Gee, What a Surprise

1 week in, and congestion pricing is already working in New York City.

Faster traffic speeds, faster mass transit, and better air.

Exactly as forecast.

This is not a surprise. This is what happens everywhere that this has been implemented.

New Yorkers are cruising much faster along Manhattan’s bridges and tunnels since their city implemented its long-debated congestion pricing plan early this month, according to newly available traffic data.

Morning rush-hour speed from New Jersey through the Holland Tunnel, a main route under the Hudson River into Manhattan, has almost doubled to 28mph compared with a year earlier. Evening speed over the Manhattan Bridge to Brooklyn has increased from 13mph to 23mph.

If these trends hold, motorists willing to pay the $4.50-$14.40 toll to enter the congestion zone in the centre of the US’s busiest city will save thousands of hours per year they currently waste crawling through smoggy tunnels or over clogged bridges. New York’s congestion-pricing scheme, which went into force on January 5, is meant to cut traffic and help fund $15bn in sorely needed improvements to local mass transit.

It's a good policy, and it works, so doubtless Trump and his Evil Minions™ will try to kill it.

Thursday ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Again

So we have the unemployment report, and initial claims rose more than forecast, but continuing claims fell.

The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits rose last week, but layoffs remain historically low and the job market broadly healthy.

Applications for jobless benefits rose by 14,000 for the week ending January 11, the Labor Department said Thursday, up from the previous week’s 203,000. The previous week’s figure was the lowest since February of last year.

The four-week average of claims, which softens some of the week-to-week volatility, dipped by 750 to 212,750.

The total number of Americans receiving unemployment benefits for the week of January 4 fell to by 18,000 to 1.86 million.

Yeah, not a clue what the hell this means.

The World Just Got a Lot Less Weird

This is a bad thing.

I am referring, of course to the the death of director David Lynch, who appears to have died of complications of emphysema.

He was a singular talent.

Would that the studio executives had not fucked with Dune (1984).

I Feel Like Shit

30 minutes on an exercise bike.

Rather selfishly, Sharon* wants me to live forever, so she "Convinced" me to enroll at her gym.  (They had a special for adding family members)

Do not like.

^*Love of my life, light of the cosmos, she who must be obeyed, my wife.

When Your Employer Tries to Kill You

It is natural for employees to be less invested in the success of their firms.

That was the lesson from Covid: 

Employee engagement in the U.S. fell to its lowest level in a decade in 2024, with only 31% of employees engaged. This matches the figure last seen in 2014. The percentage of actively disengaged employees, at 17%, also reflects 2014 levels.

The percentage of engaged employees has declined by two percentage points since 2023, highlighting a growing trend of employee detachment from organizations, particularly among workers younger than 35.

These are among the findings of Gallup’s most recent annual update of U.S. employee engagement. Though engagement increased slightly midyear, it declined through the rest of 2024, finishing the year at its decade low.

In Gallup’s trend dating back to 2000, employee engagement peaked in 2020, at 36%, following a decade of steady growth, but it has generally trended downward since then.

Gee, what happened in 2020 that would have made people not trust their employers?

You Say it Like It's a Bad Thing

Gee the Wall Street Journal is wring its hands because, "Even Harvard MBAs Are Struggling to Land Jobs."

Given the destructive potentials of MBAs in general, and Harvard MBAs in particular, this is kind of like saying that the nuclear asbestos company down the road is shutting down:

Landing a professional job in the U.S. has become so tough that even Harvard Business School says its M.B.A.s can’t solely rely on the university’s name to open doors anymore.

Twenty-three percent of job-seeking Harvard M.B.A.s who graduated last spring were still looking for work three months after leaving campus. That share is up from 20% the prior year, during a cooling white-collar labor market; the figure was 10% in 2022, according to the school.

If they aren't working, then they aren't destroying jobs and businesses.

That's a good thing.

This Post Aged Like Milk

Childhood is loving JK Rowling. Adulthood is realising that Neil Gaiman is vastly superior on every level as a creator and a person.
byu/Mr_smith1466 insaltierthankrayt

I'm not talking about the specific "issues" (which is to put all of this this VERY mildly) with either Mr. Gaiman or Ms. Rowling.

I don't want to talk about the specifics, but I do want to note something important:  Artists can produce great beauty and be complete fuckwads.

If you enjoy their work, whether it be Pablo Picasso (horrible to women), Ezra Pound (Nazi), or Lovecraft (racist), etc.

If you can enjoy their work, enjoy their work.  If you can't enjoy their work any more don't.

Setting them up as paragons of virtue is a sucker bet.

Artists have no more authority on morals or ethics than you or I do.  What they do have is authority over their own art.

H/t JR at the  Stellar Parthenon BBS.

Way to go Jeff!

Will the last person leaving the Washington Post offices please turn out the lights?

With web views down by almost ⅔ since 2020, and ¼ million subscriptions canceled since Jeff Bezos ordered the paper not to make an endorsement for President this year, it's looking grim.

If Elon were not running Ecch (Twitter) into the ground, we would making jokes about Jeff Bezos.

Newspapers across the country have experienced a drop in website traffic and circulation since Donald Trump left office, but the declines at the Washington Post have been especially painful.

Post website traffic took a nosedive from about 140 million visits in April 2020, dropping pretty steadily to now less than 55 million, according to the most recent numbers obtained by City Paper, which are not published on the Post’s site. That’s a 60 percent drop in just a few years.

The decrease was so precipitous that the Post stopped sharing highlights of its web traffic with the public. A tab on the Post site that reads Audience & Traffic was updated consistently for several years. But about 15 months ago, the paper stopped disclosing those figures.

In the 11 years since Jeff Bezos bought the Post, he has said little publicly about his view of readership numbers, website traffic, or profitability generally. Current and former Posties often say that while Bezos’ wealth allows him to worry less about the bottom line than most corporations, he is also not obligated to run a charity.

His bottom line is how the WaPo serves his personal interest, which right now involves sucking up to Donald Trump.

………

It’s not just a decline in digital readers. Print circulation, the number of folks who buy the paper at a newsstand or have one delivered to their homes, has declined as well. 

It's what happens when you make a concerted attempt to enshittify your product.

The paper seems determined to take the route of Boeing, and it ain't pretty.

Took Them Long Enough

Korea's impeached and suspended President Yoon Suk Yeol, has finally been arrested.

There had been previous attempts, but the Presidential bodyguard refused to allow investigators in to serve the arrest warrant.

Maybe some arrest warrants for the Presidential bodyguard are warranted as well:

Yoon Suk Yeol became South Korea’s first sitting president to be detained, surrendering himself for questioning Wednesday after a weeks-long standoff that resulted in a dramatic predawn raid on the official presidential residence.

