Linkage

• What Peter Thiel Saw in Jeffrey Epstein (The Nation) Money quote, "The difference between them wasn’t moral. It was tactical. Epstein may have preferred to talk about pussy, while Thiel stayed up late pondering philosopher Rene Girard’s concept of mimetic desire. But both were both asking the same question: How do we build a world where people like us have unlimited power and the rules don’t apply?"
• Huge Study Finds Living Near Nuclear Plants Linked With Cancer Deaths (Futurism) Not a surprise.My guess is that government operated plants do better.
• Gay Nazis (Or Why Liberal Identity Politics Must Die) (¡Do Not Panic!) When right wing assholes happen to be gay, their political success should not be celebrated.
• Jimi Hendrix's Analog Wizardry Explained (IEEE Spectrum) Kewl stuff.
• Bacteria Engineered to Eat Tumors From the Inside  (Futurism) I'm not expecting this to result in treatments in the foreseeable future, but it is cool.
• FTC Admits Age Verification Violates Children’s Privacy Law, Decides To Just Ignore That (Techdirt) Age verification is a gaping security hole.
• Vitamin K Shot Safety: More Parents Skip Injection That's Not Vaccine (Bloomberg) It's to improve clotting to prevent brain bleeds.  Refusing the injection can kill your kids.
• NYC's Most Sociopathic Motorists Will Pay $60K/Year to Drive Like Assholes  (HellgateNYC) There are no points associated with speed cameras in New York, so this guy is spending over $60K to keep speeding.
• The Battle Against Faux Discounts (Pat Garofalo) Many retailers raise prices then announce their return to normal as a discount.  New York Governor Kathy Hochul is doing the right thing (!) in proposing making this unlawful. 
• Yep, the NYPD Is Still Obsessed With Snowballs (HellgateNYC) Seriously, if you have this much butt hurt over this, get another job! 

I would argue that a proper music video is impossible for this song:

History Rhyming

The fact that private credit defaults in the United States hit 9.2% in 2025, sounds a lot like the leadup to money market funds "Breaking the Buck" in 2008.

The default rate among U.S. corporate borrowers of private credit rose to a record 9.2% in 2025, ​according to a report Friday by credit rating agency ‌Fitch Ratings.

In its monitor of 302 companies with outstanding private credit debt, Fitch recorded 38 defaults among 28 different borrowers. The 9.2% default rate in ​2025 follows a previous record 8.1% rate of defaults ​in 2024.

Smaller issuers with $25 million or less in earnings made ⁠up the majority of last year's defaults, which were diversified ​among sectors, according to the report.

………

Most of ⁠the private credit loans were floating rate and tied to the federal funds rate, which has ​persisted at a high level over the past three ​years. ⁠Fitch pointed to this as a catalyst for last year's defaults.

There are a lot of companies out there who could only service their debts when rates were near 0%.

They are now insolvent, and there is a non-zero chance that this will take down the private credit firms.

This is not good. 

$100/BBL

Is anyone surprised that oil is now over $100.00 a barrel?

It is foreseeable by anyone with 2 brain cells to rub together that bombing Iran and shutting down the Strait of Hormuz would have this effect.

The chairman of oil producer DNO was flying from New York to Oslo early on Feb. 28 when he told staff to turn off the company’s oil wells in Iraq.

America and Israel had just attacked neighboring Iran. Bijan Mossavar-Rahmani wasn’t taking any chances, having weathered a drone strike on the company’s oil fields in Iraqi Kurdistan last summer. By the time he landed, the pumps had stopped—the first oil shutdown of the war.

To the south, another problem was brewing. An apparent recording of an Iranian naval captain telling ships not to enter the Strait of Hormuz spread through industry WhatsApp groups. 

Tanker traffic slowed to a trickle. The doomsday some oil analysts believed could never happen was coming to pass. Unable to ship crude to world markets, much bigger producers in Iraq began to run out of places to put it. The country cut output by more than two-thirds. Tanks in Kuwait were next to fill up. U.S. oil prices vaulted above $100 a barrel Sunday for the first time since the fallout of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

………

On Saturday, the Abu Dhabi National Oil Co. signaled it too was slowing production so tanks didn’t overflow. If the strait is still closed this Friday, daily output in the region could fall by more than four million barrels, Kaneva estimates. The decline could reach around nine million by the end of March, representing almost a 10th of global demand. 

Also note that Trump has done nothing to replenish the US Strategic Oil Reserve.

I am so glad that my Sharon* and I are driving hybrid vehicles with fuel economy in the 50 mpg range.

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

I F%$#ing Hate F%$#ing Daylight F%$#ing Savings F%$#ing Time

That is all.

F%$#. 

Well, Turnabout is Fair Play

US intelligence sources are claiming that Russia is providing high quality satellite imagery to Iran to aid in Tehran efforts to target the US military in the region.

Considering that the US has been generating and supplying the entire kill chain for numerous US weapon systems to the Ukraine to enable them to strike targets deep inside Russia, this seems to me to be an obvious step for Russia to take. 

Russia is providing Iran with targeting information to attack American forces in the Middle East, the first indication that another major U.S. adversary is participating — even indirectly — in the war, according to three officials familiar with the intelligence.

The assistance, which has not been previously reported, signals that the rapidly expanding conflict now features one of America’s chief nuclear-armed competitors with exquisite intelligence capabilities.

Since the war began Saturday, Russia has passed Iran the locations of U.S. military assets, including warships and aircraft, said the three officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity.

………

Analysts said that the sharing of intelligence would fit the pattern of Iran’s strikes against U.S. forces, including command and control infrastructure, radars, and temporary structures, like the one in Kuwait where six service members were killed.

………

Russia’s assistance reshuffles how various countries have engaged in a proxy war since Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Throughout that conflict, U.S. adversaries including Iran, China and North Korea have provided Russia with either direct military aid or material support for Moscow’s vast defense industry. The United States has given Ukraine tens of billions of dollars’ worth of military equipment and shared intelligence on Russian positions to improve Kyiv’s targeting.

This is not going to end well.

We Are Unbelievably Screwed

Remember the claims that in the next few decades anthropogenic climate change will result in increases in sea level?

Well, it's already here, at least according to this study in Nature.

