Because Of Course He Did

On the matter of self-driving cars running over and killing cats, the Apartheid Era Emerald Heir Pedo Guy™ is firmly on the side of killing cats.

Disappointing, but not surprising. 

In between trying to become the world’s first trillionaire, expanding his defense contracting business, fighting the “woke mind virus,” feuding with Sam Altman, and overseeing half a dozen tech companies, Elon Musk has somehow found the time to wade into the debate over whether it’s good or bad that a rogue Waymo robotaxi (by the company’s own admission) seems to have run over and killed a beloved bodega cat in San Francisco.

In case you somehow missed it, a cat was run over earlier this week, leading to ongoing anger against the reputed culprit (Waymo). The feline, whose name was KitKat—but who also went by the moniker “the mayor of 16th street”—was a longtime staple of Randa’s Market in the city’s Mission neighborhood. KitKat’s owner, Mike Zeidan, told The San Francisco Standard that his pet was hit by a robotaxi late Monday night. “Honestly, man, it’s difficult,” Zeidan said. “He was a one-of-a-kind cat. He brought joy to so many people. People loved him.”

To their credit, Waymo admitted that it was one of their cars that did this, but Elon's response was basically, "Who cares, it's just a dead cat."

……… 

On Friday, as a means of adding his two cents, Musk retweeted an account that had defended driverless cars as being a savior, not a killer, of neighborhood pets. “5.4 million cats are hit by cars every year in the U.S., and 97 percent of those cats die from their injuries,” @WholeMarsBlog wrote. “Autonomy will dramatically reduce that number.”

“True, many pets will be saved by autonomy,” Musk commented.

It’s great that Elon could take time out of his busy schedule to participate in the discourse around KitKat. Big picture, Musk is launching a robotaxi service, so we all know which dog he has in this fight. But the truth of the matter is, we don’t really know if autonomous cars would reduce the number of feline deaths.

Gee, yet another case where Elon musk determines that the only moral decision is one that makes him more money.

 

No Blogging Tonight

 I think that I am brewing something.

The 9 Billion Names of God

One of the failed former CEOs of Intel is working to facilitate the return of Jesus through AI.

So basically, he's looking to rapture the world using artificial intelligence.

You know, it seems to me that I might see part of the recent problems that Intel has had.

In March, three months after being forced out of his position as the CEO of Intel and sued by shareholders, Patrick Gelsinger took the reins at Gloo, a technology company made for what he calls the “faith ecosystem” – think Salesforce for churches, plus chatbots and AI assistants for automating pastoral work and ministry support.

The former CEO’s career pivot is taking place as the US tech industry returns to the political realm as a major revenue stream. Some of its most prominent present-day leaders have funded Donald Trump’s re-election and renewed their pursuit of government contracts as the second Trump administration has revitalized religious conservatism in Washington DC.

Now Gloo’s executive chair and head of technology (who’s largely free of the shareholder suit), Gelsinger has made it a core mission to soft-power advance the company’s Christian principles in Silicon Valley, the halls of Congress and beyond, armed with a fundraised war chest of $110m. His call to action is also a pitch for AI aligned with Christian values: tech products like those built by Gloo, many of which are built on top of existing large language models, but adjusted to reflect users’ theological beliefs.

“My life mission has been [to] work on a piece of technology that would improve the quality of life of every human on the planet and hasten the coming of Christ’s return,” he said.

This reminds me of an Arthur C. Clarke short story.

Python Foundation rejects $1.5M grant with no-DEI strings • The Register

In a world where Tech Bros fall over each other to out bigot each other, it is refreshing to see the Python Foundation telling the National Science Foundation telling the NSF to put their $1,500,000.00 where the moon don't shine, because the grant demands that the organization cease all anti-discrimination activities.

I looked at recent data on executive compensation at the Foundation, and no one there got more than $200,000/year in 2023, yet more evidence that Dan Ariely,'s research on compensation, which shows that excessive pay reduces performance, is true.

The Python Software Foundation (PSF) has walked away from a $1.5 million government grant and you can blame the Trump administration's war on woke for effectively weakening some open source security.

The programming non-profit's deputy executive director Loren Crary said in a blog post today that the National Science Foundation (NSF) had offered $1.5 million to address structural vulnerabilities in Python and the Python Package Index (PyPI), but the Foundation quickly became dispirited with the terms of the grant it would have to follow.

"These terms included affirming the statement that we 'do not, and will not during the term of this financial assistance award, operate any programs that advance or promote DEI [diversity, equity, and inclusion], or discriminatory equity ideology in violation of Federal anti-discrimination laws,'" Crary noted. "This restriction would apply not only to the security work directly funded by the grant, but to any and all activity of the PSF as a whole."

To make matters worse, the terms included a provision that if the PSF was found to have violated that anti-DEI diktat, the NSF reserved the right to claw back any previously disbursed funds, Crary explained.

By way of perspective, that $1.5 million is about ⅓ of their annual operating budget.

The Python Foundation is a  501(c)(3) not-for profit, and donations are tax deductible, and they manage thousands of volunteers working on development of the eponymous cross-platform FOSS programming language.

I have no opinion as to its merits as a programming language, but it is very widely used. (I'm not a programmer)

Sweet

The DC Bar has told law firms that cut a deal with Trump to either drop their clients who are challenging federal government actions or secure a waiver from them.

It makes sense under my understanding of legal ethics: 

Months after law firms made deals with President Trump to ward off punitive executive orders, the ethics committee of the District of Columbia Bar is warning that such arrangements may require firms to drop or obtain waivers from all clients who have interests at odds with the government.

An opinion issued by the committee this week could bring new scrutiny to several prominent law firms that chose to strike deals with Mr. Trump instead of challenging his executive orders targeting them.

Any lawyer or law firm that contemplates making a deal with a government that includes conditions that may limit or shape their practices, the opinion said, “must examine whether the arrangement would prevent the firm from providing conflict-free representation to clients — existing and new — who are adverse to the relevant government.”

………

Even though the committee’s opinions are not legally binding, they are considered authoritative and are often cited in disciplinary proceedings brought by the office that prosecutes legal ethics violations, which is overseen by the District of Columbia Court of Appeals. Allegations of a conflict can also be important if a law firm is sued for malpractice.

The opinion did not specifically mention Mr. Trump. But it indirectly referred to his administration’s pressure on law firms not to challenge his policies, citing a Justice Department memo issued in May that says the administration will treat any firm that represents a client in a dispute with any executive branch agency as having a conflict with the entire executive branch — not just that agency.

………

Four targeted law firms filed lawsuits, and a series of federal judges in those cases have blocked Mr. Trump’s orders against specific firms as unconstitutional.

But at least nine struck deals with him, agreeing to provide millions of dollars in free legal services to causes he favors. The exact details of the arrangements are murky. Mr. Trump announced them on social media, but it is not clear whether those are formal written deals that detail the scope of the obligations the firms have agreed to, as opposed to vague handshake agreements.

At least two of those firms, Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison and Kirkland & Ellis, are now working on a range of matters for the Commerce Department, The New York Times has reported. A personal lawyer to Mr. Trump has also connected a third, Skadden Arps, with the department about working on trade deals for the Trump administration.

………

To avoid an ethics problem, the opinion said, such a firm must drop the client, pull out of its agreement with the government or obtain a conflict-of-interest waiver from the client. But, the opinion also stated, to validly consent to such a waiver, the client must be fully informed of all the ways in which a firm’s deal with the government might create a conflict and the potential consequences.