Police used ladders to climb over barricades made of buses to get into the residence and enable prosecutors to speak directly to Yoon, who was impeached last month after making a brief but botched attempt to impose martial law and exert political control.

Prosecutors had a warrant for Yoon’s arrest, which a Seoul court issued after the president ignored three summonses to appear for questioning over whether his actions amounted to insurrection. Yoon’s presidential security detail offered little resistance on Wednesday, in sharp contrast to an earlier attempt to detain him.

………

Local television stations showed a convoy of black SUVs leaving the presidential residence, transporting Yoon to the headquarters of the Corruption Investigation Office for High-Ranking Officials (CIO), which is leading the probe into Yoon’s Dec. 3 attempt to impose martial law.

The CIO said its prosecutors have started working through their 200 pages of questions for the impeached president. But Yoon, who is accompanied by a lawyer, has so far refused to provide any answers, a CIO representative said on condition of anonymity at a press briefing Wednesday afternoon.

Yoon is set to be held in a detention center near the CIO headquarters while the questioning continues. Prosecutors have 48 hours to formally arrest or release the president.

Yoon is a nut-case, claiming, among other things, that the US Supreme Court's ruling on Donald Trump's immunity gave him immunity ……… In Korea. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

It's crazy, but at least there appears to be the rule of law in the Republic of Korea, unlike, you know, the United States,

Fuck Allstate

Allstate, already known as the Visigoths of the insurance market, has been buying app companies to collect your mobile data so that they can jack up your rates.

I'd call them a bunch of pig felching rat-bastards, but would be unfair to people who felch pigs.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on Monday filed a lawsuit against Allstate Corporation and its mobile analytics subsidiary, Arity, alleging the American insurance giant conspired with mobile app developers to collect telematics data on millions of motorists without consent, in violation of consumer protection laws.

When the supremely corrupt Ken Fucking Paxton is the good guy in a lawsuit, you are doing it wrong.

Allstate then allegedly used this data against those drivers to justify rate increases, deny coverage, or to drop coverage.

"Our investigation revealed that Allstate and Arity paid mobile apps millions of dollars to install Allstate’s tracking software," said Attorney General Paxton in a statement. "The personal data of millions of Americans was sold to insurance companies without their knowledge or consent in violation of the law. Texans deserve better and we will hold all these companies accountable."

………

Because the Artity SDK data alone could not reliably identify drivers, Allstate is alleged to have licensed the personal data available to the apps – first and last name, phone number, address, zip code, mobile ad-ID (MAID), device ID, and ad-ID – and to have combined the data sets to profile drivers

………

"For example, if a person was a passenger in a bus, a taxi, or in a friend’s car, and that vehicle’s driver sped, hard braked, or made a sharp turn, Defendants would conclude that the passenger, not the actual driver, engaged in 'bad' driving behavior based on the Arity SDK Data," the complaint explains. "Defendants would then subsequently sell and share the data so it could be used to inform decisions about that passenger’s insurability based on their 'bad' driving behavior."

Allstate doesn't care.  They've never cared.

If this is not a crime, it should be.

From the Department of Too Much Free Time

Someone has created a version of the seminal video game Doom that is contained in a PDF file.

It's monochrome, but apparently, it works.

Still, why? 

There is a race to see who can bend the PDF file format to do the most impressive thing. Considering the more-than-30-year-old shooter, Doom, has been ported to many unexpected places, it was inevitable it would turn up in a PDF file.

The Portable Document Format (PDF) was developed to present documents in a manner that was independent of the software, hardware, and operating system showing them. It's an undoubtedly neat system, but malware authors have been known to exploit its complexity.

However, what for one person is an opportunity for mischief is for another a demonstration of programming prowess, which brings us to DoomPDF, a port of the classic first-person-shooter that will run from a PDF, assuming the PDF engine used to display the document at least partially supports PDF file format's implementation of Javascript.

The Reg ran the PDF in a Chromium browser and, purely in the interest of research, spent perhaps more time than we should making sure the monochrome rendering of '90s mayhem worked as we remembered.

 This appears to be done with overgrown dynamic ASCII art.

But again, why?

Pass the Popcorn

Political activist, and model for the end stage portrait of Dorian Gray, Steve Bannon has gone after Elon Musk hammer and tongs, calling him racist and evil.

I agree with Steve Bannon.

I fucking cannot fucking believe that I fucking agree with Steve fucking Bannon:

In an escalation of discontent among the highest-profile far-right followers of Donald Trump, his former adviser Steve Bannon has called Trump’s newest favorite, Elon Musk, “racist” and a “truly evil guy”, pledging to “take this guy down” and kick him out of the Maga movement.

In an interview with the Corriere della Sera newspaper in Italy, excerpts of which were published this weekend by Breitbart, Bannon criticised Musk’s embrace of some forms of immigration and vowed to ensure that Musk does not have top-level access to the White House.

“He is a truly evil guy, a very bad guy. I made it my personal thing to take this guy down,” Bannon said. “Before, because he put money in, I was prepared to tolerate it – I’m not prepared to tolerate it any more.”

He added: “I will have Elon Musk run out of here by inauguration day”, which falls on 20 January. “He will not have full access to the White House. He will be like any other person.”

The dispute about H1B visas, which the Apartheid Era Emerald Heir Pedo Guy™ see as essential to his abusing his employees, while Steve Bannon finds it an affront to his xenophobia.

And then there is this:

………

Bannon further widened his aim to attack Musk’s fellow tech giants Peter Thiel and David Sacks for having South African heritage.

“He [Musk] should go back to South Africa,” Bannon said. “Why do we have South Africans, the most racist people on earth, white South Africans, we have them making any comments at all on what goes on in the United States?”

I am profoundly amused.

I hope that there is a way for both of them to lose.

Support Your Local Police

Despite the technology being inadequate and prone to error, police continue to arrest people despite knowing this.

Too lazy to do the shoe leather policing, I guess:

After two men brutally assaulted a security guard on a desolate train platform on the outskirts of St. Louis, county transit police detective Matthew Shute struggled to identify the culprits. He studied grainy surveillance videos, canvassed homeless shelters and repeatedly called the victim of the attack, who said he remembered almost nothing because of a brain injury from the beating.

Months later, they tried one more option.

Shute uploaded a still image from the blurry video of the incident to a facial recognition program, which uses artificial intelligence to scour the mug shots of hundreds of thousands of people arrested in the St. Louis area. Despite the poor quality of the image, the software spat out the names and photos of several people deemed to resemble one of the attackers, whose face was hooded by a winter coat and partially obscured by a surgical mask.