Abstract

The impacts of sea-level rise and other hazards on the coasts of the world are determined by coastal sea-level height and land elevation. Correct integration of both aspects is fundamental for reliable sea-level rise and coastal hazard impact assessments but is often not carefully considered or properly performed. Here we show that more than 99% of the evaluated impact assessments handled sea-level and land elevation data inadequately, thereby misjudging sea level relative to coastal elevation. Based on our literature evaluation, 90% of the hazard assessments assume coastal sea levels based on geoid models, rather than using actual sea-level measurements. Our meta-analyses on global scale show that measured coastal sea level is higher than assumed in most hazard assessments (mean offsets [standard deviation] of 0.27 m [0.76 m] and 0.24 m [0.52 m] for two commonly-used geoids). Regionally, predominantly in the Global South, measured mean sea level can be more than 1 m above global geoids, with the largest differences in the Indo-Pacific. Compared with geoid-based assumptions of coastal sea level, the measured values suggest that with a hypothetical 1 m of relative sea-level rise, 31–37% more land and 48–68% more people (increasing estimates to 77–132 million) would fall below sea level. Our results highlight the need for re-evaluation of existing coastal impact assessments and improvement of research community standards, with possible implications for policymakers, climate finance and coastal adaptation.

It turns out that the climatologists were wrong.  It's worse than they have ever predicted.

It Gets Worse

It turns out that staff at Camp East Montana in El Paso, Texas were running a betting pool on which detainees would commit suicide.

Yes, I think that we can call them concentration camps now. 

Staff at the nation’s largest Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility have placed bets on which detainee will be the next to die by suicide, according to new reporting from the Associated Press based on 911 calls and detainee accounts.

Owen Ramsingh, a legal permanent resident who spent several weeks at the Camp East Montana detention facility in Texas, told AP that he overheard a security guard talking about a betting pool for which detainee would next die by suicide. The guard said he had paid $500 into the pot, which would all go to the winner with the most accurate predictions on detainees harming themselves.

Without providing details, the Department of Homeland Security spokesperson told AP that Ramsingh, who was brought to the US at age 5 from the Netherlands, was lying about the suicide bets.

In January, staff at Camp East Montana called 911 to request emergency help for Geraldo Lunas Campos, a 55-year-old from Cuba. DHS described his death as an attempted suicide. A medical examiner later ruled it a homicide. That same month, staff at the detention facility called 911 to report that a 36-year-old Nicaraguan man died by suicide. The AP reports that “detainees attempted to harm themselves while expressing suicidal ideations on at least six other occasions that resulted in 911 calls.”

Once the site of an internment camp for Japanese Americans during World War II, Camp East Montana is made up of six long tents at the Fort Bliss Army base outside of El Paso. On an average day, the facility holds around 3,000 detainees who are living in harsh conditions: They lack sufficient food and often go without proper medical care, according to AP’s review of 130 calls made to 911. Those calls took place in just about five months—from when the tents were quickly constructed in mid-August to January 20.

The cruelty is the point.

When War Intersects with Eschatology, It is Never Good

The assassination of Ayatollah Khamenei is the single greatest strategic blunder in modern US history.

By killing him, the US and Israel didn’t just eliminate a leader; they fulfilled a 1,400-year-old prophecy and created a martyr whose shadow will haunt the West for decades.… pic.twitter.com/AylDxzYjHV

— S͎a͎l͎a͎d͎i͎n͎🇸🇴⚖️🕋✍️ (@InaHassan3) March 3, 2026

Way to create a holy war 

I suggest that you click through to the Ecch (Tweet), but you can also look at this from Juan Cole, where he says much the same thing.

Dr. Cole is one of the preeminent academics on Islam, Shia Islam, and the Arab world.

Basically, the US actions seem almost calculated to check boxes for the Shia vision of end of times. and the return of the 12th Imam 

Short version:

• He was assassinated during Ramadan, just as the first Imam was. 
• He family was killed as well, just as was Husayn at Karbala.
• It feeds into the narrative of the oppressed and the oppressor which is central to Shia Islam.

This gives credibility to a man who was widely loathed and ignored until a few days ago. 

It also turns out that this also plays into more general end of times theology present across all branches of Islam, which is why we are seeing massive protests in predominantly Sunni nations, most notably Pakistan, as well. 

Even if Iran were to capitulate tomorrow, (it won't) in the minds of a significant portion of the world's population, this is the start of a holy war.

 

Headline of the Day

Drinking in Country Music: Are Whiskey Songs Going Away?

— Rolling Stone, discussing how a decrees in drinking has effected the genre.

The subhed says it all, "In Nashville, some are wondering how a decline in drinking may affect artists’ own liquor brands and the songs they sing. “There are more weed songs for sure,” says one songwriter." 

I did not predict this.  My prediction was that AI and self-driving cars would lead to country songs about your pickup truck leaving you. 

Unsurprisingly, Willie Nelson is promoting a THC tonic. 

He's F%$#ing Nuts

So, Trump is demanding unconditional surrender before negotiating with Iran.

This is beginning to sound like that much memed scene from Downfall. 

President Trump declared on Friday that he would settle for nothing short of “unconditional surrender” by Iran, the latest and broadest expansion of his goals for the conflict, and one that could portend a much longer war if he persists in that aim.

Six days into the Israeli and American bombing campaign, Iran has shown no interest, at least publicly, in surrendering. Instead, it has done the opposite, expanding the war to Arab states that host American bases and attacking them with missiles and drones, though in diminishing numbers in recent days.

But Mr. Trump demanded in a social media post that the country capitulate, after which he said would come “the selection of a GREAT & ACCEPTABLE Leader(s),” and promised that the United States and its allies “will work tirelessly to bring Iran back from the brink of destruction.”

The president’s bellicose statement reflects how he has melded his longtime vision of a powerful America that makes maximum use of its military might with his new confidence in his ability to decapitate hostile governments, and personally install a new generation of leaders who he believes will bend to American will.

We are f%$#ed. 

It's Friday ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

It's pretty brutal, with non-farm payrolls falling by 92,000 and unemployment rising to 4.4%.

Hiring fizzled in February, a sign of unexpected weakness in the labor market that sent warning signs flashing through the broader economy.

Employers slashed 92,000 jobs last month, the Labor Department reported on Friday, with losses cutting across nearly all major sectors. The unemployment rate ticked up to 4.4 percent.

