Of Course It's Amazon

You've hears about the AI groups that are shredding old rare books in order to train AI without having copyright issues.

We now have at least one of the culprits. 

A book seller put Airtags in a bulk book order, and it's Amazon that is shredding the books.

On an emotional level, this is the single most offensive thing that Jeff Bezos' monster has ever done. (Intellectual level, the mistreatment of workers is worse)

For the past year or so, booksellers have suspected that AI firms are buying up huge lots of rare books, then destroying them after scanning them to train AI. But this was hard to prove until now, as 404 Media reports that an Airtag hidden in a rare book shows that at least one tech giant, in the race to advance its frontier models, is behind some of the bulk orders: Amazon.

On Monday, 404 Media revealed that it had connected with a bookseller who agreed to plant an Airtag in a rare book that was part of a bulk order. That Airtag was then tracked to an Amazon AI training facility in Las Vegas that housed a team focused on tearing books from their spines and scanning pages, 404 Media reported. Apparently tone-deaf to the escalating backlash over destructive book scanning, a logo on the door of that team’s warehouse, VGT3, showed a Tyrannosaurus rex preparing to devour a book, 404 Media documented.

I have advocated breaking up Amazon on a few occasions.

Screw that, send the whole C-Suite to Gitmo. 

No Disciplinary Actions

After prosecutors in Queens, New York were discovered to have concealed exculpatory evidence, The disciplinary committee decided to take no action against them.

These guys should have been fired ……… Out of a cannon ……… Into the sun.

Five years ago, one of the state’s top judges found Queens prosecutors had deliberately hidden evidence that could have spared three men decades in prison. Not long afterward, an attorney asked a disciplinary committee to investigate the incident.

The committee has finally returned its own finding. There is “insufficient evidence” the prosecutors had violated any of the “rules and laws governing attorney conduct,” according to a letter from the committee that was obtained by Gothamist.

The letter states the committee has closed the complaints against seven prosecutors filed in connection with the wrongful murder conviction of George Bell.

The five-sentence letter offers no information about the committee’s investigation or reasoning. Gothamist’s reporting on the matter is the first public confirmation of how the disciplinary process ended, and may be the only accounting the public ever gets.

This is why secret proceedings done by secret committees staffed by fellow members of the same profession rarely if ever deliver meaningful accountability.

Our Dumb Polity

It appears that Trump has another issue with the New Ford Class aircraft carriers, he thinks that the the location of the island toward the stern is ugly, and wants it changed.

This is even stupider than his order to remove the electronic catapults on the new class.  (The electronic catapults, arresting gear, and lifts have all been a bit of a cluster f%$#, but we're well past the limits of the sunk cost fallacy there)

The U.S. Navy is considering a major redesign of its new aircraft carriers to better match President Donald Trump’s preferred aesthetic for the warships, according to seven current and former U.S. officials familiar with the matter. 

The service is evaluating the feasibility of moving the multistory tower that acts as the carrier’s command center farther forward, toward the middle of the ship, to resemble older vessels, the officials said. The review, which has not been previously reported, is in response to Trump’s concerns about the “look” of the new Ford-class ships, where the tower is near the rear, these people said.

The timing and extent of the Navy’s evaluation is unclear, with current and former officials cautioning that the service was concerned that such a change would require significant time and money. Like others, they spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive situation.

Moving that command center, known as the “island,” would be the second major design change prompted by the president, who on Thursday issued a national security memorandum directing the Navy to develop a plan to revert to older steam-powered catapults on future carriers. The systems help launch jets off the ships’ flight decks.

Trump’s preference, current and former officials said, is for the new aircraft carriers to look more like those that were in service during World War II.

The Navy also examined the issue during his first term as president, said a former senior U.S. official. A study found that moving the island could cost billions of dollars in redesign costs and significantly delay the program, this person said. 

 The stupid, it burns.

Nostalgia

Somali pirates are back.

It’s Groundhog Day in the Gulf. I use an American reference as it’s an American-made calamity. After weeks of stop-start progress, 14,000 of the estimated 20,000 seafarers who had been stuck in the Strait of Hormuz since Donald Trump began bombing Iran have made their escape. Having heard that good news, you could be forgiven for thinking that things had been on the up, at least as far as shipping is concerned.

……… 

In Hormuz, ships have no protection either. They are easy prey. With the Western navies preoccupied, the Somalis have opportunistically reappeared in the Arabian Sea and western Indian Ocean and now hold hostage four ships and 67 seafarers. The pirates have issued a £3 million demand for the release of MT Honour 25 and released a chilling photo of the crew sitting on the floor of the bridge, with masked pirates and AK-47s as a backdrop.


When Honour 25 was first taken hostage, one of its crew managed to send a voice note to his family in Karachi, Pakistan. His son Muzammil Ahmed Ansari told Al Jazeera what his father, 53-year-old Mehmood, had managed to say. “He said, ‘We are hijacked, reach out to the company, to people, to the government.’ He said there were pirates on the ship, all armed. He panicked, but he said, ‘Don’t worry, ask the government to deal with it.’”

More blowback from Trump's disasterous Iran war. 

When You Are Too Corrupt for JP Morgan………

JPMorgan has terminated their relationship with the online gambling site Polymarket.

JPMorgan Chase terminated its banking relationship with Polymarket last year over regulatory concerns, underscoring escalating worries in the industry over fast-growing prediction platforms.

JPMorgan notified Polymarket that it needed to find a new bank in October, according to people familiar with the matter. Polymarket is now working with a new lender, the identity of which could not be confirmed. 

At the time, Polymarket was banned from allowing US customers to use its platform following a 2022 enforcement action by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission for operating an unregistered derivatives trading platform. 

The CFTC under the Trump administration allowed New York-based Polymarket to re-enter the US last year, though the agency has an ongoing investigation into the company, the FT reported in June.