Though the city’s facial recognition policy warns officers that the results of the technology are “nonscientific” and “should not be used as the sole basis for any decision,” Shute proceeded to build a case against one of the AI-generated results: Christopher Gatlin, a 29-year-old father of four who had no apparent ties to the crime scene nor a history of violent offenses, as Shute would later acknowledge.

Arrested and jailed for a crime he says he didn’t commit, it would take Gatlin more than two years to clear his name.

The cops don't care about getting it right, they care about closing cases. as Mr. Gatlin is no doubt now aware. 

Cops don't advance in their career by solving crimes, they advance in their careers by closing cases and arresting people.  Those are their incentives.

Simple Answer to a Simple Question

The Surrey Now-Leader (a weekly in British Columbia) asks, "Why are B.C. kids sick all the time?"

Covid!

There, that was easy.

“I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired. It’s been a rotating door here of sickness. Someone is always sick. Since September, and I don't even know if blaming schools and daycare is the reason. I need family immunity help. Any tips? ” – shared by a mom on social media, December 2024

Wear a fucking mask, and put them on your kids!

………

B.C. schools restarted during a summer surge of COVID-19, and since then, it’s been a neverending parade of viruses infecting schoolchildren and their families. In the lead-up to the holidays, B.C.’s pediatric laboratory RSV test positivity rate was hitting last year’s high of 30 per cent. Meanwhile the pediatric RSV admissions were outpacing last year’s, as per the latest report of the Canadian Nosocomial Infection Surveillance Program. At the same time, influenza infections were ramping up.

In the fall of 2022, parents were told to blame “immunity debt” for the surge in children and youths’ respiratory infections. Immunity "debt" or "gap" was proposed to result from the lack of immune stimulation due to the reduced circulation of microbial agents and reduced vaccine uptake during the early years of the pandemic.

………

But is this really what’s going on? Many scientists didn’t buy it then, and don’t buy it now. Some have pointed out that increased levels of infectious disease have persisted after several years without widespread mitigations -- and kids who weren’t even born yet during lockdowns bear much of the brunt of current infections.

(emphasis mine)

Wear a fucking mask, and put them on your kids!

I get it. Our whole corrupt sick society is opposed to the very idea of public health, but some very basic, and rather inexpensive, rediations will protect your kids, preventing things like brain injury and long term immune system damage. 

………

On Oct. 22, 2024, at her last update on B.C.’s respiratory illness season, [BC Provincial Heath Officer ] Dr. [Bonnie] Henry stated as much: “If you’ve had COVID recently, you’ve had a boost to your immunity, so that’s a good thing.” 

Bonnie Henry is a fucking moron.

Wear a fucking mask, and put them on your kids!

I would note that Dr. Henry is still tepid about Covid being airborne, and has removed requirements for first responders to be vaccinated.

Note that it has indisputable that Covid is airborne since March of 2020, when the choir outbreak in Mt. Vernon, Washington occurred.  (Also, the whole droplet theory put forward by public health experts gets the physics of particle sizes and how long they remain in the air wrong)

If indeed “immunity debt” is the result of too few infections, and lasts for years, would it follow that not only airborne but other mitigations should be avoided? Should kids drink untreated water, consume unpasteurized milk, and stop washing their hands? This might seem like a good way to strengthen children’s immune systems -- were it not for the fact that we know what happens without hygiene: prior to 1850, before these advances in science and sanitation, roughly 50% of children died before their 15th birthday.

Yes, but wearing masks is uncomfortable, don't you know.

Wear a fucking mask, and put them on your kids!

………

In the absence of public health measures to limit transmission, repeated waves of infection will continually surge through the population, driven by the evolution of new variants and the waning population immunity from infection and vaccines. If you are lucky, your most recent vaccine will offer you some protection against being infected, but this protection varies from one person to the next and lasts only for a few months.

Don’t get us wrong, the vaccines are very important, but their main benefit at this point is to decrease the risk of ending up in hospital, in the ICU, or dying. They also diminish, but don’t eliminate, the longer term risks to your health, which are also severe outcomes, as anyone who has developed Long COVID will tell you. These long-term effects are shockingly common, and rising as our population gets reinfected over and over, as both the STAT Canada and Institut National de Santé Publique du Québec reports showed.

 ………

One of us (T. Ryan Gregory) coined the term “immunity theft” to describe the negative impact of SARS-CoV-2 on the immune system. 

Also, lung damage, heart damage, a correlation to early onset cancers, and cognitive impairment.

At the risk of repeating myself:

Wear a fucking mask, and put them on your kids!

More and more evidence is accumulating that the virus damages our immune system, making us more vulnerable to future infections. Crucially, T cells, a class of white blood cells in our body that play a vital role in our body’s defence against other infectious diseases, are depleted and exhausted, even with mild COVID-19 infections. Some of this effect seems to come from the SARS-CoV-2 virus directly infecting these cells.

Simply put, COVID-19 infections weaken our immune systems. This makes us more prone to reinfection with SARS-CoV-2, infections with other viruses (e.g. RSV), reactivation of dormant viral infections (e.g. shingles, Herpes-Zoster virus), bacterial infections (Group A strep,TB) and even rare fungal infections. To make matters worse, the infections themselves may also be more severe. Being infected with SARS-CoV-2 and other viruses or bacteria at the same time can also make things worse, in adults as well as children.

It should be noted here that two of the three the authors of this OP/ED, Doctors. Lyne Filiatrault and Arijit Chakravarty are medical doctors, and the third, T. Ryan Gregory, is a PhD evolutionary biology.

Let me leave you with one thought:

Wear a fucking mask, and put them on your kids!

Also, avoid poorly ventilated public areas.

Linkage

• Here are 10 reasons why a child wanting a hippo for Christmas is a sign they are a budding evil mastermind. (Bethany Brookshire on Bluesky) Had to be here, just for the title.
• The Walmart Effect (The Atlantic) They impoverish the towns where they exist.
• Do Carbon Offsets Offset Carbon? (American Economic Association) Money quote, "We estimate that the sale of these offsets to regulated polluters resulted in substantially higher global carbon dioxide emissions."
• The Truth About Musk, From His Biographer (Seth Abramson) He has the receipts, and it is fucking brutal.
• Eighth Circuit Upholds Denial Of Immunity To Gov’t Officers Who Fired Staffer For Politely Asking About Masking Protocols (Techdirt) Seriously, even you think that you have immunity, don't be an asshole.
• Opening the DNC’s Black Box (The American Prospect) The vote for DNC chair will be remarkably opaque, with not even the names of the members of the 448 members of the DNC are known ……… Until now.

Dereck and the Dominos, Johnny Cash, and Carl Perkins.  Sweet.

Finally

It appears that some members of the  Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) are beginning to realize that the consultants who have been running the party's political operations are not working for the party, they are working for themselves.

