Yves here. Yanis Varoufakis frames this piece by recounting how his father, who worked initially in supervisory positions in a steel factory, made Greek antiquities a focus of his private life. Yanis’ obituary for his father gives a much clearer picture…
Yves here. Yes, this is just a little scandal. But it’s so juicy and tacky. A New York city cop, soon to be sheriff, promoting a fake Covid protection device…oh, and when the sheriff role involves enforcement of Covid rules. And…
Just trust me. And enjoy! Hat tip Mark G. This entry was posted in Curiousities, Guest Post on June 3, 2023 by Yves Smith.
Yves here. This new article is tellingly thin on obligatory “That lame Russia military is limping along” trope. It also amusingly starts with a disapproving mention of wrong-way Max Boot saying all is well in Kiev, apparently before the latest round…
The New England Journal of Medicine has a new article, Lessons for a Pandemic, which presents itself as a high level post mortem of the US pandemic response. While it does include some pointed criticisms, as we’ll soon explain, that appears…
Yves here. One hates to point the obvious: the gap between the amount needed to overhaul electrical systems around the world, versus plans and funding to date, translates into “na ga happen” at least on the needed timetable. Yet various initiatives,…
Yves here. This article, despite pointing out that an expected UN plastics treaty is likely to underdeliver, does stress that plastics opponents are challenging the idea that recycling is a remedy. Our Jerri-Lynn Scofield, who covered the war on plastics, regularly…
It’s a stretch to use anecdata to build a theory…save when the evidence is overwhelming, as it is here, of the widespread erosion of executive ability. It’s not be controversial to point out that the caliber of what passes for leadership…
Yves here. This article points out that the perhaps undue eagerness of French pundits and pols to support assisted dying is coming at the expense of adequate funding and programs for palliative care. In the US, for many, the situation is…
Yves here. Coming from a family that on one side was fishermen and sea cooks, reading about harm to ocean-dependent lifestyles, even if mainly of the tourist classes, is sad. Many traditional communities now depend on making hay during a comparatively…
Yves here. Psychedelics have a very long history in religious ceremonies and more recently in self-discovery. But these mushroom sales have many of the worst aspects of dietary supplement and illegal drug use. You aren’t sure of the potency of what…
Why Gen Z prefer dogs to babies Unherd ‘You don’t want to pick up your trash, don’t come to the mountain,’ mountaineer Tenzi Sherpa said, as he shared visuals of trash left behind on Mount Everest pic.twitter.com/dYZxcN1j7r — Reuters (@Reuters) May…
Yves here. This post focuses on what sadly has become an important topic, namely propaganda, with coverage of wars as the object lesson. Since readers have sometimes brought it up, I suspect many will concur with the commentary on how the…
Yves here. The deans of analysis of political spending in the US, Tom Ferguson, Paul Jorgenson, and Jie Chen, yet again demonstrate the overwhelming power of money in US politics, here as demonstrated in the debt ceiling kayfabe where the only…
Yves here. Many, including many readers, have been keen about the idea that global population levels will stall out and hopefully decline, and with it, reduce resource demand. This article contends that the transition may result in even higher commodity consumption.…
Fat cat survives after falling from 6th floor, breaking car window Thaiger (furzy). This cat is lucky. Cats are most likely to die in falls of less than 8 stories. At greater heights, they have time to flip themselves over, and…
Even for well-reported 20th century wars, decades later, historians are still seeking to improve our understanding of them. With the Ukraine conflict, we’re in the midst of the unprecedented experience of being able to discern a remarkably high proportion of what…
Yves here. This post makes a strong claim, that demand for oil is inelastic, presumably for a certain level of GDP. Recall that demand for oil and gas priced collapsed during the global financial crisis. But “demand is inelastic” is presumably…
Do Animals Get Drunk? Natilus (Micael T) Bear helps itself to 60 cupcakes from Connecticut bakery, scares employees Associated Press (resilc) The hidden mini statues of Budapest Budapest Flow (BC) France to launch bird flu vaccination programme after ‘satisfactory’ tests France24…
Yves here. Get a cup of coffee. This is an in-depth discussion of Michael Hudson’s extensive work on the origins and effects of periodic debt jubilees versus the enshrinement of creditor rights. The latter produces oligarchs, the impoverishment of lower orders,…
Yves here. Like author Sonali Kolhatkar, your humble blogger has been skeptical of a four day, or better yet, 32 hour workweek without an increase in worker compensation. By Sonali Kolhatkar, an award-winning multimedia journalist. She is the founder, host, and…
Yves here. A success in union organizing in Georgia is a welcome contrast to the worker defeat of the hard-fought battle over the Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama. Note that campaigners have filed 21 objections to the National Labor Relations Board,…
When I was last in New York City, I heard a sadly common display of class privilege when a woman waiting in my chiropractor’s office initiated a rant on the topic of free public transportation. The drift of her gist: What…
Yves here. I had no idea that Medicaid was such a heavyweight in total US health care. This is remarkable in what it says indirectly about poverty and income instability in the US. Remember that Medicaid has stringent eligibility requirements and…
Yves here. Predictably, policy-makers prefer the climate change version of wunderwaffen to traditional approaches with less NGO-busying and producer-enriching. And that before getting to the fact that lower tech works better. And cutting energy use, as in radical conservation, works best!…