The report dimmed the picture of the labor market, injecting a surprising note of caution into an economy already reeling from chaos in energy markets brought on by the war in Iran and fresh unknowns over trade policy. And it all but foreclosed the prospect of a swift resurgence in job growth after an anemic year of hiring that was weighed down by economic uncertainty.

………

Revisions to previous months bolstered the case that the job cuts in February were consistent with a broader decline rather than a blip. In December, employers shed 17,000 jobs, down from an earlier estimate of a gain of 48,000, and hiring figures for January were also revised downward slightly, to 126,000. Taken together, job growth for the last three months effectively slowed to zero.

 In related news the stock market is now officially down for the year. 

A roller-coaster week in the stock market left the S&P 500 in negative territory for the year, after data on Friday showing weakness in the job market added to investors’ consternation stemming from the Iran war.

The S&P 500 fell 1.3 percent on Friday, taking the index’s losses for the week to 2 percent, its worst week of the year so far. The index fell into negative territory for the year on Thursday and now sits 1.5 percent lower than it was at the end of 2025.

Stocks were choppy all week as investors gauged the inflationary impact of the war with Iran, with oil prices rising sharply as crucial energy exports from the Persian Gulf have ground to a halt. Brent crude, the international oil benchmark, settled on Friday at over $92 a barrel, up almost 30 percent over the past week. That’s the biggest weekly rise in the oil price since April 2020, when markets globally were roiled by the coronavirus pandemic. In turn, what customers are paying at the pump has risen sharply as well.

The war ain't helping, but I called recession a few months ago, and I am sticking by that.

Primary Update

Outside of Maryland, I generally do not concern my with state house races, but something interested happened in North Carolina, Democrats who voted to override the governor's veto of anti-trans legislation were turfed out.

North Carolina Democrats who’ve crossed the aisle to vote with Republicans since Donald Trump returned to office were handed resounding defeats last night in the state’s early, benchmark primary, the Charlotte Observer reports.

At least four Democrats who supported measures to ban trans student-athletes from play, support ICE, and declare a gender binary in line with the president’s demonization of the LGBTQ+ community went down to defeat, some by extraordinary margins for incumbent lawmakers.

Those margins and a big turnout were leading indicators of Democrats’ enthusiasm this election cycle, the first chance outside of special and off-year elections that voters will have to register a vote on Republicans and Donald Trump’s return to office. 

More of this.

Headline of the Day

Monopoly With A Heaping Side Of Extra Racism 

—Karl Bode, on how the Trump administration is requiring racist policies as a condition of merger approval.

Making America Jim Crow again. 

One of the Trump administration's core policies is to not just approve giant and terrible mergers, but to make racism and sexism a condition companies must meet if they want regulatory approval.

The latest case in point: the Trump FCC rubber stamped yet another major merger in the telecom industry this week. This time the FCC approved the merger of Cox and Charter, two already massive cable companies, creating the biggest cable company in the nation. Just the sort of "populism" everybody asked for!

This kind of consolidation is always harmful to the public interest. U.S. telecom already sees muted competition at the hands of regional monopolies, resulting in high prices, spotty access, and generally terrible customer service.

………

That last bit, "no DEI discrimination," is a requirement by the companies that they eliminate already fairly pathetic company programs simply acknowledging that systemic racism and sexism exist. 

This is just awful.

In Related News, Water is Wet

The headline at Rolling Stone, "Miami Group Chat for Young Conservatives Riddled With Racism," says it all.

I am profoundly unsurprised. 

It's Thursday ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Initial Claims


Imports/Exports.Inflation


Wages and Productivity Initial claims are flat, and continuing claims rose slightly.

New hiring? Not so much.

The number of Americans filing new applications for unemployment benefits was unchanged last week and layoffs dropped sharply in February, consistent with stable labor market conditions.

While other data from the Labor Department on Thursday showed worker productivity slowed in the fourth quarter, the trend remained strong, helping to curb growth in labor costs ​in 2025. Labor market stability and rising inflation risks from the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran reinforced economists' views that the Federal Reserve was in no rush to resume cutting interest rates.

………

Initial claims for state unemployment benefits were flat at a seasonally adjusted 213,000 for the week ended February 28. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast 215,000 claims for the latest week. The unchanged reading was despite unadjusted filings in New York shooting up 17,434 as the state reeled from a massive winter storm.

………

The import duties have since been struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court. Trump responded to the ruling by imposing a 10% global tariff and later announced it would rise ⁠to 15%.

………

Hiring plans soared 140% from January, but they were down 63% compared to last February. Tepid hiring means some people who lose their jobs are experiencing long bouts of unemployment.

The number of people receiving unemployment benefits after an initial week of aid, a proxy for hiring, increased 46,000 to a seasonally adjusted 1.868 million during the week ended February 21, the claims report showed. The data does not include unemployed recent college graduates, whose lack of or limited work history disqualifies them from claiming ​jobless benefits.

We'll have the unemployment rate tomorrow. 

Ecch (Tweet) of the Day

Never seen a covert CIA separatist military operation so heavily advertised as it's happening, as widely and loudly as they can PR it. You'd almost think CIA was running a deception operation here, to stoke IRI paranoia and get them to massacre local Kurdshttps://t.co/Q00UC4isOM

— Mark Ames (@MarkAmesExiled) March 4, 2026

To quote Arthur Conan Doyle, "When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."

There are two possible non-exclusive explanations here that I can think of.

The first is what Mr. Ames suggests, and the second is that this is not an operation to manipulate the Iranians by the US State Security Apparatus, but rather that it is an operation to manipulate Donald Trump by the US State Security Apparatus.

Replaced by Something Even More Bizarrely Inexplicable

So, amid cratering poll numbers, Donald Trump has fired Kristi Noem as head of DHS and replaced her with the stupidest man in the Senate Markwayne Mullin.

There are any number of reasons for this, such as her persistent self dealing and her lying to the Senate about this under oath, or her $¼ billion PR program which primarily consisted of glamor shots of herself, or it could be that she said that Trump had approved her advertising excesses.

Mostly, I think that it's because she got caught, so Trump took her to the gravel pit along with her (alleged) adulterous "Special Advisor" Corey Lewandowski.

