All indications are that2026 will be worse than 2025.
Of course, "Say fuck January will continue until January 31st, though I am tempted to continue through January 335th.
So my reader(s) should expect a bit of swearing for the next months, in addition to my early start.
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| Hippo | Gnu | Yarrr!!!! |
I hope for the best for you and yours, but recent evidence indicates that this is unlikely.
The Matt Gaetz House Ethics Committee report has been released.
The House Ethics Committee on Monday revealed it found "substantial evidence" that former Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz had sex with a 17-year-old girl in 2017 and that he "regularly" paid women for sex, all while he was in Congress.
The panel, in a final report on its yearslong investigation into Gaetz, also found that he used illegal drugs, including cocaine and ecstasy, on multiple occasions between 2017 and 2019.
Gaetz also accepted gifts, including a 2018 trip to the Bahamas, "in excess of permissible amounts," the bipartisan committee concluded.
"Representative Gaetz has acted in a manner that reflects discreditably upon the House," the 42-page report said.
The only surprising thing about this report is that it actually got released.
What can you say about the fact that Halliburton filing an ISDS (Investor–State Dispute Settlement) complaint against Venezuela to revover their damage from US sanctions.
As Anna Russel would say, "I'm not making this up, you know."
This is functionally identical to murdering one's parent and then asking for mercy as an orphan.
The ISDS is an administrative secret court that allows for private investors to sue governments for engaging actions that might negatively effect their profits.
In this case Halliburton is suing because the Venezuelan BolÃvar was devalued and they had to leave the country because of US sanctions.
On December 11, as the Trump administration was escalating its military campaign against Venezuela by trying to impose a total siege on the country’s oil and gas sector, the US oilfield services company Halliburton quietly filed a suit against Venezuela at the World Bank’s international arbitration court, ICSID.
Long-standing readers are well-versed on investor-state dispute settlements (ISDS), a topic we’ve covered in depth over the past decade or so. As Yves pointed out in a recent post on Russia’s decision to use ISDS to go after the EU’s attempts to permanently confiscate Russian assets, the judgments made in these dispute settlements overwhelmingly benefit investors:These treaties, designed to override the laws and regulations of states in order to give protected status to investors, make a mockery of national sovereignity. ISDS disputes draw on a small community of arbitrators, many of whom were involved in drafting ISDS treaty provisions, with hearing held in secret and typically not appealable. The rising (and correct) perception that the rules were gutting labor rights and environmental protection was instrumental to stopping their reach being extended further in the US. But it seems no existing ISDS provisions have been unwound.What makes this case particularly pernicious is that a large part of the losses and foregone profits Halliburton is seeking to claw back stems from Washington’s economic sanctions on Venezuela. What’s more, the case was filed at the World Bank’s International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes, to which Venezuela has not even been party since 2012.
To say that this is Orwellian or Kafkaesque would be an understatement.
………
There is currently very little information available on the ISDS case filed by Halliburton. The following is an excerpt of a firewalled article published by the Global Arbitration Review that was translated into Spanish and posted by the Madrid-based legal firm Bullard Falla Excurra on its LinkedIn page (translated back into English by yours truly, emphasis also my own):
On December 11, 2025, Halliburton filed a claim against Venezuela with the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) under the Barbados-Venezuela Bilateral Investment Treaty. The case will be processed under the Additional Facility Rules, given that Venezuela withdrew from the ICSID Convention in 2012. The dispute stems from Halliburton’s gradual withdrawal from the Venezuelan market between 2016 and 2020, after reporting losses of approximately US$199 million. These losses were attributed to the devaluation of the Venezuelan bolÃvar and the deteriorating economic and political conditions in Venezuela, which affected its ability to meet payments to its clients, including PDVSA, the state-owned oil company. Halliburton also notes that changes in the Venezuelan government’s exchange rate and US sanctions further complicated the viability of its operations in the country. Halliburton, which had operated in Venezuela since 1940, was forced to cease operations in 2020 [by US sanctions], although it maintained local assets and equipment in the country.
It seems to me that filing an action in a court that has no jurisdiction in response to actions that were taken by a party not a party to the action is fraud, and perhaps attempted extortion.
While Venezuela does not have much in the way of foreign reserves, it seems to me that they do have a court system to charge the people involved, including the members sitting on the ISDS panel with fraud and extortion, and then offer rewards in the low 6 figures for their delivery to Caracas.
From a blogging perspective, this year has been a disappointment for me.
My output has hit a low for me, around 1020 posts when all is said and done. (I typically try for about 100 posts a month)
Some of you will suggest that I should focus on quality rather than quantity, but as anyone who has read my screeds, it's pretty clear that I'm never gonna knock it out of the park on quality.
I'm not called the worst writer on the internet for nothing. (OK, it's me wot calls me that, but still………)
As to my top 10 posts of the year according to Blogger stats, they are:
At least according to the Blogspot tools.
As to my year end summary of what actually happened here, I can only conclude that Osama bin Laden has won.
On the brighter side, I've done more brewing, and I made a kick ass recipe based on a Babylonian recipe.
The Blokes at Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal have just created what is simultaneously the funniest and saddest thing that I have seen all week.
Seriously, if you want to do an angsty Superman limited edtion comic, this would be a great place to start.
It seems to me that the freedom of modern materials and modern computer analysis have reduced high end architecture to little more than very public acts of masturbation.
Just look at some of the works by "Iconic" architect Frank Ghery.
This is self indulgent crap.
I generally don't care about ugly art, but architecture forces you to see it every time that you are there.
In case you are wondering, this is not some guy with photoshop.
The hotel is real, and people noticed how fucking ugly it was when it opened:
You can’t polish a turd, but you can clad it in bronze-coloured steel. Edinburgh’s new W Hotel is proof. Poking its faecal peak above the historic skyline, puncturing the globally cherished panorama of elegant stone steeples and spires, this shimmering pile is evidence that, despite all the Unesco World Heritage site protections, conservation group campaigns and lengthy planning negotiations, shit still happens.
Trumpeting the arrival of the £1bn St James Quarter retail-hotel-housing behemoth to the Georgian New Town, the bronzed coil now butts on to the horizon from practically every prospect of the Scottish capital. From some angles, it appears to squat on other buildings’ shoulders, like an unfortunate deposit dropped from on high. From others, it looms up in the background, standing as a menacing dung heap at the end of axial vistas (perhaps appropriately in the case of the Melville monument, providing a soiled backdrop to a man who delayed the abolition of slavery). Just when you thought you’d evaded the gilded mess, its pert tip rears up above the rooftops with a mocking flick.
Yes, I know, Oliver Wainwright does a far better job of excoriating the job than I do.
But Israel has becomes the first nation to formally recognize Somaliland, a region of what is generally considered to be Somalia which declared independence in 1991.
My guess is that the Israelis want to use the inevitable exchange of diplomatic personnel to derive some sort of military or intelligence advantage in Yemen, but I'm not sure what the Somalilanders get out of this.
Needless to say, the response of other African countries has been to preserve the (dysfunctional) colonial boundaries that they were left. This has been one of the bedrock principles of every multinational project in Africa.
When there have been separations, South Sudan and Eritrea come to mind, they have been drawn on old colonial lines.
