From a couple of days ago, but really depressing story from down under:
AI chatbot helps teach online-only psychology classes at Macquarie University
I guess half the people with psychology degrees want to go into marketing so it’s a good fit /sarc
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LawnDart Half the people taking the classes are already whack-a-does just trying to figure their own s**t out… chatbotsmight lead them over the edge.
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“Billionaire SpaceX investor is selling his private island for $7.9M or best offer — but Tanzania says the land isn’t his”
Obviously he thought that the Tanzanian government would be just like the American government and waive the laws in his favour. Doesn’t this guy have a lawyer or something that could have explained to him just what he did and did not own? Does he do this for his investments?
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Last night in Toronto we had some bigly nasty weather including very strong winds, flooding, trees knocked down, and very large hail. Very dismal summer day. File under climate?
A short compilation:
https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/heavy-rain-thunderstorms-on-the-way-for-toronto-and-southern-ontario/article_2794bbef-1c8b-4366-98b7-604e4a5684de.html
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/livestory/toronto-thunderstorm-alerts-9.7330186
https://x.com/RT_com/status/2095339436884013547
https://www.torontotoday.ca/local/environment-climate/damaging-storm-blasts-toronto-triggering-flooding-power-outages-12738095
https://www.ctvnews.ca/toronto/photos/2026/09/02/severe-thunderstorm-drenches-toronto-heres-what-it-looked-like-throughout-the-city/
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GC54 Lake America acting up again?
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Good morning. “Why have climate impacts been underestimated?”, well now, maybe because the Precautionary Principle was used to protect scientific reputation instead of the public.
The lede into the opening header,
“Records are tumbling and impacts not expected until mid-century are now hitting every continent – what happened?
Underestimation”
Thanks, we got that. This part gets a chuckle.
“This is in no way a criticism of the scientific community.”
Huh? It’s the “scientific community” that refused to acknowledge how friggin bad things look if you just open both eyes. Ask Sam Carana if you don’t believe me.
Rant off.
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Rui At the same time, you have the UNEP article saying we can still save everything, it isn’t that bad. Minimizing has been and will keep on being the narrative.
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Steve H. > “scientific community”
There’s a category error in assuming the IPCC represents the scientific community. It is a political entity. The word ‘consensus’ appears 8 times in the article, but as Peter D Carter noted, they haven’t agreed on a definition of consensus. Dumping RCP8.5 was a tell.
Extrapolation ’bout guarantees no consensus, since it’s hard to analyze data that doesn’t exist yet. For the 40+ years I’ve been within the environmental science world, the scientists I know have been howling.
(ps I’m seeing the Sam Carana link, but not a specific relevant point. Sam Carana is not a person, but a collective pseudonym. That in itself is not dispositive against; ‘Nicolas Bourbaki’ has been important in mathworld. From what I can see, ‘Sam Carana’ is an argument for using higher-order polynomials in analysis, which can lead to string-theory-like overfitting.)
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mrsyk That “howling” hasn’t got much press. Instead we seem to get the kind of coverage that the Guardian provides, the kind that emphasizes IPCC numbers to assuage, whispering “There’s still time”.
As to Sam Carana, I’ve been reading his blog for ten plus years now with the understanding that he’s ex-petroleum industry, where he was a methane hydrologist. It’s news to me that he isn’t a person, but if you say so. BTW, the extrapolations in his graphing have been terrifyingly accurate from the get go.Reply ↓
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Steve H. Least important first: Sam Carana. I’ll repost his Fcbk page response to the question below; the way it’s put on the arcticnews site is: ‘Posts are written by Sam Carana where no name of a specific contributor is added at the top.’ If it is a consortium, they seem to have achieved internal consensus. Their contributor list is excellent.
Next importance: Specific lines on a graph. Higher-order polynomials being more accurate than linear or simple growth curves should be expected. The question is not whether the curve hits the data better with a more refined exponent, it’s what those numbers mean. This is because:
Most important: Complex system. The biosphere as a system of feedback loops has been understood well-enough for a very long time. But climate change is altering the given equation parameters while introducing new equations. Example: ’85 per cent of the increase in atmospheric methane since 2007 is due to microbial sources. And about half of that is from the tropics.’ Earlier models could be good-enough without specifically accounting for tropical wetlands; current models must deal with them, and the specific mechanisms mean more equations to model different inputs.
Here’s the important part. You could account for the changes by tweaking the numbers on a straight numerical model, and the more polynomial orders, the tighter the fit you can get. But doing that, even for a short time, can lead an investigator astray, thinking they are just refining the model, when in fact tropical wetlands are blowing up.
I’ve changed my mind about linking the Sam Carana Fcbk page, you can find it if it’s important to you. The original critique was of the ‘scientific community’ being represented by political organizations. That “howling” hasn’t got much press. Damn right. Drowning RCP8.5 in the bathtub was an expression of power, when it was more accurate to data than other, lower RCP’s. It is profoundly enraging, when the knowledge capacities are so great, that in practice it doesn’t mean a thing for policy. ‘Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. Those who remember the past but are outnumbered by those who forget are also condemned to repeat it.’
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mrsyk I appreciate the response. I’m not meaning to be combative. I’m highly sympathetic to climate scientists. I’m concerned that we are deeper into the curve than anyone wants to believe. I believe it was Tom N who wrote about colleagues calling it quits to spend time with family, and this some time ago now. You do know my glass is half empty. I wish it weren’t so.
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Henry Moon Pie Let’s consider three groups in the context of our breaching 7 of 9 planetary boundaries. The billionaires are busy racing each other to build a silicon genie that will solve all our problems, and they are completely unwilling to consider any changes to Business As Usual that would slow them down. The PMC, including the scientists and politicians involved in the COPs, work for the billionaires directly or indirectly, and the closest they can come to a solution that preserves capitalism and the planet is electrifying everything followed by carbon capture, and since it’s become clear that these proposed solutions are completely unrealistic at current levels of consumption, the PMC would rather not think about all. The third group is the typical American consumer, already beset on all sides by developments chipping away at their lifestyle. These folks tend to react to any talk of shared sacrifice for the sake of future generations by digging in their heels and whining about freedom.