Yves here. The IPCC’s ideological prejudices have led to an unduly relaxed view of the speed of ice melt and rises in ocean levels. An arguably more realistic view includes “fast feedback” factors which point to rapid increases, which in turn…
Yves here. It is disheartening to see how the Democratic party and elite fondness for complex programs, best of all in eligibility rules to make the poors pay for their bennies in time and stress, then serves as a mechanism for…
Yves here. I must confess I had never heard of the Crusade Bulls before. I majored in the Industrial Revolution, and by then, the controversies over papal indulgences were over, even if their effects (Christian schism) were durable I wonder how…
Yves here. While there has been a blip in the dry-out-of-the-West trend line due to monster snowfalls in many areas, this article points out one important consequence: toxic arsenic levels in well water in areas where aquifers are low. The piece…
A Magnificent 1,000 Day Mushroom Timelapse Laughing Squid (resilc) ‘I knew aliens were real’: Marine’s footage of mystery objects over military base sparks UFO talk Raw Story (furzy) Triangle-Wheeled Bike Gives New Meaning to ‘Tricycle’ Gizmodo Questioning physicians about health conditions…
Yves here. “Nobody wants to” should not be an acceptable answer. But advanced economy governments are cowed by big business, even incumbents of a industry in decline. This North Sea tale no doubt is like many other environmental fiascoes, save it’s…
Yves here. This is all so sad. The cost of having lots of migrants compete for jobs at the bottom is more desperation, pressure on cheap housing, too often homelessness and disease….and for what? The PMC wanting cheap servants and businesses…
Yves here. I’m so used to cold water Yankee discipline and sheer terror as ways to deal with crisis level problems that I have trouble wrapping my mind around comedy being energizing. But for those where sheer terror produces paralysis, as…
Time is an object aeon (Anthony L) Students are increasingly refusing to go to school. It’s becoming a mental health crisis. USA Today #COVID-19 Looking Back on the Sadism of the Covid-19 Shaming Campaign Matt Taibbi and Matt Orfalea, The Racket…
Yves here. This is a very lucid post on the debt ceiling game of chicken that presents some options that I had not heard discussed before, such as a conflicts of law argument for spending in excess of debt ceiling limits.…
Yves here. I’m not sure how to prevent a major industry like meat producers from having a seat at the table, but it’s not hard to support preventing undue influence. But where to draw the line? But here the big concern…
Back in the day when raiders were putting fear in the hearts of Corporate America, merger & acquisition pros were business media stars. One of the top shops back then, Lazard Frères, prided itself in its skills in abnormal psychology, aka…
Yves here. If the forecast in this article proves to be correct, and the author argues that it’s pretty much baked in, a big fail in US LNG production will produce a lot of collateral damage. The first is for Europe,…
Does Your Dog Truly Love You? Science Has the Answer Newsweek Cops: Woman Defecated On Church Altar Smoking Gun (resilc) Americans’ Views of Childhood Vaccines Remain Largely Positive Pew Research Center. This is not consistent with what IM Doc is being…
Yves here. I’m running this piece mainly as an example of “fact checking” as a vehicle for attacking individuals and groups outside the mainstream. This article establishes that what Bernie Sanders said about drug price is accurate: “We pay by far…
Yves here. Your humble blogger is in no position to opine on the UK’s new right wing contenders, the National Conservatives. However, I am bothered by the use of the term “nationalist” as pejorative, since globalization has not worked out so…
Yves here. Because Republicans are ever and always bad guys, at least if you are a Democrat, commentators are IMHO being far too generous to the Biden Administration on the current debt ceiling impasse. Biden simply postured that he wasn’t going…
Yves here. Tom Neuburger sets forth examples of how the US is expanding its definitions of who its enemies are….after potentially having included President Kennedy as one. This posture looks like an effort to indoctrinate law enforcement officials and the press…
Yves here. This is a fine compact treatment of the intellectually shoddy market fetishism, and how its biggest fanbois are routinely the ones who get waivers, such as bank and airline bailouts and subsidies via favorable tax treatment. There are many…
CalPERS’ sense of privilege knows no bounds. The latest example is its Deputy Executive Officer, Communications & Stakeholder Relations Brad Pacheco unsuccessfully trying to ‘splain the very bad optics of Chief Investment Officer Nicole Musicco and her son getting NBA courtside…
We first wrote about what came to be called about deaths of despair when the landmark work by Angus Deaton, the 2015 Nobel prize winner in economics, and his wife Anne Case, on the dramatic rise in the death rate of…
Yves here. Forgive me for running this very fine Juan Cole piece a bit late, since it means you may have already seen it elsewhere. It gives a solid overview of how China has economic interests in the Middle East which…
Yves here. Has no one in the Beltway gotten the memo that it punishment fetish isn’t working out so well? The great shock and awe sanctions against Russia are Exhibit 1, with the US only getting as a consolation prize the…
Readers have sometimes been so kind as to ask in comments where I stand on my plans to move abroad, since I had been oversharing about the process of settling the estate and where I would go next. As much as…
Yves here. As Lambert likes to say, I do try to keep up, but I must confess to being unfamiliar with this new farm to biofuel scheme. The fact that, at least per this article, these biofuel digesters are explosion-prone, can…