Gambling is a great way to launder money, and has been shown with both Polymarket and Kalshi, it is an even better way to engage in insider trading. 

Whatever JPMorgan saw, it's worse than what is publicly known.

That ain't good. 

Lesson From Barack's Folly

When a group of crooks masquerading as bankers and investors crashes out, do not bail them out like Barack Obama did.

It is bad politics and worse policy. 

This applies even more to the Artificial Intelligence charlatans than it did to the 2008 banksters.

After Barack Obama surged to the White House in 2008, his administration was hobbled by the perception that it had rescued the bankers who had crashed the global economy, held nobody accountable for the destruction that was unleashed, and left ordinary people to fend for themselves. Current events may soon rhyme with that fateful episode.

Just like before, there is an overleveraged, underregulated sector at the heart of our economy that could cause devastating consequences should it hit a liquidity crunch. Perhaps the biggest difference is that this time, the executives and billionaires have learned from 2007, and are already looking to justify golden parachutes in advance. Progressives can learn from 2007, too.

A Tale of Two Bailouts

In 2008, the Republican Party was dead in the water. Weighed down by the Iraq War and the unfolding Great Recession, the party suffered what is to date its worst defeat of this century. The view that a new period of long-term dominance was dawning for Democrats became commonly accepted. Memories of 1933 and an enduring Democratic majority were plausibly relevant, as George “Katrina + Iraq + subprime” Bush could make a long-term electoral punching bag comparable to Herbert Hoover.

Obama’s winning coalition was handed a gift-wrapped opportunity to champion working people in their clash with Wall Street. Instead, influenced by neoliberals like Larry Summers and Tim Geithner, the Obama White House chose to arbitrarily constrain the size of the stimulus package and prioritize stabilizing Wall Street as the “responsible” path forward, with accountability for the crisis dismissed as “Old Testament” justice. There was only a single prosecution for triggering the greatest economic downturn of the century.

………

In short, the 2008 bailout was a political albatross around the establishment’s neck, seen as a rescue of the very rich and connected people who caused mass unemployment and foreclosures. Whoever was in power as this anger built would get singed by it.

The AI folks are incredibly unpopular now.  If the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) forces the party to bail them out when (it is when, not if) the bubble pops, this could destroy the party on a level that makes the 2010 "Shellacking" look like a high tea.

 

Another Economic Data Point

US consumers are are cutting back on retail purchases in anticipation of increasing interest rates.

Given that consumer spending is over ⅔ of our economy, this ain't good.

American consumers have powered the economy forward this year. In July, they took a breather.

Why it matters: While the underlying trend in consumer demand appears solid, retail sales hit an air pocket last month, suggesting a bumpier path ahead for overall growth.

• Combined with a weak jobs report last week and two subdued inflation readings this week, it points to the Federal Reserve having room to be patient on potential interest rate increases this fall.

Driving the news: Retail sales fell 0.6% in July, the weakest performance in more than a year and well below the 0.1% gain analysts expected.

• Excluding gas stations and auto dealers, there was still a 0.3% decline in sales, meaning that the weakness was evident even apart from those volatile categories.
• Auto dealers' sales were down 2%, gasoline stations' sales fell 0.9%, and electronic and appliance store sales declined 0.5%.

This is not looking good. 

 

The Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) in a Nutshell

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has proposed a law preventing companies like Amazon from using of sub-contractors to evade liability for mistreating delivery drivers.

Given that Amazon dictates the schedules of the drivers, the routes that they take, and watches them through cameras in the truck, this law is an unalloyed good.

Leading the charge against the law is one Jessica Schumer.

If that last name sounds familiar, it is probably because her dad is New York US Senator Chuck Schumer.

Amazon’s chief lobbyist fighting a delivery worker protection bill in New York City recently endorsed by Mayor Zohran Mamdani is Jessica Schumer, the daughter of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), according to public lobbying records and three sources with knowledge of the situation.

The bill, the Delivery Protection Act, would establish safety, training, and labor standards for delivery drivers in New York. All delivery facilities and service providers would need to be licensed with the city’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection, and companies that operate warehouses could not contract out deliveries to third parties.

That means Amazon, which subcontracts last-mile package distribution to a network of delivery service providers (DSPs), would instead have to directly employ those workers in New York City, forcing the company to take responsibility for traffic accidents, mandatory quotas that deny workers rest or bathroom breaks, and any other violations of the new standards.

………

Mayor Mamdani endorsed the Delivery Protection Act, known as NYC Council Introduction 518 and sponsored by Councilmember Tiffany Cabán, on Monday with a splashy video. But the bill was first introduced in 2023, and reintroduced in subsequent council sessions. The 2026 version has 35 co-sponsors among the 51 members of the council, though council Speaker Julie Menin is not among them. (The 2025 version was up to 41 co-sponsors, and included Menin, who was an original co-sponsor.)

………

Schumer, a former policy director for Tim Kaine when he served as Hillary Clinton’s running mate in 2016, has worked at Amazon since 2020, initially as a senior policy director. In January, she became the head of New York policy and community engagement, a euphemism for an in-house lobbyist.

In New York state lobbying disclosures (which also covers municipal lobbying), Schumer is listed as one of four lobbyists working for Amazon at the city council. The Delivery Protection Act is named as one of the bills that Schumer and her fellow lobbyists are working on.

………

For nearly a decade, Amazon has deployed its DSP model around the country. Delivery workers must wear Amazon uniforms, drive vans with Amazon logos, use Amazon equipment, are assigned routes and package deliveries by Amazon, and work out of Amazon facilities—but they are not classified as Amazon employees. This deprives DSP workers of Amazon’s benefits and wage structures, and makes it harder to seek union rights. The National Labor Relations Board this year determined that Amazon was not a joint employer with DSPs, and could not be held accountable for any safety violations or union avoidance at those contractors.

 The unholy mix of nepotism, hypocrisy, and corruption seems to be a defining trait of the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment).