Since meaningful changes that might address our impacts on the planet are blocked by these three groups, It’s clear we’re headed off the climate cliff unless we do a Thelma & Louise over a different cliff first (like nuclear war). Our children and grandchildren are going to be living in a very hostile world.
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Jason Boxman And doing it having been infected repeatedly by a novel virus that everyone pretends is gone.
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Laughingsong “The third group is the typical American consumer, already beset on all sides by developments chipping away at their lifestyle.”
To paraphrase a character from a quirky little computer game (“Dispatch”):
It’s life but it ain’t no kind of style.
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neutrino23 It is quite reasonable to me that the overall estimates have been low. This is a complex phenomenon and the scientists are teasing out one thread at a time. It makes sense that they don’t figure out everything all at once.
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Will the DOJ act on Epstein co-conspirators list issued by Massie? The Hill
I think we can safely assume Betteridge’s Law will apply here.
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Dr. John Carpenter Just for fun, I looked through the list to see, if needed, who could be thrown under the bus. Maybe Randy Andy? He’s already a bit damaged goods. But yeah, I’m not holding my breath.
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“Niger Accuses Neighboring Countries and France for Attempted Coup – teleSUR English”
The full roster of counties that were taking part in this coup were the UAE, France, Belgium, and Chad-
‘Valhalla
@ELMObrokenWings
Breaking News| Niger
Nigerien state television: During interrogations, coup officers admitted that the coup attempt was supported by the UAE, France, Belgium, and Chad.’
https://x.com/ELMObrokenWings/status/2095117537646158195
So does the inclusion of Belgium mean the EU?
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“Tibetan activists accuse China of underreporting flood death toll”
Yeah, I’m gunna be wary of this claim by ‘Tibetan activists’ since I got burned the other day. So I was watching the TV news and a BBC report was saying that China was keeping the news of this disaster on their side of the border under wraps which made me wonder what possible reason China would have to do so.The next day people were calling bs on this claim and said that if you went to the Chinese news websites and looked for the word ‘mudslides’ there were plenty of news items about it – and they had the screen-captured receipts to prove it. So France 24 and these Tibetan activists should spend more time trying to help the people affected by the floods and less time trying to strike up propaganda points.
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Michael Fiorillo Not surprising since, whether they know it or not, these imbecile “activists” are touting a feudal theocracy led by a pedophile.
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Joe Renter That’s pretty harsh. And perhaps western norms based.
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The Rev Kev Not so harsh. A long time ago I gave a link to what conditions were like in Tibet about a century ago before the Chinese eventually rolled in. The best thing that you could say about the place – and I mean the best thing – was that they had open slavery. An old Southern slave master would be embarrassed about some of the stuff that they did there. This is a mild account-
https://theblanket.library.indianapolis.iu.edu/freetibetlor.html
I seriously wonder if these activists are actually representing the old Tibetan high-ranking lamas and secular landowners that want their property back with them back on top again.
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Offtrail As a student of Tibetan Buddhism, I disagree with this characterization of pre-communist Tibet. There is actually quite a bit of good that cpuld be said about that society.
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Joe Renter Good and not good as in all society’s.
For a good reading list. Three Years in Tibet by Ekai Kawaguaci his travels in Tibet 1898 -1901. My Journey to Lhasa by Alexandra David -Neel she was there in 1924.Seven years in Tibet by Heninrich Harrer. Time frame is WW2. I still reading Kawaguaci’s account. It’s about 600 pages. Of the three books his most critical of the country. And I will admit that my illusions of an enlightened society had a reality check for me. But it seems most people were content, although with challenges.Reply ↓
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Second American Civil War: quite the reading list embedded in that very long thoughtful dissertation!
All I could think of was far NW MT, the Idaho panhandle, and far NE WA : The home of the Last Redoubt.
https://montanafreepress.org/2021/11/24/selling-the-american-redoubt-in-montana/
check out that business card !!
Ph uuuu uuu c.
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WobblyTelomeres I think it brilliant, getting all the right wing nutjobs to self-relocate to a super-volcano. Or Texas.
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Lefty Godot When people get tired of the system consistently not working, they have fantasies about just breaking things and hoping they reassemble in a more favorable configuration. In a milder form, that’s what led to Trump’s election in 2016. The radical left in the late 1960s (back when there was such a thing) had fantasies of violent revolution and the right-wing militia types were dreaming of something like that in the 1990s. I would be more up for something like New York state and New England seceding and becoming part of Canada, peacefully. I know Canada has plenty of problems too, but not on the scale of the US.
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Jason Boxman Mass politics—slow and bureaucratic, but also productive and durable—is a “high” form that Jäger contrasts with the “low” form of hyperpolitics: “low-commitment, low-cost, and all too often, low-value.” Again, the internal logic of hyperpolitics is that of online life and late capital: fluid, impermanent, reactive, short-term, and optimized for exit. “Trading algorithms know no future.” The age of mass politics was also the age of long-term planning. Under hyperpolitics, five-month plans are unthinkable, never mind five-year plans. The de-institutionalized conditions of hyperpolitics explain why the millions of feet that turned out for the largest protest movement in American history (catalyzed by George Floyd) left but footprints on a beach, almost instantly washed away by the rhythmic, cyclical waves of financial markets and engagement metrics.
Yep, No Kings! and pussy hats! Like teardrops in the rain.
