-east/20240711-more-than-186-000-dead-in-gaza-how-credible-are-the-estimates-published-on-the-lancet
186,000 dead, from ten months ago.
Yes, it is hard to be realistic. No, there are times when trying to balance is the least productive thing one can do.
“Biblical hatred,” from, ahhh, the Good Book. The Book of Peace and Love. Looks like someone slipped and told the truth.
One of the aspects of this genocide is that we don’t even know how many have been killed.
Freedland is a heavy duty Zionist, who writes for the zionist Guardian. He will find excuses for Israel and allege antisemitism lurks under every bush. He is slightly less unhinged than Melanie Phillips who writes for the Times (of London) and whose husband is a legal correspondent for the BBC and various newspapers.
Quite – one of the main propagators of high end hasbara in the British MSM. His latest article represents a significant change in tone, in the context of the intellectual contortions he has had to perform over the last 20 months (in order to square his Zionism with his progressivism), but he will never be able to effect a genuine parting of the ways. As ever, Netanyahu remains the convenient lightning rod and focus for deflection. Indeed, Freedland was apparently in the vanguard of those senior managers in the Guardian who were most bitterly opposed to reporting the facts in a fair manner; there has allegedly been a battle royal between him and his allies and the likes of Owen Jones, Nesrine Malik, etc. I can’t help but think of his article as all of a piece with the recent optics of the Guardian as a whole, which has suddenly discovered that its record on Gaza risks wrecking its reputation with its predominantly progressive readership.
Never forget that the pre-eminent personality in the Guardian’s history, C. P. Scott (“comment is free, but facts are sacred”), was a devoted Zionist, and probably did more than anyone else to broker the relationship between Weizmann and Lloyd George during WW1. I once got censored in the Guardian for daring to remind readers of this history, and have also been censored a number of times for mentioning the G-word, which I now have to conceal with the word ‘impunity’. Maybe facts aren’t so sacred after all on Planet Guardian after all.
– ‘A biblical hatred is engulfing both sides in the Gaza conflict – and blinding them to reason’ – The Guardian
“Israel starving Palestinians, two killings at a Jewish museum: both are atrocities. But vanishingly few can see it …”
An excellent example of the “both sides do it” framing technique. Yes, the murder of two embassy officials by an individual shouting “free Palestine.” The genocide of an entire trapped population by a government using overwhelming force, which is the culmination of a much longer slow-motion project of ethnic cleansing and destruction. Equivalent. Why can’t “both sides” just get along and let reason prevail? ‘Tis a mystery.
The mystery is how it’s still going on. Perhaps the global community will come to their senses and at least save those white south-africans, lol.
Still waiting for ICE raids in Forest Hills.
“Irish privacy watchdog OKs Meta to train AI on EU folks’ posts”
‘Collecting data for AI training on “legitimate interest” grounds, for example, would be in violation of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) by erroneously arguing that Meta needed all that data to be “culturally aware” of EU norms.’
So if I am reading this right, as EU norms evolve over time, then meta would need all that data on a continuous, ongoing basis and there would never be a time when they said that they had enough data and would stop.
That Ashera cat is handsome. Apparently they can reach 40 lbs cursing them to be bread for captivity. A large Ashera would be a devastating apex predator with little to fear and the neighbors’ chickens to eat.
Too lazy to chase down a link but my understanding is that when they mature, they are uncontrollable and have unpleasant wild behaviors like territory issues, stalking and attacking, etc. That is a dangerous animal.
Magnificent, but a poor choice for a pet.
That cheerleading routine…WOW. Am I the only one more impressed by that boy’s strength than the cheerleaders gymnastics? Half the time he was holding her up with one hand. Unbelievable.
The other thing I was impressed by was to see younger people involved in a sport that required so much touching between opposite sexes, and it not seeming like any big deal to them. I sometimes wonder if I, a 55 year old, have been more brainwashed by the media about the younger generation buying into wokism and the Me Too movement than they are. I work with 20-25 year old students every year as our department has an internship program with the local university. In the past eight years, I’ve not once had a student tell me which gender they identify as, nor which pronouns they would like me to use. It makes me wonder how much of the perceived differences I have about the younger generations are real and how much is just Hollywood/ MSM B.S.
Do not discount well compensated social media influencers.
And while they depress and yes enrage me, I honestly think that the majority of young people while they watch are very aware of the hucksterism on display.
Palestine and the Conscience of China Dissident Voice
*****
I’m reading a lot of comments here and there on China and Palestine, entirely by Western sources. I think it’s largely that people are hoping that somebody, anybody, does something.