Her erstwhile successor mind mindbogglingly stupid, even by the standards of MAGA, which is saying a lot.

"Predictive Markets," My Hairy White Flabby Ass!

Polymarket decided that it would be a keen idea to make book on the possibility of nuclear weapons use in Iran.

Once the news got out, people were horrified, and they backed down.

The crypto-based prediction sensation Polymarket has quietly taken down a bet on whether a nuclear weapon would be detonated before next year.

The bet, which was first listed last November, generated significant controversy on social media Tuesday after it was flagged by several users. 

Polymarket had also highlighted the bet on its official X account that day, tweeting that its market now predicted there was a 22 percent chance a nuclear weapon would be detonated this year. The post has since been deleted — and the bet itself has now been “archived” as of Wednesday morning.

………

The Wall Street Journal reported that the nuclear detonation bet had spiked in popularity after the US and Israel’s deadly strikes in Iran. Before the attacks broke out, only $10,000 in bets had been placed on Friday, according to data from the Block cited by the newspaper. But on Tuesday, the daily trading volume had surged to almost $244,000, bringing the total amount of money on the line to over $830,000.

Anyone want to take a bet on whether senior executives at Polymarket will eventually be frog-marched out of their offices in handcuffs. (My bet is never)

Crockett Conceded and Endorsed Talarico

All those people who were screaming, "Oh my God, Crockett is going to go scorched earth!" were wrong.

What they really were saying was, "This angry n****r scares us." 

She gave a full-throated endorsement of him.  Progressives don't act the way that faux Democrats do.

Rep. Jasmine Crockett congratulated state Rep. James Talarico in a phone call on becoming the Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate race in Texas, the congresswoman said in a statement.

"Texas is primed to turn blue and we must remain united because this is bigger than any one person," she said. "This is about the future of all 30 million Texans and getting America back on track."

Crockett called on the party to unite behind Talarico heading into what is expected to be a top race to watch this fall.

"With the primary behind us, Democrats must rally around our nominees and win," she said. "I’m committed to doing my part and will continue working to elect democrats up and down the ballot." 

………

 

No Virginia, AI Cannot Hold Copyright

The Supreme Court has refused to hear an appeal of a lower court ruling that AI generated material cannot be copyrighted.

I'd rather that they had ruled definitively on this, but is OK.

The US Supreme Court has declined to hear a case over whether AI-generated art can obtain a copyright, as reported earlier by Reuters. The Monday decision comes after Stephen Thaler, a computer scientist from Missouri, appealed a court’s decision to uphold a ruling that found AI-generated art can’t be copyrighted.

In 2019, the US Copyright Office rejected Thaler’s request to copyright an image, called A Recent Entrance to Paradise, on behalf of an algorithm he created. The Copyright Office reviewed the decision in 2022 and determined that the image doesn’t include “human authorship,” disqualifying it from copyright protection.

After Thaler appealed the decision, US District Court Judge Beryl A. Howell ruled in 2023 that “human authorship is a bedrock requirement of copyright.” That ruling was later upheld in 2025 by a federal appeals court in Washington, DC. As reported by Reuters, Thaler asked the Supreme Court to review the ruling in October 2025, arguing it “created a chilling effect on anyone else considering using AI creatively.”

Ironically enough if I were to paint a copy of his "Artwork" on my belly, hung gummy bears from my nipples, and videotaped myself engaging in interpretative dance, that would be covered by copyright. 

Note to my reader(s):  I promise not to do this.

Why Would Anyone Want to Clone Jim Carrey?

I can understand why someone might want to clone someone, but why on earth would they pick Jim Carrey? 

Why not clone Beethoven, or Albert Camus, or Paul Neil Milne Johnstone instead?

Asking for a friend. 

 

It's Primary Night

Just a quick run-down:

• Texas Senate: James Talerico has defeated Jasmine Crockett in the Democratic Senate primary in Texas, and Cornyn and Paxton are headed for a runoff on the Republican side. (Texas rules require a runoff if a candidate does not secure an absolute majority of the votes.)
• US Congress TX-2: Incumbent Dan Crenshaw, who is definitely nuts, lost the primary to the even nuttier Steve Toth.
• US Congress TX-23: Incumbent Tony Gonzales and Gun Tuber Brandon Herrera are almost tied, and are headed to a runoff.  What makes this race interesting is that married with 6 children Gonzalez had an affair with one of his staffers, harassed her repeatedly, and she committed suicide by setting herself on fire.  Herrera, on the other hand has political positions, particularly with regard to gun laws that are repugnant to me, but he is very entertaining on YouTube.
• US Congress NC-4:  A very close rematch (Yet to be called) between incumbent Valerie Foushee, and Nida Allam.  Of note here is that AIPAC and AI datacenter money was a big factor, and Foushee promised not to take money from them, but received support from a related stealth PACs.  (More on that later)

Here's hoping that further developments give the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) some major heartburn.

Headline of the Day

Judge: IRS broke law ‘approximately 42,695 times’ in giving DHS data

—The Washington Post

That is both a very large and a very precise number. 

Today in Unfortunate Branding

There are a number of things that I tend not to write about because they never happen, you know, things like carnivorous killer sheep, sentient slime molds,honest Republicans, etc.

One of these things is, "Expansions in the Los Angeles Metro."

It's not good or bad, it's just never gonna happen.

Or so I thought.

It turns out that they have extended some lines, including, so it seems, the "D" line, which will be adding 3 lines later this Spring.

The folks at LA Metro are excited about this.  They are so excited that they are selling a T-shirt to commemorate this.

What does this shirt say?  

It says, "Ride the D."

The shirts have sold out.

L.A. Metro really wants people to take their soon-to-be-opened rail line extension, and have come up with a wildly popular marketing method to spread the word — a new line of merchandise proudly emblazoned with the phrase, “Ride the D.”

The cheeky shirts, available both in full length and as crop tops, have become a viral sensation, with the initial release selling out in just one day. But those eager to own their own need not despair: The transit system announced shortly before 3 p.m. Friday that a limited batch was back in stock.

“If you neeeeeeeeD it GO NOW,” L.A. Metro wrote in an Instagram post announcing the restock. The T-shirt is on sale for $21 and the crop top for $20. Fans were encouraged to snap them up quickly before they sell out again.