To quote the old joke, "I think we already established that, now we're just negotiating."

They whored themselves to Trump, and the Bar is acknowledging this fact.

About Graham Platner

Am I concerned about Reddit posts he made 20 years ago?

No, I am not.

Am I concerned about his Totenkopf tattoo on his chest, which he got on a drunken bender with fellow marines when he was 23?

Yes, I am. 

I am not concerned about the tattoo itself, but rather his response, which should have been, "I was a 23 year old idiot, and I should fave addressed it sooner.

There are a number of people running for Senate on the Democratic nomination in Maine, but he is one of the two front-runners, the other one being the solidly centrist septuagenarian Janet Mills.

I still favor him, because I'm sick to death of the current generation of feckless, cowardly, and careerist Democratic Party leadership, and Mills was aggressively recruited by the hapless and hopeless Chuck Schumer. 

Needless to say, we can be sure that the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) will all the stops to defeat him, and that these efforts will not end with the primary, but the latest University of New Hampshire poll, which covered the time where the Reddit and tattoo stories came out, still shows him with 58%.

I think what is clear is that  the Democratic Party rank and file are sick to death of the current party leadership, and that the support of Schumer is a negative for Mills.

The Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) is worried about Plattner becoming another Fetterman, but Fetterman's politics never had the specific policy proposals that Plattner does, even before his stroke and subsequent transformation to Joe Lieberman of the 2020s.

I'm not a Maine voter, but if I were, I would support Plattner.

As an aside in the 2020 election Susan Collins beat Sarah Gideon by a solid 9 points, despite Gideon out-raising her ($75 million to $30 milliion) and outspending her ($63 million to $29½ million) in the race.  (Maine's population is about 1.4 million)

The Gideon campaign was still frantically fundraising on election day, because the consultants make bank off fund raising.

We do not need a repeat of that. 

TikTok of the Day

This is beautiful. 

If you want to see the original on TikTok, you can do so here.

Until I can find a way to embed TikTok videos that do not auto-play, I'll be downloading the video and re-upload it to Youtube.

Basically, a delivery driver got hassled by the recipients of a package for his rainbow earing, and his response is one for the ages.

There is no Perfect Jack-O'-Lant……… .

I was misinformed.

Linkage

• Scientists Finally Reveal Biological Basis of Long COVID Brain Fog (SciTechDaily) Hopefully, they are right, and hopefully there can be a treatment developed for this.
• Even-year elections are coming to New York’s towns, counties. NYC could be next. (Gothamist) Good news.  Hopefully it will stop things like the takeover, destruction, and looting of Spring Valley Schools by the Orthodox Jewish community there.
• Antarctica is starting to look a lot like Greenland—and that isn’t good (Ars Technica) Looking like Greenland means melting.
• You’re About to Learn How Part of the Sausage Gets Made (New York Times) A quick primer on synthetic and natural sausage skins, including a, "wurst cases" pun.
• The Secret Campaign to Silence Critics of a Hospital Real Estate Empire (Mother Jones) First, if you don't want to be criticized for defrauding your shareholders, don't defraud your shareholders, second, this CEO needs to be frog marched out of his office in handcuffs.
• Dear Tech Evangelists: Have You Tried “Move Slow and Make Things”?  (Literary Hub) No, they haven't because they lack the smarts to make real work profitable.  They "win" by breaking the law.
• “Not Too Sweet” or Too Sweet to Fail? (TASTE) An interesting observation on the role of sugar in Asian cooking, and how Americans use too much sugar.
• A Short Seller’s AI Exercise Paints a Dire Picture of Private Equity (Institutional Investor) AI determines that Private Equity is worthless as it is directing massive investments for AI.  Sharper than a serpent's tooth.
• A religious upbringing in childhood is linked to poorer mental and cognitive health in later life (Psypost) Not a surprise.

A dog walks into a bar……… (The world's oldest jokes)

Rats Returns to Democratic Party

I am referring, of course, to Hakeem Jeffries who literally endorsed Zorhan Mamdami at the last possible moment, about a day before early voting started.

I still want to see him primaried, and if he suffers the fate of Tom Foley, I will not be disappointed:

Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the House Democratic leader, endorsed Zohran Mamdani for New York City mayor on Friday, the latest sign that skeptical party officials are swallowing concerns about their nominee as Election Day nears.

The endorsement by Mr. Jeffries, a Brooklyn Democrat, is more meaningful than most. A national party leader, he is also one of the city’s most prominent Black politicians and has been a sharp critic of the Democratic Socialists of America, which counts Mr. Mamdani as a member. 

Yeah, Jeffries is a corporate stooge with dead eyes, but he knows which way the wind is blowing. 

………

The endorsement came in written form just a day before early voting is set to begin. People familiar with his thinking said that Mr. Jeffries had planned to announce the endorsement earlier but pushed it back because of the ongoing government shutdown.

Bullsh%$.  He was hoping for Zamdami to have a major gaffe, or for Cuomo's opposition research to come up with something.

He endorsed because he had to endorse

………

Several high-profile New York Democrats remain uncommitted to their party’s nominee. New York’s senators — Chuck Schumer, the Senate Democratic leader, and Kirsten Gillibrand — have not made endorsements in the mayor’s race and appear unlikely to. Jay Jacobs, the state party chairman, said outright that he would not endorse Mr. Mamdani, citing the candidate’s democratic socialist beliefs and sharp criticism of Israel.

Yeah, Gillibrand and Schumer should be primaried as well.

For them, "Vote blue, no matter who," only applies when corporate stooges are running.

The Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) are a bunch of cowardly incompetents who need to be fired.

I'm Thinking That Someone is Juicing the Statistics

Hmmmmm………It turns out that the latest inflation figures include some odd numbers, specifically, it it includes a value for owners' equivalent rent that is significantly lower than it should be.

Seeing as how Trump fired the head of the BLS because he did not like the numbers that he was getting, it seems to me that having such a number as an outlier, as it is a completely synthetic metric. 

Because of this, it is an easy place to mess with the numbers, because there is no underlying reality to them.

The delayed release of the Consumer Price Index today, cobbled together with perhaps not all the staff and means that the Bureau of Labor Statistics has normally available due to the government shutdown, was perhaps the best that could be done under the circumstances.

But there were a few things that were off, the most important of which was Owner’s Equivalent of Rent (OER), a huge component in CPI, accounting for 26% of overall CPI, for 33% of core CPI, and for 44% of core services CPI: It was a massive historic outlier.

OER rose by only 0.13% in September from August (blue line in the chart), according to the BLS today, compared to 0.38% in the prior month, and compared to the 12-month range between +0.27% (May) and +0.41% (July). Something went wrong there, and given its huge weight, OER significantly pushed down the month-to-month readings of overall CPI, core CPI, and core services CPI. 

If this situation with OER hadn’t happened, the inflation readings today would have been a lot hotter than they were, particularly core services CPI where OER weighs 44% and core CPI where OER weighs 33%.

OER is not a measure of rent. The measure of rent is the Rent CPI. OER is a stand-in for the costs of homeownership. OER indirectly reflects the expenses of homeownership such as homeowners’ insurance, HOA fees, property taxes, and maintenance. It’s the only measure for those expenses in the CPI. It is based on what a large group of homeowners estimates their home would rent for, with the assumption that homeowners would try to recoup their cost increases by raising the rent.