Well, knock me over with a  GBU-57A/B Massive Ordnance Penetrator bomb.

After spending well over a billion dollars, and a significant chunk of that change ending up in consultants pockets, you are just now noticing?

Candidates vying to lead the Democratic National Committee have found a common enemy: the D.C. consultant.

In the first DNC-sanctioned forum in the body’s low-profile race for chair on Saturday, DNC candidates channeled their frustration at the “D.C. insiders,” whom New York state Sen. James Skoufis vowed to “kick to the curb.” Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party Chair Ken Martin pledged the “D.C. consultants” will “be gone when I’m there.” And Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair Ben Wikler promised he’d go into 2025 “with no commitments to anyone who’s been on a campaign payroll before.”

It’s a sign of the times for a party that burned through some $1.5 billion in the final months of the campaign, only to come up short against President-elect Donald Trump. As the party still searches for answers to its devastating losses in 2024, consultants became the punching bag while the DNC candidates largely avoided sparring with one another. They all agreed that the party needed to reground its identity with the working class and commit to a permanent campaign infrastructure across the country. But any light attacks — of which there were a few — came without names attached.

That $1.5 billion was spent in about 15 weeks, and as near as I can figure (unsurprisingly the numbers are incomplete and confusing) a least ⅕ of that went to various consulting firms.

This happens again, and again, and again, and nothing seems to be done about it.

One does hope that the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) will finally do something about fixing this problem.

Another Sellout to Developer Political Contributors

California Governor Gavin Newsom has announced that he will suspend environmental rules to speed rebuilding following the devastating Los Angeles fires.

This sounds like a common sense move, but this is going to end up being a back door subsidy to real estate developers and building contractors.

This is how faux-liberals like Newsom use a crisis to create profit for their supporters:

Landmark California environmental laws will be suspended for wildfire victims seeking to rebuild their homes and businesses, according to an executive order signed Sunday by Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Requirements for building permits and reviews in the California Environmental Quality Act and the California Coastal Act — often considered onerous by developers — will be eased for victims of the fires in Pacific Palisades, Altadena and other communities, according to the order.

………

Dan Dunmoyer, president and chief executive of the California Building Industry Assn., said the governor’s action represents an early and strong statement about the future of these areas. Newsom is making clear, Dunmoyer said, that the state will encourage homeowners to go back to their neighborhoods rather than deem development there too risky.

The California Building Industry Association are lobbyists for actors who are much of the problem here, they fought regulations for fire safe construction and landscaping, they fought to be allowed to build in fire prone areas, and they fought against prescribed burns, all of which would have mitigated the damage.

Look on the right.  Any guess as to which home is not a wood frame building?

Particularly in the case of California, where at least 80% of the purchase price is for the land upon which it is built, requiring fire resistant construction should not be that big of a deal.

Also, there is no need for a waiver:

………

The California Coastal Commission, which is tasked with coordinating with local officials in enforcing the Coastal Act, noted last week that the state law already clearly lays out that reconstruction of homes, businesses and most other structures destroyed by a disaster are exempt from typical coastal development permits — as long as the new building is sited in the same location and not more than 10% larger or taller than the destroyed structure.

So there is no issue with state permitting, and there never has been an issue with state permitting, following disasters, but Newsom is proposing dropping the regulations.

Expect to see 1500 sq foot houses being rebuilt as 4500 square foot mega mansions, and 20 unit apartments being rebuilt as 60 unit apartments. (I would actually support the larger apartments, but that is irrelevant to this discussion)

It's a corrupt act taken by a corrupt politician.

Can't Make Ships

The Arleigh Burke guided missile destroyer is an old ship.

The first of the class entered was laid down in 1988.

After the failures of the Zumwalt class destroyer and the Littoral Combat Ship, the Navy is acquiring more Burkes, and the costs are skyrocketing.

The U.S. Navy’s Flight III Arleigh Burke (DDG-51) class destroyers are facing cost increases and delays, jumping from an average of $2.1 billion per ship to $2.5 billion per hull, with even steeper cost increases coming in the future, according to a new Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report. The report analyzes the Navy’s 2025 shipbuilding plan, which calls for a 390-battle force ship fleet by 2054, and includes nine more vessels than in last year’s plan.

Beyond destroyers, the versatile workhorses of the Navy’s combat fleet, the CBO’s assessment notes cost hikes among other platforms, as well as systemic American shipbuilding industry shortfalls that could impede the service’s fleet size goal. All this long-term planning comes as the sea service races to prepare for a near-term war with China if Beijing invades Taiwan in the coming years. These destroyers and their anti-air, anti-submarine and anti-surface warfare capabilities would be crucial to such a future fight.

The Navy currently has 74 destroyers of the Arleigh Burke class, in Flight I, Flight II, Flight IIA and Flight III variants. Two Flight IIAs and 18 Flight IIIs are already either under construction or their purchase has already been authorized by Congress. CBO’s assessment also found that, overall, the 23 Flight IIIs laid out in the 30-year shipbuilding plan will end up costing $2.7 billion on average.

“The Navy stated in a briefing to CBO and [the Congressional Research Service] that the increase in its estimates of the cost of the DDG-51 Flight IIIs was attributable to shipbuilding inflation’s outpacing economywide inflation as well as declining shipyard performance,” the CBO report states.

"Declining shipyard performance," huh?

That's bureaucrat-speak for the shipyards can't build properly any more.

Rather unsurprisingly, this increase in cost has been accompanied by a schedule slippage.

Time is money, so missing schedule means busting the budget.

The military industrial complex is running on fumes.

And Then There is SERIOUSLY Old School

Such as refining the recipe for an 8,600 year old loaf of bread.

Turkish chef Ulaş Tekerkaya has done so, and it's pretty good according to reports:

In Konya, central Türkiye, inspired by the "8,600-year-old bread" found in the Neolithic settlement of Çatalhöyük, where the grains were identified through scientific analysis, chef Ulaş Tekerkaya baked bread made from peas, barley, wheat and faba beans.

In the excavation conducted two years ago at Çatalhöyük, located in the Çumra district, a charred spongy find was analyzed at Necmettin Erbakan University's Science and Technology Research and Application Center (BITAM). The analysis revealed that this find, dating back to approximately 6,600 years before Christ, was "leavened bread."

After this exciting discovery, both in Türkiye and internationally, chef Ulaş Tekerkaya, who was curious about the taste of the "8,600-year-old bread," wanted to bring it back to life today.

Previously, Tekerkaya, with the support of the excavation team and academics from Necmettin Erbakan University, published a work titled "Neolithic Age: 9,000-Year-Old Culinary Culture," where he collected the majority of the grains from the region to recreate the bread.