Today in Nepo-Babies

Phoebe Gates, Bill Gates' daughter appears to have been directing a sales referral fraud network in her shopper referral app.

Here's hoping that she sees some jail time.  Not Elizabeth Holmes time, but maybe Martha Stewart time.

Phia co-founders Phoebe Gates and Sophia Kianni pushed for features in the e-commerce startup’s software that took credit for sales it didn’t drive, according to internal communications and people with knowledge of the matter.

The founders were aware of the practice for at least seven months going back to December, according to the people and messages posted on the company’s internal Slack channels that were shared with Bloomberg News. The people asked not to be identified as they were not authorized to discuss the issue.

That timetable runs counter to public remarks by the company, which said on July 8 that it had only become aware of the situation “within the last 24 hours.”

Phia bills itself as a “personal shopping assistant” that helps users find the lowest prices on a broad range of clothes and fashion accessories. It operates a browser extension that, when used as part of the online checkout process, can quickly find discount codes for products and save shoppers money. When a shopper uses Phia’s product to help make a purchase, the company earns a commission from the retailer for helping drive the sale.

But Phia’s browser extension was also designed to report that the startup drove a sale even when its product was never used – a practice that resulted in increased commissions, Bloomberg reported in July. The company said at the time that the problem stemmed from a software bug that had only been discovered on the day it was contacted by Bloomberg.

………

These techniques, known as “cookie stuffing,” were responsible for a significant portion of Phia’s sales, according to an internal revenue chart seen by Bloomberg. After Phia disabled the features in early July, average daily revenue at the company dropped from about $80,000 to between $10,000 and $28,000, the chart shows. A Slack message posted by a Phia data scientist on July 7 and reviewed by Bloomberg estimated that cookie stuffing accounted for about 51% of the merchandise value Phia claimed credit for selling in June. 

Yeah, and Phia has been through a series of fundraising stages that have the company valued at $180 million.

Nope, no fraud here. 

More History Rhyming

Home Sales

Home SupplyWhile much of the focus has been on the slow decline of commercial real estate, we are also seeing significant declines in single family home sales.

We need to remember that the 2008-2009 housing crash was not the result of home prices falling.  Instead it came from home price increases falling from 10-15% to just 5%, which prevented over-leveraged buyers from refinancing.

Sales of existing single-family homes fell by 1.9% in July from June, seasonally adjusted, the second month in a row of declines, to an annual rate of 3.69 million sales, sinking deeper into the mud at the bottom that sales have been in for four years, according to data by the National Association of Realtors today.

………

Supply of single-family homes rose to 4.6 months in July, the highest since the summer of 2016.

Supply is a function of inventory and sales – how much inventory there was at month-end in relationship to sales during the month. Sales sank deeper into the mud at the bottom, while inventories rose to 1.4 million single-family homes for sale.

While "regular" interest rates are high, real interest rates (regular interest rates - inflation) have actually remained quite low.

My prediction is that we are going to see a reckoning in the real estate markets sooner rather than later. 

Pass the Popcorn

The BBC is now pursuing subpoenas to depose Trump's children and Jared Kushner.

Good.

Hopefully, the questions will involve the Trump Org's business practices as well as his statements on January 6.

The BBC is trying to subpoena Donald Trump’s children as it builds its defense against the president’s defamation lawsuit centered on a documentary on the January 6 insurrection.

In a motion filed on Friday, the BBC sought authorization to serve Trump’s two eldest children, Donald Trump Jr and Ivanka Trump, and son-in-law Jared Kushner, with subpoenas for testimony and their records on the events of 6 January 2021.

The BBC, its lawyers wrote in court documents, is entitled to discover Trump’s “intention behind the speech and anything that bears on the impression his audience could have reasonably obtained in listening to the speech”, which includes whether Trump “gave it intentionally or otherwise; the breadth of the audience of the message and impression; and the extent of any resulting injury or harm”.

This is how a real news organization responds to bogus defamation claims.

Frog March Them Out of Their Offices in Handcuffs

Once again, Flock Safety has continued to operate a camera system after their contract was canceled.

If this ain't illegal, it should be. 

The easiest way to tell that Flock Safety doesn’t really care that its massive network of ALPR (automatic license plate reader) cameras is being abused by cops to stalk their exes and harass residents is to judge it by its actions. When confronted with court case after court case detailing these allegations (and those are just the cops who actually got caught!), the company says two things: first, we’re not personally responsible for the actions of “bad apples” and second, some vague “fixes” are on the way at some indeterminate point in the future.

The other way you can tell Flock doesn’t care about anything but future profitability is this: when cities pull the plug on Flock systems due to local backlash, Flock has — one more than one occasion! — decided to to simply turn the cameras back on.

Dayton, Ohio ended its contract with Flock following public complaints and some apparently forbidden sharing of data with federal immigration officers. But the city had to resort to covering Flock cameras with garbage bags to prevent further recordings since even the PD seemed unsure of whether or not it could actually control this function and Flock itself remained deliberately vague about when (or if!) it would be showing up to remove the recording equipment that contractually still belonged to it.

This has also happened in Menominee, Wisconsin, Evanston, Illinois, Littleton, Massachusetts, and the South Carolina Secretary of Transportation has documented hundreds of unpermitted cameras.

………

Do what now? Flock was told to remove the cameras. Instead, Flock decided this meant it could flip the on/off switch as often as it wanted to until it actually got around to removing the cameras, due to vague concerns about backlash Flock has absolutely earned.

And I can guarantee you whatever things Flock is saying at this point, it’s only saying because it got caught. I have yet to see an incident where Flock has informed cities or PDs of inadvertent activation or illegal access. In every case, it’s always Flock making excuses after the fact for things it could have done more of to prevent (illegal access) or abusive things it did itself (re-activating/re-installing cameras) that contradicted the intent of city residents and their governments. These are not the actions of a trustworthy tech provider. These are the actions of a company that clearly believes it cannot be fucked with because it has managed to corner this market.