The interesting thing here is that Somaliland was colonized by the British, and the rest Somolia by Italy, and the union was largely created by British rat-fuckery on the way out. (See India-Pakistan, Israel, Sri Lanka, Uganda, etc. (In the latter two, they literally imported people from other parts of the empire to create ethnic tension)
I'm not quite sure how this is different from South Sudan and Eritrea, but the rest of Africa apparently sees this as an existential threat, which is what is worrying.
There is a lot that nations do in the face of a perceived existential threat. (Think of Biafra)
Israel has become the first country to recognise Somaliland as a sovereign state, a breakthrough in its quest for international recognition since it declared independence from Somalia 34 years ago.
The Israeli foreign minister, Gideon Sa’ar, announced on Friday that Israel and Somaliland had signed an agreement establishing full diplomatic relations, which would include the opening of embassies and the appointment of ambassadors.
The recognition is a historic moment for Somaliland, which declared its independence from Somalia in 1991 but until now had failed to be recognised by any UN member states. Somaliland controls the north-west tip of Somalia, where it operates a de facto state, and is bordered by Djibouti to the north-west and Ethiopia to the west and south.………
The AU said it “firmly rejects” Israel’s move, warning: “Any attempt to undermine the unity, sovereignty, and territorial integrity of Somalia ... risks setting a dangerous precedent with far-reaching implications for peace and stability across the continent.”
I don't thing that this is faux outrage.
………
Israeli analysts have said recognition of the breakaway state could be in Israel’s strategic interest, given Somaliland’s proximity to Yemen, where Israel has conducted extensive airstrikes against the Houthi rebels over the past two years.
A report in November by the Institute for National Security Studies, an Israeli thinktank, said: “Somaliland’s territory could serve as a forward base for multiple missions: intelligence monitoring of the Houthis and their armament efforts; logistical support for Yemen’s legitimate government in its war against them; and a platform for direct operations against the Houthis.”
As I noted, I understand why the Israelis wanted this, but I'm not sure what Somaliland gets out of this, except, perhaps, the first recognition, which is likely the hardest to get.
It looks likely that a wealth tax is probably heading to the ballot in California, and once again, rich psychopaths are threatening to leave it it passes.
When one looks at the effects of the billionaire class on a society.
If they stay, they pay the tax.
If they leave, they are no longer a feature of California politics, and their colossal compounds will be subdivided and occupied by mere centimillionaires, and their former properties will be subdivided and occupied by mere decimillionaires, and so on down the line, freeing up scarce housing resources for the ordinary people.
Billionaires are a drain on society, not an asset, and their wealth is used to bid up nedcessities like housing for the rest of us.
Billionaires including Peter Thiel, the tech venture capitalist, and Larry Page, a co-founder of Google, are considering cutting or reducing their ties to California by the end of the year because of a proposed ballot measure that could tax the state’s wealthiest residents, according to five people familiar with their thinking.
Mr. Thiel, 58, who owns a home in the Hollywood Hills and operates a personal investment firm from Los Angeles, has explored opening an office for that firm, Thiel Capital, in another state and spending more time outside California, three of the people said.
Other billionaires who appear to be making moves to decrease their presence in California include Mr. Page, 52, a longtime resident of Palo Alto. He has discussed leaving the state by the end of the year, according to two people briefed on the talks. In mid-December, three limited liability companies associated with Mr. Page filed documents to incorporate in Florida, according to state records.
The moves are being driven by a potential California ballot measure from the health care union, Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West, the people said. The proposal calls for California residents worth more than $1 billion to be taxed the equivalent of 5 percent of their assets.
Not good enough. You need to start lower down, ½% of $100,000,000.00, and stepping up by ½% for every additional centibuck in value.you get to 5% at a billion.
Also don't plateau until you get to $10 billion (10%), at least.
It would be only be on the amount above the line, as it works in income tax, so if one is worth $100,000,200.00, you would be charged $1.00 in taxes.
To quote Br'er Rabbit, "Don't throw me in that briar patch!"
More research on the Ger/Yurt tonight, so light posting.
I'm trying to get information about what sort of heating was used in period. Today, in Mongolia at least, there are a lot of coal stoves made from fabricated steel.
I'm gonna make myself a Yurt/Ger one day.
Howie Klein, former music executive and later a political activist, has died at age 77 of pancreatic cancer, not something I would wish on anyone.
My exposure to him was primarily as the proprietor of the blog Down With Tyranny, but he was everywhere in pop music during his earlier career. (Not sure what will happen to the site with him gone)
He and I were on the same page about the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment).
Howie Klein, a veteran record executive, radio DJ and political activist who was a leader in the famously artist-friendly Warner Music family during its golden era of the 1980s and early ‘90s, died Wednesday after a long battle with pancreatic cancer, according to a social media post from his sister. He was 77.
He was a top executive at Sire Records during the label’s peak era — a time when the label had everyone from the Smiths and Depeche Mode to Madonna and Lou Reed on its roster — and later was president of Warner’s Reprise label from 1989 to 2001. He was a co-founder of the San Francisco-based 415 Records during the 1970s, and was a strong and vocal presence in the music industry’s anti-censorship efforts in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, focusing on political activism in his later years.
You can read the rest of the article for his voluminous background in music, particularly Punk.
He occasionally wrote about music on DWT, and I wish that he had written something on the Ur-Punk band Death.
So allegedly one of the reasons that people are able to see past the redactions on the Epstein list is because Doge cancelled the Government’s contract with Adobe reader! Now this is totally ironic! 👇👇 pic.twitter.com/RuGhPElPfr
— Suzie rizzio (@Suzierizzo1) December 27, 2025
Yes, this story has been confirmed.
I am amused.
Stewart Copeland, composer and drummer for The Police, has stated that he once, "Bogarted a joint from a Beatle."
It was Paul McCartney.
He's also a magnificent drummer, and a fine composer.
I want to Bogart a joint with Paul McCartney. Hell, I want to Bogart a joint with Ringo.
Just so you know, McCartney never held this against him.Q: What’s been your most cringe-worthy run-in with a celebrity?
A: I once Bogarted a Beatle. It was at the after party for the Foo Fighters concert at Wembley Stadium. Somebody says, “Oh, I smell marijuana”, and so I wander over in that general direction just as somebody’s handing a joint. So I said, “OK, sure” – just to be polite – I took the joint, and I looked over and I realised that the intended recipient of the joint was none other than Paul McCartney. And I had just interrupted the passage of this chalice to the great one! I had interloped in this moment.
I went to bed that night not quite sure whether I was mortally embarrassed or if that was kind of a cool brag.
Someone managed to get the number of robotaxis that Tesla is operating in Austin, and simultaneously operating vehicles could be counted without taking off your shoes.
Yep,fewer than 10 cars at a time.
If Elon Musk is to be believed, millions of driverless Tesla Robotaxis are set to conquer the streets of America by next year.
Right now, however, his tiny fleet would be stretched thin covering a couple city blocks.
With Tesla remaining tight-lipped about how many self-driving cabs it has in operation, Texas A&M engineering student Ethan McKanna tells Electrek that he’s created an online tracker that keeps tabs on the automaker’s service in Austin, Texas by reverse-engineering its ride-hailing app. It shows that just 32 different Tesla Model Ys are currently operating as part of the Robotaxi network — and worse yet, most of the cars don’t even operate concurrently: the data suggests that fewer than ten robotaxis are giving rides at the same time.