I don’t know what internal Chinese thinking is. It’s interesting that what I’m not seeing are analyses of the internal Chinese language press. What this linked article did was a few steps removed by providing some translations of Mao Zedong’s comments from the 1960s.
Anyway the claim of the article is that China is not interfering because it doesn’t want to fall into the trap of being world police. That might be. But there is no evidence provided from contemporary Chinese media and scholarship. I’m also not sure it’s true, if China doesn’t want to be a hegemon, why is it building aircraft carriers?
“Anyway the claim of the article is that China is not interfering because it doesn’t want to fall into the trap of being world police.”
The less diplomatic side of me notices China has no problem taking advantage of some of the wreckage and anti-worker policies already spread globally by the West. Maybe not called interference, but it’s involvement.
Then the more diplomatic side says the country is doing a better job than most at taking care of about 1 billion people. That’s laudable considering all the problems in the world and too many are expecting them to take the weight billions more onto their shoulders.
But if they want to increase the living standards of hundreds of millions more Chinese, it’s going to be interesting to see what plan, from the economic ideas that float around the global mainstream, is produced that seriously grows the global South incomes. Because I’ll flat out say it, there hasn’t been so much development going on in troubled places that mass migration was put on hold.
And, as some countries have shown, weaponizing mass migration to cause destabilization or the threat of destabilization elsewhere is a tactic.
Are you seriously arguing that China should direct its largesse towards solving the mass migration problems created by the West’s de-stabilising activities in the Global South, Palestine and the Ukraine to reduce the further de-stabilisation of a West in severe self-induced decline?
“The less diplomatic side of me notices China has no problem taking advantage of some of the wreckage and anti-worker policies already spread globally by the West. Maybe not called interference, but it’s involvement.”
“Then the more diplomatic side says the country is doing a better job than most at taking care of about 1 billion people. That’s laudable considering all the problems in the world and too many are expecting them to take the weight billions more onto their shoulders.”
“if China doesn’t want to be a hegemon, why is it building aircraft carriers?”
To take back Taiwan by the ofrce of arms if necessary?
As for sanctioning Israel, the question should be put to Turkyie, Azerbaidjan, Egypt, GCC countries, and EU, since they are the biggest trade partners of Israel and neighbours.
I am curious if the verbal threat made by UK was also combined with blocking the use of the UK airbase in Cyprus against Gaza by both UK and Israel…
Aircraft carriers have value, but not against the United States or China.
It’s largely that people are hoping that somebody, anybody, does something. Yes, somebody, anybody, anyone but themselves. They would rather point their finger at China, or Russia, or any other country but their own.
Wow, guillotine watch contained a bonus antidote today, what a coup! My two favorite segments.
Re: Jon Stewart – I really, deeply loved the daily show back in the day…this attempted bumper sticker slogan suggests to me that the better part of the creativity of that production was a credit to the writers. Still, on-screen talent matters, but this really isn’t it.
Most importantly, the paper at the top – I assume that’s Alastair Crooke – deeply redolent of the not-so-old wisdom that “at least Mussolini made the trains run on time”. Our version might have something to do with air traffic controllers. In any case Trump in Crooke’s construction would be the American Sulla (sort of a Sulla as “history repeating itself in farce”…), smashing indiscriminately the corroded edifices of the whole apparatus such that a future dictator can achieve a more complete and lasting transformation – I think this actually might be too optimistic. It’s not clear to me that the present machine can even be salvaged; our train-clocks may not even be right twice a day. It’s telling though that reading this piece I had an acute pang of “I don’t suppose Caesar would be so bad after all” when measured against the present kakistocracy.
“Most importantly, the paper at the top – I assume that’s Alastair Crooke – deeply redolent of the not-so-old wisdom that “at least Mussolini made the trains run on time”. Our version might have something to do with air traffic controllers.”
There’s still plenty of raving over authoritarian regimes with good railway systems.
We did have that paper about Singapore to make us think about it.
However, an authoritarian regime a la Trump would be mana for natural disasters including pandemics…
“‘Unprecedented’: ICE Officers Operating Inside Bay Area Immigration Courts, Lawyers Say”
I can see where this is all headed. So sooner or later you will have an auditorium full of families getting ready for their US naturalization ceremony where they can take their Oath of Allegiance as new citizens when BAM, in comes ICE to round them up as they are not yet citizens and haul them away in paddy wagons.
‘Nobody expects the ICE Inquisition!’
Next we’ll have ICE medical examiners to check the newborn boys to see if they are circumcised or not. Those with foreskins get ‘deported’ to the Pfizer/United Health “Parts Department,” suspiciously located in the refurbished Gaza Pediatric Hospital.