Shut it down. 

The Second Most Relieved Man in Britain Tonight

That would be professional bigot Nigel Farage, who defeated parody candidate Count Binface by 63% to 26%.

The most relieved man in Britain tonight is, of course, Count Binface, who would have had to serve as an MP had he won the by-election. (Count Binface is the bloke making the v sign with his finfers).

The fact that Binface lost by only 37% has to be an embarrassment for Farage.

Good. 

Nigel Farage has seen off Count Binface to win the Clacton byelection in a contest boycotted by every other major political party.

The Reform UK leader in July triggered the byelection in an attempt to shake off a deepening scandal over a £5m gift he received from the cryptocurrency billionaire Christopher Harborne.

After a campaign in which a record-breaking 34 candidates vied for the coastal seat, Farage held on to Clacton, with 22,239 votes (63.34%) of the vote.

His nearest competitor, Count Binface, a parody candidate dressed as an intergalactic rubbish bin, won 9,455 votes (26.93%). The turnout was 44%.

Farage had been widely expected to win. A poll from Survation on Monday put Farage on 75% of the vote, with Binface on 20%. Farage declared himself the winner while the votes were still being counted.

I did not expect Binface to win, but I was hoping that he would win.

It's Thursday ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The short version is that initial claims rose and continuing claims fell.

There is some additional context, as last week's numbers were revised up. 

Filings for US unemployment benefits rose last week after hovering near historic lows.

Initial claims increased by 9,000 to 209,000 in the week ended Aug. 8, according to Labor Department data released Thursday. The median forecast in a Bloomberg survey of economists called for 202,000.

Continuing claims, a proxy for the number of people receiving benefits, fell to 1.78 million in the previous week.

The increase in filings could reflect typical summertime volatility in a period when seasonal employment patterns and the timing of holidays often affect the data. Economists will look for more than one week’s worth of data before reassessing the recent stability of the labor market.

Meanwhile,  Producer Price Index (PPI) inflation is holding steady, which makes it less likely that the Fed will raise rates at their next meeting.

U.S. producer prices were unchanged in July as goods prices fell and the cost of services increased marginally, bolstering financial market expectations that the Federal Reserve could keep interest rates unchanged next month.

The report from the Labor Department on Thursday followed news on ​Wednesday of mild consumer inflation last month. The data led most economists to also expect moderate readings in the Personal Consumption Expenditures price indexes in July.

Damned if I know what the hell is going on right now.

 

Nope

So it looks like Donald Trump is trying to put his name back on and shut down the Kennedy Center again.

Because his feelings are hurt when the judge told him that putting his name on the facility was unlawful. 

If I were judge Cooper, I'd be throwing the entire board in jail for contempt.

The board of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts voted on Thursday to inscribe President Trump’s name on the building beneath the main signage, according to two people with direct knowledge of the proceedings, aggressively testing a federal judge’s order.

According to the resolution approved by the Trump-allied board, the inscription underneath the institution’s name would read: “Restored and Renovated by President Donald J. Trump.” The board’s decision, which directs officials to act by “all legal means,” came shortly after it voted to move forward with Mr. Trump’s plan to shutter the building for renovations.

Restored and renovated by Trump? 

Is he swinging the hammer? Nope.

Is it his money that is being spent on this? Nope. 

F%$# this. 

………

The move appeared to attempt to find a creative workaround to a provision in the federal law governing the Kennedy Center that says “no additional memorials or plaques in the nature of memorials shall be designated or installed in the public areas.”

………

Both decisions will be subject to the scrutiny of the judge who, in response to a lawsuit from a Democratic lawmaker, found that the board had been “derelict” in considering the closure plan before approving it originally. Mr. Trump announced in February that the center would close for two years, with the objective of transforming what he called a “tired, broken and dilapidated” institution.

The board voted on Thursday to close the Kennedy Center’s main building while keeping a newer addition to the campus, known as the Reach, open for limited programming and to operate as an active memorial to John F. Kennedy. 

………

Outside arts administrators have suggested the financial realities for cultural organizations are far different from what the board is projecting, saying institutions typically do anything possible to avoid closure so they do not lose ticket revenue and donors. Ms. Beatty’s lawsuit questioned the true reasoning for the closure plans, arguing that it may be an effort to mask a financial downturn stemming from the president’s takeover.

Gee, ya think? 

I do hope that the judge goes postal on their flabby white asses.

A Complete Sh%$ Show

Things have gotten so bad on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln that sailors are literally jumping overboard to get off the ship.

Military families and Congress members are sounding the alarm about an intensifying mental health crisis onboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, as its 5,000 sailors and marines endure a record-breaking deployment at sea tied to the war with Iran.

Two leading specialist military papers, the Navy Times and Stars and Stripes, are reporting that there have been multiple attempts by sailors to jump overboard as poor conditions and mental stresses on the Lincoln reach the breaking point. The crew is in its ninth month at sea, and has spent 250 days consecutively without making land – a record for an aircraft carrier in modern times.

Not to worry.  I'm sure that once Hegseth's plan to give testosterone shots to sailors will fix everything.

……… 

The Navy Times gave details of thwarted suicide attempts onboard the aircraft carrier during the current deployment. Annabelle Loma told the outlet that her husband had tried to jump overboard after his spell at sea kept being extended. 

At this rate, we are going to start seeing a return of officers being fragged sooner rather than later.

Mom! History is Rhyming Again!

It looks like non-bank lenders are in the process of slowly collapsing.

Seems a lot like 2009.  Things move slowly, and then all at once. 

Private credit is showing increasing signs of stress, despite comments to the contrary from some of the largest fund managers that are trying to put a year of turmoil behind them.