………

According to the analysis published by the excavation team in the "Çatalhöyük Area 66 Neolithic Period Bread Findings Analysis and Evaluation," Tekerkaya worked to produce the bread containing various grains. He conducted numerous trials to recreate the form of bread from 9,000 years ago.

Using a volcanic grinding stone called a hand mill to grind the grains, Tekerkaya baked the dough (dough balls) over a wood fire at the Meram City and Culture Museum.

In an interview with Anadolu Agency (AA), Tekerkaya stated that his work on Çatalhöyük's cuisine had earned a global award in gastronomy. Reflecting on the preparation of a menu aimed at bringing the region's 9,000-year-old culinary culture to life, Tekerkaya said, "After the discovery of the bread, I was excited to make it. After about a year of trials, the bread's final form is like this. Initially, it was too hard and had a bitter taste, but after many trials, I adjusted the recipe and baked a tasty product. It's very delicious and filling."

 I so want this recipe.

Going Old School

For the first time in decades, a US Navy Ship, the  USS Essex (LHD-2) navigated from Oahu to San Diego entirely through celestial navigation.

This technique, which came to its full fruit in the mid 1700s, when marine chronometers became accurate enough to allow its use, has largely fallen by the wayside in these days of GPS and other navigational aids.

Kind of cool:

In February 2022, just a few miles off the coast of Oahu, Hawaii, all electronic navigation systems on the bridge of the USS Essex (LHD-2) went dark. The bridge team shifted to navigating by celestial fixes plotted on paper charts. Five days and more than 1,800 nautical miles later, the Essex arrived off the coast of San Diego, California, on time and on track.

A casualty did not cause this to happen. With the approval of the Essex’s commanding officer (CO), Captain Kelly Fletcher, her navigator (coauthor and then–Lieutenant Commander Stanton), and the lead navigation instructor from Surface Warfare Schools Command in Newport, Rhode Island (coauthor Walter O’Donnell), the Essex tested its own proof-of-concept for navigating with a total loss of integrated electronic navigation equipment. Any navigation equipment that used electricity was prohibited, including all GPS sources, the Essex’s electronic Voyage Management System (VMS), and the computer-based celestial navigation software STELLA.

Celestial navigation competence was still necessary just a generation ago. The practice waned with the advent of more sophisticated and precise electronic navigation solutions; yet, as U.S. adversaries’ cyber and electronic warfare capabilities advanced, analog navigation techniques became relevant again. However, it is still rare for a Navy warship to intentionally operate without its electronic navigation suite. As The American Practical Navigator (aka “Bowditch”) states, “No navigator should ever become completely dependent on electronic methods. The navigator who regularly navigates by blindly pushing buttons and reading the coordinates from ‘black boxes’ will not be prepared to use basic principles to improvise solutions in an emergency.”

I wonder if they used a mechanical chronometer for this?  Probably not.

Maybe There Is an Upside to the AI Craze

There are indications that LLM artificial intelligence could eliminate 200,000 jobs on Wall Street.

Eliminating 1 job on Wall Street is a good thing.

Global banks will cut as many as 200,000 jobs in the next three to five years as artificial intelligence encroaches on tasks currently carried out by human workers, according to Bloomberg Intelligence.

Chief information and technology officers surveyed for BI indicated that on average they expect a net 3% of their workforce to be cut, according to a report published Thursday.

………

Nearly a quarter of the 93 respondents predict a steeper decline of between 5% and 10% of total headcount. The peer group covered by BI includes Citigroup Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc.

………

Citi said in a report in June that AI is likely to displace more jobs across the banking industry than in any other sector. About 54% of jobs across banking have a high potential to be automated, Citi said at the time.

………


Jamie Dimon could credibly be replaced with a talking toaster Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan’s chief executive officer, told Bloomberg Television in 2023 that AI is likely to make dramatic improvement in workers’ quality of life, even if it eliminates some positions. “Your children are going to live to 100 and not have cancer because of technology,” Dimon said at the time. “And literally they’ll probably be working three-and-a-half days a week.”

The obvious question is, "Who gets cut."

I would suggest CEOs, CIOs, CMOs, and CHROs to start.

Deep Thought

Yeah, Boeing.

H/T Tim Boudreau

Funny That

You may recall that the Senate failed to appoint a new chair for the National Labor Relations Board.

They could have, but Kamala Harris did not make it to the Senate in time to cast the tie breaking vote.

So...Kamala Harris coulda broken the tie on the NLRB vote, but she wasn't there to cast the vote, and her brother-in-law is the chief counsel of Uber, which has tangled with the NLRB. https://t.co/CwYJlnedeo

— David Sirota (@davidsirota) January 8, 2025

Time for me to don a tinfoil hat, but her brother in law, Tony West, took an outsized role in her campaign and fought tooth and nail against anything that might inconvenience the. "Great malefactors of wealth."

When Rep. Khanna suggests that Harris was somehow just out of pocket and unavailable, he is likely being far too charitable.

Monthly Jobs Numbers Out

And there were 256,000 new jobs created in December, well above the consensus estimate of 155,000, and unemployment fell to 4.1%.  This compares favorably to the November Jobs report, 227,000 new jobs and 4.2%. 

Of course, the response to this economic good news from the stock market was negative, because it is feared that the Fed will stop cutting rates.

Yeah, it sounds nuts too me too:

The U.S. economy added 256,000 jobs last month and the unemployment rate edged down, the Labor Department said Friday.

December’s gain in nonfarm payrolls was well above the 155,000 jobs that economists had expected, according to a Wall Street Journal survey. The 4.1% unemployment rate was also better than the expected 4.2%.

The results were the latest sign that the U.S. labor market has recovered from its midyear stumble and may even be gaining steam. But Friday’s job report also shuts the door on a rate cut at the Federal Reserve’s next meeting, which is Jan. 28-29, and reduces the chances of a cut at its subsequent meeting in March.

………

Stock futures fell after the report was released, and the yield on 10-year Treasury bonds jumped to 4.79% from around 4.7%.

………

The U.S. added 2.2 million jobs in 2024. That was more than double the number expected by economists heading into the year, according to a Wall Street Journal survey conducted last January.

Average hourly earnings rose 0.3% from November to $35.69. That was up 3.9% from December 2023.

Once again, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. 

Ecch (Tweet) of the Day

BREAKING: Sources have confirmed that Juan Guaidó has declared himself Interim Prime Minister of Canada. 🇨🇦 pic.twitter.com/vkToo8Kd9C

— Alan MacLeod (@AlanRMacLeod) January 7, 2025

This is funny as hell.

This Should Have Been 9-0

Instead, by a 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court has ruled that Donald Trump can be sentenced for the 34 felonies that he committed in the Stormy Daniels hush money case.