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The full blown delusion and misinformation of the UNEP article is tragic and fully explains the other link under it that is asking why have climate impacts been underestimated. Apparently, everything will be solved at COP31! 😂🙄
Quote: “Global temperature rise is set to cross 1.5°C, likely within the next few years…” – the 3 year temperature average is already over 1.5ºC, the next few months will likely top 1.8ºC.
Quote: “This pathway would minimize peak temperature rise through immediate and sustained cuts to greenhouse gas emissions, including methane, on the road to net-zero…” – emissions are still increasing, not even stabilizing, there is no foreseeable road to net-zero and the Earth energy imbalance is at record levels. Talking about net zero is delusional at this point. As for methane emissions, permafrost meltdown will explode methane emissions.
Quote: ” (…) and bring down temperatures through long-term net-negative emissions, with carefully governed Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) – the process of removing carbon from the air and storing it through afforestation or other means – an essential part of the mix.” – good luck keeping those fairy tale forests from burning. As for bringing down temperatures from net-negative emissions, this ain’t gonna happen in any meaningful time frame, meaningful as in before tipping points ruin the world and kill billions.
So, the answer to the question “Why have climate impacts been underestimated?” is in the UNEP link: because the Titanic is still floating, so we have all the time in the world to listen to the orchestra playing. Just don’t be a doomer, much better to be delusional.
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“Is Trump’s $1 coin now on sale a legal tender? What the law says”
Knew last year that Trump would make America’s Semiquincentennial all about himself and he has not disappointed. Putting his mug on the face of a coin in spite of laws against it shows that he continues to use Federal funds to advertise himself. It was a real chance for America to have great celebrations for the arrival of the Semiquincentennial but Trump made it a bust.
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Oregon Lawhobbit Sooooo….I can buy 25 dollars of “legal tender” for 61 dollars.
Why does this feel like when the Post Office wanted to charge an extra penny or two for a no-lick-just-stick stamp and got itself swatted down?
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“Netherlands moves billions in gold to London in ‘crisis preparedness’ move”
Over 27 tonnes out of the USA to London, just in time for London to send Venezuela’s 31 tonnes of gold to the USA. Phew! It was a close call!
As for the Netherlands trusting their gold to London, good luck with that.
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The Rev Kev It seems that trusting London was better than trusting the US and Canada with their gold. But that is not high bar that. Heaven forbid that the Dutch store their very own gold in, oh I don’t know, Rotterdam perhaps?
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Rui I wouldn’t be surprised the Dutch were coerced to move it to London, instead of the Netherlands, or expect more difficulties by the USA in giving them their gold back. Aren’t the Germans getting their gold back in tiny installments, for example?
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The Rev Kev I was just reading somewhere today that the Germans said that they had no plans to repatriate any more of their gold from the US. And that a third of Germany’s gold is in New York. Or is it?
https://www.newsweek.com/list-of-countries-that-have-pulled-gold-from-us-federal-reserve-12398243
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Rui Exactly, so the Dutch probably played their hand the best they could?
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Oregon Lawhobbit Heaven forbid that the Dutch store their very own gold in, oh I don’t know, Rotterdam perhaps?
And then when the inevitable Russian Juggernaut comes rolling in, how are they going to finance their government in exile?
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Showers again this morning in the wine country, grape growers are going to have one hell of a rough year.
And Halloween decorations went on sale a week ago…
in August.
I’m sure this must be good sign for the economy because America has entered a New Golden Age of Peace and Prosperity.
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Henry Moon Pie You have to stop these reports, Tom. I’m being overcome by schadenfreude regarding a certain world traveler with a Napa winery.
I’m terrible.
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Tom Stone HMP, A little ethyene glycol, grain spirits and frozen grape juice will be an acceptable substitute for Zinfandel grapes.
Most people who spend $50 or more a bottle couldn’t tell the difference, for those that can there’s 2 buck chuck.Reply ↓
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Joe Renter Bourgeois alcohol? A good guises for many who legitimize their drinking issues with cultural norms of over priced grape juice. I say go back to dairy production.sheep farming and growing apples.
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tet vet Sonoma County was known for hops back in the day. A return might keep the cost of the less expensive alcohol beverage in check for us regular folks.
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Oregon Lawhobbit there’s 2 buck chuck.
I think it’s up to three bucks now. Possibly more. I get to hit a Trader Joe’s next week, maybe I’ll remember to check.
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Interstellar / Harmonic Story Analysis update.
Well, today is the 3/4 mark between the Feb 28 assassinations and the day after the midterms. The story at the 1/4 mark was the USS Ford limping home, so the anticipation was that ‘aircraft carrier’ would be a relevant content marker about now. But I did not see the plot twist, that it would be docking at the ladyboy capital of the world for a little R&R.
This is the last numerical point of this series, dividing into fifth’s hasn’t proven useful when I’ve analyzed plays this way. However (with a hat-tip to mrsyk), I’ll report on about Sep 30 for the symmetrical reflection of Trump’s Easter meltdown.)
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Yves Smith Pattaya is known first and foremost as the sex capital of Asia. I heard of it when I worked for the Japanese in the 1980s. Bar girls vastly outnumber ladyboys.
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“Ukraine Might Be Planning A Sustained “Operation Spiderweb” Against Russia’s Air Hubs”
By avoiding Russian airspace, European airlines have been forced to fly much longer routes to Asia, being easily beaten in those routes by those airlines that kept on using Russian Federation airspace. I think this new threat by Ukraine is trying to do European airlines a favor, while attacking Chinese airlines, amongst others. It isn’t simply an attack on Russian airlines or the Russian economy like the author describes it. The implications are wider.
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The Rev Kev If the Ukrainians manage to take down a civilian airliner, then I expect that you can kiss goodbye to every civil airport in the Ukraine along with all their airliners. But if a Russian civil airliner got taken down, then I am sure that the EU countries will blame Russia.