If I were to try and mess with the numbers, this is actly the thing I would use.,

Headline of the Day

Elon Musk Doesn’t Give a Fuck About Poverty

—Gizmodo on Elon Musk claim that he is somehow creating a techno utopia.

First, a major raspberry to Gizmodo, because while the headline that you read on the web page says the above, the metadata, the thing that you would see in a bookmark of the page or a Google link, says, "Elon Musk Couldn't Care Less About Poverty."

Also, I do think that Apartheid Era Emerald Heir Pedo Guy™ DOES care about poverty.  He loves poverty, and insecurity, at least for other people.

If people do not lead desperate and precarious lives, then they would not feel compelled to work for an abusive sexual harasser boss like Elon Musk.

In a just world, the people that he abuses would leave him, and he would not be able to claim credit for their work.

Tesla held its third-quarter earnings call on Wednesday, and CEO Elon Musk seemed particularly focused on getting his $1 trillion payday. But before the world’s wealthiest man made the case for why he deserves to be the first trillionaire, he wanted to make sure you understand one thing: He’s going to help abolish poverty.

………

The billionaire has long teased the idea that the future will be filled with so many robots and so much automation that nobody will have to work. It’s an idea that was incredibly popular in the 20th century, not just in science fiction but among serious academics. Back in the 1960s, it was just taken as a given that people of the year 2000 would only work maybe 20 hours per week. And beyond that, by the mid-21st century, no one would have to work at all.

………

In reality, Musk does not give a fuck about poverty. To guys like Musk, people who are poor are just getting what they deserve. And all it takes is a quick search of his X account to see how often he says things to degrade homeless people.

………

Musk believes that the U.S. is built on meritocracy, where people who have billions of dollars obviously deserve that money, and people who are poor deserve to stay poor. He demonstrated that time and again with DOGE, claiming that he was rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse. The “fraud,” as he saw it, was people who were undeserving of the government benefits they received, whether it was food stamps or Social Security, a program he called a Ponzi scheme.

Yes, I know it's not, "Say fuck January," but I needed to discuss the whole metadata thing.

Headline of the Day

Libertarianism, 13, Dies in Argentina Chainsaw Accident

—The Nerd Reich

Yes, I know, this hed is from a few weeks ago, but it's new to me.

It is, of course, about Argentine President Javier Milei asking, and getting, a bailout from Donald Trump/ 

Here We Go Again

With rising interest rates, and rising house prices, potential buyers are heading back to more exotic and risky mortgage products.

We're partying like it's 2008: 

Mortgage demand overall weakened again last week, even as interest rates fell slightly. For those still in the market, though, they are looking increasingly to adjustable-rate loans to get the lowest interest rate possible.

………

For those who are buying or refinancing, somewhat riskier adjustable-rate mortgages are gaining in popularity, as they offer lower interest rates. Rate terms on ARMs can be fixed for up to 10 years, but the loans are considered riskier, as they can adjust higher depending on market conditions when the fixed term expires. 

It appears that we have learned nothing in the past 17 years. 

Speaking of Unity

New York State Attorney General Leticia James has established a web site to allow Nwew Yorkers to upload evidence of ICE misconduct.

Now we know who is watching the watchmen, in New York state, at least. 

The New York state attorney general, Letitia James, rolled out a “Federal Action Reporting Portal” form urging New York residents to share photos and videos of federal immigration enforcement action across the state, just a day after a high-profile ICE raid rattled Manhattan’s Chinatown and prompted hundreds to come out in protest.

A US congressman revealed in a Wednesday press conference that four US citizens were arrested and held for “nearly 24 hours” after Tuesday’s raid. Protests broke out in New York on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings.

“Every New Yorker has the right to live without fear or intimidation,” James wrote in a statement announcing the portal.

“If you witnessed and documented ICE activity yesterday, I urge you to share that footage with my office. We are committed to reviewing these reports and assessing any violations of law.”

Even if they are federal agents, ICE is still subject to the jurisdiction of the states and municipalities in which they operate. 

Maybe the city should keep Rikers Island open just for them.

An Interesting Perspective on China Trade Sanctions

Specifically, Arnaud Bertrand is suggersting that China has been slow walking negotiations until they haD developed alternatives to items that were only available in the United States, particularly helium.

Here's a question I know many are wondering about: why did China wait until now to use rare earths as leverage against the US? Why not in the first Trump administration when the US started the trade hostilities? Or when the Biden administration unleashed the chips export controls 3 years ago?

I just watched a fascinating explanation by a Chinese analyst and, unexpectedly, a big part of the explanation is... helium. 

 I had no idea but as he explains (source here), all the way until 2022 China imported 95% of its helium and most of it was controlled by the US. Of the world's ten largest helium producers, four were American companies, and the remaining six all used American technology. 

Helium isn't just a party balloons gas: it has plenty of industrial applications for things such as quantum computing, rocket technology, MRI machines, as a coolant for chip lithography equipment, etc. 

In a nutshell what he's explaining is that with helium the US had an even stronger card to play if China ever used the rare earths card. 

The Chinese embarked on a crash program to develop helium extraction technologies and to nutralize other US controlled choke-points.

Now that this has been achieved, they can throw choke-points the United States' way. 

Even if you don't admire the player, you have to admire the play. 

In Union There is Strength

The University of Indiana is upset that their newspaper, the Indiana Daily Student, is reporting on news, so the university admins  decided to stop printing the paper except for 5 advertising fluff editions a year for events attracting alumni. (It would remain online)

When the journals at the paper said that they would front page stories about problems at the university in their homecoming edition, administrators shut down printing completely.

In response, management at the Purdue Exponent, who own their own printing press, printed the homecoming issue of the Daily Student and got the copies back to campus so that they could kiosks in time for homecoming.

To hed quotes Aesop.  (Probably, we don't know if Aesop ever really existed)

Last week, Indiana University administrators fired the school newspaper’s (Indiana Daily Student) advisor and ordered students to stop printing the paper.

The student journalists say that University administrators didn’t like the student paper’s decision to increasingly criticize University President Pamela Whitten’s decision to coddle the authoritarian Trump administration, or, at best, remain silent as the Trump administration and state leaders take direct aim at free expression, the First Amendment, and any curriculum teaching about race or gender discrimination.

Enter students at the Purdue student paper, The Exponent, who stepped up and traveled two hours from West Lafayette to Bloomington to help Indiana University students deliver a physical paper to local students anyway:

………

Like many broader mainstream media outlets, what academic administrators want is a sort of pseudo-news that’s devoid of anything that might upset anyone (think of a Ken Doll with all the important bits sanded off to a smooth hump). A sort of feckless simulacrum of journalism that focuses on “safe” issues that, most importantly, don’t upset right wing Americans:

 “According to an Oct. 7 email the IndyStar obtained, Rodenbush passed on guidance from the Media School administration that the IDS’s print publication should solely focus on a special theme, such as homecoming or fall sports, and contain “no other news at all, and particularly no traditional front page news coverage.”

It's gone viral now, so I think that now that this whole sordid affair has gone viral, President Whitten is not oong for her position.

Maybe instead, she should have just made Bari Weiss editor in chief. 

First Setting Fire to the Constitution

 And now, demolishing the East Wing of the White House.

