A Guy Strapped a Camera to His Cat and It’s the Best Thing We’ve Ever Seen Futurism (PdB). I could not be a cat. I would get vertigo.
Pinball is booming in America, thanks to nostalgia and canny marketing Economist. In my teens, when my father was in an uncharacteristically generous mood, he got a pinball machine. It was totally cool
Titanic: First ever full-sized scans reveal wreck as never seen before BBC. Lead story, so there is officially no news.
Replication of High-Temperature Superconductor Comes Up Empty arstechnica
EcoLogicStudio turns algae into air-purifying biopolymer “tree” dezeen
The joy of sulk aeon
#COVID-19
Covid-19 will cost the US economy $14 trillion Asia Times
The Pandemic Isn’t Over. Here’s How to Stay Safe Wired (Dr. Kevin)
Climate/Environment
Gas-Powered Cars Won’t Die Off Any Time Soon Axios
This year’s record-breaking snowpack is pouring into the dried-out Salt Lake High Country News (furzy)
China?
Could a Taiwan tax deal help US ‘cripple’ China’s semiconductor development? South China Morning Post
From DLG via e-mail:
Fatto Quotidiano’s paper edition this morning has three articles about how Italy is being forced into not renewing its Silk Road accord with China, which comes up for renewal in 2024 (after five years in effect). Italy is the only G7 country to be in the Silk Road. Which makes sense, given that Roma has been one terminus of the Silk Road for, ohhh, a couple-a thousand years.
Pressure is coming from the US of A and the EU. And after NordStream, the Italians know what the friendses are capable of.
Further, Giorgia Meloni is going along with the Atlanticist garbage to preserve her government. She doesn’t want to be soft-coup-d’etat-ed and have Mario Draghi parachuted upon her.
It occurs to me that the august neoliberal leadership of Europe gives in to U.S. demands because it is the path of least resistance. So long as the U.S. doesn’t foment a war within their country, why not give in? There’s money to be made. One doesn’t want to end up as the new Serbia. The English must be allowed to extract further revenge.
Liz Truss speech in Taiwan is even more unhinged than I feared.
She calls to stop *any* cooperation with China, including on climate change, because that’d destroy “freedom and democracy” which is more important than the survival of the human race 🤡https://t.co/MBOMfvqiho
— Arnaud Bertrand (@RnaudBertrand) May 17, 2023
Quad meeting in Australia canceled as U.S. politics pull Biden home Nikkei. Note this looks like it will push back the inking of the Papau New Guinea port access deal.
Old Blighty
UK sees record number of people off work due to long-term sickness Washington Post (Kevin W)
Vauxhall maker says Brexit deal must be renegotiated or it could shut UK plant Guardian (resilc)
Global Britain and King Charles’ Great Reset Canadian Patriot
Britain is becoming Brussels on Thames The Spectator
La belle France
France honours six-year-old WW2 Resistance agent BBC (Dr. Kevin)
New Not-So-Cold War
Release: Airman Teixeira leaks (53 MB) Distributed Email of Secrets (furzy). Note Larry Johnson has complained the slides are hard to find so this repository should help with review. Yours truly has not had a chance to have a look.
Ukraine – Air Defense Lessons (Updated) Moon of Alabama. Dima of Military Summary, who sometimes can be a bit wild-eyed, offered a theory: the Patriot battery had been located in a residential area. Somehow the operators got signals the Russians could hit it. So they fired a bunch of missiles off to prevent them from being detonated in place upon a Russian strike. Plausible?
If last night’s video is, indeed, a Patriot, and if it was, indeed, destroyed, that’s a loss of ~$160 million just in ammo, and then the cost of the system itself on top, while still failing the mission. Perhaps the most expensive AD failure in history https://t.co/7H8b536Vhk
— Russians With Attitude (@RWApodcast) May 16, 2023
EU to curb Indian fuel imports made with Russian oil: Report Al Jazeera (Kevin W). I’d like to know how they tell.
THE UKRAINE REFUGEE QUESTION Seymour Hersh. We mentioned this from time to time as an issue early on. Apparently enthusiasm for the Ukraine cause meant any signs of problems have been pointedly ignored.