Recent quarterly reports from funds overseen by the industry’s big players showed that loan health and investor returns are worsening, according to an analysis by The Wall Street Journal.

………

The percentage of defaulted loans in Blue Owl’s fund hit 2.8% in the second quarter, its highest level in at least five years. Nonperforming loans at the three other funds also hit five-year highs, exceeding levels reached in 2023 when the Federal Reserve hiked interest rates, squeezing the finances of corporate borrowers and triggering a wide stock and bond market selloff.

 Not only have the lessons of 1929 been forgotten, the lessons of 2009 have been forgotten.

The Good Guy Wins

Said good guy being Chuck Redd, who was just awarded $252,480 under an anti-SLAPP provision of DC law after the Kennedy Center sued him for canceling his Christmas concert.

They changed the name, and Redd canceled, so Trump's stooges sued him.

A superior court judge in Washington DC has ordered the Kennedy Center to pay more than $250,000 to a musician who canceled a performance at the arts center after the White House announced that Donald Trump’s name would be added to the venue.

Judge Tanya Jones Bosier ordered the Kennedy Center on Monday to pay $252,479.70 in legal fees and costs to attorneys for musician Chuck Redd within 45 days.

The Kennedy Center had sued Redd after he canceled a Christmas Eve concert at the venue. In June, the judge dismissed the Kennedy Center’s lawsuit and ruled in Redd’s favor under the district’s anti-Slapp statute, which is designed to protect people from lawsuits seeking to silence protected speech. Redd then requested that the court make the Kennedy Center reimburse him for the legal costs he incurred defending himself.

………

Redd’s decision to cancel came after the Kennedy Center’s Trump-controlled board voted to rename the institution “The Donald J Trump and The John F Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts.” Trump’s name was then added to the building’s facade and the center’s digital materials.

 

Damn

Francesca Hong narrowly lost the Wisconsin primary to David Crowley last night.

Given the current political environment, I don't think that the Republican has much of a chance of winning this election cycle, unless, the race becomes a debate about data centers, an issue where his opponent Tom Tiffany appears to be running to the left of Crowley.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

Brave, Brave, Brave, Brave Sir Donald

And they were forced to eat Robin's minstrels, and there was much rejoicing

I'm not sure that I can add much about Donald Trump cravenly slinking away from the Presidential 747 in response to an almost certainly false report of a threat from Iran, but seeing as how it gives me the opportunity to make a Monty Python reference, I'm doing it anyway.

Donald Trump departed on a secret military flight from Turkey to Britain last month when the White House said he was flying aboard ⁠Air Force One, in an extraordinary ruse – prompted by an Iranian assassination threat – that involved hiding the president in an airport catering container, according to reporting from the Washington Post and the New York Times.

The operation took place when Trump was in Ankara for a Nato summit with world leaders, according to the Post. The president reportedly boarded the old Air Force One jumbo jet in view of television cameras, and then was secretly shuttled minutes later to a smaller plane via an airport catering truck typically used to load meals and other supplies preflight, a US official told the Post.

What a f%$#ing poltroon,

Human Sacrifice, Dogs and Cats Living Together, Mass Hysteria!

That's a fine looking flying squid And now we have Neon Flying Squids.

This is a harbinger of something, and I do not think that it will end well.

On a research vessel 15 years ago, a group of Japanese scientists documented something that had only previously been described by startled sailors to disbelieving listeners. They saw a formation of squid flying through the air.

The shoal of about 100 squid rose unexpectedly from a patch of the Pacific Ocean around 370 miles from Tokyo and glided near the boat for about 30 metres. The astonished researchers were the first to capture photographs of such a thing, which looked like the early stages of an alien invasion.

They were probably neon flying squid (Ommastrephes bartramii), the subsequent study states, a species that is part of a 20-strong flying squid family that was known to leap from the water but, until then, was only rumoured to also be able to glide above it.

The neon flying squid was able to gain such elevation by using the hyponome, a funnel-like muscular organ also present in other cephalopods, such as octopuses. The organ is able to force water out in a jet, propelling the body along both in and out of the sea. Photographs of the gliding squid show them with their arms (they have 10 limbs in all) splayed outwards.

Neon flying squid are about the length of a rolling pin and tend to gather near the surface to feed upon fish and crustaceans. It’s unclear exactly why they would fly in unison in this way, with one possible explanation being that they were evading a predator, such as a shark.

This is some seriously weird sh%$.

Were F%$#ed

Today in anthropogenic climate change, we have the Hoover Dam on the verge of being unable to generate power, and methane emissions are jumping in Siberia.

Not good.

From the rim of Lake Powell, you can’t see the danger line. There isn’t a flashing gauge or a chart on the canyon wall that warns visitors when one of the most important machines in America begins to fail. There’s only an invisible number: 3,490 feet above sea level.

Engineers call it “minimum power pool.” Above that elevation, Lake Powell can still push water through Glen Canyon Dam’s massive penstocks, spin its turbines, and send electricity across the Southwest with no trouble. Below it, the dam loses the function that helped justify its existence. The river still wants to move, but the machine starts running out of ways to move it.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the international date line:

Methane emissions from Siberia have more than doubled over the past decade, according to new research co-led by scientists at the University of Edinburgh’s National Centre for Earth Observation (NCEO).

The study, initiated as a collaborative project with researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences during their stay at the University of Edinburgh, reveals that rapid warming, alongside increasing wildfires and shifting wetland activity, is driving a sharp rise in methane emissions from the vast permafrost regions of northern Russia. The findings raise concerns that these accelerating emissions could undermine effects to meet global climate targets.

Major rise in potent greenhouse gas

The international research team, including NCEO scientists based at the University of Edinburgh, analysed satellite and atmospheric data spanning 2010 to 2023. They found that methane emissions across Siberia have been rising by around 5% per year, with emissions during the summer growing season now more than twice as high as in 2010.