This to me seems to be an indication that there are a small number people who are constantly monitoring the vehicles, and so they cannot scale at the rate that the Apartheid Era Emerald Heir Pedo Guy™ is claiming.
Elon Musk is a snollygoster.
The senior management of the Mozilla Corporation are trying very hard to kill the web browser.
I would argue that they are among the most overpaid executives in Silly-Con Valley. (Musk is, of course in a class of his own in this category.
Case in point, in their relentless pursuit of the latest shiny object, the brand new CEO announced that he would be baking AI features into the program.
After the inevitable outcry from Firefox users, the CEO has announced that there will be a kill switch to disable AI features.
The backlash against AI invading almost every aspect of the computing experience is growing by the day.
Particularly as an onslaught of lazy AI slop subsuming news feeds, the tech is starting to feel like a massive distraction — and huge parts of the internet are disillusioned or even fuming in anger.
For instance, a vast number of Windows users refused to upgrade after Microsoft announced it would turn the operating system into a so-called “agentic OS.”
Even household names in the open-source industry aren’t safe. After being appointed as the new CEO of open-source software company Mozilla, whose Firefox browser has long been lauded as a compelling alternative to Google’s Chrome and Apple’s Safari, Anthony Enzor-DeMeo announced that it would be tripling down on AI.
In a December 16 blog post, Enzor-DeMeo announced that Firefox would become a “modern AI browser and support a portfolio of new and trusted software additions.”
But a ringing backlash quickly forced the company into damage control mode.………
The outcry was formidable enough for Mozilla to clarify the company’s new CEO’s comments.
“Something that hasn’t been made clear: Firefox will have an option to completely disable all AI features,” the company wrote in an update on Mastodon. “We’ve been calling it the AI kill switch internally. I’m sure it’ll ship with a less murderous name, but that’s how seriously and absolutely we’re taking this.”
I would note that Mozilla has released new and widely loathed features with some sort of kill switch, and 3 or 4 releases later, they remove the kill switch.
I had to engage in some fairly deep hacking to roll back their Mozilla add-on library requirement, for example.
In the latest episode of AI under delivering, we have this article asking, "Is an AI-Powered Toy Terrorizing Your Child?"
This kind of sh%$ seems to be a feature, rather than a bug in large language model artificial intelligence.
Parents, keep your eyes peeled for AI-powered toys. These may look like they might make a novel gift for a child, but a recent controversy surrounding several of the stocking stuffers has highlighted the alarming risks they pose to young kids.
In November, a team of researchers at the US PIRG Education Fund published a report after testing three different toys powered by AI models: Miko 3, Curio’s Grok, and FoloToy’s Kumma. All of them gave responses that should worry a parent, such as discussing the glory of dying in battle, broaching sensitive topics like religion, and explaining where to find matches and plastic bags.
But it was FoloToy’s Kumma that showed just how dangerous it is to package this tech for children. Not only did it explain where to find matches, the researchers found, it also gave step-by-step instructions on how to light them.
“Let me tell you, safety first, little buddy. Matches are for grown-ups to use carefully. Here’s how they do it,” Kumma said, before listing off the steps.
“Blow it out when done,” it added. “Puff, like a birthday candle.”
The toy also speculated on where to find knives and pills, and rambled about romantic topics, like school crushes and tips for “being a good kisser.” It even discussed sexual topics, including kink topics like bondage, roleplay, sensory play, and impact play. In one conversation, it discussed introducing spanking into a sexually charged teacher-student dynamic.
The problem here is not any inherent danger to AI, but rather the inherent recklessness of the business desperate to jump on the AI bandwagon.
If steps could be taken, for example not having IP protections on models and data sets, the frenzy would subside, and we could see slower and more measured development.
The wannabee billionaire tech-bro's don't care who or what they damage along the away.
Eliminate the billions, you eliminate the recklessness.
The New York Times just put out an expose on the National Kidney Registry, and it looks like yet another case where greed makes health care in America worse.
The worst moment of Garet Hil’s life, he once said, came when he discovered he couldn’t donate a kidney to his sick 10-year-old daughter. By the time the girl found a match a couple of months later, Mr. Hil, an entrepreneur, had drawn up plans to transform the world of living organ donation.
His organization, the National Kidney Registry, started in 2007 with a simple idea: Donors who are incompatible with sick loved ones give their kidneys to a nationwide pool. The sick patients tap into that pool of strangers to find matches more quickly.
Since its founding, N.K.R. has enabled nearly 12,000 such swaps, called paired donations, far more than any other public or private program. The organization’s focus on technology and efficiency has jolted a sluggish system, many health experts said.
But at the same time, N.K.R. has created a multimillion-dollar business with considerable power over the flow of thousands of organs, according to interviews with more than 100 people in transplant medicine and a review of business records. Many doctors told The Times the stakes of these lifesaving exchanges were too high to be managed by a private company with little government oversight.As N.K.R. has grown, it has charged hospitals steep fees for access to its registry of donors. Some of that cost is passed on to taxpayers through Medicare.
The organization was a nonprofit for more than a decade, but during that period paid at least $39 million for technology and other services to a company owned by Mr. Hil, charity filings show. In 2023, N.K.R.’s commercial operations were sold to a new for-profit company owned by Mr. Hil, making its finances much more opaque.
I'm sure that Mr. Hil thinks that he's doing good. He's not.
He is a parasite.
No, Progressives Don’t Want “Purity.” They Just Want Some Courage
—The New Republic, on the cowardice of the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment)
Truer than turnips this is.
Mainstream Democrats use dozens of old catchphrases that suggest they’re out of step. “When they go low, we go high,” for example, sounded fine when Michelle Obama first said it in 2016, but it passed its sell-by date almost the next day. For quite some time, the Democratic Party, which is still closely aligned with banks and billionaires, has needed to go anywhere but high.
But it’s the meme of the “purity test” that should spike real worry that the Democratic Party is missing the moment right now. Party standard-bearers still use the phrase as a slur to trivialize legitimate questions from the left. It’s a petty and defensive move, and it comes across as a refusal to engage with the most obvious and urgent questions facing the party and the country.
A recent case in point involved New Jersey Senator Cory Booker. Booker is a tireless legislator who two weeks ago sponsored a promising bill to provide support for family caregivers, but he has sometimes been criticized for his coziness with Big Tech and Big Pharma. In October, the popular firebrand Jennifer Welch of the podcast I’ve Had It asked Booker why he and other Democrats had turned to “Neville Chamberlain–type appeasement” with President Trump. As just one example, Welch cited Booker’s confirmation of one of Trump’s shadiest ambassadors, Charlie Kushner, Ivanka Trump’s father-in-law; a felon and a billionaire real-estate developer from Booker’s home state of New Jersey.
“What do you have to say about the capitulation that you participated in?”
Booker smiled. He tried to seem unflappable. He then waved away Welch as “holding up a purity test.”
“That’s such bullshit,” Welch shot back. “It’s not a purity test. It’s, Are we in this fight? Are we being beholden to corporations and corporate interests? Or, Are we really the party of the working class?”
