I Was Today Years Old When I Learned This

I have been aware for some time of the term, "Perfidy," which is used as a synonym for disloyal or treacherous, what I did not know was that it was a specific term used in the context of the international laws of war, and that when the Trump administration fired missiles at fishermen to distract from Jeffrey Epstein from a plane in civilian markings, they had violated this law.

Even if one accepts Trump's claims that this is a real war, which makes you a blithering idiot, they are still required to follow the laws of war, so in addition to the double-tap strike on men clinging to the remains of a boat, the whole attack constitutes a war crime.

If there is another Presidential election, and there is a Democrat elected, not prosecuting the rat-fucks would be a betrayal of the Republic.

The Pentagon used a secret aircraft painted to look like a civilian plane in its first attack on a boat that the Trump administration said was smuggling drugs, killing 11 people last September, according to officials briefed on the matter. The aircraft also carried its munitions inside the fuselage, rather than visibly under its wings, they said.

The nonmilitary appearance is significant, according to legal specialists, because the administration has argued its lethal boat attacks are lawful — not murders — because President Trump “determined” the United States is in an armed conflict with drug cartels.

But the laws of armed conflict prohibit combatants from feigning civilian status to fool adversaries into dropping their guard, then attacking and killing them. That is a war crime called “perfidy.”

Retired Maj. Gen. Steven J. Lepper, a former deputy judge advocate general for the United States Air Force, said that if the aircraft had been painted in a way that disguised its military nature and got close enough for the people on the boat to see it — tricking them into failing to realize they should take evasive action or surrender to survive — that was a war crime under armed-conflict standards.

There should be trials, but I do not think that there will be trials, because our elites are terrified that accountability applied to the most perfidious of them will eventually be applied to them as well.

Nixon gets his pardon, Obama says that we have to look forward, not back, and our country continues to circle the moral drain. 

As Anna Russel Would Say, “I’m Not Making This Up, You Know.”

It appears that the "War on Woke" in Texas has led Texas A&M to ban Plato in philosophy class.

I'm not a fan of Plato.  In high school, I came to that he was the direct ancestor to western Fascism, and I find his dialogues to be contrived and self serving.

That being said, banning Plato from philosophy class?  What the fuck? 

I guess that it's time to start making Aggie jokes again.

A professor at Texas A&M University was forced to remove Plato readings from his syllabus after a crackdown on academic freedom in the university system and Texas at large. Martin Peterson, a philosophy professor at the university, fell victim to a proposal adopted in November that limits teaching “advocat[ing] race or gender ideology, or topics related to sexual orientation or gender identity.”

Campus presidents, in accordance with the new measure, are required to sign off on courses that fit this description as well as those related to sexual orientation or gender identity. According to a report from The Texas Tribune, the university “had identified roughly 200 courses as potentially affected by policy restrictions.”

For Peterson, his story has garnered national attention after his syllabus was reviewed and his department head, Kristi Sweet, gave him two choices — either remove “the modules on race ideology and gender ideology, and the Plato readings that may include these,” according to a New York Times report, or teach another course.

In an interview with the Times, Peterson expressed, “A philosophy professor who is not allowed to teach Plato, what kind of university is that? Is that really what they want?”

………

The president of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), Todd Wolfson, issued a statement on Jan. 12 regarding Peterson’s situation, stating,

“Silencing 2,500-year-old ideas from one of the world’s most influential thinkers betrays the mission of higher education and denies students the opportunity to engage critically with the foundations of Western thought… A university that censors Plato — as well as other significant texts — abandons its obligation to truth, free inquiry, and the public trust… A college or university of this sort harms its students, faculty, and traditions, and consequently can no longer be regarded as a serious institution of higher learning.”

After all that effort to have a physics department that their football team would be proud of, it's come to this.

So sad. 

 

And the Smear Campaign Begins

It looks like the J. Edgar Hoover's bastard child is doing its best to slander murder victim Renee Good.

Why am I not surprised?

Federal investigators assigned to the fatal shooting of a 37-year-old Minneapolis woman are looking into her possible connections to activist groups protesting the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement, in addition to the actions of the federal agent who killed her, people familiar with the situation said.

It seems increasingly unlikely that the agent who fired three times at the unarmed woman, Renee Nicole Good, will face criminal charges, although that could change as investigators collect new evidence, the people added.

On Sunday, President Trump described Ms. Good and her wife, Becca Good, as being “professional agitators,” adding that the authorities would “find out who’s paying for it.” He offered no evidence to support his claims.

The decision by the F.B.I. and the Justice Department to scrutinize Ms. Good’s activities and her potential connections to local activists is in line with the White House’s strategy of deflecting blame for the shooting away from federal law enforcement and toward opponents they have described as domestic terrorists, often without providing evidence.

I'm not surprised that the FBI is doing this, Kash Patel is director of the FBI, but to do so so openly and blatantly is a bit of a surprise.

As I noted earlier, I would not be surprised if Donald Trump gives Jonathan Ross a Medal of Freedom for shooting a middle aged mother in the face. 

Donald Trump and I Agree

We both hate Maine Senator Susan Collins.

We do so for different reasons.  I see her as a hypocrite and a liar who pretends to be moderate, but always tows the line when her vote matters, while Trump hates her for not beint 100% in lockstep with dear leader.

Republicans are increasingly concerned about maintaining Senate control in the upcoming midterm election, expressing frustration that Donald Trump is undermining their efforts.

The party faces challenging circumstances. While poor approval ratings—partly attributable to the president's inability to address cost-of-living concerns—make House losses likely, Republicans have remained confident about retaining the Senate.

That confidence has wavered following Trump's attacks on five Republican senators who voted with Democrats to limit his military authority regarding Venezuela. His criticism of Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) has particularly alarmed GOP leadership.


According to The Hill reporter Al Weaver, "While Republicans were miffed at the attack on the handful of members, it's Collins they are most concerned with as she potentially holds the key to them retaining the majority next year."

One anonymous GOP senator expressed frustration: "You probably ought not take on the chair of Appropriations, who's a little bit pissed off about not getting regular order appropriations done. And now you're s——g on her on this sort of stuff?"

………

Senate leadership has long protected Collins, a Maine centrist and frequent Trump target. Both parties acknowledge she represents the only Republican candidate likely to win her seat in 2024. Without her, the seat would likely be lost permanently, similar to recent Democratic losses in Montana and West Virginia. 

I would note here that it's not just the Republican leadership, but the Democratic leadership as well, because they are spineless morons.

The interesting thing here is that the vote is meaningless, because it will never make it through the House. 

This is posturing directed at the upcoming election, and if the vote had meant anything, she would have voted the other way. 