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“The Bishkek Declaration: What the SCO Signed, and Why India’s Name on It Matters”
There is something that Larry Johnson missed. Because of the war in the Ukraine, India was buying heavily discounted oil from Russia and was making a mint selling it to Europe. But then Modi jumped into the Israel–US camp and started to get oil from the Gulf instead and was cutting back on Russia’s oil under orders from Trump. But then Trump blew up that whole arrangement with his war with Iran causing Modi to scramble back to Russia. But last I heard, they were no longer paying heavily discounted prices but were now paying premium prices instead.
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The Jerusalem Post is now running editorials with ideas for how the Pentagon could recruit enough American soldiers to launch a ground invasion of Iran.
They want to exploit the crippling debt young Americans are carrying by offering them a chance at forgiveness…
Can ashes be destroyed?
Can a beggar be bankrupt?*
Along the lines of “if you owe the bank $100k, the bank owns you, but if you owe the bank $10m, you own the bank” that debt– collectively– is potential leverage.
If properly organized to reach the national level, think about what a debt strike could accomplish… it seems more difficult to think about what it could not accomplish.
Make the creditors scream and Washington will listen.
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LawnDart *words of a poet who wandered off into the sunset long ago.
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LawnDart I promise that in the future I will not post until I’ve had that second-cup of coffee.
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OnceWere How generous ! How appealing ! You thought you weren’t interested in a front-line combat role storming the beaches of Kharg Island, but have I got a deal for you. Money for your creditors ! Surely there’ll be lines around the block at the recruitment office to take advantage of that blockbuster deal.
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LawnDart Thinking about that, if the poverty-debt soldiers are killed, won’t their estates become responsible for their debts?
I bet it’d be awfully damn hard to get life insurance to pay out if one chose to go into a war-zone, but I’m seeing the angle for another racket here…
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The Rev Kev Lots of poor people in Israel as well. In fact a fifth of them are living below the poverty line. Plenty of recruiting to be done there-
Just sayin’
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John Wright I read the original op-ed at https://www.jpost.com/defense-and-tech/article-906985
Note, it is written by a Canadian, Aj Jaff, for a country, Israel, which may have more than a small interest in getting USA youth to fight for it.
Jaff has that “But states generate the soldiers they need through incentives that work on the population they have.”
He doesn’t mention that, perhaps, many USA economic “volunteers” would likely be out of shape, poorly adapted to Iranian climate and lacking enough time to be sufficiently trained for surviving combat.
And these soldiers might wonder how they are fighting for the USA.
Cynically, one could suggest Jaff wants many USA deaths to occur in Iran to ramp up American vengeance against Iran.
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Re Trump coin–someday archeologists will unearth Trump coins and place them in museums next to Emperor Nero and others. This will be in the Ozymandias Wing.
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ambrit Which wing you enter under the still mysterious Golden Arches of Triumph.
Archaeologists say there is still a lot of stuff undiscovered underwater at the old site of Washington City.Reply ↓
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flora It’s fitting that this pres has golden arches. (Will they look like french fries? / ;)
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/a8/af/59/a8af590c6e6a59f0c646855ce8f29b1c.jpg
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Hakeem Jeffries inability to keep his troops in line on a simple vote on the rule doesn’t bode well for his likely Speakership.
Unlike the Imperial Presidency, House Speakers are getting weaker and weaker.
Mike Johnson is probably the weakest speaker in modern times. He couldn’t keep the Freedom Caucus from torpedoing many votes, and has nothing to show for 2 years other than the Big Beautiful PoS which is next to nothing.
As an institution Congress seems completely broken and is now the weakest branch of government, unlike what the founders of the republic envisioned. Having outsourced its’ power to AIPAC doesn’t help.
PS – anyone seen Mitch “Milk carton” McConnell?
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The Rev Kev I was reading about Mike Johnson today and how he reckons that lying is a part of Iran’s religion-
This from a denizen of Washington DC. The man is a muppet.
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Tom Stone I like the nickname WSWS gave Hakeem, “AIPAC Shakur”.
If the foo shits…Reply ↓
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Dr. John Carpenter Mitch who?
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The Rev Kev He means “Glitch” McConnell.
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pete The Missing Mitch.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing-children_milk_cartonReply ↓
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Mark Gisleson The weakest Speaker in modern times is still the Speaker of the House.
The second (third?) most senile POTUS of the last 100 years is still POTUS.
One of the world’s smallest nations controls our foreign policy establishment.
Our food policy is based on the needs of corporate giants, not consumers.
Our electrical grid is on the brink of collapse while our transportation infrastructure crumbles.
Time to stop seeing Democrats and/or Republicans. The Duopoly exists, it is to blame and it should be punished. I’d suggest voting for minor party candidates only, but I do not believe minor party candidate votes are counted, simply moved over to the candidate whose “party” controls that polling place.
The nonviolent solution would be a national strike (limited) followed up by permanent boycotts of AI services, gaming platforms (parents should be able to create small platforms for their kids that can be monitored and reviewed), brands associated with Israel, restaurants (are good but nothing would hurt the oligarchs like a collapse of the restaurant industry), plus driving less, seeking out independently made entertainment, etc. Or we could take to the streets and get ICEd.
Time to start planning for the End Times (of the West).
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Joe Renter Do you think we have that option to vote for this change of the uniparty? I think we will see something much more destructive. And for this I am remorse. But, perhaps the fallen eagle will rise like the Phoenix. We can only hope.
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ChrisFromGA Historically, the House has been the institution closest to the people. Each representative in theory has a relatively small district, with direct contact with their constituents. I still remember during the GFC when my representative Tom Price (R) would hold telephone “town halls” where I could dial in and ask him a direct question.