Welch was right. “Purity test” is bullshit, and it’s a deflection Democrats must stop using. Challenges to politicians on major issues, including foreign policy, acceptance of corporate money, and failure to keep ICE out of cities—these are not puritanical attacks on their lifestyles. They are credible allegations that the party must acknowledge and address: that Democrats are allies of Republican hawks like Liz Cheney, valets for private equity, and hopeless incrementalists on social justice.
The problem is that many of the politicians in the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) have achieved their positions entirely from their prowess at fund raising.
Cowardice is self-interested job protection.
As you may have heard, Donald Trump's stooges renamed the Kennedy Center to the Trump-Kennedy center on December 18, despite the fact that the name of the center is mandated by law, and this law prohibits putting anyone else's name on the building.
In response to this, there were a number of cancellations, including the touring show of Hamilton, but the most abrupt cancellation came from the annual Jazz Jams concert, which is typically on Christmas eve.
So Trump's stooges are threatening to sue the organizer, percussionist Chuck Redd for $1 million.
This response was foreseen and foreseeable.
Maybe if you decide to violate the law, and are accused by multiple artists of not paying them in a timely manner, you should expect cancellations.
The president of the Kennedy Center has demanded $1m in damages and fiercely criticized a musician’s sudden decision to cancel a Christmas Eve performance at the venue days after the White House announced that Donald Trump’s name would be added to the facility.
“Your decision to withdraw at the last moment – explicitly in response to the Center’s recent renaming, which honors President Trump’s extraordinary efforts to save this national treasure – is classic intolerance and very costly to a non-profit Arts institution,” the venue’s president, Richard Grenell, wrote in a letter to musician Chuck Redd that was shared with the Associated Press.
In the letter, Grenell said he would seek $1m in damages “for this political stunt”.
………
A drummer and vibraphone player, Redd has presided over holiday Jazz Jams at the Kennedy Center since 2006, succeeding bassist William “Keter” Betts. In an email Wednesday to the Associated Press, Redd said he pulled out of the concert in the wake of the renaming.
“When I saw the name change on the Kennedy Center website and then hours later on the building, I chose to cancel our concert,” Redd said. He added on Wednesday that the event has been a “very popular holiday tradition” and that he often featured at least one student musician.
I would suggest that Mr. Redd lawyers up, and that his lawyer be extremely during discovery.
While changing the name of the Center probably being unlawful (i.e. not a criminal infraction), making this decision could be prosecuted as a conspiracy, which is a criminal infraction.
Official Photo of Kim Jung Un reviewing the submarine We have a report on the as yet unnamed 8,700 ton displacement boat, which is claimed to carry submarine launched domestic missiles.
It appears that the submarine is nearly complete from the fact that it has already received its anti-corrosion paint.
The weight of 8,700 tons, (probably metric tonnes) is about the same as a Virginia class boat, which is small for a modern SSBN.
One of the notable things is the extremely long sail, which implies that much like its predecessor, the Sinpo Class, and like the Soviet Golf and Hotel classes.
My guess would be that there are 6-8 missile tubes, and like the Sinpo, and unlike the Golf and Hotel, it is likely to be able to conduct underwater launches.
As to the effect on the frozen conflict on the Korean Peninsula, nothing until it is deployed, and perhaps a bit more stability after that, because Pyongyang will feel less vulnerable, assuming that it works as intended.
That's actually a big assumption, because this sub is about four times the displacement of their prior submarines.
The belief that men do not listen to them. (No, this is not a run up to a crude pun)
It turns out that cats meow more and louder when trying to get the attention of men than when trying to get the attention of women.
I'm not particularly surprised.
As he lectured on animal behavior, Kaan Kerman, an instructor in the psychology department at Bilkent University in Turkey, noticed a pattern. Dog owners tend to confidently interpret their pets’ behavior, he said, “but cat owners are always puzzled.” Compared with dogs, cats have been studied less, partly because they prefer to stay at home.
“If you want to bring cats into the lab,” Dr. Kerman said, “good luck.”
When he and his colleagues asked cat owners for permission to film inside their homes, the response was enthusiastic. “As long as you give us some answers about our cats,” was a common reply. What that study found may not be as welcome among men who care for cats.
In a study published this month in the journal Ethology, the researchers reported that cats meow more frequently when greeting male caregivers. The team hypothesized that men “require more explicit vocalizations to notice and respond to the needs of their cats.” In other words, the researchers are suggesting that many cats have concluded that men don’t always listen, and adjusted their behavior accordingly.
I am sure that many women who have read this story have thought, "No shit, Sherlock."
We now have a report that alleges that Donald Trump participated in what sounds like the ritual sacrifice of a newborn baby.
NO.
In order for Trump to have participated in a ritual sacrifice, he would have to be following a religion of some sort, and all religions require one to believe that there is something greater than one one's self.
Malignant narcissism is antithetical to human sacrifice, at least as a lower level participant
I could see Trump doing the whole James Earl Jones as Thulsa Doom thing though, because that is what he is doing now.
Donald Trump's name appears on a newly released Epstein file in which a purported victim makes allegations about a newborn baby being murdered and dumped in Lake Michigan.
The Justice Department released this file ahead of Christmas Eve in which an unnamed individual, on Aug. 3, 2020, is looking for an update on the status of their earlier complaint. The report lists an unnamed uncle as the perpetrator and Trump as a witness.
It is odd that I am arguing that someone is too venal and self-serving to perform human sacrifice though.
After years of screwing up everything that he touched Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav is going to walk away from the proposed merger with Netflix $567,000,000.00 richer.
It's kind of like Typhoid Mary selling a restaurant for a million dollars back in the door.
I’ve written a lot about the AOL–>AT&T–>Time Warner–>Discovery mergers simply because I think they perfectly encapsulate the pointless, destructive incompetence at the heart of modern media consolidation, and the cannibalistic nature of Wall Street’s obsession with illusory quarterly growth propped up by smoke, mirrors, and complex accounting.
Ever since the original AOL Time Warner merger back in 2001, an endless wave of pointless mergers promised no limit of innovative “synergies,” but instead resulted in more than 50,000 layoffs, shittier product, higher prices, the death of a ton of well-loved brands and IPs, decades of chaos, a decline in quality journalism, and a bottomless well of shit.
At the heart of this enshittification (at least the more recent mergers involving AT&T and Discovery) has sat Warner Brothers CEO David Zaslav. Like the AT&T execs before him, Zaslav has seen absolutely zero accountability for this chaos, and, in fact, has been repeatedly rewarded with a series of massive compensation packages that in absolutely no way reflect his competency.
With Netflix and Paramount (CBS) now scrapping over the remnants of Warner Brothers’ carcass, Zaslav stands to cash out with a golden parachute for the ages. All told, it’s expected that Zaslav is set to see $567 million in cash and other buyout options:“Zaslav will receive $30 million in “golden parachute” compensation, along with $537 million in equity, for a total of $567 million in a transaction-associated pay, per the Wednesday filing. Zaslav has led Warners since it formally merged with Discovery in 2022 following a $43 billion spinoff from then-owner AT&T.”………
The endless chaos created by “growth for growth sake” mergers may provide temporary stock boosts and tax breaks, but it simultaneously has generated no limit of ill will among consumers (something Zaslav sometimes pretends to recognize), massive stock fluctuations, a huge talent drain, lots of wasted money and time, significant animosity among creatives, and significant harm to core brands (like HBO and CNN).