This is after promising no demolitions, and also, the price has gone up by 50%. \

President Donald Trump on Wednesday raised the estimate of his planned White House ballroom, saying that the project would cost $300 million — up from his initial claim of $200 million — and defended the decision to tear down the East Wing amid widespread complaints. 

To quote Declan Patrick MacManus, "I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.." 

In the Middle of a Government Shutdown, 2 Gulfstream 700s

Yeah, Kristi "Ice Barbi" Noem has had the US Coast Guard buy her 2 Gulfstream jets for $172 Million.

Way to steward the taxpayer's money, you Saracen pig dog. 

I guess that she wants space for privacy while she achieves the mile high club with Corey Lewandowski. 

There was money in the budget, about $50 million, for a Gulfstream 5, but I guess she just needed more space, so she pulled money from somewhere else.  (I think that the technical term for this is embezzlement)

In Another Episode of "Leopards Eating Faces"

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

— Adrian Bott (@Cavalorn) October 16, 2015

Karma, Elon

In an extremely amusing article at Techdirt, they note that , "Elon Musk Discovers What Hierarchy Actually Means."

In this case, he is upset because, despite beinmg the world's richest man, NASA is looking at another way of getting to the moon because he's sh%$ posting about Donald Trump.  (Yeah, there is also budget and timeline slippage, but we all know what this really about)

The Tech Bro sh%$ heels like Musk, and Andreeson, and  Thiel, and Zuckerberg always thought that they would be running things when their much anticipated authoritarian oligarchy arrived.

It does not work that way, just ask Hugo Junkers. 

Elon Musk is having a very bad week. The man who bought Twitter for $44 billion to secure unaccountable power over public discourse is discovering what unaccountable power actually looks like when wielded by someone who understands dominance better than he does.

Trump just stripped SpaceX of a government contract and handed it to Jeff Bezos. Musk’s response? Rage-tweeting at Trump officials, including the immortal question “why are you gay”—the rhetorical sophistication we’ve come to expect from the richest man-child on the planet having a public meltdown because Daddy won’t give him what he wants.

This isn’t just delicious schadenfreude, though it is that. This is the neo-reactionary project—the Silicon Valley movement to restore hierarchy and reject democratic constraints—consuming its architects in real-time. A perfect demonstration that the oligarchs funding authoritarian politics fundamentally misunderstood what they were building.

………

Musk thought he’d bought partnership. He bought the privilege of being degraded publicly.

This is what Peter Thiel and Curtis Yarvin and the entire Silicon Valley neo-reactionary apparatus never quite explained to their fellow travelers: In the systems they’re building, someone has to be subordinate. The hierarchy they’re restoring doesn’t stop conveniently at their own necks. And Trump—whatever else he is—understands this instinctively. He knows that power in authoritarian systems isn’t demonstrated through competent governance or policy achievement. It’s demonstrated through the arbitrary exercise of dominance over those who thought themselves powerful.

……… 

This is the system they built. This is what they wanted—rule by the strong, unencumbered by democratic constraints, where power flows from dominance rather than from consent. They just thought they’d be the ones doing the dominating.

………

The man who bought Twitter because he wanted absolute control is learning what absolute control actually means when someone else has it. The irony would be poetic if it weren’t so terrifying. Because this isn’t just about Musk’s bruised ego. This is about oligarchs discovering that the authoritarian systems they funded don’t stop at the people they don’t like. Hierarchy has teeth. And those teeth point in every direction.

………

Welcome to the world you built, Elon. How’s it feel?

I am amused. 

 

Headline of the Day

Treat Big Tech like Big Tobacco

—Joel Wertheimer noting the obvious, big tech is a problem because they actively market a harmful product.

This ain't rocket science.

The tech bros are making their money by promoting body dysmorphia, bigotry, discrimination, ethnic cleansing, fraud, etc.

They want engagement (or in the case of crypto, marks) and they will actively harm people to get this.

The problem with Big Tobacco was not that it could charge excess prices because of its market power. The problem with Big Tobacco was that cigarettes were too cheap. Cigarettes caused both externalities to society and also internalities between the higher-level self that wanted to quit smoking and the primary self that could not quit an addictive substance. So, we taxed and regulated their use.

The fight regarding social media platforms has centered around antitrust and the sheer size of Big Tech companies. But these platforms are not so much a problem because they are big; they are big because they are a problem. Policy solutions need to actually address the main problem with the brain-cooking internet.

I love that bon mot, "Brain cooking internet."

………

For three decades, internet providers were merely passive hosts of third-party content, immune from liability faced by publishers. That grant of immunity was foundational, and the costs of such freedom were wildly outweighed by the benefits of the internet.

Both of these facts are no longer true. Social media companies are no longer passive hosts but active curators. And the costs of these products are now too high to ignore. They make us addicted to their apps with slot machine-style precision, and they are now helping creators fake reality with text-to-video generation.

The answer is not to destroy these companies or pull the government into the messy and probably unconstitutional world of directly regulating speech. The answer is to remove the special protections they have been granted and finally allow people harmed by these products to hold these companies liable.

………

Recommendation algorithms have allowed large platforms to turn our attention into a solved game. I say this with a lot of trepidation at a time when free speech is seriously threatened, particularly after seeing the harms that the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act wreaked on sex workers. But the time has come to amend Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA 230). Specifically, lawmakers should remove protections for platforms that actively promote content using reinforcement learning-based recommendation algorithms.

 The argument behind the safe harbor provisions was that websites which allowed users to share their opinions were like bookstores, and bookstores are not held liable for the content of their books.

On the other hand, newspapers ARE held liable for the content of the letters ot the editor that they publish, because they make a conscious decision about which letters to publish.

Their algorithms, and  soon their AI slop are conscious editorial decisions, and these decisions are made to the detriment of their users.

Mao Was Right About Landlords

Guess what?  Landlords now demanding their tenants' logins to their payroll systems.  (Alternate link here)

Whey want you to log in through an app called Argyle, which scrapes an enormous amount of data from your employer/payroll website.

I'm feeling charitable today, so I'll just suggest that landlords and executives at ApproveShield be arrested tried and jailed, and not, as Mao Zedong did, that the legal niceties be ignored and a bullet be put in their head.

Landlords are using a service that logs into a potential renter’s employer systems and scrapes their paystubs and other information en masse, potentially in violation of U.S. hacking laws, according to screenshots of the tool shared with 404 Media.

The screenshots highlight the intrusive methods some landlords use when screening potential tenants, taking information they may not need, or legally be entitled to, to assess a renter.

“This is a statewide consumer-finance abuse that forces renters to surrender payroll and bank logins or face homelessness,” one renter who was forced to use the tool and who saw it taking more data than was necessary for their apartment application told 404 Media. 404 Media granted the person anonymity to protect them from retaliation from their landlord or the services used.

……… 

The person said earlier this year they were verifying their income in order to start a lease at an apartment complex in Atlanta. The apartment complex used a tenant screening service called ApproveShield, the person said. The landlord required 60 days of pay history, or four pay stubs, the person said.

ApproveShield is in-part powered by a tool called Argyle, which verifies peoples’ income. It does this by having people log into their corporate employer HR services, such as Workday, and scraping information stored within. I’ve covered Argyle before, when I found it was linked to a wave of suspicious emails that offered people cash for their workplace login credentials. 

The renter said ApproveShield’s Argyle-powered widget asked them to log into their employer’s Workday. That's when they noticed something unusual.

