Baby moose trapped in a lake is saved by Alaska man and police as its worried mom watches AP

Stonehenge solstice sunrise attracts 15,000 people BBC

Crisis memory, geopolitics and the risks of financial contagion Gillian Tett, FT

Climate

Relatives search for missing in Saudi Arabia as hajj death toll tops 900 France24

Heatwave in Mexico claims lives of more than 150 since March France24

Why some scientists think extreme heat could be the reason people keep disappearing in Greece CNN

India heatwave sparks spate of fires, ignites calls for stricter safety regulation enforcement Channel News Asia. Commentary:

NCR = National Capital Region (India).

Bats drop dead from trees in Kanpur due to extreme heatwave India Today

Economist suggests storing grain to prepare for next global emergency Guardian

Occasional paper: Fungal banking Crooked Timber

Book Review – Eat, Poop, Die: How Animals Make Our World The Inquisitive Biologist

Water

What happens if we break the Colorado River? Salt Lake Tribune

Syndemics

The destruction of public health and the growing threat of an H5N1 bird flu pandemic WSWS

Human SARS-CoV-2 challenge uncovers local and systemic response dynamics Nature

China?

Xi Jinping’s mystery PBoC plans surface with biggest shift in years Business Standard

China aims to solve property puzzle with affordable housing push, but debt cloud remains South China Morning Post

South China Sea: Philippines advised to stake claim on disputed shoal with civilian site South China Morning Post

Philippines secretly reinforces ship at centre of South China Sea dispute FT

Putin, Kim and new multipolar world. Sullivan, striking Russia is common sense. Conflict in Lebanon (video) Alex Christoforou, YouTube. See at 8:30.

The Koreas

‘We’ll continue our struggle’: South Korea’s doctor strike crisis deepens as more join walkout Channel News Asia

Hanwha strikes $100m deal for Philly Shipyard Splash 247

Could CIA Sabotage North Korean Arm Shipments to Russia? Spy Talk

Inside the Success of South Korean Brands Harvard Business Review

Vietnam’s ‘bamboo diplomacy’ triumphs with visits from Biden, Xi and now Putin FT

Putin’s State Visit to Vietnam karlof1’s Geopolitical Gymnasium

Five Decades On, Cambodia Is Taking Ownership of Its Troubled Past The Diplomat

Syraqistan

Endless War, Not ‘Total Victory’: IDF Wants to Leave Gaza, but Netanyahu Has Other Ideas Haaretz. Commentary:

IDF transfers powers in occupied West Bank to pro-settler civil servants Guardian

The U.S. power structure is blindly dedicated to Israel Mondoweiss

Apologies Sir Atrios, Eschaton

European Disunion

French women voters swing sharply to far right Politico

Why the Greens are losing in the EU and what Ukraine should learn from it European Pravda

EU cancels vote on child sexual abuse law amid encryption concerns Politico

Dear Old Blighty

The Leaving of Blackburn Craig Murray

Sunak may sanction UK youth if they refuse compulsory national service Al Mayadeen

New Not-So-Cold War

Zelensky’s peace summit flop The Spectator

US says Ukraine can hit inside Russia ‘anywhere’ its forces attack across the border Politico. Caption: “‘This is not about geography. It’s about common sense,’ national security adviser Jake Sullivan told PBS.”

U.S. will boost Ukraine’s air defense by pausing exports to allies WaPo

EU Ambassador: “The ‘foreign agents’ law has frozen Georgia’s European integration” JAM News

Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan & China: When is a done deal really done? BNE Intellinews

Digital Watch

This Week in AI: Generative AI is spamming up academic journals TechCrunch

Neo-Nazis Are All-In on AI Wired

Hackers ‘jailbreak’ powerful AI models in global effort to highlight flaws FT

Meta warns bit flips, other hardware faults cause AI errors The Register

The Bezzle

Ditching paper money has made Sweden a haven for online scams Straits Times

Fast Crimes at Lambda School Sandofsky

Supply Chain

Transhipment ports challenged by changes in call patterns amid the Red Sea crisis Hellenic Shipping News