Regarding the aircraft developed by China, known as the Jiutian SS-UAV, it reminds me of a passage in Jaron Lanier‘s book “Who Owns the Future”. Something along the lines of a person, relaxing at the beach. They are approached by a drone that issues up from the sand and offers the vacationer a margarita. The person says “sure” but the drone responds “for only $8.99 a month you can receive our services” ……………
Re Trump and CBS–if a potential payoff to Trump over his frivolous lawsuit isn’t a bribe then it’s hard to know what is. By contrast ABC was genuinely libelous by accusing Trump of rape. That both sides in this dispute are dubious merely endorses the wisdom of W.C,Fields: You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man. A plague on all their houses but a plea for less corruption generally.
From your local Luddite. When does participation in AI (direct or observational) lead to its acceptance and eventual normalization? By “enjoying” AI created “art” are we leading to our own demise? The “Dance of the ocean waves” is a good example of encouraging something that I feel is essentially dangerous. Just my opinion of course. I’ve been accuse of virtue signalling by mentioning I don’t (never have & never will) own a cell phone though I avoid preaching about why, unless asked. But I wonder when we will come out with “NON AI” label as we do with “Organic” at the grocery store. Are we becoming Pandora’s Proxy?
Speaking of organic…….. when the power goes out and you can’t use AI to plant a tomato, what ya gonna do?
Invading Mexico a mistake” While I agree with the headline, there is little in the article that is realistic – Mexico is a surprisingly wealthy country but its Gini coefficient is stratospheric, which is why AMLO and Sheinbaum continue to be very popular :
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.POV.DDAY?locations=MX
whereas the author longs for the PRI oligarchic days.
My SWAG, watch the cartels become popular as they lead a guerrilla fight to repel the Yankees. And does the US have the stomach for a long guerrilla war with a slow drip of bodybags and a tidal wave of immigrants bringing the war home? Could the US even raise the troops, given the state of health of teenagers today?
What about the cartel gangs in the US? That would be a nice two front war…
Those characters are too well connected to the Three Letter Agencies to suffer any fallout from the Southern Border Controversy. I suspect thay they will be utilized against any “native” opposition to the Status Quo. After all, importing ‘foreign’ troops to “maintain order” in the Homeland is an old and honoured practice.
It’s just a Globalist version of the old “hire one half to kill the other” game.
Up next: Black helicopters!
“watch the cartels become popular as they lead a guerrilla fight to repel the Yankees.”
I have the feeling that those cartels might actually get in touch with the Yankees and, to reuse the Trumpian terminology, make a deal with them.
Why fight and risk severe losses when one can manipulate invading forces so that they target a competing cartel, carve out a power base by being officially established as some kind of local delegate to take care of administrative matters while the GIs go around arresting, torturing, and shooting at “enemy combatants”, and enter into contracts to supply the Yankees with fuel, food, prostitutes, whatever?
Meanwhile, production and sales of narcotics will go on unimpeded, just unobtrusively.
Basically, just like in Iraq or in Afghanistan.
Or Vietnam.
How could I have forgotten that one?
Or, to go back further in time, in Italy. After all, the US forces made a deal with the mafia so that it takes over in the South — instead of the dreaded commies from the PCI. All the easier since Mussolini had the mafia painfully feel the might of the fascist state (fascists did not like competition from other organizations).
But also, by opposing the Germans, the mafia was rehabilitated amongst the population.
The Boston Review article missed the easiest and most important change that could be made to the Constitutional system. In the 1880’s, the 9 lackeys of the 1% deemed that corporations are people, thus giving them all the rights to buy politicians and get laws passed for them such as anti-labor.
https://www.eurotrib.com/story/2018/3/7/52146/29312
“Conkling had served on the drafting committee that was responsible for writing the Fourteenth Amendment. Then the last member of the committee still living, Conkling told the justices that the drafters had changed the wording of the amendment, replacing “citizens” with “persons” in order to cover corporations too. Laws referring to “persons,” he said, have “by long and constant acceptance … been held to embrace artificial persons as well as natural persons.””
“Years later, historians would discover that Conkling’s journal was real but his story was a fraud. The journal was in fact a record of the congressional committee’s deliberations but, upon close examination, it offered no evidence that the drafters intended to protect corporations. It showed, in fact, that the language of the equal-protection clause was never changed from “citizen” to “person.” So far as anyone can tell, the rights of corporations were not raised in the public debates over the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment or in any of the states’ ratifying conventions. And, prior to Conkling’s appearance on behalf of Southern Pacific, no member of the drafting committee had ever suggested that corporations were covered.”