The shirts’ release Thursday coincided with the announcement that the first phase of the Metro D Line subway extension will open May 8, with three new stations connecting downtown Los Angeles to Beverly Hills. The new stations are located at Wilshire/La Brea, Wilshire/Fairfax, Wilshire/La Cienega and will collectively serve Koreatown, Miracle Mile, Hancock Park, Carthay Circle, the Fairfax District and Beverly Hills.

YouTube Comment of the Day

They [The Beatles] weren't "going" prog, they were inventing it.

User @jamescox42317 d explaining to producer and composer Isaac Brown what the Beatles really did.

Brown has a series of videos of him reacting to hearing every Beatles album for the first time. (Thank you for making me feel old as f%$#, dude!)

While listening to, "Happiness is a Warm Gun," Brown says, "What the heck is this, Prog Rock? Hey, The Beatles are going Prog!" (about 27:10 of Part 1 below) 

Over the span of less than a decade, the Fab Four literally redefined rock and roll.

Part 1:

Part2:

FWIW, I do agree with Brown's basic thesis, which is that White Album is less an album than it is a collection of songs from 4 amazingly talented dudes.

It is a chaotic magnificent masterpiece, and my favorite Beatles album. 

Gee Ya Think?

Someone at the New York Times has noticed that while people were enchanted by the possibilities of the dot-com developments around the turn of the century, they hate the current AI bubble with a white hot burning passion.

Maybe it's because there is no promise of making the world a better place, but rather a transparent attempt to loot society from narcissistic psychopaths.

Silicon Valley executives promise that artificial intelligence is going to radically change everyone’s life for the better, starting just a few minutes from now. A.I. is described as the new electricity. It’s even bigger than fire. Don’t bother saving money for retirement because everyone will be rich rich rich.

Your grandparents heard pretty much the same thing. The creators of a new technology have always sold it as producing a fundamental transformation of human existence. The radio was touted as bringing “perpetual peace on earth.” Television was supposed to arouse so much empathy for different cultures that it would end war. Cable television would educate the masses and lead to widespread enlightenment.

This time, though, the masses have not been won over.

In a YouGov survey last year, more than a third of respondents said they were concerned that A.I. would end human life on earth. Even those with a more hopeful attitude overwhelmingly said in another poll that they would not pay extra to put A.I. on their devices. And in the most recent large survey conducted by the National Bureau of Economic Research, 80 percent of firms reported that A.I. was having no impact on their productivity or employment.

They Silly-Con valley types are promising that you lose your job, that you will work harder, that your electric bill will go up, but it's all good, because they will get rich.

People remember the dot-com bust around 2000, and they remember how criminals in high finance were bailed out rather than arrested, and they see this all happening again.

Americans get it because they have seen it before, and used that information to develop understanding, something which current AI will never be able to do.

Margaret Atwood Must Be Weeping

In a move that highlights the inhumanity of the Trump administration, immigration authorities are moving detained girls to Texas to force them to have their babies.

This includes many rape victims. 

These people need to be permanently removed from anything resembling a position of power.

All unaccompanied immigrant children who are pregnant, many by rape, are being moved to a single facility in Texas in order to avoid providing abortion services in a significant human rights violation, critics say.

As detainees are frequently moved across state lines quickly, often to red states like Texas, pregnant people are facing challenges accessing reproductive health care in detention centers.

Unaccompanied minors who lack immigration documentation are at high risk for trafficking and other forms of harm, so they fall under the care of the office of refugee resettlement (ORR), which previously had facilities across the country capable of caring for children under the age of 18 who are pregnant.

Since July, more than a dozen pregnant children have been moved to a single facility in the small town of San Benito, along the south Texas border. The children kept in Texas are as young as 13, and about half are pregnant because of rape, according to a joint investigation by the Texas Newsroom and the California Newsroom. In Texas, abortion is banned in nearly all circumstances, including rape and incest.

 When the worm turns, the need to be taken down.  To quote Robert Graves apocryphal quote of They cannot be reasoned with.  To quote Robert Graves apocryphal quote of Germanicus Caesar, "They must be struck into the dust, struck down again as they rise. Struck again while they lie groaning, while their wounds still pain them." 

 

Today in TACO

Trump has decided to retreat in response to lawsuits from law firms he was trying to shake down.

Yeah, this sort of bullsh%$ is something that is beyond even the hackery of his most corrupt pet judges, except, perhaps,  Aileen Cannon. 

The Trump administration on Monday abandoned its defense of the president’s executive orders sanctioning several law firms, punctuating a year of turmoil that rocked the legal industry and forced its leaders to choose between taking on the White House or capitulating.

In a court filing, the Justice Department said it was dropping its appeals of four trial-court rulings that struck down Trump’s actions against law firms Jenner & Block, WilmerHale, Perkins Coie, and Susman Godfrey. The move came just days before the Justice Department’s opening brief was due in an appeal of the four cases, which were consolidated before a federal court in Washington.

………

The firm added that it viewed the case as a fight not just for itself but “for the people across this country who refuse to back down in the face of an administration that seeks to silence and intimidate them—lawyers and nonlawyers alike.”

Trump issued a string of executive orders last year against several law firms and individual lawyers that would have stripped security clearances, restricted their access to federal buildings and directed agencies to end any federal contracts with the firms and their clients.

………

In targeting the firms, Trump cited their connections to his political rivals and criticized their diversity initiatives and pro bono work advocating for immigrants, transgender rights and voting protections. The White House had singled out these firms for representing clients including Hillary Clinton and George Soros, and for ties to figures such as Robert Mueller, who as special counsel led the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election 

It does appear that the law firms that prostrated themselves to Trump have found it hard to recruit and keep staff. 

Let the market decide, I guess. 