It’s the extraction class abusing the rules of the game to pretend to be good at business. They’re not actually building anything useful, or remotely interested in the longevity of the company, its customers, the talent that powers it, or the people who work there. They’re playing with funny numbers to try and perpetually generate the illusion of impossible permanent growth at incredible scale, then cashing out when the check finally comes due for their complicated shell games.
As an FYI, Zaslav is the guy who canceled multiple projects, including finished movies, when he determined that the tax write-offs were more remunerative that releasing them to the public.
Have you even shut a seat belt in the door or not closed the door firmly enough and gotten a door warning?
It turns out that Waymo semi-autonomous taxis has no way to shut its own doors, so the cab company is paying people $20 to rescue cars with doors that are ajar.
This is another way to protest the beta test of a 4,000 pound death machine on public streets.
Don Adkins was walking along the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles late one night this month when he heard a plea for help.
“Please close the right-side rear door, thanks,” Adkins recalled a synthetic voice calling out. It came from a Jaguar SUV stopped in the street with its lights flashing. One of the hundreds of Waymo robotaxis in Los Angeles operated by Alphabet was in trouble.
………
Adkins had witnessed an Achilles’ heel of the Waymo robotaxis that ferry thousands of riders in Los Angeles, San Francisco and other cities each week. The vehicles can navigate city streets and compete with taxi drivers without anyone behind the wheel — but become stranded if a human doesn’t close the door behind them at the end of a ride.Because riders and passersby can be unreliable, Waymo pays workers in Los Angeles $20 or more for rescuing a robotaxi by closing a door, summoning help through an app called Honk that is like an Uber for towing companies.
Jenn Bud suggests that the purpose is not to engage in immigration theater, nor is its purpose to deport thousands of people, (though that is a perceived benefit of these people), but rather its primary purpose to create an on the ground law enforcement infrastructure on the ground in Democratic voting areas that will be used to suppress voting.
I know that you may be thinking that this is just a conspiracy theory, but Jeb Bush did this in Florida in the 2000 elections, where state and local law enforcement aggressively impeded and harassed voters in minority areas.
Not only could it happen, it already has.
Believe it or not, there is a purpose behind which cities are raided by ICE that few are discussing.As I noted above, Jeb Cush did the exactly this in 2000.
The immigration enforcement agencies are not simply choosing the biggest, most blue cities to raid just because they hate them. Not even because they believe they are sanctuary cities who refuse to cower and bend the knee to their thugs. Not because they believe that these cities are full of criminal migrants, the worst of the worst as they say. Their own statistics prove this point as 97% of Chicago arrests had no criminal record.
Yet, not a single media outlet has bothered to ask why. If ICE and CBP are not meeting their goals of arresting the worst of the worst. What are they doing? What is the real purpose of these raids?
………
The purpose of these raids is to establish and [maintain? strengthen?] a law enforcement infrastructure to target these specific cities during the upcoming elections.
………
Additionally, the DOJ has issued the new domestic terrorist directive redefining the term to mean essentially anyone who obstructs federal agents, is pro-immigrant and anti-fascist. Secretary Noem recently stated, “American citizens are increasingly under threat from assassination attempts, intimidation tactics, and violence perpetrated by our adversaries, radical Islamist extremists, and radical Left-wing terrorists.” And Trump issued an executive order to expand the jurisdiction of the Joint Terrorism Task Forces to his political opponents and those he deems “radical Left-wing terrorists.”
These are the tools they intend to use soon during elections.
I expect this administration, Secretary Noem and CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott to order federal immigration agents to accost voters as they stand in line on voting day. Those of color, specifically Latinos, will have their citizenship questioned. And judging by how the agencies are grabbing people without even conducting on-site citizenship interviews, then taking them into ICE custody for a day, or two or three before letting them go, I expect this will be used to prevent citizens from voting. I wouldn’t even be surprised if Border Patrol set up checkpoints in areas of high Latino populations.
Remember how they used, "Special Purpose Vehicles," to conceal the extant of their debts?
AI firms are using the same tactic to conceal their debt.
This ain't going to end well.
Tech companies have moved more than $120bn of data centre spending off their balance sheets using special purpose vehicles funded by Wall Street investors, adding to concerns about the financial risks of their huge bet on artificial intelligence.
Meta, Elon Musk’s xAI, Oracle and data centre operator CoreWeave have led the way on complex financing deals to shield their companies from the large borrowing needed to build AI data centres.
Financial institutions including Pimco, BlackRock, Apollo, Blue Owl Capital and US banks such as JPMorgan have supplied at least $120bn in debt and equity for these tech groups’ computing infrastructure, according to a Financial Times analysis.
That money is channelled through special purpose holding companies known as SPVs. The rush of financings, which do not show up on the tech companies’ balance sheets, may be obscuring the risks that these groups are running — and who will be on the hook if AI demand disappoints.
History is rhyming again.
Ice is using CIA torture techniques against detainees at Alligator Alcatraz, and possibly other immigration detention centers.
We are not talking about water boarding, (yet), but rather locking people in tiny boxes for hours on end.
One of the most horrific torture methods that the CIA employed in its post-9/11 incommunicado "black site" torture chambers was the Confinement Box.
Not many detainees in CIA custody experienced the Box. The most prominent of them is the man known as Abu Zubaydah, the first CIA detainee post-9/11 and someone the agency used as a guinea pig for all who came into their custody later. What follows is not pleasant reading.
For 20 days in August of 2002, after the Justice Department approved a proposed CIA menu of torture including something it called "cramped confinement," Abu Zubaydah was subjected to what the Senate intelligence committee's 2014 inquiry called "enhanced interrogation techniques on a near 24-hour-per-day basis." While the intensive waterboarding the CIA visited upon Abu Zubaydah has forevermore defined whatever passes for the popular understanding of his torture, the waterboarding was by no means the limit of what the CIA did to him.
On his first day of the August torture, after agency torturers slammed Abu Zubaydah's head against a concrete wall, they removed his hood "and had Abu Zubaydah watch while a large confinement box was brought into the cell and laid on the floor." A CIA cable records that they placed the box on the floor of the interrogation room "so as to appear [to be] a coffin." No one can misinterpret that message. But because the CIA was interested in driving the point home, its personnel at the Thailand black site known as Catseye or Detention Site Green "told Abu Zubaydah that the only way he would leave the facility was in the coffin-shaped confinement box."
A CIA medical officer—don't be fooled by the title into thinking they were there to help the detainees—cabled that Abu Zubaydah's liturgy of torture "progress[ed] quickly to the water board after large box, walling and small box periods." ("Walling" is using a rolled-up towel, positioned behind someone's neck and held on either side by someone in front of them, to slam someone's head into a wall.) The large box was the coffin. According to the Senate report, during those twenty days, "Abu Zubaydah spent a total of 266 hours (11 days, 2 hours) in the large (coffin size) confinement box and 29 hours in a small confinement box, which had a width of 21 inches, a depth of 2.5 feet, and a height of 2.5 feet."
