Gorilla Mother Constantly Reminding Children To Slouch The Onion

Climate

Temperature rise ‘unprecedented in the instrumental record’ Climate & Capitalism

‘Godfathers of climate chaos’: UN chief urges global fossil-fuel advertising ban Guardian

Giant viruses found on Greenland ice sheet Science Daily

Water

Holy Waters: The Sea Field & Stream

“Sharing is important”: Elementary students dive into Colorado water issues in pen pal program Colorado Sun

Wanted: Disaster Resilience in Tokyo’s Water Infrastructure Nippon.com

Syndemics

Birx says US making ‘same mistakes’ with bird flu as COVID-19 The Hill

WHO: Fatal H5N2 Infection In Mexico City Avian Flu Diary

Huge amounts of bird-flu virus found in raw milk of infected cows Nature

New Report Underscores the Seriousness of Long Covid NYT

‘I was shocked’: Ontario to cancel widely praised wastewater surveillance program Ottawa Citizen

The bloodstained leveller Aeon

China?

China’s Energy Intensity and Carbon Intensity Targets Are All But Unachievable The Diplomat

How to Respond to China’s Tactics in the South China Sea RAND

Hiker finds pipe feeding China’s tallest waterfall BBC

India

Billionaire-Friendly Modi Humbled by Indians Who Make $4 a Day Bloomberg

Commentary: With Modi failing to secure landslide victory, India returns to default of coalition government Channel News Asia

Pleasure Gardens: Blackouts and the Logic of Crisis in Kashmir The New Inquiry

Syraqistan

Netanyahu prolonging Gaza war for political aims: US President Biden Business Standard

Biden: ‘I don’t think’ Netanyahu is playing politics with war in Gaza Anadolu Agency

Did The Houthis Hit The USS Eisenhower May 31st? Ian Welsh

Israel Secretly Targeted American Lawmakers With Gaza War Influence Campaign Haaretz

After publishing an article critical of Israel, Columbia Law Review’s website is shut down by board AP

‘Elections’ organized by PKK/YPG in northeast Syria are ‘malicious, dangerous’: Association Anadolu Agency

European Disunion

Election 2024, as told in lovers’ quarrels Politico

Dear Old Blighty

Rishi Sunak puts Jamie Dimon and Eric Schmidt forward for UK honours FT

Nigel Farage Gets Milkshake Thrown In His Face As He Launches Election Campaign Huffpo. Commentary:

New Not-So-Cold War

Putin warns West over Ukraine armaments, nuclear arsenal in news conference Al Jazeera

Lavrov’s Deputy: ‘The West wants to repeat the Maidan scenario in Georgia’ JAM News

The sequence of destruction in any Russian response to NATO-directed attacks on its heartland GIlbert Doctorow

Ukrainian power company to implement emergency outages in 12 oblasts Ukrainska Pravda

‘Putin’s Davos’ recovers to pre-war levels, but representation from the West has all but disappeared BNE Intellinews

How Brics chair Russia will deepen cooperation in expanded bloc South China Morning Post

The US Empire Isn’t A Government That Runs Nonstop Wars, It’s A Nonstop War That Runs A Government Caitlin Johnstone

War, the dark fleet and energy geopolitics all part of the debate at Posidonia Splash 247

2024

The best argument to lock up Trump: Merchan must protect the judiciary Jennifer Rubin, WaPo (Furzy Mouse).

Antitrust

US antitrust enforcer says ‘urgent’ scrutiny needed over Big Tech’s control of AI FT

The Bezzle

Researchers plan to retract landmark Alzheimer’s paper containing doctored images Science. See KLG, August 31, 2022.

Digital Watch

To solve AI’s energy crisis, ‘rethink the entire stack from electrons to algorithms,’ says Stanford prof The Register

AI’s Insatiable Data-Center Demand Makes Crypto Miners Targets Bloomberg

OpenAI Insiders Warn of a ‘Reckless’ Race for Dominance NYT

Alice in Wonderland: Simple Tasks Showing Complete Reasoning Breakdown in State-Of-the-Art Large Language Models (preprint) arXiv. “Often, models seemed to rely on attempting to execute various basic arithmetical operations on the numbers mentioned in the problem to arrive to a final answer. The probability to get a correct response was thus influenced by how likely executing few arbitrary simple calculations, like additions or multiplications that included numbers presented in the problem text, might also accidentally result in a correct answer, although the way of arriving there had nothing to do with correct reasoning.”

Stanford University team apologises over claims they copied Chinese project for AI model South China Morning Post

Instagram confirms test of ‘unskippable’ ads TechCrunch

Spook Country

Johnson quietly makes controversial picks to House Intel panel Politico

How to Keep Your Car From Spying on You WSJ

Police State Watch

The Age of the Drone Police Is Here WIred

Housing

Colorado’s growing approach to solving chronic homelessness: Permanent housing with few rules Colorado Sun

FBI raid on real estate company linked to Harlan Crow’s RealPage rental price fixing Daily Kos

Chinese official dies ‘after being stabbed over housing dispute’ South China Morning Post

Class Warfare

Teamsters and Amazon Labor Union Announce Affiliation, Member Vote Still Ahead Labor Notes

Deere & Co. Cutting Production, Salaried Workforce WSJ

Why put up with the grief that writing a blog guarantees I’ll get? Funding the Future

Uneasy on the Ear: An Interview with Lola De La Mata The Quietus

Antidote du jour (David Menke):

See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.

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This entry was posted in Guest Post, 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.