Linkage

• US – Europe Productivity Gap Is Mostly a Statistical Illusion (CEPR) Lies, damn lies, and statistics.
• The DJI Romo robovac had security so poor, this man remotely accessed thousands of them (The Verge) The internet of sh%$.
• Hackers Expose The Massive Surveillance Stack Hiding Inside Your “Age Verification” Check (Techdirt) Hoocoocanode that, "Could I have your date of birth, mother's maiden name, and last 4 of your social security number," could be insecure?
• Crypto Bros Nauseated After Realizing Bitcoin Itself Was Funded by Jeffrey Epstein (Futurism) Much Schadenfreude
• Bill Gates Admits to Multiple Affairs in Epstein Fallout (Futurism) We already knew this.  It's not that Gates or the other Epstein fellow travelers were pedophiles, they were just people who wanted to demonstrate their wealth and power through transgressing.
• Is "MAHA" Revenge for Theranos? (Pandemic Accountability Index) Yeah, Elizabeth Holmes is a martyr to the antivaxx crowd.
• China has planted so many trees around the Taklamakan Desert that it's turned this 'biological void' into a carbon sink (Live Science) But in the US, we have the lead in obscure financial instruments.
• Tesla’s Wile E. Coyote Moment Is Here (American Prospect) How can I not share a Warner Brothers animation reference?
• Kentucky man covered in fur arrested after allegedly being caught having sex with deer (Local 12 News) I have never partied that hard.
• ‘A beaver blind date’: animals given freedom to repopulate Cornish rivers (The Guardian) It's about the reintroduction of the dam building rodents into the UK.  Whoever wrote the hed just has a dirty mind.

This is tin-foil hat stuff, but at least it's not AI:

Today in Fascism

Florida Republicans wants to establish a state level intelligence agency.

Let me be clear, I am not talking about a law enforcement agency, I am talking about a domestic spy agency. 

“Florida man seeks to create a state counterintelligence unit and claim sweeping surveillance powers over people whose ‘views’ or ‘opinions’ he dislikes.” It’s not nearly as amusing as the usual “Florida man” headline, and it may lead to a blueprint for lawmakers far beyond Florida.

If Florida enacts House Bill 945, it will create a national first – CIA-style structure at the state level that blurs the traditional line between state law enforcement and intelligence work. It likely wouldn’t remain a local experiment. Red states often borrow aggressively from one another’s policy playbooks, on everything from gerrymandering to anti-abortion laws to transporting immigrants to Democratic-led states. A state-level intelligence office empowered to scrutinize residents based on ideology is precisely the kind of proposal likely to spread once normalized.

The bill would create an operational intelligence office charged with identifying and disrupting threats to Florida and the United States. That alone should raise questions. The federal government already spends enormous sums (by some accounts, trillions of dollars since 11 September 2001) on national security and counterterrorism. Why should states duplicate those functions without demonstrating a clear need, specialized expertise, or meaningful oversight?

………

The bill’s language allows scrutiny based on “views” and “opinions”, a standard that echoes some of the darkest chapters of American surveillance history. In the 1960s and 70s, the FBI’s Cointelpro program infiltrated protest movements, monitored journalists, and targeted civil rights leaders – not for crimes, but beliefs.

I have no doubt that this would be used as a rat-f%$#ing squad.  It's purpose would be to disrupt the activities of the political opposition. 

So, About This Iran Thing

The technical term for this is, "Bad day at the office."

Where to start ……… Where to start.

I'll guess I'll start at the most ghoulish thing so far, the online betting site Polymarket is vociferously defending its making book on the war, despite the fact that we have already seen insider trading:

Polymarket has been allowing people to bet on when the US would strike Iran next. Obviously, now that it’s actually happened and people have died, the prediction betting market is feeling some pressure. The site has been at the center of controversy before, including suspicions of insider trading on the Super Bowl halftime show and the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

In a statement posted on its site, Polymarket defended its decision to allow betting on the potential start of a war, saying that it was an “invaluable” source of news and answers, before taking shots at traditional media and Elon Musk’s X. The statement reads:

Ah yes, the betting equivalent of snuff films.  Lovely.

On a more significant note, it has been confirmed that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has been assassinated by a joint Israeli US operation.  Given his position within Shia Islam, where he was considered one of the most, if not the most, important sources of religious scholarship and authority, it is highly likely that this will inflame sentiment throughout areas with significant Shia populations.

There are two problems with Assassinations, they do not work even when the target is successfully killed, and they legitimize assassination as a tool of statecraft, and western leaders are far more exposed. 

I would also note that among the strikes, somehow or other the US and Israel managed to bomb a girl's elementary school, killing over 50. 

God bless America, huh?

Meanwhile the Strait of Hormuz is shut down, not because of Iranian mines or attacks, but because insurance has been canceled for ships wishing to transit the waterway.

Leading maritime insurers have cancelled war risk cover for vessels operating in the Gulf as the escalating Iran conflict disrupted shipping and sent some freight costs surging.

At least 150 vessels including oil and liquefied natural gas tankers have dropped anchor in the strait of Hormuz and surrounding waters, and at least three tankers were damaged and one seafarer killed over the weekend.

The vital shipping route, through which about 20% of the world’s oil supplies and 20% of seaborne gas tankers pass, is effectively closed after the US and Israel began intense airstrikes on Iran on Saturday.

Several leading mutual marine insurers, including Norway’s Gard and Skuld, the UK’s NorthStandard and the London P&I Club, and the New York-based American Club, said they were cancelling war risk cover for ships operating in the region.

Western shipping companies don't wipe their ass without insurance coverage.

And, of course.there have been deaths of American personnel immediately followed by a typically callous statement by Trump.

President Donald Trump’s indifference towards U.S. soldiers killed in a war he started is not sitting well with some Americans.

Trump, 79, addressed the nation on Sunday and said that “there will likely be more” U.S. military personnel killed in the war with Iran that he started on Saturday, saying “that’s the way it is.”

(emphasis mine)

Finally, we have 3 F-15 Eagle fighters shot down, allegedly by friendly fire from Kuwaiti air defense units.

My guess would be that the volume of Iranian counter-attacks around the Persian Gulf overwhelmed these units, resulting in the shoot-down, though there are a number of other possibilities (sabotage of IFF systems, a strike from Iranian long range SAMs, etc.)

There are already rumblings that the US will declare victory and pull out.

I Take ONE Day Off...

And the United States and Israel are at war with Iran, and allegedly the Ali Khamenei has been assassinated by US air strike.

Trump is claiming that the purpose is regime change. 

As near as I can tell, there have been no plans for a large boots on the ground campaign, and the record of air power triggering regime change is extremely thin, so if I were a betting man, I would bet on this conflict ending up a loss for the United States.