………
I say all this because the following description appears in an Amnesty International report released Friday into the conditions of confinement for migrants at Alligator Alcatraz:
The four men interviewed by Amnesty International, as well as Florida-based organizations, told the organization about the ‘box’, described as a 2x2 foot cage-like structure located outside in the yard of “Alligator Alcatraz” where individuals are sent for punishment. Individuals are put in the ‘box’, their hands are shackled and their feet are attached to restraints on the ground. They are unable to sit down or move positions, and are forced to remain there for hours in the heat with hardly any water or protection from the sun, heat and insects. According to a man seeking safety, “People ended up in the ‘box’ just for asking the guards for anything. I saw a guy who was put in it for an entire day.”
A "2x2 cage-like structure… [an] extremely small space that prevents sitting, lying or changing position" has dimensions startlingly reminiscent of those the Senate documented in the black sites. The major difference is that in Florida, the Small Box is exposed to the elements and constructed as a barred cage, whereas in Catseye, it was a closed structure inside the larger closed structure of the black site. And in Florida, the box is used as punishment. According to one of the Alligator Alcatraz survivors in the Amnesty report, people were put into the box simply for alerting the guards to someone's need for medication. "They were taken to 'the box' and punished for trying to help me," the person told Amnesty.
………
Here we have Florida jailers using CIA-pedigreed torture techniques on migrants accused of being in the country without proper authorization, a civil, not criminal, violation. I have many questions about whose idea it was to import the confinement box to Alligator Alcatraz. But in the absence of answers to them at present, I submit to you that its appearance here, structurally speaking, is the direct result of there being no criminal or even substantial political penalties for the architects of the torture program, either at Langley or within the Bush administration. When there is no consequence for torture, torture will persist, going into abeyance—at most—until politically empowered sadists reach for a tool of domination. The lack of consequence ensures it is a matter of time before people who owe their positions of authority to declarations that they seek to dehumanize the vulnerable play a sick game of Well, if we did this to these Terrorists there, why not to these other Criminals here…
(emphasis original)
Every last one of these motherfuckers need to spend the rest of their lives in a 2 foot by 2 fit box.
Because of the holiday, they issued the initial unemployment claims a day early.
So, initial claims fell and continuing claims rose.
As you can see from the graph, continuing claims have continued to rise, indicating the general weakness of hiring.
Applications for US unemployment benefits fell last week, highlighting the seasonal swings in the data at this time of year.
………
Initial claims decreased by 10,000 to 214,000 in the week ended Dec. 20, according to Labor Department data released Wednesday. The median forecast in a Bloomberg survey of economists called for 224,000 applications.
Continuing claims, a proxy for the number of people receiving benefits, rose to 1.92 million in the previous week, rebounding from a significant decline at the end of last month.
Overall, Wednesday’s figures are consistent with a labor market seeing relatively low layoffs, a trend that has remained intact throughout the year despite heightened economic uncertainty. While multiple large employers, including PepsiCo Inc. and HP Inc., have announced job cuts recently, those plans have yet to translate into a notable pickup in actual layoffs.
That's probably note the headline economic news though (Yes, I'm burying the lede) is that GDP in the 3rd quarter rose more than expected, along with growing consumer spending and declining consumer confidence, (Yeah, I have no bloody clue what is going on here)
Today’s GDP report, delayed by the government shutdown, was the “initial” report for the third quarter. Data collection for it occurred before the government shutdown. It replaces the “advance estimate,” which got canceled due to the shutdown at the time, and the “second estimate” (originally scheduled for November 26). So this release is essentially the “second estimate” and includes the revisions that would have been part of the second estimate.
And WHOOSH went the economy in Q3. Gross Domestic Product, the broadest measure of the economy, grew by an annual rate of 4.3% in Q3, adjusted for inflation, after the 3.8% growth in Q2, and the -0.7% decline in Q1, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis today.
By comparison, in the years between the Great Recession and the pandemic (so excluding recessions), average quarter-to-quarter GDP growth was 2.5% annual rate. The average 20-year quarter-to-quarter GDP growth, including recessions, was 2.2% annual rate.
The decline in Q1 had been driven by an explosion of imports due to tariff frontrunning. Imports deduct from GDP; exports add to GDP. But that frontrunning of tariffs in Q1 and other trade shifts due to tariffs caused a dramatic improvement of the trade deficit in Q2 and Q3, from the horrible levels of Q1, contributing substantially to the high growth rates in both quarters.
Consumers also pitched in and spent hand over fist, despite their allegedly very sour mood as depicted by these silly consumer sentiment surveys. Consumer spending, adjusted for inflation jumped by 3.5%, the highest since the red-hot quarters last year.
As to the specific numbers on consumers, consumer confidence fell by 3.1 points to 89.1, but consumer spending rose sharply, though a lot of that appears to be medical spending, which might indicate a surge in medical inflation.
As to my take on what is going on? No clue.
As you may be aware, iRobot just declared bankruptcy, and the usual suspects blamed Lina Khan for blocking its merger with Amazon.
The usual suspects, of course, were the banksters on Wall Street.
In fact, the company was a dead man walking long before Lina Khan wrote her seminal paper on monopolies, because they were following the advice of those same banksters on Wall Street.
They killed all their research, stopped doing advanced work for the DoD, and eliminated all of their manufacturing, outsourcing that to China.
By last week, all they were was a holding company for the Roomba trademark, and giving their no-longer dominant position in the automated vacuum cleaner market, they had nothing.
There is nothing that high finance cannot destroy.
A few days ago, consumer products company iRobot, the maker of iconic Roomba automated vacuum cleaner, declared bankruptcy. The CEO, a branding and mergers expert named Gary Cohen, sadly announced that the firm could not continue as a going concern.
The board, full of lawyers and financiers but not robotics experts, voted to sell iRobot off to Shenzhen Picea Robotics, the Chinese company to which it had offshored manufacturing. There are about 20 million active Roomba vacuum cleaners in operation, and unless Trump regulators or antitrust enforcers act, now all the data harvested from our homes will go to China.
The co-founder of iRobot, Colin Angle, was not introspective about this collapse, nor did he associate it within the broader context of the many firms who have had their technology transferred to China. Instead, he, like much of Wall Street, blamed the bankruptcy on Lina Khan. Why? Well she ran the Federal Trade Commission when it investigated Amazon’s possible acquisition of the company in 2022, a deal the two companies ultimately called off. Here’s Angle:
………
Many Wall Street dealmakers and foes of antitrust enforcement echoed this sentiment. For instance, former Obama chief economist Jason Furman, who is now the Aetna Professor of the Practice of Economic Policy at Harvard, used it as an example of the problem with populist economics. Blocking mergers, he believes, leads to destructive outcomes and national security problems.
………
In the mid-2010s, during Furman’s tenure running economic policy under Obama, the company sold its defense business, offshored production, and slashed research, a result of pressure from financiers on Wall Street.
………
This is a sad story, it’s also a common one. China has captured technology and key process leadership from American and European firms, across everything from rare earths to batteries to chemicals to robotics. And the driver is that the American model of running corporations is to focus on “asset light” cream-skimming, which is to say, focusing on lines of business where the return on capital is exceptionally high.
Conversely, the Chinese government, to preserve and extend its particular authoritarian model, actually suppresses the return on capital for its financiers, forcing an “asset heavy” approach. They overly emphasize factories and engineering. The net effect of these two complementary forces used to be celebrated as “Chimerica,” where China produces and the U.S. consumes.