As an aside here, should Collins announce her resignation, it eliminates the argument that the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) have made for nominating the geriatric Janet Mills instead of Graham Platner.  (I think that this argument is false, FWIW.  Mills is a Schumer Democrat, and Schumer Democrats lose.)

Unbelievably Fucking Lame

In an attempt to have Donald Trump install her as President of Venezuala, María Corina Machado offered to transfer her Nobel Peace Prize to Trump.

The Nobel committee, deciding that this was a bridge too far, told her that this was not allowed.

Even if the committee allowed this, it would not have her installed in Caracas.

Even a cursory examination of her support in country shows that she is about as popular as a case of the  clap, and her stint as a US puppet would last about as long as a neutrino detection.

The organisers of the Nobel peace prize have said it “cannot be revoked, shared or transferred” after Venezuela’s opposition leader, María Corina Machado, said she wanted to give her award to Donald Trump.

When Machado was named Nobel laureate in October, it was seen as a snub by the White House, despite Machado rushing to dedicate the prize to the US president and his “decisive support of our cause”.

Trump has made no secret of his strongly held desire to be awarded the Nobel peace prize, the winner of which is selected by an independent five-person committee in Oslo.

She thinks that Trump is a delicate snowflake whose feelings were hurt because he did not get an award, which is true, but she also thinks that Trump would be grateful enough to put her in charge if she gave him the prize.

Trump does not do grateful.

Also, I'm pretty sure that the Nobel Committee is beginning to regret giving the award to her inb the first place. 

 

Portlander of the Year Arrested

 I am, of course referring to Seth :Toad" Todd, better known as the Portland Frog, recipient of Wilammette Week's Portlander of the year.

Todd was at another protest following the shootings of 2 people in Portland and arrested.

Police arrested six people during protests outside the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement building in South Portland on Thursday night, officials said.

………

Protesters gathered after news spread of a Border Patrol shooting Thursday afternoon that wounded two people in Southeast Portland. Hundreds of people went to the site of the shooting, blocking streets. Another crowd came together outside the ICE building, yelling “Shame” and hurling insults at the building’s occupants.

Ezekiel Mclain, 28, of Portland, and Benjamin J. Davis, 24, also of Portland, were booked on charges of riot, disorderly conduct in the second degree and interfering with a peace officer, police said. Ashley Daugherty, 48, and Seth Todd, 24, of Clackamas, face charges of second-degree disorderly conduct and interfering with a peace officer. Jordan Brokaw, 28, of Portland, was charged with second-degree disorderly conduct.

………

But the night’s relatively high-profile arrest was Todd. Last year, Todd began showing up outside the ICE building in an inflatable frog costume and quickly became known as the “Portland Freedom Frog.” When he was pepper-sprayed by federal agents on Oct. 2, he told The Oregonian/OregonLive it was no big deal.

It was a big deal 

The World Has Become Marginally More Fact Based

The headline says it all, "Erich von Däniken, Who Claimed Aliens Visited Earth, Dies at 90. 

One less snollygoster peddling pablum to the world. 

Gee, Ya Think?

In admitting the obvious, Dell Computer has announced changes to its PC lineup because said customers hate AI features with a white-hot burning passion.

Reading this room did not require much of a stretch. 

The tech industry’s insistence on cramming AI into virtually every aspect of their consumer-facing offerings, from AI apps you can’t uninstall to hallucinating assistants that nobody asked for, has been nothing short of insufferable.

Tech enthusiasts and average consumers alike have watched helplessly as software and hardware they rely on to research, work, game, and keep in touch have turned into testing grounds for unproven AI tech — often without their consent.

………

Thankfully, vendors are finally starting to pay attention. As PCGamer reports, Windows PC maker Dell admitted at this year’s CES that things have really gotten out of hand.

Their executives are willing to say the quiet part out loud — that nobody is scrambling to buy an “AI PC.”

“One thing you’ll notice is the message we delivered around our products was not AI-first,” Dell’s head of product, Kevin Terwilliger, said during a pre-CES briefing, as quoted by the publication. “So, a bit of a shift from a year ago where we were all about the AI PC.”

………

The fact that Dell is worried its AI-first approach may be hindering it from reaching new customers and making new sales, though, is telling.

Beyond Terwilliger’s eureka moment, Dell also admitted at CES that killing off its much-beloved line of XPS laptops was a mistake, officially reviving it for 2026 — and judging by the elated reactions the move has garnered, it was likely the right move.

If you war wondering if regular consumers are sick and tired of bogus hallucinating "Artificial Intelligence" features in their every day work, the answer is not just, :ye," but the answer is, "Fuck yes."

The 'Phants Blinked

With 17 Republican defections, the House of Representatives have voted to reinstate the Obamacare subsidies.

The US House of Representatives on Thursday passed legislation to re-establish tax credits that lowered premiums for Affordable Care Act (ACA) health plans, after a small group of Republicans broke ranks and joined with Democrats to defy Donald Trump on a key healthcare issue that could sway voters ahead of the November midterm elections.

The chamber voted 230-196 to approve a bill that would extend for three years the credits, which were first created under Joe Biden but expired at the end of last year despite a concerted effort by the Democratic minority to continue them.

All Democrats voted for the measure along with 17 Republicans, many of whom were moderates who said they could not tolerate a hike in healthcare costs for their constituents, but acknowledged the House measure will likely be revised by the Republican-controlled Senate before it is enacted.

I'm not hopeful in the Senate, but this does give us hope.

There is No Perfect Juxtaposition of 2000s Music and 1960s Televis………

I want to note that Diana Rigg gave me stirrings at about age 7.

Our Democratic Party Establishment (There is no Democratic Party Establishment)

Amid increasing calls, particularly following the murder of Renee Good by an ICE agent, to reduce the budge of ICE, Democratic Party minority leaders in the House and Senate, Charles Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries are refusing to even consider the idea.

The cowardice of the party leadership is the single biggest impediment to political success. 

How can you believe promises from Democrats when they always cave? 

The killing of Renee Good by a federal immigration officer in Minneapolis this week came as Republicans in Congress were planning to bring a homeland security spending bill to the House floor, deciding on whether the agency that's surged thousands of armed agents into communities across the country should have increased funding—and progressive lawmakers are demanding that the Democrats use the upcoming government funding deadline to hopefully reduce the department's ability to wreak further havoc.

"I just don’t understand how we provide votes for a bill that funds the extent of the depravity," Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) told CNN Thursday. "I know we can’t fix everything in the appropriations bill but we should be looking at ways we can put some commonsense limitations on their ability to bring violence to our cities."

