The Yanks, Nato and the EU won’t like this one little bit – they’ve already cheated the guy out of a victory, and dismissed democracy in Romania. I wouldn’t be surprised – if they tried to do a Fico on him and assassinate him – or do a Imran Khan on him, and falsely accuse him of fraud/embezzlement – to get him out of the picture in Romania.
“Calin Georgescu, the politician whose first-round victory in the Romanian presidential election was overturned by the Constitutional Court, has argued that the borders claimed by Ukraine were artificially drawn and are subject to inevitable change.
The staunch critic of Western policies made the remarks on Wednesday in an interview with political analyst Ion Cristoiu on YouTube. He was discussing the adjustments of European borders after World War II, which resulted in a transfer of territories to Soviet Ukraine. Georgescu said he expects Ukraine to be fragmented as part of a peace deal with Russia, along historical lines.”

Posted by: Republicofscotland | Jan 30 2025 17:13 utc | 4

why ?
Posted by: exile | Jan 30 2025 16:30 utc | 1
Isn’t it kind of an annual event now?
Name the most recent time the fedgov hasn’t reached the debt ceiling.

Posted by: Mary | Jan 30 2025 17:15 utc | 6

Its okay to commemorate one genocide – but speak out against another one and you’ll pay the price – what a bunch of nasty hypocrites.
“Polish MEP Grzegorz Braun called on his fellow legislators to “pray for the victims of the Jewish genocide in Gaza” during a moment of silence in remembrance of Holocaust victims on Wednesday. He was swiftly asked to leave the chamber by European Parliament President Roberta Metsola.
After being ejected from the European Parliament’s commemorative ceremony marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the MEP from Poland’s right-wing Confederation alliance insisted in a post on X that he hadn’t wanted to “disturb” the event, but rather “supplemented” it.”

Posted by: Republicofscotland | Jan 30 2025 17:17 utc | 8

Nato-Finland, after taking ten US military bases in the ass, is again feeling the brunt of that decision as a gigantic fog is everywhere, leaving an unnatural smear on all surfaces, oddly grainy under the streetlights.
Several people say they’re coughing blood after being outside.
Reports from other countries say that under a microscope, the “fog” is laced with millions of parasites. Nothing new for America/Nato/UN of course.

Posted by: Jack M | Jan 30 2025 17:22 utc | 10

@lester #9
The US won’t turn on India until it is obvious that India will not provide the manpower to fight China. There is nobody else in Asia with remotely the warm bodies to be able to do this.

Posted by: c1ue | Jan 30 2025 17:25 utc | 12

Ed Zitron’s latest Deep Impact
Pretty nice overview on what Deepseek has done, how they have done it.
But more important: the impact on the existing AI bubble. He specifically says we have now officially passed “Peak AI”.
And if this is true, it is going to hurt.
1/3 of all venture capital (VC) went to various AI companies last year.
nVidia will crash if its latest/greatest GPUs are no longer in insatiable demand.
Nobody will need/want massive new data centers if they are unnecessary.
The $200 billion spent last year on capital for AI data centers, stranded much less the larger numbers bruited about for this year -including the $500B Stargate proposal.
The stock market won’t do well either. Zitron goes into detail how investors are neither going to keep funding the loser AI companies, nor give credence/credit to the big tech companies for having dumping tens and hundreds of billions into a literal pig in the poke.
And it is worse than that: even with DeepSeek’s lower costs, there still is no killer app for “AI” i.e. LLMs. As anyone who has ever done reviews before – whether code or documents or anything – there is a point where it is more effort to review than it is to do the original job, more correctly. This break even point is much smaller if the reviewer is not the originator of the information being reviewed, because the reviewers have to learn all about the reviewed material first plus there is a lot less efficiency due to not having the mind set, data set and goals/practices of the originator.
The lingering question I have is: what is the hallucination percentage of LLMs as compared to this break-even point? If the break even point is structurally at or near the break even point, then there is literally zero to negative benefit of using LLMs.
Of course, the break even point varies by industry. For customer service, the tolerance is probably pretty high. But what about medicine? law? research?

Posted by: c1ue | Jan 30 2025 17:36 utc | 14

As usual, another outstanding discussion between Wolff, Hudson and Nima. It begins with Wolff explaining his recent article, “Settler Colonialism – ‘It Ends With Us’ in Palestine and Israel”, and the current West Asia situation that also relates to the declining Outlaw US Empire. One other event discussed is the internal political battle occurring over the confirmation of Tulsi Gabbard and what that reveals. And then we have Trump fighting hard not to be named the One who LOST OUR Ukraine that’s shaping up similarly to what happened in 1949 when Mao’s forces liberated China. The ending commentary about Trump’s use of the Tariff Tool is very instructive.