Methane is a particularly potent greenhouse gas, trapping significantly more heat than carbon dioxide over short timescales, and is a major contributor to global warming.

 Things are going to hell even faster than the most pessimistic climate experts have predicted.

Well, That Was Quick

Less than 24 hours after being sworn in as US Attorney General, Todd Blanche  is already making a mockery of the law in order to shield Donald Trump.

Gee, hoocoodanode? 

It’s been less than 24 hours, and freshly sworn-in Attorney General Todd Blanche has already issued entirely new legal protections for President Donald Trump.

In a memo published Monday evening, just hours after Blanche’s swearing-in ceremony, the Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel argued that the president could claim executive privilege over communication between him and his “private advisers,” provided that the communications were confidential and related to his presidential “decisionmaking.”

The memo also seemed to expand executive privilege to apply to communications between the president’s “direct advisers” and civilians.

If the Democrats take back the House of Representatives in the upcoming midterm elections, this memo could have major implications for any investigation into the president and other top administration officials. Clearly, the Trump administration is preparing to stonewall Congress.

 This is a feature, not a bug.

I Ran Into Attila the Phlebotomist Today

Ouchie.

Headline of the Day

Memo to Those Who Fear Socialism: Why Don’t You Try Fix Capitalism? 

— The New Republic, on the current socialism panic.

I can answer this question:  Because the Free Market Mousketeers believe that capitalism cannot ever fail, it can only be failed. 

Everywhere I look, I see people expressing alarm about the popularity of socialism. It polls in the mid-to-high 30s, and considerably higher among younger people. Older people, who have a living memory of the various socialist regimes that once dotted the planet, which at best didn’t deliver prosperity to their people and at worst threw them in jail by the thousands, can’t understand how this could be and seem to want to talk endlessly about it.

I, however, marvel at the other consistent result of all these polls, which these people don’t seem nearly as interested in talking about. I refer to the ratings Americans give to capitalism. They’re terrible. A big Gallup poll from last fall is representative. Socialism won the approval of 39 percent, while capitalism’s positive number was 54 percent.

That is pathetic—barely half the country! In the country that invented modern capitalism and where it is worshipped by the elite class! And you know what? It’s entirely deserved. In fact, it deserves to be a little worse (as it is among Democrats). The kind of capitalism we’ve been practicing in this country over the last 40-plus years is cruel, corrupt, and a perversion of what humane capitalism ought to be. The people who are so freaked out about socialism ought to realize that the only way they’re going to arrest its rise is to change capitalism for the better.

 

Linkage

• How Bad Could the Private-Credit Crisis Get? Just Look at 1929. (Barron's) From the very definition of conventional economic thinking.
• Aluminum-Adsorbed Vaccines and Chronic Diseases in Childhood: A Nationwide Cohort Study: (Annals of Internal Medicine) There is no association between the use of aluminum adjuvants and childhood diseases.
• DuckDuckGo Is Selling Anti Pervert Glasses That Contain Zero AI, Cameras, or Even Electronics Whatsoever (Futurism) Sunglasses.
• Pluralistic: Google is a scammer’s paradise (Pluralistic) Harming their own users is profitable.
• Association Between First MMR Vaccination Before Age 2 Years and Childhood Autism in a U.S. EHR Cohort of 2.5 Million Children (Ovid) Spoiler, there is no association.   
• Ozempic Could Fight Addiction Too – Scientists Finally Know How (SciTech Daily) This whole class of drugs is getting more and more interesting.
• Earth’s molten core suddenly reversed direction — and scientists don’t know why (ScienceDaily) This is end of the world stuff.
• Criminal Deception in Silicon Valley (Organization Science) The culture of Silly-Con Valley has been larcenous since at least the end of the last century.

A nice video primer on the circular payment scheme fraud that undergirds AI:

When Your Realize Your Partner is Unreliable

European countries are looking for alternate sources for weapons because they are concerned about the misuse of ITAR regulations by the United States.

The use of American subsystems has always been complex for European defense contractors, since it gives Washington a veto over potential exports, and even before Trump, these limits were frequently applied more for industrial protection rather than security concerns.

Today, there is absolutely no trust remaining.

US firms seeking to tap into ballooning European defense budgets are finding a new roadblock emerging: a desire by European capitals to avoid US control of weapon sales.

There have long been concerns about how American International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) restrict foreign governments’ ability to sell or transfer domestically built weapons that contain components originating in the US. And that concern is becoming harder to ignore as skepticism surrounding US and European relations has led to a serious push on the continent to move away from buying weapons with US-controlled parts, according to a half-dozen people who talked to Breaking Defense.

………

In its simplest terms, ITAR is a set of US government rules to regulate the export and import of defense and military items on the United States Munitions List (USML), including services and technical data. 

Scott Wise, a partner at Crowell & Moring and a member of the law firm’s international trade group, said the bulk of foreign governments’ concerns on ITAR is the “see-through rule.” That rule, he told Breaking Defense, means ITAR regulators track the US-made components inside a foreign-built weapon system and control where those parts go and what they’re used for.

 Consequences.

A Fortunate Failure

The Trump administration has done its best to hamstring wind power.  Its primary tool for this is stopping required reviews of new wind farms by the Pentagon.

The courts are having none of it.

On Thursday, a US District Court in Oregon ordered the US government to restart the process of approving wind projects. All new wind development in the US has been on hold since August 2025, when the Department of Defense (DoD) stopped participating in a process that allows it to compel developers to alter projects in order to limit their interference with radar equipment. The court ruled, however, that the DoD’s national security claims did not allow it to opt out of a process that is legally mandated.

The Trump administration has made many attempts to block wind development, both offshore and land based. Its attempts to stop offshore wind included the same approach at issue in this case: Claim that drone developments mean that radar interference by wind turbines creates a national security risk. The courts were not sympathetic to this claim, including in cases where judges examined a classified report that the DoD was using to justify blocking offshore wind construction. As a result, the administration has turned to paying companies not to pursue wind development.