But the top Democratic leaders, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (NY) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (NY) both appeared to have little interest in discussing how their party can use the appropriations process as leverage to rein in US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agencies that have taken part in President Donald Trump's mass deportation operation.

………

But Jeffries said Thursday that he was focused on passing other appropriations bills that were ultimately approved by the House.

“We’ll figure out the accountability mechanisms at the appropriate time," Jeffries told reporters.

With Congress facing a January 30 deadline for approving government spending packages—and with public disapproval of ICE at an all-time high—several lawmakers have said this week that right now is the "appropriate time" to rein in the agency in any way the Democrats can.

Yeah.  Keep that powder dry, boys! 

Maybe I Should Make "Apocalypse Watch" a Regular Thing

Yesterday, sheep in Germany, today, vervet monkeys in St. Louis, Missouri.

Some residents in St Louis, Missouri, spotted monkeys roaming their streets this week in a situation that feels like the movie Jumanji come to life.

A handful of monkeys were spotted in north St Louis by residents on Friday.

“The Department of Health has confirmed that multiple monkeys are on the loose around the vicinity of O’Fallon Park in North City. Original reports suggested there were four animals, but we cannot confirm an actual number at this time, only that there is more than one,” Justen Hauser, environmental health bureau chief with the St Louis department of health, said in a statement.

We had the sheep, and now the monkeys, and we also have the Orcas sinking small boats near the Iberian peninsula.

Something odd is going on here. 

Headline of the Day

Tesla Loses Trademark to "Cybercab" Due to Its Own Staggering Incompetence

—Futurism, letting their schadenfreude freak fly.

In a blunder that sums up Tesla’s struggling efforts in the self-driving space, Electrek reports that the Elon Musk-owned automaker has badly screwed up trying to get a trademark for its upcoming “Cybercab.”

………

According to a US Patent and Trademark Office suspension notice obtained by Electrek, the trademark “Cybercab” has been formally suspended as of November 14, 2025, for two main reasons: a “likelihood of confusion,” the USPTO’s examining attorney wrote, and because another company called Unibev, a French beverage outfit, beat Tesla to the punch.

This wasn’t down to bad luck. Per the reporting, Musk unveiled the Cybercab at the “We, Robot” event on October 10, 2024, but neglected to file an application until November — an astonishing oversight for a company so large and ambitious. Unibev, meanwhile, saw the opening and filed a “Cybercab” application before the end of the month. Tesla had weeks to secure its trademark, even after making the questionable decision of not filing for it before unveiling the new product at a highly covered event.

Unibev is using a tactic called trademark squatting, and it apparently has a vendetta with Tesla, having three trademarks for “TESLAQUILA” in the US, the same name Tesla tried to use for its own line of tequila, Electrek noted.

As we alluded to earlier, this isn’t the only branding blow Tesla has suffered for its self-driving cab efforts. Last summer, the USPTO turned down Tesla’s application for trademarking the term “Robotaxi” for being too generic. Or in the examiner’s words, “merely descriptive,” since the term robotaxi is “used to describe similar goods and services by other companies.” It may as well have tried to trademark its cars as Cars. 

So, not only did they fuck this up, they fucked this up at least twice before. 

If you think that they can screw the pooch like this on business 101 and still make self-driving work, you are smoking some bad LSD. 

Signs of the Apocalypse

This was a documentary

Rampaging sheep in Germany.

About 50 wayward sheep broke off from their flock and stormed a discount supermarket in a German town, startling and delighting customers as the animals rushed to explore the aisles before being escorted from the premises.

The woolly incursion occurred on Monday during a routine seasonal migration of the sheep in the Bavarian municipality of Burgsinn. A few dozen of the sheep had other ideas about the route and made their way into a store of the Penny retail chain.

“It was impossible to tell whether the sheep were looking for something particular on offer or just wanted to warm up,” the company said in a statement, noting that the flock seemed particularly fond of the checkout area where shoppers and staff were present.

Witnesses said that while the animals resisted the urge to nibble their way through the fresh produce on display, their foray into the store left a path of destruction in the drinks section as their bustling knocked glass bottles and other products from the shelves.

This won't end well.

I’m Not Making This Up, You Know

The Donald Trump revenge tour beginning to resemble the Spın̈al Tap 1980 tour, but nothing has gotten more surreal than his pursuit of New York Attorney General Letitia James.

There have been a couple of developments

First Federal Judge Lorna Schofield has order a stop to all investigations of James, because the US Attorney running the investigation is not legally a US attorney.

There seems to be a lot of that.

A judge on Thursday barred the top federal prosecutor in Albany, N.Y., from any further involvement with a civil rights investigation into the state’s attorney general, Letitia James, in another setback for the Trump administration as it pursues Ms. James.

The prosecutor, John A. Sarcone III, can no longer lead the investigation after lawyers for Ms. James challenged the legitimacy of his appointment as they sought to quash subpoenas related to the matter, one of several inquiries that the Justice Department has mounted against the attorney general.

Mr. Sarcone, the acting U.S. attorney for the Northern District of New York, remains in charge of the office, though the decision by the judge, Lorna G. Schofield, opens the possibility that Mr. Sarcone could be completely removed from the post.

It's the second case where things get weird.  It appears that the failures to prosecute Letitia James have driven prosecutors insane, because they are now trying to find criminal activity through Ms. James hairdresser. 

I know that they got Capone on tax evasion, but this reeks of desperation. 

Federal prosecutors are investigating financial transactions involving the New York attorney general, Letitia James, and her longtime hairdresser, opening a new front in their pursuit of one of President Trump’s perceived enemies, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

The hairdresser, Iyesata Marsh, has known Ms. James for years. Last month, Ms. Marsh was indicted in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana and charged with bank fraud and aggravated identity theft in connection with the purchase of a Land Rover about three years ago. Court documents accuse Ms. Marsh and her nephew of using the identity and personal information of an unidentified woman in Ohio to buy the vehicle.

The investigation is still in its early stages, but prosecutors are interested in talking to Ms. Marsh about past financial transactions involving Ms. James or her campaign, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the inquiry.

It's clear what is going on here.

Prosecutors are trying to suborn perjury from Ms. Marsh. 