The judge has already basically promised that there will be no jail time, so figure a few thousand bucks and a slap on the wrist.

It does mean though, that he cannot vote in his new home state of Florida:

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday denied President-elect Donald J. Trump’s emergency bid to halt his criminal sentencing in New York, all but ensuring it would proceed as planned on Friday.

In a brief unsigned order, a five-justice majority noted that Mr. Trump was not facing jail time and that he could still challenge his conviction “in the ordinary course on appeal.”

Although Mr. Trump had argued that being sentenced 10 days before his inauguration would distract from the presidential transition, the majority held, “The burden that sentencing will impose on the president-elect’s responsibilities is relatively insubstantial.”

The majority included Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Sonia Sotomayor; Amy Coney Barrett; Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. Four of the court’s conservative justices — Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr., Neil M. Gorsuch and Brett M. Kavanaugh — noted dissents without providing reasons.

The sentencing is now free to move forward on Friday morning in the same Lower Manhattan courtroom where Mr. Trump was convicted on 34 felony counts of falsifying records to cover up a sex scandal that had endangered his 2016 presidential campaign. The president-elect has indicated he plans to appear virtually.

The fact that 4 of the justices voted in favor preventing the sentencing, something that as near as I can tell has absolutely no basis in law, is profoundly troubling.

Nothing to see here, move along. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

Pass the Popcorn

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit has ruled that Jack Smith's special prosecutor report can be publicly released, reversing the completely incoherent ruling from Trump's concierge judge Aileen Cannon prohibiting the release of the report.

The injunction stands for another 3 days, which is enough time to appeal to the Supreme Court, but I expect it to come out in a few days:

A federal appeals court on Thursday said that it would not block the Justice Department from releasing a report by the special counsel Jack Smith about the two now-closed investigations he conducted into President-elect Donald J. Trump.

In a brief and unsigned order, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, in Atlanta, rejected an emergency request from Mr. Trump’s legal team to stop the report from coming out.

………

Both sections of Mr. Smith’s two-volume report remain for the moment under an injunction put in place this week by a lower-court judge in Florida that is temporarily blocking their release.

The Justice Department has already said that it intends to hold off on releasing the volume that concerns the case in Florida in which Mr. Trump was accused of mishandling classified documents after he left office.

They are holding off on that one, which I would argue would be the more interesting report, because there are still court cases against other defendants.

But the department has said that it wants to release the other volume, which details Mr. Smith’s decisions in the case he filed in Washington accusing Mr. Trump of seeking to overturn the 2020 election.

In its order on Thursday night, the appeals court left the injunction in place but said that the Justice Department could take further action seeking to appeal it. Still, the injunction, which was issued by Judge Aileen M. Cannon, who oversaw the classified documents case, is scheduled to last only another three days.

Well, I guess historians will find this interesting.

Ecch (Tweet) of the day

CDC And WHO Issue Urgent Warning To People In Areas Of Wildfires To Wash Hands To Avoid Inhaling Toxic Wildfire Smoke pic.twitter.com/DAevS5lxr3

— The Vertlartnic (@TheVertlartnic) January 8, 2025

In case you are wondering, the Vertartnic is a parody site, much in the same vein as the New York Times Pitchbot, wherein the humor comes from taking the mindless both-siderism and extending it beyond the already absurd lengths that the Atlantic and the New York Times go to to appear, "Fair and balanced."

The Grauniad Abides

So The Guardian had an article, "Marlon Brando fury at ‘feeling like a freak’ among revelations in new book of Hollywood secrets."

I know that this is outside of my normal bailiwick, but put your mouse over the link and look at the url.

Notice this bit, "marlon-brandon-fury."

I know what you are thinking, it's just a URL, but there is a note at the bottom of the article:

The headline of this article was amended on 4 January 2025 to correct a misspelling of Marlon Brando’s surname.

The Guardian is legion for both its corrections section and its predilection for typographical errors.

It is well deserved.

H/T Stephen Saroff (My Brother)     o o  The Bear who Swims      
                                    (_)_____o      
                                 ~~~~(______)~~~~~~~~~~
                                     oo    oo

^*According to the Wiki, The Guardian, formerly the Manchester Guardian in the UK. It's nicknamed the Grauniad because of its penchant for typographical errors, "The nickname The Grauniad for the paper originated with the satirical magazine Private Eye. It came about because of its reputation for frequent and sometimes unintentionally amusing typographical errors, hence the popular myth that the paper once misspelled its own name on the page one masthead as The Gaurdian, though many recall the more inventive The Grauniad."

It's Thursday ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ On Wednesday

Because of commemorations of the death of Jimmy Carter, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released unemployment claims data a day early, with initial claims falling by 10,000 to 201,000 beating the consensus estimate of 218,000, with continuing claims rising by 33K to 1.867 million, with ADP releasing a report showing an increase in the private labor force of 122,000.  (On the last one, I'd wait for the official report in 2 days)

The number of Americans filing new applications for unemployment benefits fell to an 11-month low last week, pointing to a stable labor market, though a slowdown in hiring has led some laid-off workers to experience long bouts of joblessness.

Signs of a steadily cooling labor market could allow the Federal Reserve to keep interest rates unchanged in January against the backdrop of still high inflation.

OMG!  Inflation is 2.6%, not 2.0%!  Panic!!!!

Mores sado-monetarism.

………

Initial claims for state unemployment benefits dropped 10,000 to a seasonally adjusted 201,000 for the week ended Jan. 4, the lowest level since February 2024, the Labor Department said on Wednesday. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast 218,000 claims for the latest week.

The report was published a day early as federal government offices are closed on Thursday in honor of former President Jimmy Carter who died on Dec. 29 at the age of 100.

………

Labor market stability was underscored by government data on Tuesday showing an increase in job openings in November, with 1.13 vacancies for every unemployed person, up from 1.12 in October. Uncertainty over the impact of proposed policies from President-elect Donald Trump's incoming administration is also seen causing the Fed to pause rate cuts this month.

………

While layoffs have remained low by historical standards, hiring has slowed, with the ADP National Employment on Wednesday showing private payrolls increased by 122,000 jobs in December after rising 146,000 in November. Economists had forecast private employment rising by 140,000.

I think that we are now in a downturn, if not a full recession.

Layoffs are not ramping up yet, but it appears that hiring is slowing.

Here About That Fluoridation Study

You may have heard of a meta-study that showed that fluoride in drinking water lowered IQs..

Rather unsurprisingly, the study is complete pants. 

It failed peer review multiple times, and they finally assembled a hand picked review committee, and then SELFpublished this as a monograph:

Federal toxicology researchers on Monday finally published a long-controversial analysis that claims to find a link between high levels of fluoride exposure and slightly lower IQs in children living in areas outside the US, mostly in China and India. As expected, it immediately drew yet more controversy.