I Saw This in 2008

It looks like investors are setting up complex financial instruments to protect themselves from the collapse of AI companies. (Archive.is link)

This sounds like the (ultimately ineffective) attempts in the 2006-2008 time frame to use similar instruments. 

Investors are riding out the “whack-a-mole” software sell-off by loading up on protection against volatility and exploiting the divergence in sectors tipped to be either winners or losers from AI’s advance.

Some of Wall Street’s biggest players are turning to complex options and hedging strategies to navigate a market buffeted by blog posts and headlines that have recently wiped tens of billions of dollars off the value of some of the S&P 500’s largest tech groups.

Yes, adding complexity to an unstable market always work out SO well.

………

Investors are embracing so-called dispersion trades, which involve buying single-stock volatility while selling index volatility to profit from the gap between the S&P 500’s relatively subdued daily moves and large price swings for individual companies.

………

Dispersion trades could come unstuck if markets suffer a broader setback — perhaps sparked by geopolitical risks or an escalation of trade wars — that causes stocks to fall in unison. 

In that situation, investors who have bet on dispersion might be forced to buy index-level volatility protection, potentially exacerbating a market-wide sell-off, according to Jasmine Yeo, a fund manager at Ruffer.

Gee, isn't that how CDOs and the like led to the panic in 2008?

We are f%$#ed/ 

Meanwhile, in Gorton and Denton

Labour has lost a by-election in the formerly secure constituency of Gorton and Denton.

Not only was it a blow-out, Labour came in 3rd place,behind the Green and the Reform Parties.

They won almost entirely disgust with the Conservative Party and the status quo from a profoundly disenchanted electorate.

One only has to look at the turnout.  Labour received ½ million fewer votes in 2024 than they had received in 2019 with total turnout falling by 3½ from the prior election. 

So Starmer's Tory-Lite policies, particularly when his government appears to be (at best) marginal improvement of Conservative incometence, look to be a recipe for failure.

Labour MPs have said for weeks that the outcome they most feared at the Gorton and Denton byelection was a Green party victory.

On Friday morning, those fears were realised.

The Greens’ convincing win in the Manchester seat gives the leftwing party its best byelection result and its first northern seat. More importantly, however, it gives progressive voters a clear signal that they do not have to vote Labour to beat Reform – a signal that could prove catastrophic for the government in some of its strongest heartlands over the next few years.

“What makes this loss so consequential to Labour is not just the scale of the defeat but the message it sends to voters about future contests,” said the pollster Luke Tryl. “One of Labour’s ace cards had been the hope that, however frustrated or disillusioned progressive voters might be with the Starmer government, the threat of Reform would be enough to bring them back into the fold and reunite the left – a similar approach to President Macron’s re-election against Marine Le Pen [in France].

“But that argument risks collapsing following last night’s result.”

Yes, the, "We're incompetent prats, but have you seen the other guy?"strategy.  

That has worked so well for the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) in the United States.  Just ask President Kamala Harris

………

But for Starmer, Labour’s distant third place is likely to reignite questions about his leadership and renew the criticism of those on the left of the party that he has not done enough to impress its progressive base. It follows a similar result last year in the Welsh Senedd seat of Caerphilly, where Plaid Cymru topped the ballot, ending more than 100 years of Labour dominance in the region.

The prime minister’s decision to block Andy Burnham from running for the seat is likely to come under renewed scrutiny, given many voters said they would have been more likely to vote Labour if the Greater Manchester mayor had been the candidate.

Starmer kiboshed the Burnham because he is a (marginally) progressive politician and a potential rival to Starmer's position in the party.

This is what happens when you stand for nothing. 

Linkage

• Ban Prediction Markets The subhed says it all, "They don’t produce knowledge, they can’t prevent insider trading, and they turn politics, war, and death into a cash-out."
• A cup of coffee for depression treatment has better results than microdosing (Ars Technica) Vive la bean!
• The Means-Testing Industrial Complex (LPE Project) Expansive means testing is not just cruel, it's a profit center.
• The Second Amendment Was Never for Black and Brown Americans (The Intercept) True dat.
• European Tech Giant Cuts Off U.S. Subsidiary After Multimillion Dollar ICE Contract (Gizmodo) The US has become toxic in Europe.
• "Million-year-old" fossil skulls from China are far older—and not Denisovans (Ars Technica) The fossils were Homo erectus, not Homo longi.
• Iron Age Surgeons Fixed a Woman's Shattered Jaw With Primitive Prosthetic—and She Survived (Gizmodo) Ancient medicine was far more sophisticated than the popular wisdom.
• There’s Only One Way to Eradicate Trumpism for Good (The New Republic) Accountability, meaning jail time.

If only this were fiction:

It Was Just a F%$#ing Snowball Fight

The Manhattan District Attorney agrees, and dropped assault charges against one of the participants.

Manhattan prosecutors declined to pursue an assault charge against Gusmane Coulibaly on Thursday night, instead charging him with misdemeanor obstructing government administration and a harassment violation in connection with the viral Washington Square Park snowball fight.

………

In court, prosecutors said that after reviewing the evidence, they were unable to prove that an officer suffered a physical injury caused directly by Coulibaly’s conduct and therefore did not pursue an assault charge. They said the investigation remains ongoing.

About a dozen uniformed officers sat in the courtroom along with union leadership, including Police Benevolent Association President Patrick Hendry.

And the cops proceeded to whine about this, like the entitled babies that they are.

It's just a snowball fight, and if the boys in blue had not attempted to engage in dick swinging, nothing would have happened. 

We Live in the Worst Timeline Ever

Fascist Kink Roleplay Subreddit Draws the Line: No More ICE Porn

—404 Media (Alternative link at archive.is) On how reality became too awful for a Reddit kink forum.

This buggers the mind.

In the wake of the public killings of multiple US citizens, protestors, and legal observers in recent weeks by immigration agents in Minneapolis, January 26, 2025 marked a watershed moment for r/FuckingFascists: they will no longer allow content or roleplay featuring ICE. 

The Reddit community r/FuckingFascists is for people with a kink for roleplaying sex with fascists. The subreddit’s description explicitly states that the sub is “about making porn or making fun of authoritarians. REAL FASCISTS, SEXISTS, HOMOPHOBES, TRANSPHOBES AND OTHER BIGOTS ARE NOT WELCOME HERE!,” and “Rule 1: No Fascists”. 