 

Linkage

• How safe is food in the U.S. after FoodNet, funding cuts? (Statnews) Much less safe than ti should be.
• UNIX V4 tape successfully recovered (The Register) V4 was the first Unix kernel written in C.
• Camus' life without illusion (Engelsberg ideas) A review of Albert Camus' recently republished notebooks. There is a lot of joy here,
• Status of the US Dollar as Global Reserve Currency: USD Share Drops to Lowest since 1994 (Wolf Street) I hope that this happening.  It would damage Wall Street, which IMHO is an independent good.
• Washington Post readers revolt against Bezos’s editorial board (Press Watch) The WaPo has had a lame OP/ED page for a very long time, but the, particularly when Frederick Samuel Hiatt ran the division, the editorial page has gotten even worse.
• Did Animals in Africa Always Migrate?  (Sapiens.org) There is evidence that these mass migrations only began after humans started impacting the environment around them.
• Declared extinct in 2025: A look back at some of the species we lost (Mongabay) Sad.
• More Student Loan Borrowers Are Shedding Debts in Bankruptcy (New York Times) A law change 3 years ago makes filing easier, particularly if the school fucks up the financial aid.

Yeah, Tolkien naming your company is a red flag.

Minneapolis

Over the past few months, I have seen way too many murders. (The joys of the internet, huh?)

I know a murder when I see one, and the execution of poet Renee Good by ICE officer Jonathan Ross is a murder.

This is a part of a pattern if ICE agents unloading on random people in cars.

The Feds have already effectively turfed out Minnesota law enforcement, so I expect a full court press coverup during the investigation.

The only (small) bit of hope here is the recent Supreme Court case in Barnes v. Felix, where the court said that the totality of the encounter, and not just the moment that the shots are fired, must be evaluated, so a police officer can (theoretically, at least) no longer recklessly put himself in jeopardy to justify killing someone.

What I want to see is Officer Ross put on trial and made to share a cell with Derek Chauvin.

What I expect to see is him getting a promotion, and possibly a medal for freedom from Epstein's partner in crime. 

Don’t Let the Door Hit You on the Way Out

Steny Hoyer will not seek reelection.

Almost as much as Nancy Pelosi, he was f%$%#ing the Democratic Party and inadvertently paved the way for Donald Trump.

Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the longest-serving Democrat in Congress and once a rival to become House speaker, will announce Thursday he is set to retire at the end of his term.

Hoyer, who served for years in party leadership and helped steer Democrats through some of their most significant legislative victories, is set to deliver a House floor speech about his decision, according to a person familiar with the situation and granted anonymity to discuss it.

………

At 86, Hoyer is the latest in a generation of senior-most leaders stepping aside, making way for a new era of lawmakers eager to take on governing. Retirements have been high in the political parties, Democrats and Republicans, ahead of the midterm elections in November that will determine control of Congress.

 I regret that I never had the opportunity to vote against him.

Gee, What a Surprise

Nothing to see here, move along.Polymarket, the gamble on anything in their casino futures market company, has announced that it will not pay out on the bets regarding the attack on Venezuela.

I'd rather they just out whoever it was in the Trump administration who made the bet in the first place. 

Polymarket is disputing that the mission to capture Nicolás Maduro constituted an invasion and said it will only settle a prediction contract if the US military takes control of Venezuelan territory.

The decision by the prediction market has angered gamblers and added to the controversy surrounding a successful wager on the timing of Maduro’s capture that netted more than $400,000 in winnings for a mystery trader. The dispute over the definition of “invade” highlights just one of the controversies faced by the mostly unregulated industry.

Polymarket — which only recently gained regulatory approval to operate legally in the US — says on its website that it will resolve the “Will the US invade Venezuela by . . .?” contract if the US “commences a military offensive intended to establish control over any portion of Venezuela” by one of three dates. 

Nice Bit of Political Jujitsu

One of the disappointments from Zoran Mamdani after his election is that he announced that he would keep the absolutely horrible Jessica Tisch as police commissioner.

It looks like he's found a way to split the baby.

Unlike his predecessors, the commissioner will be reporting directly to the Deputy Mayor, and so would not be getting regular face time with hizzoner.

In the context of City Hall politics, face time is the most important currency, and Tisch will be getting less of it.

So Much Winning, Not Sarcasm Edition

I am referring, or course, to New York City's congestion pricing, which, much like London's earlier program, is a resounding success, with decreases in air pollution, noise, congestion, traffic deaths, pedestrian fatalities, and improved commute times.

Gee, hoocoodanode? (Basically anyone who saw what happened when "Red" Ken Livingstone did this same thing decades earlier.)

Surprise! A public policy initiative panned by drivers and pro-car pundits turned out to instead be a roaring success that improved traffic congestion, road safety, and even reduced pollution — a godsend not just for those living in Manhattan, but for transit riders, drivers, and outer-borough residents.

Congestion pricing is a policy which charges drivers a toll of up to $9 for using surface-roads below Manhattan’s 60th street, an area known as the Congestion Relief Zone (CRZ), which is enforced by over 1,400 license-plate cameras.

……… 

As a result, those who do drive or use surface-level transit like buses experience much less traffic. Over the past year, average travel speeds increased 4.5 percent in the congestion zone, while the rest of New York City experienced a 1.4 percent increase. Local bus speeds are also up noticeably, increasing 2.4 percent in the CRZ, and 0.8 percent throughout the rest of the city.

The gains haven’t just been about convenience, either. The reduced volume of cars has led to marked improvements in pollution and traffic safety for motorists, cyclists and pedestrians. It also raised more than half a billion dollars for the city’s beleaguered public transportation system. 

Car centric cities are an idea that has failed.

Headline of the Day Week Month Year

Who’s Who at X, the Deepfake Porn Site Formerly Known as Twitter

—The Financial Times, giving a rundown of senior management at the Apartheid Era Emerald Heir Pedo Guy's hellsite.

It is notable that this headline appears in the, "Pink Paper."

While nowhere near as stodgy as, for example, the Economist, it is notable just how out of character this is for them, particularly when their rogues' gallery of senior Ecch executives were all in Photoshop clown makeup, except for Elon, who needs no makeup to be a clown.

Quote of the Day

Here’s Another Thing You Should Understand About These Guys: The Only Thing the Elite Washington Press Corps Likes More than a Bipartisan Commission on Debt Reduction Is a Stack of Flag-Draped Coffins.

—Alex Pareeneon on Deadspin (Archive link from 2017) describing the complete moral vacuity of the Washington Press Corps(e)

Yes, this quote is truly evergreen.

When a President bombs brown people, the Washington Press Corps(e) in inevitably say that, "This is the day that he become President" 

H/t Atrios.

Today in the Annals of the Criminal Enterprise Formerly Known as Facebook™

Literally a sketch from the 1970s movie The Groove Tube

In a move that seems to have been foretold by the 1974 sketch comedy film The Groove Tube, Facebook (Meta) decided that the appropriate response to its inundation by scammers and fraud was to sabotage the tools used by government regulators to find fraudulent advertising.

No attempt to protect the users, no attempt to protect its legitimate advertisers, just lobby to allow for business as usual. 

I'm not surprised, but I am disappointed. 