The study, published in JAMA Pediatrics, is a meta-analysis, a type of study that combines data from many different studies—in this case, mostly low-quality studies—to come up with new results. None of the data included in the analysis is from the US, and the fluoride levels examined are at least double the level recommended for municipal water in the US. In some places in the world, fluoride is naturally present in water, such as parts of China, and can reach concentrations several-fold higher than fluoridated water in the US.

The authors of the analysis are researchers at the National Toxicology Program at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. For context, this is the same federal research program that published a dubious analysis in 2016 suggesting that cell phones cause cancer in rats. The study underwent a suspicious peer-review process and contained questionable methods and statistics.

The new fluoride analysis shares similarities. NTP researchers have been working on the fluoride study since 2015 and submitted two drafts for peer review to an independent panel of experts at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine in 2020 and 2021. The study failed its review both times. The National Academies' reviews found fault with the methods and statistical rigor of the analysis. Specifically, the reviews noted potential bias in the selection of the studies included in the analysis, inconsistent application of risk-of-bias criteria, lack of data transparency, insufficient evaluations of potential confounding, and flawed measures of neurodevelopmental outcomes, among other problems.

After the failing reviews, the NTP selected its own reviewers and self-published the study as a monograph in August.

And here is the money quote:

………

The study's primary meta-analysis only included 59 of the studies: 47 with a high risk of bias and 12 with a low risk. This analysis looked at standardized mean differences in children's IQ between higher and lower fluoride exposure groups. Of the 59 studies, 41 were from China.

Among the 47 studies with a high risk of bias, the pooled difference in mean IQ scores between the higher-exposure groups and lower-exposure groups was -0.52, suggesting that higher fluoride exposure lowered IQs. But, among the 12 studies at low risk for bias, the difference was slight overall, only -0.19. And of those 12 studies, eight found no link between fluoride exposure and IQ at all.

This study is General Jack Ripper raving about Russians attacking our purity of essence.

He's a Corrupt Rat-Fuck

When Donald Trump is the less corrupt person on a phone call, were are dealing with a very special circumstance.

In this case though, the person on the other end of the line was Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito.

Alito claimed that it was Trump asking about a reference for a former clerk, but Trump hasn't followed up on a reference by himself since ……… probably ever.

Trump was lobbying Alito to convince the rest of the court to take on his appeal regarding his upcoming sentencing in New York state court for multiple felonies.

Alito wants us to believe that this was a conversation about his former clerk.

It wants me to go Jules Winnifield in Pulp Fiction. ("Does Marcellus Wallace look like a Bitch?")

Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. spoke with President-elect Donald J. Trump on Tuesday, not long before Mr. Trump’s lawyers asked the Supreme Court to delay his sentencing following his conviction in New York in a case arising from hush money payments.

Justice Alito said the call was a routine job reference for a former law clerk whom Mr. Trump was considering for a government position.

It was not clear, however, why Mr. Trump would make a call to check references, a task generally left to lower-level aides.

Ummm.....it is pretty clear.  Trump was lobbying Alito, and Alito lied about it.

………

In a statement on Wednesday, Justice Alito said the call was an unexceptional endorsement of a talented clerk.

“William Levi, one of my former law clerks, asked me to take a call from President-elect Trump regarding his qualifications to serve in a government position,” Justice Alito said. “I agreed to discuss this matter with President-elect Trump, and he called me yesterday afternoon.”

Justices often serve as references for their law clerks, but the prospective employers are seldom certain to have business before the court. Even aside from his own criminal case, Mr. Trump is set to lead an administration that will undoubtedly be a party in dozens of cases before the court.

This shit won't end until law enforcement begins frog-marching Supreme Court Justices out of court in handcuffs, and this needs to happen sooner rather than later.

Meme of the Day

I'm not sure where I found this, but I found this, and you need to see this.

Badassery in Heraldry

In response to Donald Trump's demands taht Denmark sell Greenland to the United States, Denmark's King has modified his coat of arms to increase the prominence of Greenland and the Faroe Islands. (The new one is on the left)

I am intensely amused.

The Danish king has shocked some historians by changing the royal coat of arms to more prominently feature Greenland and the Faroe Islands – in what has also been seen as a rebuke to Donald Trump.

Less than a year since succeeding his mother, Queen Margrethe, after she stood down on New Year’s Eve 2023, King Frederik has made a clear statement of intent to keep the autonomous Danish territory and former colony within the kingdom of Denmark.

For 500 years, previous Danish royal coats of arms have featured three crowns, the symbol of the Kalmar Union between Denmark, Norway and Sweden, which was led from Denmark between 1397 and 1523. They are also an important symbol of its neighbour Sweden.

But in the updated version, the crowns have been removed and replaced with a more prominent polar bear and ram than previously, to symbolise Greenland and the Faroe Islands respectively.

As someone who has been in a Medieval recreation group, the Society for Creative Anachronism, I have one thing:  Don't fuck with heralds.

Fuck Me

Canada is offering to buy Alaska/Minnesota from Trump. 🇨🇦😉

Let’s. Fucking. Go.

I’m turning into a Doug Ford guy…

pic.twitter.com/1GCFcFNlbq

— Dean Blundell🇨🇦 (@ItsDeanBlundell) January 6, 2025

When Doug fucking Ford is the Statesman, something is very wrong

Donald Trump now has me Trump has me agreeing with Toronto Premier Doug fucking Ford. (He's the brother who wasn't caught smoking crack, that was Rob)

Rob Ford has made a counteroffer to buy Alaska and Minnesota.

I agree with his snark.  I cannot fucking believe that I fucking agree with that right wing asshole:

A prominent Canadian politician shot back at U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s suggestion that the two countries should merge by suggesting that his nation could purchase two American border states instead.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford, the leader of Canada’s most populous province since 2018, joked on Monday that Canada could instead purchase Alaska and Minnesota as a counteroffer.

“I know under my watch, in Ontario, we would never be for that at all,” Ford said of Trump’s threats to acquire its northern neighbor on Canada’s CTV News. “We have the greatest country in the world. We have the greatest province anywhere.”

When a reporter asked Ford if he thought Trump was just joking, the Ontario leader gave the president-elect a counteroffer. “How about if we buy Alaska. And we’ll throw in Minnesota and Minneapolis at the same time,” Ford said. “You know, it’s not realistic.”

Am I in a J.J. Abrams timeline or something? (That's a Star Trek reference)

More Arrogant Than Elon

Yes, I know that concept boggles (buggers?) the mind, but Emanuel Macron just just criticized African leaders for being insufficiently grateful for the presence of French troops in their countries, and the associated looting and stolen national reserves that went along with this over the past 60 years.