“Argyle hijacked my live Workday session, stayed hidden from view, and downloaded every pay stub plus all W-4s back to 2024, each PDF seconds apart,” they said. “Workday audit logs show dozens of ‘Print’ events from two IPs from a MAC which I do not use,” they added, referring to a MAC address, a unique identifier assigned to each device on a network. 

Yeah, this is hacking.  Even if the accesses were approved by the renter, they would violate the terms of of service of literally every payroll system out there.

I know that jails are overcrowded, but we can let out some shoplifters and drug addicts to lock these people up forever.'

Or we can take off and nuke the site from orbit.  It's the only way to be sure. 

Yep, We're In a Recession

In economic news, there would have been essentially 0% growth in GDP in the first half of the year but for frantic spending to support the AI bubble.

Tell me that this does not sound like the DotBomb crash: 

U.S. GDP growth in the first half of 2025 was almost entirely driven by investment in data centers and information processing technology, according to Harvard economist Jason Furman. Excluding these technology-related categories, Furman calculated in a Sept. 27 post on X.com GDP growth would have been just 0.1% on an annualized basis, a near standstill that underlines the increasingly pivotal role of high-tech infrastructure in shaping macroeconomic outcomes.

Furman’s findings, shared online and echoed by financial analysts including Robert Armstrong of the Financial Times‘ Unhedged (the same writer who coined the term “TACO trade’), echo several months of observations on the remarkable surge in data-center infrastructure. In August, Renaissance Macro Research estimated, to date in 2025, the dollar value contributed to GDP growth by AI data-center buildout had surpassed U.S. consumer spending for the first time ever. That’s remarkable considering consumer spending is two-thirds of GDP.

Technically, as Furman notes, investment in information-processing equipment and software was only 4% of U.S. GDP for the first half of 2025, yet it also accounted for fully 92% of GDP growth over that period. Furman added it’s probably not the case the U.S. economy would have recorded almost no expansion at all absent this buildout, reasoning that “absent the AI boom we would probably have lower interest rates [and] electricity prices, thus some additional growth in other sectors. In very rough terms that could maybe make up about half of what we got from the AI boom.” But still, it’s big.

 Our economy doesn't make anything, it just supports the financial casino and confidence men.

And it's all of us who are paying for this, first through higher interest rates and electric bills, and then later, when we bail out the fraudsters and the banksters who sold the fraudsters. 

Because They are Evil Rat-F%$#s Who Fetishize Proprietary IP

Not particularly bright reporters are wondering why people are freaking the f%$# out over the acquisition of Arduino by Qualcomm.

It's not just because it means that what has been an open source of inexpensive computer hardware is being taken over by a for profit company, it is because Qualcomm's entire business DNA is predicated on the abusive use of our dysfunctional IP system to extract excessive rents.

Arduino is not just being taken over by a for-profit company, it is being taken over by an ineluctably evil for-profit company. 

On 7 October, the open-source hardware community woke up to surprising news. Qualcomm, the tech giant behind the Snapdragon chips found in billions of smartphones, tablets, and laptops worldwide, had acquired Arduino, an Italian hardware company known for its open-source microcontrollers and educational electronics starter kits.

The announcement came out of nowhere. Arduino wasn’t known to be courting a buyer, and no hint or rumor of the deal leaked beforehand—a rarity for any tech acquisition brokered in 2025. It left fans of Arduino and open-source hardware concerned about what it means for Arduino’s future.

………

The company wants to create an ecosystem where developers can “use one of our development kits to build prototypes, can source the silicon from a distributor, and go and build everything on their own—without or with very little help from Qualcomm,” says [Qualcomm VP of industrial IoT Manvinder] Singh.

Let me translate, "This ecosystem will charge you up the wazoo if you want to move from personal LEGO robots to sell any of your work."

That's how Qualcomm makes it money. 

Ecch (Tweet) of the Day

This man simply walked into the fashion show wearing a garbage bag - and no one thought it was strange until security found him

pic.twitter.com/pZCRWyMNJ5

— Science girl (@gunsnrosesgirl3) October 20, 2025

This is the apotheoisis of high fashion.

Quote of the Day

Protests Are Violent When The Police Get Violent

—Duncan "Atrios" Black, noting that violent protests are relatively rare except when the police riot against protestors, and that the "No Kings" protests were non violent because the cops decided not to be violent themselves

Whenever you see violence in a protest, starting from the assumption assuming that the police are the primary agents of violence is simply common sense.

The Cossacks Work for the Czar

The Washington Post has an exclusive where they document how Secretary of State Marco Rubio agreed to hand over MS-13 gang members turned informants to El Salvador, where they would be murdered.

It's clear why the Salvadoran autocrat wanted these people returned, because he had cut a deal with MS-13 to turn a blind eye toward drug running if they kept the crime rate down.

In the days before the Trump administration deported hundreds of Venezuelan immigrants to a notorious prison in El Salvador, the president of that country demanded something for himself: the return of nine MS-13 gang leaders in U.S. custody.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in a March 13 phone call with Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, promised the request would be fulfilled, according to officials familiar with the conversation. But there was one obstacle: Some of the MS-13 members Bukele wanted were “informants” under the protection of the U.S. government, Rubio told him.

To deport them to El Salvador, Attorney General Pam Bondi would need to terminate the Justice Department’s arrangements with those men, Rubio said. He assured Bukele that Bondi would complete that process and Washington would hand over the MS-13 leaders.

Rubio’s extraordinary pledge illustrates the extent to which the Trump administration was willing to meet Bukele’s demands as it negotiated what would become one of the signature agreements of President Donald Trump’s early months in office. While the outlines of the quid pro quo have been public for months, the Trump administration’s willingness to renege on secret arrangements made with informants who had aided U.S. investigations has not been previously reported. 

The deal between Rubio and Bukele granted the administration access to a sprawling foreign prison dubbed the Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, that would be integral to Trump’s ongoing efforts to conduct the “largest deportation in American history.”

The deal would give Bukele possession of individuals who threatened to expose the alleged deals his government made with MS-13 to help achieve El Salvador’s historic drop in violence, officials said. For the Salvadoran president, a return of the informants was viewed as critical to preserving his tough-on-crime reputation. It was also a key step in hindering an ongoing U.S. investigation into his government’s relationship with MS-13, a gang famous for displays of excessive violence in the United States and elsewhere.

So, Rubio, and Trump, who he works for, conspired to help the Salvadoran conceal its collusion with drug traffickers.

By Donald Trump's own definition, that makes Donald Trump and Marco Rubio terrorists. 

Nice Social Media Trolling, But

Gavin Newsom is still a corporate stooge.

Case in point, Newsom buried a bailout for fire liability for Southern California Edison in a bill nominally about protecting the environment.

Seriously, just f%$# the investor owned utilities.  Let them go bankruipt, and pick up their infrastructure for pennies on the dollar and make a publicly owned utility.

Standing behind a lectern emblazoned with the words “Cutting Utility Bills,” Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law last month a package of energy bills that he said “reduces the burden on ratepayers.”

Tucked into one of those bills: a paragraph that could allow Southern California Edison to shift billions of dollars of Eaton fire damage costs to its customers.

Among other things, the bill allows Edison to start charging customers for any Eaton fire costs exceeding the state’s $21-billion wildfire fund.

“I was shocked to see that,” said April Maurath Sommer, executive director of the Wild Tree Foundation, which tracks state government actions on utility-sparked fires. “It’s effectively a bailout.”