Japanese regulators last year were upset by a flood of ads for obvious scams on Facebook and Instagram. The scams ranged from fraudulent investment schemes to fake celebrity product endorsements created by artificial intelligence. 

Meta, owner of the two social media platforms, feared Japan would soon force it to verify the identity of all its advertisers, internal documents reviewed by Reuters show. The step would likely reduce fraud but also cost the company revenue. 

To head off that threat, Meta launched an enforcement blitz to reduce the volume of offending ads. But it also sought to make problematic ads less “discoverable” for Japanese regulators, the documents show.

The documents are part of an internal cache of materials from the past four years in which Meta employees assessed the fast-growing level of fraudulent advertising across its platforms worldwide. Drawn from multiple sources and authored by employees in departments including finance, legal, public policy and safety, the documents also reveal ways that Meta, to protect billions of dollars in ad revenue, has resisted efforts by governments to crack down.

………

Meta’s internal documents cast new light on the central role played by fraudulent advertising in the social media giant’s business model – and the steps the company takes to safeguard that revenue. Reuters reported in November that scam ads Meta considers “high risk” generate as much as $7 billion in revenue for the company each year. This month, the news agency found that Meta tolerates rampant fraud from advertisers in China.

If there is any justice in the world, (s[poiler, there isn't) we will see Mark Zuckerberg frog-marched out of Meta's corporate offices in handcuffs. 

Having Booked Conventions, I Will Let You in on a Secret

Different convention groups behave differently, and in terms of pure mayhem and vandalism, the police are widely known to be the worst offenders.

They trash rooms and public spaces, and there is a plethora of alcohol induced misbehavior, including drunk officers yeeting 100+ pound planters into the atrium of a New Orleans hotel from 3+ floors up. (Not a personal experience, a recollection from a discussion circa 1993 in the context of hotel bookings for a science fiction convention).

Of course, hotels cannot afford refuse their business, because they would certainly experience retaliation from the local constabulary, but when the police show up, everyone in the business knows that they are in for an unpleasant event. 

That being the case, it appears that Minnesota Hilton hotels, the meth head steroid abusing thugs that are ice ICE was a bridge too far.

Whatever potential retaliation that might occur, particularly in Minneapolis, where the police are especially awful, these goons are simply too bad for business. 

The Department of Homeland Security on Monday said a Hilton hotel canceled reservations for Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Minnesota, where the Trump administration has deployed officers after allegations of fraud against Somali immigrants.

After ICE officers booked rooms using official government emails and rates, Hilton canceled their reservations, the department said in a post on X.

The department also posted screenshots of emails, in which the hotel’s operators said they had “noticed an influx of GOV reservations made today that have been for DHS”, and that they were not allowing any ICE agents to stay at the property.

In a statement, a Hilton spokesperson said the brand’s hotels “serve as welcoming places for all” and that the hotel that canceled the reservations was independently owned and operated. The cancellations “are not reflective of Hilton values”, the spokesperson said.

Hilton HQ is full of morons.  You are going to get tarred for this by MAGAt snowflakes anyway, so either stay silent or lean in.

Your statement only managed to piss off non-fascist potential customers.

And then they backtracked.

………

Everpeak Hospitality, the owner of the hotel, said it had “moved swiftly to address this matter” and that it was “inconsistent” with hotel policy.

“We are in touch with the impacted guests to ensure they are accommodated. We do not discriminate against any individuals or agencies and apologize to those impacted,” Everpeak said in a statement.

This is literally the worst course of action that they would take.  No one will be happy, and I expect petty vandalism from the ICE yobs than would have happened before this all blew up.

Linkage

• Even In a Populist Moment, Democrats Are Split on the Problem of Corporate Power (The Big Newsletter) That's because the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) is run by people who personally profit from people who stand for nothing but aggressive fundraising.
• Earliest evidence of making fire (Nature) Fire making, as opposed to fire use, is now confirmed to 400,00-0 years ago.
• UK stadiums swap beef burgers for wild venison to cut carbon emissions (Reuters) Finally, some British food that I approve of.
• Democrats think they’ve found their 2026 message — and Miami just backed it up (Politico) Another content and meaning free strategy being pushed by the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment)
• OpenAI Researcher Quits, Saying Company Is Hiding the Truth (Futurism) Of course they are.  Sam Altman's entire career has been self dealing..
• Sexual Abuse, Hazing, Intimidation: How the Sins of a Televangelist Power Couple Threatened to Destroy a Christian Media Empire (Esquire) TBN.  I am so not surprised. 
• Why Sam Altman is getting into the pornography business Because it allows them to pretend that they have a path to profitability.
• It’s time to accept that the US supreme court is illegitimate and must be replaced  (The Guardian) Legal scholars | Ryan Doerfler and Samuel Moyn assert that the court is beyond mere fixing.
• Donald Trump's Statue Removed in Texas Museum as Visitors Kept Hitting It (IBTimes UK) It's Tussaud's Waxworks, but the statue would likely survived if it were forged from a single ingot of Krupp Cemented Steel.

This is the sort of thing that I love to watch.  Ancient craftsmanship using ancient tools:

They Are All Pedophiles

I am referring, of course to the Fascist MAGAts, at least the one's at the top who hung with Epstein, Trump, Bannon, Musk, etc.

A recent story indicates that it ain't just flesh and blood MAGAts, as MechaHitler, (that's what it called itself at one point) aka Grok AI, has been serving up sexually explicit pictures of minors.

It has been tied into knots to fit the twisted world view of the Apartheid Era Emerald Heir Pedo Guy™, so it is no surprise that it has a thing for sexualizing kids too.

Elon Musk's xAI saw user backlash after its artificial intelligence chatbot Grok generated sexualized pictures of children in response to user prompts.

A Grok reply to one user on X on Friday stated that it was "urgently fixing" the issue and called child sexual abuse material "illegal and prohibited."

In replies to users, the bot also posted that a company could face criminal or civil penalties if it knowingly facilitates or fails to prevent this type of content after being alerted.

Grok posts are AI-generated messages and do not stand in for official company statements.

Musk's xAI, which created Grok and merged with X last year, sent an autoreply to a request for comment: "Legacy Media Lies."

The response, "Legacy Media Lies," is Elon's response to everything, so it appears that they've created a reasonable digital facsimile of Elon Musk.

I wonder where the pedo stuff came from? 

True Evil Genius

Fucking Brilliant 

On occasion, I have suggested that if you are out for revenge, you should dig two graves.

I am man enough to admit that I was wrong, though clearly this is a special case.

This is the Gordian Knot of payback, and I am still chuckling.

Clearly at some point, "Rob" is destined to rule all of Asia. 