You are correct that this is not a Donkey/Elephant thing. The People’s House has been overthrown in a silent coup d’etat by corporate and foreign interests. Congress refuses to perform its constitutional duty, like act as a check on the Executive, represent its people, and pass appropriations bills.
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flora This might sound crazy, but imo, the first step is getting rid of electronic voting machines and electronic counting of the ballots, even of the hand-marked paper ballots that are fed into the electronic vote counting box.
Paper ballots, hand marked, and hand counted in public.
The thing is, if a referendum was placed on a state’s ballot about this question, it would still be counted by an electronic counting machine. A machine whose corporate business interests and states parties interests would not want to pass. imoIt’s either this or bring back primary exit polling in all 50 states. Or both.
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flora When I asked a browser search assistant what the Wisconsin primary race exit polling results were there was no answer. None. So, I guess no exit polling in this years Wisconsin primary races on the Dem side.
Exit polls are supposed to act as a signal for potential voter fraud. Eliminate the exit polls and there’s no voter fraud check left in place to signal “something’s fishy here.”Everyone is rightly upset about T and Post Office and mail-in ballots. Everyone should start looking at their own state’s current voting processes, imo. Are electronic voting machine/voting tallies required. Are there exit polls? If not, why not? etc.
Electronic voting machines + no exit polls = not good.
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MH Just refer to the Dems/Reps as what they are the Billionaires’ uni-party.
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TJBuff “Inability” kind of presumes Jeffries actually tried, which I doubt.
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“China Won’t Have Claims to Venezuelan Oil Revenue, Wright Says”
Translation. The Trump regime is going to stiff Venezuelan debts to China. Trump has had a lot of practice here. But will China take counter measures? It is not the money but the fact that Trump is doing this
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Re Boomer food–the article seems to be going out of its way to ignore the most obvious and iconic example which would be McDonald’s and fast food. Meanwhile the rest of the world seems to be fascinated by the arches of gold even as we incubators show less enthusiasm for the place. McD seems less interested in us as well as the dining rooms shrink and the drive thru becomes the focus.
But other examples of fast food like Wendy’s are doing worse. Here’s suggesting that Mickey D will be the last to go.
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Alphonse As I recall, food started to get much more interesting around the 1990s. It felt exotic when my Japanese class in high school went out to a Japanese restaurant. Vietnamese soup soon followed, Mexican started showing up (this is Canada), home cooking started experimenting. You can see the progression in old cookbooks. Compare the New York Times Natural Foods Cookbook of 1971 with Best of Bridge in the 1980s and 90s, where cooks started to experiment with home versions of international recipes.
It seems to me that quality of life has plummeted over the course of my life (not for me personally, but looking at how most people live) – with food as a standout exception. You can eat McDonald’s if you want. When my wife and I go to a restaurant we regret it: the price, the flavour, and the tummy ache. We cook at home where there are far better options. Not everything is better: tomatoes and eggs are less nutritious and flavourful, and russet apples have disappeared. But on the whole, the monotonous meat and potatoes I grew up with (a bit of pepper, maybe some butter, is about as exciting as it gets) has been replaced by an international panoply of foods that combine flavours, vegetables and meat in smaller doses. That’s far tastier than the old charred hunk of cow and maybe some gelatinous horror from the 60s. The technology is better too. The InstantPot and induction stove have contributed more to my quality of life than smartphones and graphical user interfaces.
The other contenders for improvements since the 1970s? TV, transit (at least here in Vancouver), acceptance of gays and lesbians. I’m having trouble thinking of other major wins. A lot more was destroyed. But the food? Heck yeah.
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“AI has become a ‘non-negotiable’, Sam Altman says at G20 summit”
Real arrogance on show by people like Sam Altman, Jensen Wong and Alex carp. But Of course they had Trump to back them up who was demanding that the other G-20 countries not put any restrictions or obstacles to AI but let it do whatever those tech bros want. On the side lines, Trump probably threatened them with more tariffs if they sought to bring AI under any sort of control in their countries.
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flora “You will eat ze buggy AI.” / ;)
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US slaps 100% tariffs on drones to counter Chinese dominance Euronews
I just bought one a week or so ago, so I missed this tariff. I have a small one that would have been subject to 25%. The DJI brand is what the article talks about, which are very popular. These small drones you can buy for less than a couple grand are absolutely amazing in what they can do. The cameras and built in features for filming are quite impressive. The learning curve for flying is not too difficult, and they even come with a built in simulator to help learn.
This will be a neat hobby/small business for an old retired guy. You have to stay busy – somehow.
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Cristobal Can it carry a bomb?
Asking for a friend.Reply ↓
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Screwball No, it cannot. I wouldn’t want one that could.
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ThirtyOne I notice that screens built into the controller are becoming common in the sub $500 drones. A big plus. Also, air drop (carry and drop small payloads like say, 200 grams of Semtex).
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Screwball The controllers can have it’s own screen, or you can mount your phone to to the controller. This model is around $1500 and has it’s own screen in the controller. The non-screen model is cheaper. I’m having trouble, but I want to mirror the controller screen to a laptop. This gives me a larger screen someone else can watch, plus, I can take a screen shot when I want to. This would capture my information where a snapshot from the camera is only what the camera sees. If that makes any sense.
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‘@atrupar
Aaron Rupar
@atrupar
Bessent blames Ukraine for high gas prices: “Ukraine has decided that they want to blow up Russian energy assets and refined products, so that is creating upward price pressure on a global basis”‘
Well I suppose that the US could shut down all the targeting data and satellite navigation that the Ukrainians use to blow up Russian energy infrastructure so that the Ukrainians could do zip. But as they don’t, I am going to assume that the Trump regime wants energy prices to go up.
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TJBuff In a way, it’s impressive that the Trump admin lying has no historical, logical or even internal consistency any more. They just make up whatever might get them thru the next ten minutes. There is no past and there is no future.