Other amendments in the 231-page bill known as SB 254 helped not just Edison, but all three of the state’s biggest for-profit utilities, further limiting the costs that they and their shareholders would face if the companies’ equipment ignited a catastrophic wildfire.

Previous legislation championed by Newsom, a 2019 bill known as AB 1054, already had sharply limited the utilities’ liabilities for wildfires they cause.  

I have no problem with Newsom trolling Donald Trump on social media, but he does not deserve your vote for any position in any Democratic primary. 

And They Are So Dumb! ⃰

You know, when a reporter makes a post commenting on a story from the New York Times noting indications of selective prosecutions and prosecutorial misconduct, it's best not to get into a colloquy with that reporter about the veracity of this story if you are the "attorney" who made the presentment to the grand jury.

But we are talking about Lindsey Halligan here, the faux acting US attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, so instead, she sent numerous "self destructing" Signal messages to Lawfare reporter, and Harvard trained lawyer, Anna Bower, which were dutifully screen shotted and reported on.

When Bauer contacted the DoJ while she was writing the story, Halligan wrote to her to say retroactively that this was all off the record.

Yeah, it don't work that way.

^*Why yes, I am quoting Blazing Saddles.  It's the line delivered bv Cleavon Little after successfully taking himself hostage, "Ooh, baby, you are so talented! ……… And they are so dumb!"

I Cannot Believe That I Am Objecting to a Poop Joke

Not exactly the epitome of good taste I'm generally a fan of sh%$ posting when done in good faith and with good humor, which is why I find Donald Trump's AI generated video of his strapping into an F-18 and dropping excrement on "No Kings" protestors in to be in remarkably bad taste.

Then again, tacky kitsch is kind of his thing:

Claim:

On Oct. 18, 2025, the day people across the U.S. attended "No Kings" protests to decry U.S. President Donald Trump, Trump posted an AI-generated video of himself in a fighter jet, dropping a brown substance on protesters while wearing a crown. 

Rating: True 

It appears that Trump "Borrowed" the video from the individual (I would hesitate to call him a "Creator" much less an "Artist") who had AI generate the video.

Kenny Loggins, whose song Danger Zone was used as the sound track without his permission was profoundly unamused by this development.

I will note that this is not the most outrageous thing done by a member of the Trump administration this weekend though.

That prize would to JD Vance subjecting his own security detail to a rain of shrapnel to create a social media moment for him to exploit.

They have exceed my worst my imagination could conjure up once again. 

 

Quote of the Day

Many of These Are in Blood-Red States, the Kind of Places Where It’s Impossible to Find a Readable Copy of Atlas Shrugged Because Every Page of Every Copy Is Stuck Together. 

—Cory Doctorow, discussing how much people love their municipally operated internet service providers, even in the reddest states

Truer than taxes this is. 

The Term is "Glasshole"

The folks at Gizmodo think that there may be a backlash coming against the current crop of "smart" glasses.

Gee, I wonder why people would object to folks wearing hardware which surreptitiously records everything around them.

People hated Google Glass for this reason, and they will hate these for the same reason. 

We've already had security warnings of cree[ps using Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses on campus to film students without their knowledge or consent.

I'm sure mark Zuckerberg thinks that these are neat, but Zuckerberg is a creep's creep himself.

No, just no. 

Betteridge's Law Says No

Dan Froomkin asks, "Is the New York Times finally getting real about Trump?"

The New York Times is culturally unable to admit error, and for them to cover Trump as he actually is would be to admit error.

Another simple answer to a simple question. 

^*Betteridge's law of headlines is, "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no."

Franc Kafka to the White Courtesy Phone

From the Anna Russel Department, ⃰ we have a decision from the FCC deciding not to require ISPs to list all of their junk fees because they charge so many that it would be an undue burden on them.

Yep, you got that right, their wrongdoing is so egregious that it would that they should not be required to tell the consumer the consumer.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr says Internet service providers shouldn’t have to list every fee they charge. Responding to a request from cable and telecom lobby groups, he is proposing to eliminate a rule that requires ISPs to itemize various fees in broadband price labels that must be made available to consumers.

The rule took effect in April 2024 after the FCC rejected ISPs’ complaints that listing every fee they created would be too difficult. The rule applies specifically to recurring monthly fees “that providers impose at their discretion, i.e., charges not mandated by a government.”

ISPs could comply with the rule either by listing the fees or by dropping the fees altogether and, if they choose, raising their overall prices by a corresponding amount. But the latter option wouldn’t fit with the strategy of enticing customers with a low advertised price and hitting them with the real price on their monthly bills. The broadband price label rules were created to stop ISPs from advertising misleadingly low prices.

This week, Carr scheduled an October 28 vote on a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) that proposes eliminating several of the broadband-label requirements. One of the rules in line for removal requires ISPs to “itemize state and local passthrough fees that vary by location.” The FCC would seek public comment on the plan before finalizing it.

………

The proposal is part of Car’s “Delete, Delete, Delete” initiative that aims to eliminate as many rules as possible. In the Delete, Delete, Delete proceeding, cable lobby group NCTA and other broadband industry groups asked the FCC to ditch the list-every-fee requirement and other broadband label rules.

The FCC was required by Congress to implement broadband-label rules, but the Carr FCC says the law doesn’t “require itemizing pass through fees that vary by location.”

Sure, Jan.  

^*As Anna Russel would say, "I'm not making this up, you know."

And It's Off Again

5 days ago, I suggested that Netanyahu would do something to destroy the cease fire. 

It appears that I was wrong only with regard to the timing.

Israel on Sunday launched its heaviest wave of attacks on Gaza since a fragile cease-fire took hold a week ago and said it had temporarily suspended humanitarian aid after accusing Hamas of violating the truce by firing on its soldiers, killing two.

After nightfall, the Israeli military said in a statement that it had “begun the renewed enforcement of the cease-fire” after carrying out a series of significant strikes against Hamas targets and in accordance with a directive from the government.

The deadly flare-up of violence on Sunday and the temporary suspension of aid were the most serious tests yet of the cease-fire, which was negotiated under heavy pressure by the Trump administration and signed with great fanfare by President Trump himself.

You can never be too pessimistic or too cynical about events in the Middle East.

Not a Fan of NY Gov Kathy Hochul

But the fact that she just signed a bill banning NY landlords colluding on rents using RealPage and similar software was the right thing to do.

The cynic in me will assume that she understood the electoral dynamics of vetoing the bill, and chose the better part of valor.

Building owners and property managers will no longer be able to use algorithm-based software to artificially inflate New Yorkers’ rents as a result of a bill signed into law by Gov. Kathy Hochul on Thursday.

The new legislation updates the state’s antitrust laws to include the algorithmic software and comes after the U.S Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against RealPage, a company that uses algorithms to analyze public and private rental data — including vacancies and lease renewal rates — in order to give landlords and property managers price recommendations.

The Council of Economic Advisors estimated that price-fixing algorithms cost renters nationwide $3.8 billion more in inflated rents in 2023.

………

New York is not the only state to ban the use of algorithmic rental price-fixing software. California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a similar bill into law earlier this month.

And in May, Jersey City became the first municipality in the Garden State to ban landlords from using AI to set rental rates. Similar bans have also been enacted in cities like Philadelphia and Minneapolis.

 Even if Hochul did the right thing for the basest of political reasons, she still did the right thing.

 

I Generally Don't Comment on the Inner Workings of the Catholic Church

But reports that Pope Leo intends to shut down Opus Dei piques my interest.