Liberia blocks Russia’s Ingosstrakh from insuring ships in move against sanctions-busting “shadow fleet” BNE Intellinews

Healthcare

Drug Shortages Keep Growing. Older, Injectable Agents Are Among the Most Vulnerable. MedPage Today

The Final Frontier

Cosmic kidney disease: an integrated pan-omic, physiological and morphological study into spaceflight-induced renal dysfunction Nature. From the Introduction:

The renewed zeitgeist for space travel, ushered in by the advent of commercial spaceflight and tourism, has spurred on state-funded agencies to embark on even more ambitious exploratory ‘Deep Space’ missions. The first of these, namely the Artemis Program, Lunar Gateway space station and later the Deep Space Transport/Mars Missions, will for the first-time place humans outside of Earth’s protective magnetic field exposed to significant quantities of unmitigated space radiation and weightlessness for many months to years at a time.

The health effects of low Earth orbit (LEO) spaceflight (e.g. the International Space Station) are multiple, with much of the research communities’ intense focus centred on the musculoskeletal, neurological, ocular and cardiovascular degeneration that can manifest as early as a few weeks into a mission. Notably, the effects of LEO spaceflight on many other organ systems are less clear, with indispensable organs such as the kidneys receiving relatively little attention in the absence of overt symptoms. However, in the face of extended periods of deep space travel health issues may only present with late onset due to cloaked subclinical pathophysiology and chronic damage eating into the extensive functional reserves of such organs.

This Revolutionary New Observatory Will Locate Threatening Asteroids and Millions of Galaxies Smithsonian

Class Warfare

America’s Sweethearts Is a Surprisingly Infuriating Portrait of the Ultimate Pink-Collar Job TIme

High Expectations The Baffler

‘These Stores Are Unhealthy for Our Communities’: FAIR

Bella Baxter and the Machine: On Yorgos Lanthimos’s “Poor Things” and Julie Wosk’s “Artificial Women” LA Review of Books

Listen To Your Own Soul’s Warning Daily Stoic

Antidote du jour (Harald Wehner):

Bonus antidote:

See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.

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This entry was posted in Links on by Lambert Strether.

About Lambert Strether

Readers, I have had a correspondent characterize my views as realistic cynical. Let me briefly explain them. I believe in universal programs that provide concrete material benefits, especially to the working class. Medicare for All is the prime example, but tuition-free college and a Post Office Bank also fall under this heading. So do a Jobs Guarantee and a Debt Jubilee. Clearly, neither liberal Democrats nor conservative Republicans can deliver on such programs, because the two are different flavors of neoliberalism (“Because markets”). I don’t much care about the “ism” that delivers the benefits, although whichever one does have to put common humanity first, as opposed to markets. Could be a second FDR saving capitalism, democratic socialism leashing and collaring it, or communism razing it. I don’t much care, as long as the benefits are delivered. To me, the key issue — and this is why Medicare for All is always first with me — is the tens of thousands of excess “deaths from despair,” as described by the Case-Deaton study, and other recent studies. That enormous body count makes Medicare for All, at the very least, a moral and strategic imperative. And that level of suffering and organic damage makes the concerns of identity politics — even the worthy fight to help the refugees Bush, Obama, and Clinton’s wars created — bright shiny objects by comparison. Hence my frustration with the news flow — currently in my view the swirling intersection of two, separate Shock Doctrine campaigns, one by the Administration, and the other by out-of-power liberals and their allies in the State and in the press — a news flow that constantly forces me to focus on matters that I regard as of secondary importance to the excess deaths. What kind of political economy is it that halts or even reverses the increases in life expectancy that civilized societies have achieved? I am also very hopeful that the continuing destruction of both party establishments will open the space for voices supporting programs similar to those I have listed; let’s call such voices “the left.” Volatility creates opportunity, especially if the Democrat establishment, which puts markets first and opposes all such programs, isn’t allowed to get back into the saddle. Eyes on the prize! I love the tactical level, and secretly love even the horse race, since I’ve been blogging about it daily for fourteen years, but everything I write has this perspective at the back of it.