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File under electronic voting machines (and Dems Suck).
Wisconsin is a swing state.
From Jimmy Dore:
MSNBC Host Silent for 30 Seconds When the Votes Come Back Blank
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flora adding: both parties work to keep capital from being brought under democratic control. Both parties work to eliminate every last trace of New Deal policies, safety nets like Social Security, and good government regulations on business – Anti-trust anti-monopoly regs, for example. (Not to mention being pro-tiny country at every turn no matter how much that hurts the US’s real interests.) / imo.
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“Estonia’s Defense Minister resigns after wasting 70 million euros on faulty ammunition for Ukraine”
So we are doing this again. You think that they would have learned the first time around when 2 or 3 years ago the EU paid top dollar for some of the crappiest 155m artillery rounds abandoned in leaky shelters around the world. Half of them had to be stripped and totally rebuilt.
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Polar Socialist If the headline was “Estonia’s Defense Minister imprisoned after wasting 70 million euros…” we might stop doing this again and again.
Preferably followed by “Twenty people now prosecuted in the ‘ammunitiongate’ while investigation continues”.
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flora Every time I wonder why RU doesn’t absolutely defeat UKR and then make a peace deal I realized it could be in RU’s interest to let the EU and US destroy their own economies and military munitions stores. Never interrupt your opponent when he’s making a mistake – as the old saying goes.
As for poor UKR, my guess is the West’s Epstein class is making money hand over fist on this little adventure. UKR was long known as the most corrupt country in Europe: money laundering and smuggling of all kinds and various bio testing labs illegal to run in other countries, etc. / my 2 cents.
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bertl Don’t forget Albania and Kosovo. And, of course, the City of London.
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on “The Digital Jungle: On Datacentres and Slaughterhouses”
I have a bad feeling. Maybe it is my OCD (diagnosed) but I cannot stand to think that everything I write on the internet is scraped by AI so therefore anything I write online, or store up in the cloud, is contributing to AI.
I really do not like the feeling that I am working for AI even just by writing this. I do not care if no one follows me, I am just tired of being complicate in the fasc1st oligarchy. And I just think the internet is evil now. Have you ever scrolled through the random videos on X? It feeds you nothing but violence and s3x.
I just closed my fediverse social media accounts, even my burner X account that I had to get since Elon is suing everyone. I have taken all my data from the cloud, photos, back up, etc. I am buying a pixel 10 today and installing GrapheneOS and selling my MacBook. (Did you know that even if you never enabled AI on MacOS Tahoe it still downloads a 7GB AI model in the background that “does nothing”? Yeah, right.) I am also paying for one of those internet identify scrubbing services.
My free time will be spent in prayer.
So, I hope I will see you all in the real world.
Pax et Bonum
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flora There are some new Type fonts designed to foil AI scraping.
I have some hope that they will work.See:
The Takeaway summation.
The font-based scrambling technique won’t single-handedly stop AI scrapers, but it demonstrates the growing creativity of the resistance. As long as the incentives to harvest web text at scale remain enormous, expect this arms race between crawlers and creators to intensify — with font tricks, rendering exploits, and data poisoning all playing a role in the fight over who controls online content.
https://news.skrew.ai/font-turns-webpages-nonsense-ai-scrapers/
See also.
ShieldFont disrupts AI scrapers by serving them nonsense while humans read normally
https://cryptobriefing.com/shieldfont-disrupts-ai-scrapers-altered-text/
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flora Adding: some online scam detection sites warn away from Shieldfont and some scam detection sites say it’s very safe and recommended.
One site for personal data protection recommended by everyone is
Incogni (dot) com. I haven’t used it. It gets very good reviews.
There’s also DeleteMe. It gets very good reviews.Reply ↓
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Possibly of use: as afar as I can tell, nitter.kareem.one is still working.
Several other sites that shut down appear to have been opened up by nefarious fiends who do scrape the tweets, but have replaced all the off-site links with porn and malware. (Possible Elon’s people. More likely the usual scammers.)
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ThirtyOne Thanks for the link. I can get my X fix until the hammer comes down on it eventually.
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I wonder how soon ICE will commit a “Boston Massacre”?
They are deploying half (If that) trained white supremacists while telling them they have absolute immunity and that peaceful protesters are “Terrorists”.
And based on what has not happened to ICE/CBP agents who have committed murder on camera, they do have absolute immunity.
It’s going to be an effing mess if Trump deploys ICE at polling places, which is apparently the plan.
To me it seems a matter of when, not if, ICE/CBP agents open up with machine guns on a crowd, which would be a useful excuse for invoking the insurrection act.
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“J. Raptor Research: Rapid Decline of Nesting Peregrine Falcons in the San Francisco Bay Region of California Synchronous with an Outbreak of H5N1 HPAI”
It’s Silent Spring all over again. Millions of wild critters are dying. The Anthropocene is the age of the great dying.
https://afludiary.blogspot.com/2026/09/j-raptor-research-rapid-decline-of.html
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On “The laundering…”
“All of the players know the reality of the situation and all of them pretend not to because the laundering works. Once the ore is laundered, there is no one left to charge and nothing to charge them with. The system is designed to continue the status quo, to ensure access to all, and to reduce what could have been a criminal conspiracy to a normalized and legal supply chain procedure.”
I still think it is a crazy criminal conspiracy with tens of millions of people killed.
This is a very good and up-to-date article on one technical aspect of this international crime. Thanks !
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I took a walk this morning and the Camellia’s are starting to bloom IN SEPTEMBER.
Not February.
Nothing to see here, move along.
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re: US government corruption
via Martyanov
new GALLUP survey
Record-High 89% in U.S. Say Government Corruption Widespread
Substantial majorities of Republicans, Democrats and independents agree
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Americans’ perceptions of government corruption in the U.S. are at their highest level in 20 years, with 89% of U.S. adults saying it is widespread. That figure is up 10 percentage points from last year and well above readings in the 72% to 79% range between 2010 and 2025.