I am not particularly interested in the Dan Brown tinfoil hat stuff, but considering the organizations long record of supporting right wing despots and aggressively intervening in secular politics, the elimination of the organization is a good thing.

As reported in Christopher Hale (a political operative and writer who ran Catholic outreach for President Obama's 2012 campaign), Pope Leo XIV is weeks away from approving statutes that would vaporize Opus Dei as a unified organization. The group that gave us both Da Vinci Code villains and connections to Spain's Fascist dictator Franco is about to become three separate entities. 

……

Msgr. Fernando Ocáriz scaled the meeting back to "minimum necessary business," church-speak for "let's stall and pray for a miracle." The miracle they got was Pope Leo deciding to finish what Francis started, except with less patience for organizations accused of functioning like cults that exploit vulnerable people through coercive recruitment.

Francis had already stripped them of authority over lay members in 2023 and ordered new statutes in 2022 amid mounting allegations of sexual abuse, labor violations, and demanding celibate numeraries live highly controlled lives marked by labor exploitation. By 2025, Opus Dei still hadn't complied.

None of the above abuses are why I think that their effective abolition, they will be split into 3 parts, with the leadership having authority only over themselves, is why I am interested the internal power struggles of the Vatican.

I will celebrate their abolition because they had a pivotal role in things like the Supreme Court's repeal of Roe v. Wade in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization.  (also Leonard Leo's Opus Dei affiliated lobbying)

Like the founding fathers, I believe that the influence of religion on government is universally corrosive, and Opus Dei has been even more corrosive than most.

Ecch (Tweet) of the Day

This is so true... 😂 pic.twitter.com/IvOrVF1WZP

— I'm 𝔽ugustra™ (@fugustra1) October 16, 2025

Been there, done that, got the T-shirt.

Well, not exactly done that. 

Today in the Internet of Sh%$

The good folks at Stellantis issued an over the air software update that bricked thousands of Jeeps.

While I think that the removal of Jeeps from the highway is an unalloyed good, it is increasingly clear that the whole over-the-air infrastructure is a disaster waiting to happen. 

A software update to Jeep 4xE models caused major malfunctions over the weekend – leaving many owners stranded and some in danger after their power failed.

The culprit appears to have been a buggy "over the air" (OTA) software update to the company’s uconnect software on Friday October 10, which “bricked” vehicles if owners installed it.

A Jeep customer support representative on a 4XE forum posted Saturday: “Please exercise extreme caution this evening if you have completed the update. If you have NOT completed the update and see the pop-up, please continue deferring..."

Posting as “Kori”, they told Jeep customers on the forum that the issue was “a telematics module box update” – and later added that the software update was cancelled the same day.

But not before multiple users across the US had updated their vehicles and suffered the immediate consequences.

 BTW, if you think that the slapdash use of telematics by the automobile manufacturers is concerning, just wait until someone hacks into the network.

Have I Said That We Are F%$#Ed Lately?

I vaguely recall saying so recently.

This time it's H1N1, which appears to be only a few genes away from creating a new and lethal pandemic.

Last winter, 2024-25 I predicted on my social media platform that we were about two years (which would include next winter as well) or less from the virus [H1N1] developing human to human transmission capacity.

It’s a big prediction to make, and I hope that I am wrong, but with as little as one to three mutations in a notoriously mutagenic virus, person to person spread of H5N1 has really just become a matter of “when” not “if”.

That said, it is difficult to predict the mutational leaps a virus may or may not make. So as we head into the winter of 2025-26 I felt like it was a good time to update everyone on my thinking about this virus. I am still not certain when H5N1 will being spreading between people, but what I can say is that we are incredibly close to having a second pandemic in 5 years become a reality.

The reason I believe we are closer than ever is that H5N1 is only one to three mutations away from developing the capacity for human-to-human transmission. Well, really only one mutation, but the additional 2 or so mutations would make it spread even faster, and some of those mutations have already been detected in the wild.

Typically, when highly pathogenic avian influenza viruses make the leap to people, they come with greater transmissibility than a typical influenza and greater pandemic causing potential.

The United States is not prepared to face another pandemic, especially not one where the current mortality rate is up to 50% (likely to drop, but still may be higher than SARS-CoV-2). Political will is also ensuring a lack of preparedness by defunding surveillance, testing, and research supporting rapid development of a H5N1 vaccine that could be rapidly produced, much like the COVID-19 vaccine.

Not to worry, I'm sure that the health authorities are on the case  ……… Bueller???  Bueller???  

We Are F%$#ed

New images are showing that the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) is collapsing even faster than previously thought.

We can expect to see 10°C or more of a temperature drop in Europe if this happens:

The #AMOC is the reason for Europe’s mild climate. Evidence that it is slowing has been piling up over the years – it now is likely at its weakest in at least a millennium, and it may even be approaching a tipping point. Here I will show you the latest high-resolution images – and also discuss whether there is serious evidence speaking against an ongoing AMOC weakening.

Our regular readers are well aware of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC in short, a large-scale overturning motion of water along the whole Atlantic which transports a quadrillion Watts (that is 1015 W) of heat to the northern Atlantic, partly via the Gulf Stream. (If you are new to the topic, check out this article.)

Instabilities of the AMOC have produced some of the most dramatic climate changes in recent Earth history, well-known to paleo-climatologists (see e.g. my by now ancient review in Nature 2002), and concerns that we are destabilizing it by causing global warming has been rising sharply in expert circles in recent years (see last year’s open letter by 44 experts).

One reason is what we are observing in the northern Atlantic. And another reason is the latest model simulations by the Dutch research group in Utrecht. A recent paper by van Westen et al. (2025) has shown that the much-feared tipping point where the AMOC breaks down (first demonstrated in a simple box model in 1961) is also found in a high-resolution (eddy resolving) ocean model – destroying any hope that it might be an artifact of too coarse and simple models. This tipping point has been consistently demonstrated across the entire model spectrum by now, and the cause is well-understood (a destabilizing salt transport feedback).

For those of you wondering why cooler temperatures in Europe might not be a problem, it should be noted that the heat that leaves Europe is not going away, it's just going somewhere; somewhere else that is already getting hotter.

One could expect to see significant temperature increases in the Caribbean, leading increases in hurricane strength, for example.

This is not good. 

It's Really Really, Really, Really Thursday ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, Really!

We have a few estimates, but due to the government shutdown, we do not have a report from the Department of Labor because of the government shutdown..

So all we have are guesses from the usual suspects.

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

When Charles Schumer and Marjorie Taylor Green are both working to keep the insurance subsidies in Obamacare, this is real end of the world stuff.

When MTG is the sane Republican in the room, things are getting very, very weird.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) touted Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R-Ga.) call to extend Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies, as he doubled down on his opposition to funding the government without addressing the expiring tax credits.

In remarks on the Senate floor Tuesday, the Democratic leader read aloud from part of a social media post in which Greene said she’s “absolutely disgusted” that health insurance premiums could double if the ACA subsidies expire at the end of the year, breaking with her party on an issue at the center of the government shutdown standoff.

“I’m going to go against everyone on this issue because when the tax credits expire this year my own adult children’s insurance premiums for 2026 are going to DOUBLE, along with all the wonderful families and hard-working people in my district,” Greene wrote in the part of the post Schumer read aloud.