On Monday morning, moderator LilyDHM announced a complete ban of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) content in the sub. “No ICE related content will be allowed in kink posts,” the post reads. “We believe that this is the best option to allow people to still post MAGA content without touching this particular aspect of it, as it directly involves current politics and multiple lost lives.”

 

 

Headline of the Day

The Best Time to Leave xAI Is Before Joining. The Next Best Time is Right Now

— Gizmodo, commenting on the rapid exit of many of the senior staff at Elon Musk's child porn generator artificial intelligence company.

Having a drug-addled, paranoid, and profoundly stupid boss must suck.

Earlier this week, Elon Musk’s AI firm xAI lost cofounder Tony Wu. A day later, Jimmy Ba joined him in adding ex-xAI to his LinkedIn bio. Ba was the sixth member of the company’s 12-person founding team to ditch the firm, leaving just half of the original crew still on board. They were followed by at least five staffers, according to a report from The Verge, who decided their time was better spent elsewhere. And while few of them had anything negative to say publicly as they collectively headed for the door, it’s all a bit odd, right?

My guess is that they looked at what was going, what with the non-consensual pr0n generation and all, and realized that while the Apartheid Era Emerald Heir Pedo Guy™ is too rich to jail, they aren't.

Headline of the Day

The Finance Industry Is a Grift. Let’s Start Treating It That Way 

—An Op/Ed in The New York Times stating the obvious.

I'm surprised that the "Gray Lady" was willing to publish an opinion that explains how Wall Street has become a parasitic force in society.

About the only paper less likely to publish this would be the Wall Street Journal.

The author, Oren Cass, one of the authors of the Heritage Foundation's notorious Project 2025, is not a particularly likely author either.

It’s bonus season on Wall Street, and a record-setting 2025 is yielding bigger paychecks than ever for America’s investment bankers, thanks to their hard work doing, well, what exactly? Answering that question is surprisingly difficult and helps to explain many of the nation’s most serious economic and social problems. It all starts, like so many of life’s puzzles, with Mary Poppins.

If you’ve taken an economics course — or if you at least enjoy classic family movies — you probably remember the scene: Young Jane and Michael Banks have come to visit the bank where their father works. When the bank’s chairman, Mr. Dawes Sr., snatches Michael’s tuppence, the boy shouts: “Give it back! Gimme back my money!” Overhearing the kerfuffle, a customer assumes the institution is refusing to return a customer’s deposit. Next thing you know, the bank run is on.

………

Since Mary Poppins’s day, the financial sector as a whole — investment banks, hedge funds, private equity firms, cryptocurrency platforms and all the rest of it — has exploded as a share of the United States’ gross domestic product. It now claims the highest share of corporate profits and attracts the highest share of top talent from top schools, in part by offering the highest compensation. But actual business investment has declined, to an average of 2.9 percent of G.D.P. over the past decade from 5.2 percent in the 1960s, when the film was released.

Unlike Dawes’s Fidelity Fiduciary Bank, a modern investment bank mostly earns its money in a way that not even the bravest lyricist would set to music: providing advisory services, executing complex financial engineering schemes, trading stocks and bonds, managing other people’s money, issuing credit cards and so on. Assets get bought and sold, divided and packaged, and the bank collects fees at each step.

David Solomon, the chief executive of Goldman Sachs, could not sing to young Michael about the many productive uses to which he might put the tuppence because Goldman Sachs rarely invests in anything at all. Fostering economic progress appears to be beside the point.

Less than 10 percent of Goldman’s work in 2024, measured by revenue, was helping businesses raise capital. Loans of Goldman’s own funds to operating businesses accounted for less than 2 percent of its assets. At JPMorgan Chase the figures were 4 and 5 percent; at Morgan Stanley, 7 and 2 percent. Even the efforts at helping to raise capital are misleading, because less than a tenth of it goes toward building anything new. The rest funds debt refinancing, balance sheet restructuring and mergers and acquisitions.

………

Even critics of the financial industry tend to focus on the worst outcomes — the “lootings” that lead to bankruptcy, the irresponsible gambles, the outright frauds. But the problem isn’t the edge case; it’s the very premise.

Financialization is a grift, a rarefied form of bookmaking, of no net value to workers and consumers, the economy, or society as a whole. Let’s treat it accordingly. Economists and the news media can stop using the word “invest” in contexts where no investing occurs. “Speculate” or “bet” will do just fine.

The term is not, "Grift," the term (coined by  John Kenneth Galbraith) is, "Bezzle," the interval between money is embezzled and when the victim realizes that they have been taken. 

Bye, Felicia

And by Felicia, I mean Lawrence Henry Summers, who is is leaving Harvard as a result of the fallout from his close ties to Jeffrey Epstein.

Even if Summers were a co-conspirator with Epstein on trafficking children, and there is NO evidence that he was, that would be a small percentage of damage that he has done as an economist and a political figure.

Former Harvard President Larry Summers will resign from his academic and faculty appointments at Harvard at the end of the academic year, relinquishing his University Professorship — Harvard’s highest faculty distinction — and remaining on leave until that time, a Harvard spokesperson confirmed to The Crimson.

Summers also resigned Wednesday from his role as co-director of the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at the Harvard Kennedy School, a position he has held since 2011, according to the spokesperson. He will not teach or take on new advisees.

The resignation marks an extraordinary unraveling for Summers, long one of the most influential figures in American economics. His career spanned prize-winning research, service as United States Treasury Secretary, and the presidency of Harvard.

………

Summers’ standing began to collapse after a cache of emails disclosed in November revealed details of a long-standing personal relationship between Summers and convicted sex offender Jeffrey E. Epstein.

The correspondence revealed that Summers regularly exchanged messages with Epstein about women, politics, and Harvard-linked projects over at least seven years — staying in contact as late as July 2019, the day before Epstein’s final arrest.

Summers was asking Epstein for dating advice, and how to best seduce one of his subordinates.

Summers is pond scum.  He was pond scum when he shot the breeze with Epstein, and he was pond scum when he covered for another protege, Andrei Shleifer, who was stealing money while he was supervising the privatization of the Russian economy following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Say, "Hi," to Henry Kissenger when you get to hell.