Sept. 2, 2026
https://news.gallup.com/poll/713933/record-high-say-government-corruption-widespread.aspxgnote
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re: US academia and ISRAELI funding
US universities get millions to do military research for Israel
The projects, which often fail to disclose their funding, include efforts to create surveillance robots and improve missile guidance
Sept. 3rd, 2026
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/israel-military-us-universities/
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MichaelC Thank you for this.
One of the horribly disturbing and disconcerting elements of the US/ISR alliance is the circularity of the funding of the research the US would love to conduct in-house, but chooses to nominally outsource to a nihilistic regime that can conduct it (or in this example, oversee it) openly, and proudly.
This ruse is transparent to anyone paying attention, especially to those who could put an end to it.
Good on these journalists for scratching the surface of this scam.
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re: German history and national identity
fb has a commentary up with several longer reader comments.
p.s. I perceive things rather differently, as this imo is a circular-ism which leads nowehere – and I would claim so do most younger ones – their reality has little in common with below issues – but it certainly is a very interesting discussion.
“(…)
In his *History of the Germans* (*Geschichte der Deutschen*), Hellmut Diwald wrote: “Our present situation is inextricably linked to the year 1945. Associated with it is the most devastating rupture in German history. In 1945, the historical continuity of the Germans was severed.”
Hans-Joachim Arndt points in the same intellectual direction; as early as 1977, in his work *The Vanquished of 1945* (*Die Besiegten von 1945*), he articulated the same thought even more sharply: “Germany”—whatever that may be now—is still, in 1977, fundamentally defined by May 8, 1945: the day of unconditional surrender, of total defeat following a total war. Moreover, this pivotal event shapes the current situation, at least in Central Europe.
And finally, Arndt includes the sentence that gets to the very heart of the matter:
“Germany still lives essentially out of May 8, 1945—even if, naturally, it neither can nor wishes to celebrate it.”
This makes it clear: for both Diwald and Arndt, the issue was not merely the recollection of a past date. It was a question of historical continuity itself. Nations do not begin from nothing, and what is severed in the collective consciousness does not thereby vanish from historical reality. What is politically buried can continue to resonate within a people’s memory, its self-conception, and its historical consciousness.
More than eight decades have passed since then. States and borders have changed, political orders have come and gone, and entire generations have grown up. Yet the question raised by those thinkers remains, in essence, the same: What remains of the historical Germany—and when will Germany regain the capacity to comprehend its history as its *own* history?
For sovereignty is not exhausted by the mere possession of state institutions. Identity is not defined solely by a passport. Nor is historical continuity a sentimental turning back to the past. Rather, it represents the prerequisite for a people to know where they come from, who they are, and where they wish to go.
That is why Diwald and Arndt wrote not merely about 1945. They wrote about the Germany that emerged after 1945—about the possibility of a historical self-awareness that neither represses its past nor allows itself to be reduced to a single historical moment; about the need to view history not as an eternal burden, but as one’s own historical heritage.
More than forty years later, the question therefore appears less like a distant memory and more like an open question still awaiting an answer.
(…)”
https://www.facebook.com/groups/133487423880792/permalink/2162802804282567
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Henry Moon Pie “Hellmut Diwald wrote: “Our present situation is inextricably linked to the year 1945. Associated with it is the most devastating rupture in German history. In 1945, the historical continuity of the Germans was severed.””
I think all humanity is approaching a similar point. I’m not familiar with Diwald, but what that sentence suggests to me is that the historical continuity was severed because the outcome of 1945 put everything that had gone before under examination. What could have led a culture to accept and be complicit with National Socialism? Surely, we can’t blame Bach. But what about Wagner? Of course, not Einstein, but what about Heisenberg? Not Kant, but what about Luther? When a path leads you to the abyss, which choice at what fork in the path was the fatal one?
Human, or at least Western civilization may find itself at a 1945 point before too long. I’m interested in the question of what surviving humans will learn from human history. There are certainly those who say it’s in our genes, that it was inevitable, and that any human society that follows will repeat those mistakes. More interesting are those who recognize how much humans are a product of their culture. Now these clearer seers do not agree where humans strayed from the path and became separated from Nature. The common culprit is agriculture, but there are those who blame language or fire. Capitalism and its demon-child, neoliberalism get some attention, as does the Bomb and social media. Maybe everything in that list was just another bite of the apple, another step toward becoming the exceptional species. At the beginning, it was a bit of comfort and safety that was sought. Even a bird builds a nest. But the steps that came after arrived faster and faster and gunpowder became H-bombs and horseless carriages became 430+ ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere and the Apple II+ became marauding AI agents forming their own “civilizations” to achieve someone’s goal, we’re not sure who.
Maybe it’s less a question of which step was the fatal one–the only answer to that one may be the first one–and more a matter of whether we finally learn to use the brains we have in a way that doesn’t separate us from the planet on which we evolved and the creatures with whom we share this planet and this history. First time around, we’ve sucked. I’m just hoping we can learn from our mistakes.
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AG I belong to those who always rejected those lineages of the proverbial “from Luther to Hitler”. Which used to be a Goldhagen-like abuse of history by a certain group of scholars in Germany and Anglo-Saxon traditions. It´s convenient because it simplifis the scholar´s work.
Which would also offer an answer to a more optimistic outlook and an analysis of the past.
One that looks beyond empire´s naval and cherishes the little known big events of their “periphery”.
But that doesn´t hold the promise for quick success in the academic world.With such people as Graeber the counter micro-historians have gained some leverage. On the issues you raise that for now in Europe still remains an undervalued insight however.
p.s. Since you bring them up – Heisenberg and Einstein – a longer detour:
Heisenberg got into serious trouble for publicly defending relativity around 1937.