“So hold on to your hats,” Schumer continued in his floor remarks, after reading the post. “I think this is the first time I said this, but, on this issue, Representative Greene said it perfectly.”

“Representative Greene is absolutely right,” he added.

And here I am, staring at the spectacle with a stunned expression on my face that resembles nothing so much as a cow that stepped on its own udder.

Evidence Supports the Defund the Police Movement

In 2013, after decades of problems with ineffective and brutal policing, Camden, New Jersey abolished its police department.

Following this, a county wide police force was formed, and former Camden PD employees had to apply for new positions.

We have seen the results, crime and instances criminal cops have fallen sharply.

You can't argue with the numbers:

Camden, considered one of the most dangerous cities in the country just over a decade ago, experienced zero homicides this summer, with violent crime reaching a 50-year low.

As of Monday, homicides were down 43% compared with this time last year.

The benchmark is in line with what cities like Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Detroit are experiencing, following spikes in violence during the COVID-19 lockdowns. For those cities, the reasons behind the decline in homicides can be difficult to pin down.

But in Camden, which officials said did not experience a drastic surge in homicides and violent crime during the pandemic, officials and grassroots groups see the marked reduction in violent crime as the result of a decision to take a multipronged approach to addressing violence that started with the controversial disbanding of its city police department in 2013. 

The proposal to create a countywide police department was a novel one that met with opposition from the police officers who had to reapply for their jobs and a coalition of residents who wanted the public to vote on the matter. Still, the measure was able to garner enough buy-in from residents and across the political spectrum, including then-Gov. Chris Christie, then-State Sen. Donald Norcross, and his brother, Democratic power broker George Norcross.

Christie and the Norcross brothers were right.  (I cannot believe that I just said that.)

A decade later, Commissioner Director Louis Cappelli Jr., one of the architects of the move, credits police as the “main reason” for the decline in homicides.

“The residents of the city no longer fear the police department, as they did when it was a city department,” Cappelli said. “They now look at our officers as partners. They look at our officers as people they can rely on for safety.”

………

Despite the 64% decline in homicides since 2014 — the new department’s first full year in operation — and then-President Barack Obama lauding the reforms during a visit in 2015, the remarkable turnaround in police relations has not come without its critics.

It has critics who believe brutalizing n*****s and s***s is an independent good, even when it makes crime worse.

They are racist idiots.

I Saw This Coming

Young Republicans private chats transcripts leaked, and in news that will surprise absolutely no one, they are racist Nazi fanbois.

I am only surprised that it leaked: 

Leaders of Young Republican groups throughout the country worried what would happen if their Telegram chat ever got leaked, but they kept typing anyway.

They referred to Black people as monkeys and “the watermelon people” and mused about putting their political opponents in gas chambers. They talked about raping their enemies and driving them to suicide and lauded Republicans who they believed support slavery.

William Hendrix, the Kansas Young Republicans’ vice chair, used the words “n--ga” and “n--guh,” variations of a racial slur, more than a dozen times in the chat. Bobby Walker, the vice chair of the New York State Young Republicans at the time, referred to rape as “epic.” Peter Giunta, who at the time was chair of the same organization, wrote in a message sent in June that “everyone that votes no is going to the gas chamber.”

………

“Can we fix the showers? Gas chambers don’t fit the Hitler aesthetic,” Joe Maligno, who previously identified himself as the general counsel for the New York State Young Republicans, wrote back.

“I’m ready to watch people burn now,” Annie Kaykaty, New York’s national committee member, said.

 The exchange is part of a trove of Telegram chats — obtained by POLITICO and spanning more than seven months of messages among Young Republican leaders in New York, Kansas, Arizona and Vermont. The chat offers an unfiltered look at how a new generation of GOP activists talk when they think no one is listening.

………

Together, the messages reveal a culture where racist, antisemitic and violent rhetoric circulate freely — and where the Trump-era loosening of political norms has made such talk feel less taboo among those positioning themselves as the party’s next leaders.

Young Republicans have been this way since (at least) my college days.  They have always been racist unfunny dirt-bags.

Good that we have it in writing now. 

 

 

Headline of the Day

AI Profiteering Is Now Indistinguishable From Trolling

—Blood in the Machine, on firms now selling AI services that they are just repackaging.

I disagree.  It's fraud, not trolling:

In late 2024, billboards and bus stop posters bearing the slogan STOP HIRING HUMANS started showing up in San Francisco and New York. The ad spots, which turned out to be the handiwork of the enterprise AI company Artisan, went viral, buffeted by an outpouring of rage on social media. The company said it was just trolling. “It’s really just a viral marketing tactic,” the 23 year-old CEO Jaspar Carmichael-Jack wrote on a reddit AMA, “we don’t actually want anyone to stop hiring humans.”1 A few months later, the company closed a $25 million Series A funding round.

The company doesn’t train its own models or even build its own technology, it seems—it packages other LLMs into a software-as-a-service platform that aims to automate sales work—but whoever was behind that marketing campaign understood something about the AI boom early on: It’s all about the story. When you have a market as impossibly frothy as AI, it doesn’t matter if you have an AI-powered SaaS business with a decent UI. So does everyone else. If you want investors and the press to take note, you have to manufacture yourself a narrative, and one of the easiest ways to do so is, naturally, to troll.

It ain't trolling, it's fraud, and it's a crime.

I Did Nazi That Coming

Peak Republican Imagery

But I am not at all surprised that a an American flag was defaced to put a Swastika on it in the office of Republican Ohio Representative Dave Taylor.

This is kind of their brand these days:

U.S. Capitol Police were called about an American flag altered to include a swastika and displayed inside the office of Rep. Dave Taylor (R-Ohio), his spokesperson said.

POLITICO obtained an image taken during a virtual meeting that shows the flag pinned to what appears to be a cubicle wall behind Angelo Elia, one of Taylor’s staffers. Alongside the flag — with altered red and white lines in the shape of a swastika — are pinned images, including a pocket Constitution and a congressional calendar. It is unclear what role, if any, Elia had in the incident. He did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“I am aware of an image that appears to depict a vile and deeply inappropriate symbol near an employee in my office,” Taylor said in a statement. “The content of that image does not reflect the values or standards of this office, my staff, or myself, and I condemn it in the strongest terms.”

That's a lie.  This image DOES reflect the standards of that office, his staff, and himself.

He's only upset that his office got caught doing this.

Oh, You Poor Dears

It appears that internet service providers in California  are having major butt hurt over the new law that prevents landlords from taking kickbacks from ISPS in order to force them to pay for over-priced connectivity.

Will someone think of the children?

Rejecting opposition from the cable and real estate industries, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill that aims to increase broadband competition in apartment buildings.

The new law taking effect on January 1 says landlords must let tenants "opt out of paying for any subscription from a third-party Internet service provider, such as through a bulk-billing arrangement, to provide service for wired Internet, cellular, or satellite service that is offered in connection with the tenancy." It was approved by the state Assembly in a 75–0 vote in April, and by the Senate in a 30–7 vote last month.

"This is kind of like a first step in trying to give this industry an opportunity to just treat people fairly," Assemblymember Rhodesia Ransom, a Democratic lawmaker who authored the bill, told Ars last month. "It's not super restrictive. We are not banning bulk billing. We're not even limiting how much money the people can make. What we're saying here with this bill is that if a tenant wants to opt out of the arrangement, they should be allowed to opt out."

This is classic anti-competitive behavior, and this bill is a good thing.