Acting director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency(CISA) Madhu Gottumukkala wanted to look at some extremely sensitive intelligence reports from, "Another Agency." (If I had to guess, it would be the Defense Intelligence Agency).
He could have looked at the pretty fucking secret reports, but he wanted to access the unbelievably fucking super duper secret version of the report, for which the agency required that a polygraph exam for clearance and access.
Mr. Gottumukkala failed the polygraph examination and promptly retaliated against the staff who told him that he had to take the exam or who had administered the exam.
This man should not have access to Colonel Sanders' 11 herbs and spices.*
At least six career staffers at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency were suspended with pay this summer after organizing a polygraph test that the agency’s acting director, Madhu Gottumukkala, failed.
The Department of Homeland Security opened an investigation into whether the staff provided “false information” about the need for the test — which was scheduled after Gottumukkala sought access to certain highly sensitive cyber intelligence shared with the agency.
………
The incident this July and the subsequent fallout — which has not been reported before — have angered career staff, alarmed fellow Trump administration appointees and raised questions about Gottumukkala’s leadership of the nearly $3 billion cyber defense agency.
It does not raise questions, it answers them. He is unsuited to his position.
………
In an emailed statement, DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said that Gottumukkala “did not fail a sanctioned polygraph test.”
“An unsanctioned polygraph test was coordinated by staff, misleading incoming CISA leadership,” McLaughlin wrote. “The employees in question were placed on administrative leave, pending conclusion of an investigation. We expect and require the highest standards of performance from our employees and hold them directly accountable to uphold all policies and procedures. Gottumukkala has the complete and full support of the Secretary and is laser focused on returning the agency to its statutory mission.”
The technical term for the above is, "Bullshit."
Anyone who needs access to something that requires a polygraph would have to get it signed off from senior management, i.e. Madhu Gottumukkala
………
Compounding that instability, CISA has not had a permanent, Senate-confirmed leader since former Director Jen Easterly stepped down in January at the start of the Trump administration. Gottumukkala, a former senior IT official in South Dakota under Kristi Noem, was appointed by the governor-turned-secretary as deputy director in May. He is currently the most senior official at CISA and also holds the title of acting director.
This guy's qualification is that he's a friend of ICE Barbie?
Chinese spies must be high fiving each each other and doing jello shots right now, because it's like a permanent vacation for them.
………
Gottumukkala failed the polygraph test in the last week of July, according to five current officials and one former official.
The test was scheduled that month to determine his eligibility to review one of the most sensitive intelligence programs shared with CISA by another spy agency, three current officials and one former official said.
………
Senior staff raised questions about whether Gottumukkala needed to review the intelligence materials on at least two occasions. But he continued to push for the access, even if it meant taking a polygraph, according to four current officials.
In early June, a senior agency official did not approve an initial request signed by mid-level CISA staff to grant Gottumukkala access to the program, on the basis that there was not an urgent need-to-know, according to the third current official. The agency’s previous deputy director, this person noted, had not seen the program.
………
The senior official who denied that read-in request was placed on administrative leave in late June for a reason unrelated to the polygraph, according to three current officials. As a result, that senior official was no longer in their role by the time a second request for a read-in — this time signed by Gottumukkala — was approved in early July, the third current official said.
The phone call is coming from inside the house!
………
Less highly classified versions of the requested intelligence materials would have been available to Gottumukkala without taking a polygraph, said the third current official.
Still, Gottumukkala persisted.
We are doomed.
The reason that the Supreme Court just refused to use the shadow docket to over a lower court ruling that forbade deploying national guard troops to Chicago is not because they felt a pang of conscience.
Half of the corrupt 6 conservative justices decided not to stay the ruling because they know that either through politics, or through ill health, Donald Trump is a short timer, and if they don't back off, the power that they have been abusing will be taken away.
Pack the court. Amend the constitution to create terms of specific length for all federal judges with no opportunity for renewal.
The US supreme court refused on Tuesday to let Donald Trump send national guard troops to the Chicago area, in an important reining-in of the US president’s efforts to expand the use of the military for domestic purposes in historic moves against a growing number of Democratic-led jurisdictions.
The nation’s highest court denied the US justice department’s request to lift a judge’s order in October that has blocked the deployment of hundreds of national guard personnel in a legal challenge brought by Illinois state officials and local leaders, who had opposed any federalization of those troops to offer backup to immigration enforcement.
………The justices decided on a 6-3 vote on Tuesday to back a lower court and rule that the Trump administration had not met the legal burden needed to show that it was not able to execute the laws of the land without federal military intervention.
The three justices leaning furthest to the right on the bench, Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, dissented on Tuesday.
The decision was a significant defeat for Trump’s efforts to send troops to US cities as part of his immigration crackdown and arguments that some cities and states are doing a bad job of fighting crime.
It turns out that Zurich, Switzerland has established a beaver hotline.
I'm sure that most of my reader(s) are thinking, "They have a problem with the tree-felling rodents?" because they are perceptive, intelligent, and very attractive people.
I though it was something completely different when I first came across the headline, though.
Most of my readers were right, and I was wrong:
“I hate beavers,” a woman tells the beaver hotline. Forty years ago she planted an oak tree in a small town in southern Zurich – now at the frontier of beaver expansion – and it has just been felled: gnawed by the large, semi-aquatic rodents as they enter their seasonal home-improvement mode.
………
The caller is one of 10 new people getting in touch each week at this time of year. Beavers, nature’s great engineers, can unleash mayhem during winter as they renovate their lodges and build up their dams. For people, this can mean flooding, sinkholes appearing in roads and trees being felled. A single incident can clock up 70,000 Swiss francs (£65,000) in damages.
To cope, the beaver-rich canton of Zurich came up with the hotline. The local Beaver Advisory Centre is staffed by ecologists who give advice, assess damages and evaluate potential compensation (the oak tree-bereft woman is advised to wrap wire around the base of the other trees to stop the rodents’ chewing).
Some argue that this proves large beaver populations are not compatible with large human populations. In Bavaria, about 2,500 are shot a year, which is 10% of the population, but the number continues to grow. Poland issues permits to cull about 6% of its beaver population each year (about 8,300 individuals).
But the effectiveness of culling is questioned in Switzerland. If a river section is favourable for one beaver, it is likely to be favourable for others. “It’s efficient to shoot a beaver – but only until the next beaver comes along,” says Nienhuis. “Then the same conflicts arise.”
I, for one, am supporting the beavers.
I really hope that Beaver Hats don't come back.
Because declaring a new ship class to be a "Battleship", (it isn't one) and naming the class after yourself seems to indicate profound feelings of inadequacy.
The entire concept of a 30,000 ton surface combatant is absurd.
First, given the fiascos of the Zumwalt's, Littoral Combat Ships, and the Constellation Class frigates, it is unlikely that this would progress beyond the laying of a keel.
Second, this is not a battleship. It is armed with 5 inch rifled guns, which is well under the firepower of any ship called a battleship.
It is public masturbation masquerading as defense acquisition.
Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water. Donald Trump has announced plans for the US navy to build a new generation of warships – known as “Trump-class”.
The ships will be bigger, faster and a hundred times more powerful than any previous US-built warship, the president said on Monday. The project will begin with construction of two such battleships and eventually be expanded to 20 to 25 new vessels.