Charles de Gaulle is watching from above, and saying, "Mon Dieu!  This one is more arrogant than Charles de Gaulle!"  (de Gaulle actually talked about himself that way)

Macron claimed that Sahel nations, struggling with civil unrest and extremism, owe their sovereignty to the presence of French forces.

He also dismissed assertions that French troops were expelled from the Sahel region, which encompasses several nations south of the Sahara Desert.

………

“We had a security relationship. It was in two folds: One was our commitment against terrorism since 2013. I think someone forgot to say thank you. It does not matter, it will come with time,”

“Ingratitude, I am well placed to know, is a disease not transmissible to man. I say it for all African leaders who did not have the courage vis-à-vis their public opinions to carry it, none of them would be today with a sovereign country if the French army had not deployed in this region.” Macron said

I'd say that Macron is a complete tool, but a tool has a use.

Get Over Yourself

It appears that some Democratic members of the US House of Representatives are experiencing major butt hurt because Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez got a coveted seat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

There is no violin small enough to express how little I care about how they feel:

An under-the-radar decision to add Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and about half a dozen other members to the House Energy and Commerce is causing some angst among House Democrats, according to three people familiar with the matter who were granted anonymity to detail private discussions.

In an unusual move, the Steering and Policy panel filled six out of the seven open slots on the Energy and Commerce Committee Tuesday morning and left the last position open for a 10-way race. The spots were highly competitive, and some lawmakers are questioning why certain members like Ocasio-Cortez were selected while others were left to compete for the last open spot.

This is an easy one.  The House leadership wants AOC in the tent pissing out, and not outside the tent pissing in.

Burn in Hell, Motherfucker

The crowd in Paris celebrating Le Pen’s death is large. He was a convicted Holocaust denier & his political views were rife with racism, Islamophobia & anti-semitism. To many, he was a stain on French politics which remains to this day, despite his daughter’s attempts to soften the party’s image.

[image or embed]

— News Eye (@newseye.bsky.social) January 7, 2025 at 3:58 PM

Parisian crowds celebrating his death

Jean-Marie Le Pen has died at the age of 96.

This is the first time that he has done something to make the world a better place in ……… 96 years.

It appears that the French people feel the same way too, because they are out in the streets, and the cops aren't beating them:

From his election as France's youngest MP in 1956 to his daughter Marine Le Pen taking the party he founded to new heights, Jean-Marie Le Pen was present at every stage of the French far right's post-war history. He died on Tuesday, January 7, at the age of 96.

There are political events that immediately become history. April 21, 2002, was one of them. In a presidential election the left was widely expected to win, a "thunderclap" burst. Jean-Marie Le Pen qualified for the second round instead of Lionel Jospin, the Socialist who had been prime minister during five years of cohabitation with the scandal-plagued right. Le Pen would face Jacques Chirac, the president since 1995.

Le Pen, the pariah, the extremist, who had denounced "the cronies and the rascals" and the "gang of four" since he started in politics, was finally playing on the same court as them. It was the crowning achievement of a political career that began almost half a century earlier.

The far-right candidate would be easily defeated by Chirac (82.21% to 17.79%), after daily demonstrations against his party, the Front National (FN), which climaxed at a May Day parade that brought together huge crowds to say "no" to Le Pen. But 2002 also marked the start of the FN's second phase of growth, which would culminate, more than 20 years later, in the party becoming one of the country's main political forces, under the name Rassemblement National and the leadership of his daughter, Marine Le Pen.

The later success of the RN, and later AfD, and the rest of the neo-fascist nationalists are, I think, less an artifact of anything that Le Pen did, and more an artifact of the new structures created across Europe by another Frenchman, Jean Monnet, who was instrumental in the founding of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), which later became the EEC and then the EU.

The juxtaposition of neoliberalism and German Sado-monetarism has been almost completely unopposed by the left, and so the racist right wing nationalists have become the only alternative in Europe.

History is rhyming.

And Trudeau is Gone

I do not know a lot about Canadian politics, but just looking at the history of Canadian PMs over the past few decades, it does appear that 9 years in office appears to be pretty normal, so Trudeau's resignation as PM and party leader is not a surprise:

Justin Trudeau has said he will step down as Canada’s prime minister after his party finds a new leader, a decision that in effect brings an end to nearly a decade in power.

“Canadians deserve a clear choice in the next election,” Trudeau said, adding that party infighting had made it impossible for him to face off against his political rivals. Trudeau said would stay on as prime minister until a new leader of the ruling Liberal party was chosen through a “robust, nationwide” process.

His resignation throws open the doors to a fierce political battle to be the country’s next leader, with polls showing the Liberals losing badly to the official opposition Conservatives in an election that must be held by late October, regardless of who the leader is.

Trudeau, who used his address to recount his government’s accomplishments over three terms, said parliament would be suspended until 24 March.

He has become increasingly unpopular in the last 2-3 years, and with the resignation of Nazi apologist Chrystia Freeland from the government, allegedly because he was unwilling to hurt the poors as much as she wanted to.

I expect a shift to the right (not that Trudeau was anything but right-of-center) and a drubbing in the elections, with the Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) winning by a lot.

I would hope that the New Democratic Party (NDP) gets enough votes to be the official opposition party, but I am not holding my breath.

I expect that whatever government that comes out of this, it will spend most of its time sucking up to President Musk.

And Here We Go Again

So, we now have the first official death from H1N1 in the United States, at least the first official one.

Given the general lackadaisical approach of public health authorities meekly acquiescing to farmers refusal to test their chickens and cows, it certainly will not be the last death:

A patient in Louisiana has become the first human in the US to die of bird flu.

The Louisiana department of health reported on Monday afternoon that a patient who had been hospitalized in the state with the first human case of avian influenza has now died.

The patient was over the age of 65 and was reported to have underlying medical conditions, the department announced in a statement.

The patient contracted bird flu, officially known as highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI), or H5N1, after exposure to a combination of a non-commercial backyard flock and wild birds.

A genetic analysis had suggested the bird flu virus had mutated inside the patient, which could have resulted in a more severe illness.

Mutating inside an infected person is kind of a thing for influenza viruses, and it will do so again.

This marked the first human case in the US linked to exposure to backyard birds, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

We'll find others predating this, but it may take years of going through specimens in freezers.

The Louisiana department of health’s extensive public health investigation has identified no additional H5N1 cases nor evidence of person-to-person transmission. This patient remains the only human case of H5N1 in Louisiana, the LDH added.

And now we are relying on the good graces and the competence of the state of Louisiana to keep us safe.

Well, I'm feeling reassured.