Today in What the Fuck

When I see a headline like, "Cops Forced to Explain Why AI Generated Police Report Claimed Officer Transformed Into Frog,"  I knew that I had to click through.

Law enforcement has quickly embraced AI for everything from drafting police reports to facial recognition.

The results have been predictably dismal. In one particularly glaring — and unintentionally comedic — instance, the police department in Heber City, Utah, was forced to explain why a police report software declared that an officer had somehow shapeshifted into a frog.

As Salt Lake City-based Fox 13 reports, the flawed tool seems to have picked up on some unrelated background chatter to devise its fantastical fairy tale ending.

“The body cam software and the AI report writing software picked up on the movie that was playing in the background, which happened to be ‘The Princess and the Frog,'” police sergeant Rick Keel told the broadcaster, referring to Disney’s 2009 musical comedy. “That’s when we learned the importance of correcting these AI-generated reports.”

Gee, I wonder what happened.

OK, I don't.  The headline was a spoiler. 

So Not a Surprise

The study which showed that the herbicide glyphosate was safe to humans, you know, the one that was literally bought and paid for by Monsanto, has been formally retracted.

Given that RFK, Jr. was counsel on a lawsuit against Monsanto about its health risks, and given that a law requires that the EPA review the chemical by the end of 2026, this raises some interesting questions.

It's pretty clear that Trump and his thugs do not want to make a fair review of the chemical, one which would likely restrict or ban it, but now one of the cornerstones of doing nothing has been knocked out.

In 2000, a landmark study claimed to set the record straight on glyphosate, a contentious weedkiller used on hundreds of millions of acres of farmland. The paper found that the chemical, the active ingredient in Roundup, wasn’t a human health risk despite evidence of a cancer link.

Last month, the study was retracted by the scientific journal that published it a quarter century ago, setting off a crisis of confidence in the science behind a weedkiller that has become the backbone of American food production. It is used on soybeans, corn and wheat, on specialty crops like almonds, and on cotton and in home gardens.

The Environmental Protection Agency still considers the herbicide to be safe. But the federal government faces a deadline in 2026 to re-examine glyphosate’s safety after legal action brought by environmental, food-safety and farmworker advocacy groups.

The E.P.A. has also faced pressure to act on glyphosate from the Make America Healthy Again movement, led by supporters of the health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who once served as co-counsel in a lawsuit against Monsanto over exposure to Roundup.

The 2000 paper, a scientific review conducted by three independent scientists, was for decades cited by other researchers as evidence of Roundup’s safety. It became the cornerstone of regulations that deemed the weedkiller safe.

But since then, emails uncovered as part of lawsuits against the weedkiller’s manufacturer, Monsanto, have shown that the company’s scientists played a significant role in conceiving and writing the study.

In the emails, Monsanto employees praised each other for their “hard work” on the paper, which included data collection, writing and review. One Monsanto employee expressed hope that the study would become “‘the’ reference on Roundup and glyphosate safety.” The pharmaceutical giant Bayer acquired Monsanto in 2018 for $63 billion.

I don't generally favor criminally charging researchers with criminal fraud and conspiracy, but this is a slam dunk, and their continued silence means that the conspiracy has been ongoing, and so that is not subject to the statute of limitations.

Charge the researchers, charge the Monsanto staff, charge the Monsanto executives. 

Now We Know Why Rudolph’s Nose Was So Bright

It turns out that because of their proclivity for eating lichen, and lichen's proclivity for absorbing radioactive fallout, reindeer are among the most radioactive creatures on earth, which must be a bummer for the Sámi,  Inuit, and Yupik peoples, for whom reindeer herding remains a cultural and dietary touchstone.

In 1986, after the Chernobyl disaster, the Earth Island Journal ran a story titled “Rudolph the Rad-Dosed Reindeer?” In the article, Gar Smith described fears that radioactive Cesium-137 had contaminated reindeer, threatening the health and livelihoods of the indigenous Sami people. Government officials tried to reassure people about the level of danger, but Smith remained skeptical.

In fact, scientists had been aware of fallout-contaminated reindeer for decades. In the 1960s, the discovery of contaminated caribou triggered a major public health investigation in Canada. Historian Jonathan Luedee describes how, in their efforts to unravel the mystery, scientists and politicians grappled with the reality of a nuclearized world.

“Between 1953 and 1958,” Luedee explains, “the US, UK, and the Soviet Union conducted more than 220 atmospheric nuclear tests,” leading to concerns about widespread ecological contamination. Caribou were already on scientists’ minds. Their population had been mysteriously declining, and Indigenous groups in northern Canada had long relied on caribou meat. Early radiation studies showed that caribou had “higher exposure levels than other grazing animals, including groups of animals located closer to nuclear testing sites,” Luedee writes. Then, in 1959, Canadian botanist Eville Gorham noted high levels of radioactive material in lichen.

After a brief testing pause, the Soviet Union resumed nuclear weapons tests in the Arctic skies in 1961. Fallout from years of testing gradually fell onto lichen. Animals grazed on the lichen, absorbing radioactive particles into their bones and their flesh.

……… 

After several more years, they determined that human exposure had peaked in 1965, then declined. But Luedee points out that “even at 1965 levels, the amount of Cesium-137 detected in caribou meat was more than 580 times greater than that found in Ottowa’s poultry sample.” 

On a personal note, I recall eating reindeer sausage when I was a child in Alaska, around 1967.

Sweet. 

Year End Summary

But not for me.

This one is for the Apartheid Era Emerald Heir Pedo Guy™, who had a red letter year for over-promising and under-delivering.

Here's what he didn't do but said he would: 

1. People on Mars by 2025
2. Tesla robotaxis would cover half of the U.S. population
3. Fully driverless Tesla robotaxis
4. xAI would achieve AGI
5. A flying car
6. A demo of the new Tesla Roadster 

0 for 6. 

Wagging the Dog

First, I would note that anyone relying on US mainstream media for their information is a moron. 

Between the Epstein files, persistent concerns about his health, and plummeting poll numbers it's pretty clear why Donald Trump authorized the abduction of Nicolas Maduro and his wife and strikes on Venezuela.

It had nothing to do with drugs, particularly not Fentanyl.

The fact that Trump has also explicitly stated his goal was to steal Venezuelan oil is part of that as well.

Maduro is now in custody in the US (Update: MDC Brooklyn.)

Trump is claiming that the United States is, "Now running Venezuela," though I would think that the Vice President of Venezuela and their Defense Minister differ on this matter,

The US attacked Venezuela and captured its long-serving president Nicolás Maduro on Saturday, with Donald Trump promising to put the country under American control for now, even as Venezuelan officials vowed defiance.