The Anglo-American Hand Behind the Rise of Fascism Then and Now The Last American Vagabond (Micael T)
Syraqistan
New reports/resources from @WHOoPt – Right to Health: Barriers to health and attacks on health care in the occupied Palestinian territory https://t.co/30pPSyYQ9h pic.twitter.com/FaruoHy38F
— Lara Friedman (@LaraFriedmanDC) May 16, 2023
Big Brother is Watching You Watch
Google sued over ‘interception’ of abortion data on Planned Parenthood website The Register
Re-Victimization From Police-Auctioned Cell Phones Brian Krebs
Your DNA Can Now Be Pulled From Thin Air New York Times. I am skeptical of the positioning of this story. Yes, “your” DNA is in all sorts of places, but pray tell how is this proven to belong to you (for instance, yours truly has a tiny extended family and I am highly confident none of them have given DNA to cops or genealogy services)? Perhaps I am paranoid, but I read the angle as designed to desensitize the
Imperial Collapse Watch
Cédric Durand, Hollow States New Left Review (Anthony L)
Drug Shortages Near an All-Time High, Leading to Rationing New York Times (furzy). We fancy ourselves to be an advanced economy.
Pepe Escobar: US Empire of Debt Headed for Collapse Sputnik
Vending machines are the latest tool for fighting opioid overdoses Associated Press
Trump
Durham is Too Late to Stop the Madness Matt Taibbi. Worse, it’s been documented in cognitive bias literature that when people have strong beliefs and receive information that contradicts them, they double down on their priors. Paywalled but includes cringe-making examples of Mueller adoration.
Durham’s FBI-Trump report fuels House GOP ‘weaponization’ attacks The Hill
Biden
Democrats clash with Biden over sanctions on Cuba, Venezuela Responsible Statecraft (resilc)
US Sanctions Are Brutal and Inhumane. And They Don’t Work. Jacobon (resilc)
Debt Ceiling
Tick, tick, tick: Biden, lawmakers fail to reach breakthrough on debt ceiling The Hill
Senators dismiss happy talk after Biden-McCarthy debt sitdown Politico
Immigration
Texas governor urges all US governors to help combat border crisis following end of Title 42 Anadolu Agency
Abortion
North Carolina Legislature Reapproves Abortion Ban, Overriding Governor’s Veto New York Times (Kevin W)
A Texas woman was killed by her boyfriend after getting an abortion, police say NPR. Resilc: “Pardon ahead by Abbott.”
Woke Watch
Why Some Companies Are Saying ‘Diversity and Belonging’ Instead of ‘Diversity and Inclusion’ New York Times
AI
Microsoft Says New AI Shows Signs of Human Reasoning New York Times (Dr. Kevin). Microsoft also thinks its software works.
The Bezzle
Elizabeth Holmes loses bid to avoid prison and ordered to pay $425 million to her fraud victims Boing Boing (resilc)
Investor George Soros Dumps Tesla Stake, Enrages Elon Musk Jalopnik (resilc)
Mormon who left Wall St. to work for charity blows whistle on what he says is his church’s “clandestine hedge fund” CBS (Paul R). FWIW, I heard about this decades ago from a college buddy who converted to marry into the Mormon church, and his wife was from a very prominent LDS family. And he made clear the internal investment fund was large. I don’t find this surprising; where would all the tithing monies go?
April industrial production looks great! – until you account for the March revisions Angry Bear
Mohamed El-Erian says regional banks are in a ‘hospital’ phase of turmoil, but a Fed policy mistake will drive them ‘back into the ICU’ Business Insider. Guys like El-Erian are loath to criticize the Fed, so this is as close as he could get to our formulation, that this crisis was entirely the Fed’s creation.
The Great Pandemic Mortgage Refinance Boom Liberty Street Economics. Note refis are stimulative because they free up consumer budgets.
Inside the ‘White Gold’ Rush to Mine American Lithium and Make Millions Vice
Class Warfare
David Brooks and the “Which Way is Up” Problem in Economics
Dean Baker, Counterpunch. Resilc: “Brooks is such a load. USA USA can’t even get rid of the annual debt ceiling show. there is no united in United States on any issue. Hopeless on all frontzzz.”Big Tech Resumed Hiring Foreign Workers Just Weeks After Layoffs Lee Fang (Paul R)
Antidote du jour. William B: “Spring turtles in MN”:
And a bonus. An addition to resilc’s herd:
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