In parallel, the government was pursuing a similar approach for onshore wind. Here, a law lays out a process for the DoD to evaluate any problems posed by wind turbines and negotiate changes to planned wind farms with the developers. As laid out in the new decision, the government simply stopped participating in this process in August 2025, first by refusing to sign off on previously negotiated agreements, and later by refusing to draft agreements entirely. Eventually, it simply refused to participate in negotiations at all. This has brought a halt to all wind development in the US.

………

Nothing in that framework allows the DoD to simply stop participating in the process. “If DoD wishes to alter the statutory scheme, it can ask Congress to do so,” Immergut wrote. In the absence of congressional action, the DoD can’t simply ignore the law.

The ruling orders the DoD to resume the process of approving wind projects using the congressionally mandated schedule and to report back every 30 days on its progress.

 

Good 4th Amendment News

Following the Supreme Court ruling in Chatrie v. United States, which said that a geofence search  required a judicial warrant, a judge has ruled that tower dumps warrants are unconstitutional.

Five weeks after the Supreme Court struck down so-called geofence searches in its landmark Fourth Amendment decision in Chatrie v. United States, the ramifications for other broad law enforcement investigative techniques are coming into focus. On Wednesday, August 5, U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves reaffirmed a magistrate judge’s ruling quashing federal law enforcement’s ability to obtain “tower dump” warrants.

Judge Reeves’ decision in the Southern District of Mississippi may signal a turning point in the post-Chatrie era against non individualized electronic searches. Both state and federal law enforcement authorities have commonly used tower dumps to pull large amounts of data from cell towers located near crime scenes. The data, which reveals the cell phones connected to a cell tower during a set time block, has historically allowed investigators to examine recurring cell numbers at multiple crime scenes.

Last year, investigators with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives successfully used a tower dump to identify a man accused of a string of gun store robberies in Pennsylvania. This year, investigators asked a federal judge for approval to perform a tower dump while investigating vandalism at a Federal Aviation Administration facility in Vermont.

In the Mississippi case, FBI agents investigating a series of violent crimes committed in the Jackson area submitted four warrants for a magistrate judge’s approval in February 2025. The magistrate judge, however, denied the warrants, citing the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit’s decision in United States v. Smith, pre-dating Chatrie, striking down geofence warrants. In March 2025, the government appealed the magistrate judge’s order to Judge Reeves.

This is the sort of search that the founders specifically opposed.  

These were called, "General Warrants," or, "Writs of Assistance."

First Peoples Get It

The Cherokee Nation has banned large data centers from tribal-owned lands.

The Cherokee Nation is joining the growing backlash against massive data center projects fueled by the AI boom.

Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr. announced earlier this month that the Nation is banning hyperscale data center projects on land owned by or held in trust for the Cherokee Nation.

The decision follows a report from the Nation’s Data Center Task Force examining the economic, environmental, cultural, and community impacts of these developments across the Cherokee Nation Reservation. The report described hyperscale data centers as facilities that often span more than 10,000 square feet and require more than 100 megawatts of power.

As part of its report, the task force surveyed 1,593 Cherokee Nation citizens. About 64% said they opposed the construction of hyperscale data centers within the reservation.

Welcome to good governance. 

Engineer, Meet Petard

'I never thought leopards would eat MY face,' sobs woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People's Faces Party.

— Adrian Bott (@Cavalorn) October 16, 2015

A MAGAt restauranteur is facing the lost of his business as a result of Trump's revocation of Temporary Protected Status for Haitians.

Trump said that he would do this.  He accused Haitians of eating dogs.

Now you are surprised that he has done this.

As they say in Japan,  "バカにつける薬はない." (There is no medicine for stupidity)

Wilkinson "Ken" Sejour, who owns Miami Chef Creole, says customers and others in the community are scared, and he might have to shut down two of his restaurants.

The effects of the Trump Administration's ending of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Haitian immigrants are already starting to affect Miami's Little Haiti neighborhood.

At eateries such as Chef Creole, a well-established restaurant that famously serves comfort food inspired by traditional Haitian and Bahamian dishes, the end of TPS has led to confusion, with rumors spreading about potential raids and arrests. Wilkinson "Ken" Sejour, who told CBS Evening News that he voted for Donald Trump in the 2024 election, says the end of TPS for more than 350,000 Haitians might effectively end his career in the hospitality space.

………

"The end of TPS means for me that my future in the hospitality business is almost gonna be non-existent," he added. When asked why he voted for Trump, Sejour admitted that Trump "sold to me that he was a businessman and that he would make business decisions."

You mess with the bull, you get the horns.

Of Course He Did

Benjamin Netanyahu rejected Trump's peace plan for Gaza because even the illusion of peace will result in his losing power and going to jail for corruption.

It's really that simple. 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected US President Donald Trump's 15-point plan for Gaza, stating that no military pull-out will happen until Hamas is "genuinely" disarmed.

Trump's Board of Peace said last month it had reached an agreement for the "complete disarmament" of Hamas and other armed groups in Gaza.

But Hamas said handing over its heavy weapons was contingent on Israel ending "all forms of aggression" and withdrawing its forces from Gaza.

On Sunday, a senior Board of Peace official insisted the US-backed peace plan for the territory remained the only way forward.

Israel has continued to carry out strikes on Gaza since agreeing to an initial ceasefire in the territory last October.

"Israel rejects the 15-point document," Netanyahu said at a cabinet meeting on Sunday.

This is what happens when a leader is convinced that a loss of power will result in their incarceration.

This applies to Donald Trump as well. 

How Sharper than a Serpent's Tooth

My son Charlie has announced that he will be designing a T-shirt that says:

Vore is Biblically Canon

I thought that I raised him right.

I was misinformed. 

Today in Weird

Man arrested after dressing up in 'Grim Reaper' costume on hospital roof and staring at patients

—The Mirror

This does seem just a bit surreal.