As part of a dramatic overnight operation that knocked out electricity in parts of Caracas, US Special Forces captured Maduro in or near one of his safe houses, Trump said.


With Maduro in US custody, “we will run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition”, the US president said during a press conference at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.

“We can’t take a chance that someone else takes over Venezuela who doesn’t have the interests of Venezuelans in mind.”

………

But a few hours later, the president’s claim was undermined by Rodríguez, who, in a televised address, maintained the critical tone adopted by all members of Maduro’s cabinet since the first reports of the US bombardment.

She described the US attack as an “unprecedented military aggression”, and demanded the “immediate release” of Maduro and his wife. The Venezuelan people “are outraged by the illegal and illegitimate kidnapping of the president and the first lady”, Rodríguez said.

The Venezuelan vice-president insisted that the country “will never again be anyone’s colony – neither of old empires, nor of new empires, nor of empires in decline”.

She also echoed an argument repeatedly made by Maduro before his capture: that the real objective of the four-month-long US military pressure had never been a supposed “war on drugs”, but rather “regime change” and the “seizure of our energy, mineral and natural resources”.

With little in the way of US ground troops in the area, I'm not sure how this is going to play out.

I'm with what Atrios said, "Look forward to Venezuela defense and retaliation being portrayed as criminal aggression."  (His hed, "Mommy, he shot me back," is prize).

Even if the current regime in Caracas capitulates, there is a very good case that it all goes pear shaped, with insurgencies and a possible civil war.

The Democratic Party House Minority Leader, part 1


The Democratic Party House Minority Leader, part 2


And the always simping to the Cuban diaspora in Florida Debbie Wasserman Schultz While Maduro is not a popular figure in Venezuela, the former eletes are even less so, so their return, accompanied by US companies seizing control of their oiil and other natural resources, will not result in any US occupying force being, "greeted as liberators,"if just because the first thing that any leader installed by trump will do is roll back public healthcare and social safety net provisions that were put in place by Chavez.

Meanwhile, the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) is doing what they always do, and basically caving, and soft pedaling the whole thing.

Guys, you don't have to spend 60% of your talk saying how bad Maduro was.

This act, a war of choice, is against the war powers act and against the Constitution of the United States of America.

Presenting this is just some concerns about some Congressional prerogatives being stepped on is weak, stupid, and bad politics. 

In related corruption news, it appears that someone close to the Trump administration created an account on the Polymarket betting site and netted a quick  $½ million.

Econoimists can blather all they want about the value of predictive markets, but this is just corrupt as hell.

In the best of circumstances, betting on world events for fun and profit on marketplaces like Kalshi and Polymarket is an innocent way to make reading the news a little more interesting. Unfortunately, some suspect there are rascals out there who want to ruin it for everyone else by placing unfair, insider bets with the potential to corrupt the motives of powerful figures and their advisors. So with that in mind, when I say this next thing, I don’t want you to be suspicious:


On Friday, something that very much looks like a brand new account on Polymarket plowed $30,000 into bets on the toppling of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro. By the very next morning, when Maduro was suddenly no longer able to act as president of Venezuela anymore due to having been dragged out of his bed by the U.S. military and spirited out of his country, that account had apparently bagged $436,759.61 according to Axios’s Herb Scribner. It’s not spelled out where that number is coming from, but an archive.ph snapshot being circulated on social media places the amount at $407,920.12, so either way, this lucky person made a lot of money off their totally wild guess.

About the only thing clear in this entire thing is that, to paraphrase Mitchell and Web, the USA is the baddie here,

One thing that is certain though, we are going to see a wave of migrants heading toward the United States to get away from this developing mess.

I wonder how that will play to Trump's MAGAt supporters. 

This is Literally Peak Cat

Domestic cats, the European Tour!

The Chinese TourThere is an article in Science where it is claimed that the genetic evidence shows that domestic cats did not make it to Europe until about 0 CE, about 7,000 years later previously believed.

There is archeological evidence that domestic cats, Felis catus, made it to Cyprus around 7000 BCE, but they never made the jump to Europe. 

While are references to cats in Greek and Roman documents before the common era, this now appears to be commensalism (basically hanging out) by local wild cat populations because of the large number of rodents and other prey animals near ancient granaries rather than domestication.

It appears that something very similar occurred in China, albeit at a later time. 

Around 730 CE, F. catus made it to China via the Silk Road. 

Before that, the Leopard Cat, Prionailurus bengalensis, hung out with the locals in the Far East as far back as 4000 BCE, as evidenced by archeological finds.

If you look closely, you will note that there is a 600 year gap, from about 150 CE to 730 CE where neither cat is present in the record:

………

Interestingly, the disappearance of leopard cats coincides with the turbulent era following the Han Dynasty’s collapse and preceding the Tang Dynasty’s rise. This period experienced colder, drier conditions, declining agricultural yields, social unrest, and a population contraction lasting 400 years. These factors likely disrupted the human niche that had supported leopard cats. A parallel can be seen in Europe, where black rat populations declined with the fall of the Roman Empire only to re-emerge with economic recovery. In both cases, the decline of major civilizations may have led to the disappearance of commensal animals dependent on human-driven ecosystems.

Six centuries after the disappearance of small felids, domestic cat remains began to appear in China and at another Silk Road trade hub in Central Asia.  The arrival of domestic cats may have hindered the re-establishment of leopard cats in human settlements, as both species occupy similar ecological niches. Additionally, the rise of poultry farming in ancient China after the Han Dynasty may have contributed to human-leopard cat conflict, given their tendency to prey on chickens, further preventing the return of leopard cats to anthropogenic environments.

The short version of this is:

• Human society develops agriculture in China.
• Large granaries lead to rodent heavy spaces, and P. bengalensis decides to hang out at the all you can eat rodent buffet.
• Social unrest in China leads to famine and population falling.
• Cats realize that the aforementioned buffet is over, and what's more the big dumb apes get upset when they eat the yummy birds.
• Cats decide, "Fuck this shit, I'm out of here."

That last bit is totally peak cat. 

The Best News So Far This Year (For Me)

Yes, I know, it's only January 2, and yes, I know that the article is from 6 months ago, but the fact that there large stands of mature American Chestnut trees producing offspring in multiple locations on the Eastern Searboard is news to me.

There has always been a scattered American Chestnut trees out there, but they were too far away from each other to pollinate, which meant that there was no future.

There are now (small) chestnut forests that one can hike through.

Hundreds of years ago, American chestnut trees dominated the Appalachian Mountain forest-scape. They stood an imposing 100 feet tall and eight feet wide at maturity, lived for up to 600 years, and covered an estimated 200 million acres of land from Mississippi to Maine. Carpenters prized their lumber. Farmers regaled their ability to produce cheap and nutritious feed for livestock. Gourmands crowned their nuts the world’s finest.