He clashed over defending Einstein´s work (if not Einstein himself which would have been too dangerous already) with another Nobel laureate, Johannes Stark, who had turned into a rabid Nazi and had been a representative of the old classical physics and raged against the Jewish influence.
In July 1937 Stark attacked Heisenberg in the SS-tabloid “Das Schwarze Korps” (Black Corps) as “White Jew” for defending relativity.
What then happened:
Heisenberg defended himself against Stark and was confronted with forces well beyond his weight. Gestapo and SS came in.
Gestapo bugged his apartment in Munich. SS questioned him – I believe twice – in the infamous RSHA SS-HQ in Berlin in the basement where also torture was practiced. I assume he never felt closer to being killed by Nazis.
Stark had organized the entire mob in Nazi scholarship and outside and some Gestapo specialists came up with the life-threatening accusation that Heisenberg had been gay / pedophiliac.
The reason was that for most of his life then he had been heavily engaged with boy scouts (Bavarian Alps! where he grew up) where he had been an instructor. As was normal in the old times when they took a swim the kids were naked.
From that all kinds of accusations and fabrications emanated and Gestapo tried hard to find actual wintesses of potential wrong-doing but failed to do so.The other argument was that Heisenberg had not been known to be a womanizer and been courting for his later wife rather defensively for a long time.
Anyhow. they tried to stick something on him which could have easily brought him into concentration camp.
We know from a letter by Heinrich Himmler, head of Gestapo, to Heydrich, head of SS that it would be a pity to lose this bright fellow if it were necessary to silence him.
To this day I am not sure if this term in the German original means silence or kill him. (“tot zu machen.”)
Eventually two things saved him:
Some of his former PhD students now SS were also entrusted by SS to question him and look into the investigation that went on over a year turning over each stone of his previous life. They naturally were amicable to him.
The other was the coincidence that his mother and the mother of Himmler had known each other from elementary school.
That way a special channel became available where Heisenberg could write a letter of request to the demi-god, former chicken-farmer turned cop, Heinrich Himmler, via Heisenberg´s mother who would hand over the letter to Himmler´s mother, who would then give it to her son.
The personal connection probably saved Heisenberg and he agreed to not speak about realitvity any more.
Anything he did afterwards needs to be seen in this light. Something to my surprise virtually no science historians really has taken into account. Whatever he did this episode would hang above his head. Once you were confronted with death that changes everything.
Why he did not leave Germany is another matter for another OT.
But perhaps this tiny episode can hint at how complicated this all truly was and how little of this complication has been acknowledged in the big arrow histories presented to us today.
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So archive.is is broken?
That´d be really really great…I can´t get a single one of my hundreds of archived items up.
So essentially that´d make the work gone and my archive useless.
WTF ————?
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vao I just tried, accessing archive.is with Javascript disabled, and it worked.
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AG Then I get no caption at all and am stuck. Not creating new items nor getting up archived ones.
But thank you!If I am the only one here complaining I clearly must be doing something obvious wrong.
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flora If you can still get to your files and worry that the site will quit working, there are ways to download Archive files to your local computer’s drive hard or an externally connected hard drive or thumb drive.
Yes, it’s a pain to make your own backups of the files you think are safely backed up online. Except, sometimes online stuff becomes unavailable, shall we say. / ;)
There are several online written instructions and utube videos.
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AG Thank you.
I was trying to ignore the danger.
Alas it´s probably thousands of links by now.p.s. apparently it´s back and operational
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re: Netherlands moves gold from US to UK.
From Breaking Points.
Holland PULLS ALL GOLD FROM US In SCREW YOU To Trump
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gODwo6W9WKo
EU no longer trusts US financial reliability? Worried the US would claim it through the piracy mechanism they’ve resurrected to steal ships? / ;)
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AG thanks
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danny davis interviewing a guy ive never heard of:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35lmUVTv-IU
the great and good have so engineered things that i am spending my 57th birthday havin spoken to one human(old betsy at likker store getting my monthly keg, which wasnt put in cooler yesterday when it came in!) and one demon(mom-makin me great grandma’s chocolate pie—done, ill be asleep,lol) and all i got is all this insanity from on high.
chick , prolly a might younger than me, at one of the beer/gas/cig store i go to in town, has been flirtin with me for a month.
finally know her name, and she knows mine.(cousin sez i am too worried about comin off as a creeper)
i was all girded to ask if she was married, etc(i grok that she’s divorced–lifetime of being jane goodall observation and inductive reasoning thereof), and then ask her out here for shrimp and pasta(chef—and cousin sez its the Way), but she wasnt at work, today.
sigh.
so instead, ive spoken to one old woman, a demon, and a buncha sheep,geese, ducks and cats and one wiggly dog, today
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amfortas also spoke to a dozen or so cottontails early, and several stripey lizars this afternoon.
and one squirrel that was after the geese’ grain allotment.Reply ↓
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amfortas and Gigi, the owner of my fave beer/cig/gas store, when i had to go back to town to get birthday beer because my keg is frelling hot.
so 2 humans, 1 demon, and a buncha critters.Reply ↓
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Henry Moon Pie Happy birthday, young man! I’ll toast my next bowlful to you. Many happy returns of the day.
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flora Happy Birthday, amfortas! And many more.
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The Rev Kev Happy birthday, Amf. You know they say that it is the first 57 years that are the hardest. I raise my digital glass to you.
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Happy Birthday Amfortas!
You share a Birthday with my late Mother, who I still miss.
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File under AI:
From Dean Ball, no paywall.
On The Loose
https://www.hyperdimensional.co/p/on-the-loose
Saagar and Krystal on Breaking Points break down his paper.
OpenAI EXEC ADMITS Hiding AI DOOMSDAY SCENARIO
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