Thank you for the continuing Gaza coverage, one thing seldom mentioned is the number of dud dumb bombs, roughly 10% don’t go boom when they are supposed to.
Between 35,000 and 40,000 US made 2,000 pound bombs have been dropped on Gaza…
All of them supplied by the USA in the name of FREEDOM!!!
We have 535 total congresscritters, all but a handful are fervent supporters of Genocide.
For Money and “Status”.
Children charred and mutilated beyond recognition by the tens of thousands and our “Leaders” cheer, for Money.
Can there be a greater depravity than this?
Duds are the prime reason why parts of France are still uninhabitable over a century after the Great War ended. It’s a gigantic minefield.
At least these are conventional explosives, not poison gas.
They are also 2,000 Lbs each,much easier to locate than tens of thousands (Or more) of artillery shells.
Use magnetometers and ground penetrating radar mounted on quad copters to find them, then use robots to attach enough plastique to detonate them.
The occasional sympathetic detonation is to be expected.
3,500 to 4,000 of them…it is doable with enough manpower and the right tech.
You should go to Cambodia and fix it.
As I begin reading the “Storm in the West” paper, I note that Aurelien is referrenced by name very early in the paper. And Aurelien sometimes comments here by name.
The presence here of commenters like Aurelien and Professor Hudson and etc. indicates that comments here are at least seen by people with some influence and perhaps even a modicum of real power within some fields of operation and zones of exposure. Which means that comments from mere amateurs and mere citizens like me have a chance to be seen by them.
If we try hard enough, we might produce comments which actually contribute something to the views of mid-level influential people. At the very least, I try to make my comments not an a-priori waste of their time and eyeball-focus anyway. ( Or of our bloggers’ time and eyeball-focus, either).
From Novara Media today:
Don’t Waste Your Life. The Future Of Humanity Depends On It | Aaron Bastani Meets Rutger Bregman
I initially struggled with some views expressed by Bregman (Dutch author) but I understood more of his depth as the interview proceeded.
How does the left (the real ones) overcome their inclination for multi-point purity to achieve effectiveness.
Maybe a slight summation on my part but ultimately I found the interview worthwhile.
They could try to confer somewhere in private to see if there are any common-denominator goals and desires which every single left can enjoy supporting. And then they all agree to create a shell-party devoted to supporting just only those shared things.
If they can’t even do that, then the answer to your question is: they don’t over come that inclination. And they never ever will.
Alas, I have found myself guilty, your honor. Though I meant only well all along the way.
I walk through my very diverse (ethnic and racial) working class neighborhood and I am at home, completely at ease because I never left them. It is about skin in the game towards what advance, and the expression thereof.
“Confrontation ahead: EU Commission demands that Hungary withdraws draft transparency law”
This sounds like a repeat of the fight that the EU had in Georgia over the NGO laws. If the EU is so prepared to fight so viciously about a member State legislating transparency laws, the it would indicate it is these NGOs are the main mechanism that the EU uses to control member States internally.
It would indicate that the water is wet. Astroturfing is what the modern western world is all about, and NGOs are at the center of it. There is one for everything that you can think of, and someone is paying big bucks for that (and by paying, I mean investing).
re: Carl Schmitt Unitary Exectuive Theory
I bumped into this interesting item from 2005 by Scott Horton.
What was interesting was not necessarily Horton’s essay, which of course you can read, but more the comments.
Monday, November 07, 2005
The Return of Carl Schmitt
by Scott Horton
https://balkin.blogspot.com/2005/11/return-of-carl-schmitt.html
This is interesting.
Power is back in metro New Orleans, but what caused the huge outage? Here’s what we know., NOLA.
The big easy has a brownout, in this case a “purposeful shed”, quote, power outage that Entergy said was an intentional, “last resort” effort to reduce strain on the power supply.
There’s a handy list of those “purposed”. No surprise to find out they were mainly in Orleans and Jefferson Parishes.
Questions are raised of the vitality of Entergy’s network going into storm season.
New Orleans, a sacrifice zone old and new.
There has definitely been a noticeable sea change in the coverage of Israeli genocide in the western press. Until recently it was quite difficult to find mainstream press articles that reviewed what’s going on in Gaza negatively, even though it was hard to do anything else when looking at the facts on the ground.
Not sure why. Perhaps Israel has finally worn out its welcome after a couple of years of unrelenting and deliberate destruction. Or perhaps Trump, who seems slightly cooler towards the Netanyahu administration than Biden was, has given the media a subtle signal. Or maybe efforts to deport Israeli critics inside the US have been a bridge too far for media professionals.
Hopefully this will continue to build.