Then an invasive blight from East Asia arrived around 1904. The fungus attacked tree trunks and felled the giants by the tens of thousands. While lone trees survived here and there, their nuts were infertile without others to cross-pollinate them, and by 1950 American chestnuts became functionally extinct.

“The devastation represents one of the greatest recorded changes in natural plant population caused by an introduced organism in history,” says West Virginia University emeritus professor of plant pathology and former American Chestnut Foundation president William MacDonald. Had the tragedy been avoided, hikers on the iconic Appalachian Trail would not only experience a “radically different landscape” but enjoy “some very tasty treats around their fall campfires,” he says.

The ACF has spent the past seventy-five years working with various conservation agencies to crossbreed blight-resistent American chestnut trees using clippings from anomalous survivors and Chinese or Japanese varieties. 

The Asian trees “introduce a degree of immunity into the genome and produce a first-generation hybrid,” says John Scrivani, a forester and former president of the ACF Virginia chapter. The new trees are then back-bred with American progenitors across multiple generations until they produce blight-resistent offspring that are genetically indecipherable from those once found in the wild.        

A Meadowview, Virginia, research center spearheads the effort, and more than a dozen experimental, large-plot plantings on state public lands have not only survived but reached maturity. Lesesne State Forest in Nelson County, for instance, holds about thirty acres of natural, second-growth woods anchored by seventy-foot-tall American chestnut trees that are more than sixty years old—and produce delicious wild nuts that few living people beyond foresters and researchers have ever tasted.

………

Large stands of publicly accessible American chestnut forests are now found in more than a dozen locations spread across the Virginia mountains. Other smaller experimental plots exist in Kentucky, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, and Maine, but the largest and oldest sit within ten miles of the Blue Ridge Parkway at Lesesne and Matthews State Forest in Galax. Sky Meadows State Park in Delaplane and the Mountain Lake Wilderness near Blacksburg also hold destination-worthy groves.  

For the first time in my life, I want to go on a hiking trip.

Headline of the Day

Please Stop Mailing Butt Plugs to Bahrain

—Boing Boing describing how the US military wants a sex toy firm to stop accepting orders from soldiers who are deployed to the Persian Gulf island nation.

I don't have anything to add to this. 

We regret to inform you that you must no longer ship sex toys to Bahrain, the decidedly conservative island kingdom off the coast of Saudi Arabia. Thousands of U.S. service members stationed at the base there will have to go without or find a local source. The sad news comes from Grace Bennett, proprietor of Canadian sexual wellness shop Bonjibon. She has framed the letter she received from the U.S. Department of Defense asking her to cease and decist.

"Framing the angry letter the American Department of Defense sent my spicy Canadian toy business on behalf of the Kingdom of Bahrain tell me to STOP mailing 🍑🍑🍑 plugs to their American soldiers," she wrote, adding "their soldiers are the ones who ordered them in the first place!"

No really.  I have nothing to add to this.

The opportunity for humorous quips is so limitless as to be paralyzing.

Shut Up and Take My Money!

I just came across a fascinating new book, Lessons from Cats for Surviving Fascism, available from Hachette and other book sellers.

Stewart "Brittlestar" Reynolds is a Canadian humorist.

I do really want to read this book. 

oshit

The Ukrainian drone attack on Putin's residence was never likely to change the situation in the Russo-Ukraine war, but now it appears that it could have, and could still make things far worse, because it was also arguably an attack on Russian nuclear command and control infrastructure, which is defined under Russian law as justifying a nuclear response.

Thankfully, nothing nuclear has happened ……… Yet.

A drone attack carried out against one of Putin’s residences was also an attack against a Russian nuclear command and control center located at the residence, according to the ex-adviser to the office of the President of Ukraine, Alexey Arestovich, and a military expert interviewed by Sputnik news and Tass.

This is yet another drone attack that attempted to kill the Russian President; the first occurred when Putin was traveling to Kursk in his helicopter and was attacked by a drone swarm. This second drone attack against Putin’s residence was also an attack against a component of the nuclear triad (the nuclear control center in the residence), which under Russian law and military code, justifies a nuclear response.

Do I think that this attack will lead to a nuclear response?  No, for whatever my opinion is worth.

Do I think that further attacks increase risk?  Yes.

(update) 

Scott Ritter has a similar analysis up.

Mayor Mamdani, Sounds Good

At his inauguration, he sets the right tone, promising higher taxes on multi-millionaires and stating that they are the reason that the city is too expensive for ordinary people.

As I have stated before, Mamdani's first step shjould be to go after moles who will act against him in the party establishment and city bureaucracy, who will continually try to subvert him and his agenda.

This doesn't mean firing necessarily, a public close watch will do.

Still this is a good day for New York City. 

Zohran Mamdani, the new mayor of New York City, is pressing ahead with plans for higher taxes on millionaires, brushing off warnings they will trigger an exodus of the wealthy from America’s financial capital.

Dean Fuleihan, incoming deputy mayor, acknowledged “new revenues” would be required to balance New York’s budget and deliver on Mamdani’s expensive election promises. But he dismissed fears that rich people would turn their backs on the city in protest at a potentially higher tax burden.

“The people who are leaving are those who can’t afford New York, not the millionaire class,” Fuleihan told the Financial Times. Most people understood that addressing its affordability crisis was “necessary for the business and the success of New York”, he added.

Mamdani, a self-described democratic socialist, was sworn in as New York’s first Muslim mayor at a closed-door ceremony in a disused subway station just before midnight on New Year’s Eve, marking the climax of a stunning rise to power that has dumbfounded America’s political establishment.

………

He has pledged to raise the city’s personal income tax rate on annual earnings greater than $1mn by 2 percentage points to about 5.9 per cent and increase the top corporate tax from 7.25 per cent to 11.5 per cent — matching the rate in neighbouring New Jersey.

The extra revenues would pay for an ambitious social programme that includes free universal child care — expected to cost $6bn a year — as well as free buses, state-owned grocery stores and the construction of 200,000 affordable housing units over the next 10 years.

However, any revenue-raising proposals will encounter resistance in the New York assembly in Albany. Governor Kathy Hochul, a Democrat who is up for re-election this year, has said she is opposed to raising personal income taxes.

Hochul is, as always, full of crap.

Her concerns about winning conservative suburban voters is bullshit.

These are tax increases on people who live in the city.  Suburban voters do not care about this shit.

Hippo Gnu Yarr

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. 

Hippo	Gnu	Yarrr!!!!

I hope for the best for you and yours, but recent evidence indicates that this is unlikely.