If someone among my reader(s) is aware of the back-story, I would appreciate hearing about it. 

H/T Comic Sands.

Skeet of the Day

[image or embed]

— Susan (@joeyotis.bsky.social) August 8, 2026 at 3:01 PM

This is as true . . . as turnips is. It was as true . . . as taxes is. And nothing's truer than them.

Rat-F%$#er in Chief

Todd Blanch has been confirmed as US Attorney General by the Senate.

I'm pretty sure that he is going to be a lot worse than John Mitchell or William Barr.

One hopes that he suffers the fate of the former, jail time and disbarment, and not of the latter, no consequences and lucrative gigs.

Happiness Insights From ……… Richard Nixon?

kinda wild that Richard Nixon of all people had a profound insight about happiness pic.twitter.com/zAU6fWxd5s

— David Sirota (@davidsirota) August 9, 2026

Trippy

There a lot of things that could be said about Richard Nixon, many of them not printable, but, "Jolly," was not one of them.

On the other hand, as much as I despise him, Nixon was not an unintelligent man, and I do think that he was self aware to a degree that seems absent from our current polity. 

I do think that Nixon is right about how idle wealth and its ilk make for miserable people being miserable. 

He is a complex figure.

This is the guy who created the EPA, OSHA, ended military conscription, went to China, signed the Endangered Species Act, and proposed national healthcare and universal basic oncome.

This is ALSO the guy who authorized illegal acts against his political opponents, engaged in a coverup of such actions, dropped more bombs on Cambodia than the US dropped on Germany during WWII, actively stoked racism as a political tactic, fomented a brutal coup in Chile, delayed the end of the Vietnam War for as long as he could, (including colluding to prevent a peace deal as an election ploy), and campaign finance related money laundering.

Ha Ha!

The DC Court of Appeals has ruled that a lower court ruling blocking the construction of a White House ballroom will remain in effect.

Good.

President Trump cannot continue building the ballroom he planned as a replacement to the East Wing of the White House without explicit approval from Congress, a federal appeals court panel ruled on Friday.

The ruling, by judges from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, dealt a blow to Mr. Trump’s efforts to press ahead with the project and drew an angry rebuke from the president, who vowed to appeal to the Supreme Court. It upheld a lower court’s findings that no law or authority gave the president the power to raze and replace sections of the White House without congressional authorization.

The decision does not mean construction will halt immediately. The judges paused their ruling for 14 days to give the administration a chance to appeal. The lower court judge had similarly suspended his ruling to allow time for an appeal, and Mr. Trump has continued building uninterrupted, inviting reporters to tour the site and showcasing progress toward completion of the ballroom despite the court order.

………

“Each president is a temporary tenant, not the owner, of the White House and its Executive Residence,” Judge Millett and Judge Garcia wrote. 

Indeed. 

 

First Friday

So, we have the July jobs report, and notwithstanding a stable unemployment rate,  with non-farm payrolls fell by 23.000, while the numbers for May and June were revised down by  66,000 and and 17,000 respectively.

So job numbers are falling, but the unemployment rate has remained steady because people have given up on looking for work.

US employers unexpectedly lost 23,000 jobs in July and gains for the previous two months were revised down sharply by a combined 103,000 jobs, painting a weaker picture of the labor market than past data indicated.

The unemployment rate, however, held steady at 4.1%. Economists had projected an unchanged unemployment rate and 83,000 new jobs for the month.

The latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics illustrates the continued summer slump in job growth amid ongoing conflict in the Middle East. Pressure has been mounting within the US Federal Reserve to raise interest rates to combat persistently high inflation, but July’s job report and its latest revisions may cool those expectations at the central bank’s next meeting.

July’s job losses were concentrated in local government education, with 50,000 jobs lost, and retail, which lost 19,000. The private sector, however, gained 30,000 jobs, with growth focused once again in healthcare.

Hourly earnings of all employees changed little over the past year, increasing by 3.2% compared to last year. Next week’s consumer pricing data will reveal whether these gains have kept pace with inflation.

Figures for May were revised to 63,000 jobs added, down from an initially reported 129,000 jobs, while figures for June dropped 37,000, to 20,000 jobs added. In total, job figures for May and June were revised down 103,000 jobs.

In June, the US added 57,000 jobs, about half of what economists had predicted, with most of the growth concentrated in healthcare and social assistance. The unemployment rate had also dropped to 4.2% in June, down from 4.3% in May, driven by 720,000 people leaving the workforce.

Even more concerning, to me at least is the fact that worker wages have fallen to an all time low as a percentage of GDP, meaning that any gains are not seen by the ordinary American.

U.S. workers again saw their slice of the U.S. economy slide to a record ‌low in the second quarter amid an ongoing ‌productivity boom that is producing output gains which are outpacing wage growth, ​the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on Thursday.

The so-called labor share of nominal gross domestic product, which BLS defines as the percentage of output that accrues to workers in the ‌form of compensation, fell ⁠to 52.9% in the second quarter from 53.7% in the first quarter.

That was the lowest ⁠since the series began in 1947, BLS said as it reported stronger-than-expected growth in second-quarter productivity.

Welcome to peonage, y'all.

Keith Olbermann's Back

‮Keith Olbermann's Front‭Olberman has been blogging regularly for a few years now, and he took a break on May 11 to get treatment for atrial fibrillation.

The update, which he posted on Thursday, and which I have embedded below as a YouTube vid, is a one off, but he seems to be recovering nicely, and it looks like he will be back to twice weekly blogs in the next month or so. 

I figured that I should make note of this, if just because it gave me an opportunity to steal a joke. 

A virtual Kewpie doll to any of my reader(s) who can identify the source of the joke.

I agree with his conclusion in this episode, that the headlines have not changed over the past 12 weeks. 

It's kind of depressing actually.