John Phelan, the navy secretary, added: “Our adversaries will know, when the Trump-class USS Defiant appears on the horizon, American victory at sea is inevitable.”
Past battleship classes were typically named after US states. But Trump, whose name already adorns many hotels and golf clubs, is currently on what critics describe as a narcissistic spree.
Narcissistic spree? Ya think?
I will note that the Chinese have no chance of sinking any of the Trump Class ships, because you cannot sink vaporware.
This has as much credibility as Trump's tax returns.
Trump has appointed an envoy to Greenland with the goal of annexing the island.*
Needless to say, the Danes and Greenlanders are unamused.
There is a simple solution for this, all the Danes need to do is to declare Jeff Landry as persona non grata, which would forbid him from setting foot in any territory of Denmark.
The prime ministers of Denmark and Greenland have demanded respect for their borders after Donald Trump appointed a special envoy to the largely self-governing Danish territory, which he has said repeatedly should be under US control.*Best evidence is that Greenland is not AN island, but that it would be 2 or 3 major islands and a number of smaller ones should the ice melt.
“We have said it very clearly before. Now we say it again. National borders and the sovereignty of states are rooted in international law … You cannot annex other countries,” Mette Frederiksen and Jens-Frederik Nielsen said in a joint statement.
The two leaders added that “fundamental principles” were at stake. “Greenland belongs to the Greenlanders, and the US should not take over Greenland,” they said. “We expect respect for our common territorial integrity.”
Trump on Sunday appointed the governor of Louisiana, Jeff Landry, as US special envoy to the vast, mineral-rich Arctic island. The US president has on several occasions said the US needs to acquire Greenland for security reasons, while refusing to rule out the use of force.
I can't embed it, but Allison Gill got a copy from when it aired in Canada.
It's just some guy filming his TV, sot he quality is not great, but it is legible and audible.
There used to be a website in the early 2000s called Media Whores Online.
They would have had a field day with Bari Weiss.
(On edit, found a copy of the video on Archive.org)
JD Vance Has Nearly Completed His Quest to Become the Most Unlikable Person in Politics—The inimitable Charlie Pierce in Esquire
Damn good writing.
The only thing missing is a couch pun.
With a few redactions:
To quote Marvin the Martian, "I'm not mad just very disappointed."
Donald Trump’s justice department was hit with legal threats and scathing outrage after authorities released a limited, heavily redacted trove of Jeffrey Epstein files in an apparent violation of the law mandating the near-complete disclosure of these documents by Friday.
“The justice department’s document dump this afternoon does not comply with Thomas Massie and my Epstein Transparency Act,” Ro Khanna, the California Democratic congressman who co-authored the law requiring full disclosure of all Epstein files by 19 December, said in a video statement.
“It is an incomplete release, with too many redactions. Thomas Massie and I are exploring all options,” he also said, among them possible impeachment of justice department officials, finding them in contempt of Congress.………
Frustrations mounted on Saturday as the justice department released some new files, including transcripts, while also removing more than a dozen others from its website related to Epstein, with no explanation.
At least 16 files disappeared from the department’s public webpage, according to an Associated Press tally. The documents included images of paintings depicting nude women, and one showing a series of photographs along a credenza and in drawers. In that image, inside a drawer among other photos, is a photograph of Trump, alongside Epstein, Melania Trump and Epstein’s longtime associate Ghislaine Maxwell.………
New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was among the bipartisan chorus of lawmakers slamming Trump’s justice department, including the US attorney general, Pam Bondi, and the FBI director, Kash Patel, for the documents’ lackluster rollout.
“Now the coverup is out in the open. This is far from over. Everyone involved will have to answer for this,” Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat, said on X on Friday. “Pam Bondi, Kash Patel, whole admin. Protecting a bunch of rapists and pedophiles because they have money, power, and connections. Bondi should resign tonight.”
We knew that there would never be anything beyond malicious compliance from these folks.
Harvard is investigating the students who filmed Larry Summers self indulgent apology to one of his classes.
Officials at Harvard University launched a secret disciplinary investigation into students who recorded Larry Summers discussing his ties to Jeffrey Epstein, The New York Times reports.
Summers, who served as treasury secretary under President Bill Clinton , is under intense scrutiny for his dealings with Epstein. He resigned from his position at OpenAI in November following the appearance of his name in emails with Epstein and was included in photos recently released by Epstein’s estate.
The students, Rosie P. Couture and Lola DeAscentiis, posted videos online last month of the former Harvard president addressing his ties to late sex trafficker. The university is looking into whether those recordings violated school policies.
Yes, they are defending Larry fucking Summers over this.
The Harvard Salient, the right wing publication at the university, was just shut down for rampant bigotry.
We are talking racism, antisemitism, and Hitler fanbois:
When the Harvard Salient’s board of directors suspended the conservative student magazine in late October, they accused its student members of publishing “reprehensible” material and claimed they had received “deeply disturbing and credible complaints about the broader culture of the organization.”
Then, for more than a month, the board was silent.
But a series of documents obtained by The Crimson reveal what members of the Salient’s governing body were concerned about: variations of a racial slur used casually in a group chat of members; an unpublished issue featuring a call for mass executions; and draft versions of a September article, written by David F.X. Army ’28, that included two images of swastikas and a Nazi slogan in the subtitle.
After its publication, Army’s piece drew fire for a line — “Germany belongs to the Germans, France to the French, Britain to the British, America to the Americans” — that mirrored a phrase used by Adolf Hitler in a 1939 speech. The magazine’s editor-in-chief, Richard Y. Rodgers ’28, eventually issued a statement standing behind the piece and saying any invocation of Nazi language was unintentional.
But draft versions of the article suggest that, at the very least, members of the Salient were aware that the article’s contents invoked Nazi ideology.
The files, shared with The Crimson by two members of the Salient, include the editing history of two published articles along with screenshots and video recordings from an internal Signal thread used by the publication’s leaders and active members. In those messages, some Salient writers defend quoting Hitler, criticize extending voting rights to women, and use the n-word, replacing some letters with emojis.
The documents also include a copy of the Salient’s unreleased October edition, which was pulled by the publication’s board of directors before it could be distributed on campus. Articles in the unreleased issue include a call for the United States to “begin the implementation of the death penalty at a grand scale” and a defense of the Spanish Inquisition.
Many of the materials reviewed by The Crimson were shared with the Salient’s board of directors in October, prompting the board to announce the suspension of the magazine’s operations on Oct. 26.
It's fascists all the way down.
I reserve the right to reprint any email correspondence on my blog.
If you want to keep your correspondence private, please tell me.
A member of the Democratic wing of the Democratic party, and a fan of Bernie who thinks Neoliberal (DLC/New Dem) trickle down conomics sucks.Mechanical Engineer with a background in defense, electronics packaging, medical & food equipment, transportation, and manufacturing.
In my spare time (Hah!), I am the developer of the Firefox addon, bbCode for Web Extensions (bbCodeWebEx).
I have two cats, a black cat, and a gray and white long hair cat, who keep me on my toes. (Because he keeps attacking my feet)
I am a Jew and a Zionist, who is married to a woman with exquisitely bad taste in men, and I have two remarkable children with her.