Posted by: karlof1 | Jan 30 2025 18:13 utc | 16

ATTENTION! ATTENTION! ATTENTION!
GENOCIDE! GENOCIDE! GENOCIDE!
30,000,000+ DEAD! 30,000,000+ DEAD! 30,000,000+ DEAD!
Viruses = Superstition
Virology = Pseudoscience
Vaccines = Weapons of War
“COVID-19” = Global Genocide
“Great Reset” = War on Humanity
“Agenda 2030” = Global Technocratic Fascism
https://denisrancourt.substack.com/p/breaking-our-largest-study-of-its
https://drsambailey.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/SETTLING-THE-VIRUS-DEBATE-Source.pdf
https://drsambailey.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/A-FAREWELL-TO-VIROLOGY-Expert-Edition.pdf
ACT NOW!

Posted by: KOB | Jan 30 2025 18:48 utc | 18

The West, via a proxy assassin sympathetic to Ukraine – has already tried to murder Fico – Fico has spoken out against the Neo-Nazi dictatorship in Ukraine, cutting-off Russian gas to Europe and Slovakia, Slovakia relies heavily on Russian gas – of course Ukrainian Neo-Nazi hit men are for hire, and European targets are no outside their remit.
“A Ukrainian national has been arrested in Slovakia in connection with a coup threat, local media reported on Thursday, citing a police statement. The man, who has not been named, will be expelled from Slovakia and returned to Ukraine.
The move comes after Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, who has refused to follow NATO and EU policy on the Ukraine conflict and survived an assassination attempt by a pro-Kiev activist last year, linked recent anti-government protests in his country to interference by Ukrainians.”

Posted by: Republicofscotland | Jan 30 2025 18:53 utc | 20

Lets not forget these British murderers have/are in Gaza, and Ukraine doing god knows what – the (SAS) are nothing more than terrorists and assassins – which should be proscribed like any other nasty terrorist outfit.
“Key evidence held at UK special forces headquarters containing allegations the SAS had killed Afghans in cold blood was destroyed to prevent the military police from seeing it, an inquiry was told this week.
Senior special forces officers and defence officials were so desperate to cover up SAS activities in Afghanistan that the crucial data was deleted from an IT system at the “higher headquarters of special forces”, inquiry chairman Lord Justice Haddon-Cave said.
He noted how the data was “wiped before the military police could seize and examine it”. But he revealed that with “independent help” the inquiry had managed to get a back-up copy and intended to restore the data.
It was the latest testimony in an inquiry that has placed an unprecedented spotlight on an elite band of British troops that have a degree of protection from scrutiny greater even than that enjoyed by the security and intelligence agencies – MI5, MI6, and GCHQ.”
https://www.declassifieduk.org/sas-rogue-heroes-or-just-rogues/

Posted by: Republicofscotland | Jan 30 2025 19:04 utc | 22

Whilst you are there Grossi – have a word with the little Nazi dictator Zelensky, and tell him – to stop trying to blow up nuclear facilities – such as the ZNPP the largest nuclear power station in Europe – but then again every time the Neo-Nazi’s attack the ZNPP the IAEA just happens to not be in the vicinity – coincidence?
“International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Grossi plans to visit the Ukrainian capital of Kiev next week to hold high-level talks on nuclear security, the agency said in a statement.
“Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi will travel to Ukraine next week for high-level meetings in Kiev, in which the ongoing efforts of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to help prevent a nuclear accident during the military conflict will be discussed.”

Posted by: Republicofscotland | Jan 30 2025 19:09 utc | 24

Posted by: KOB | Jan 30 2025 18:48 utc | 18
Yawn. Anti-virology is like the theory of relativity: it’s triumphantly and conclusively, loudly and angrily, proven again and again, every month, because none of the previous proofs hold.
Wake me up when the anti-virologist conspiracy theorist losers explain chicken pox or rabies. Until then fuck off.

Posted by: Jack M | Jan 30 2025 19:14 utc | 26

I didnt find Tulsi very impressive aside from prepared remarks in the opener. In contrast, RFK Jr and Kash seem very passionate about their cause and had all the information they needed at their fingertips to rebut any position the Senators take against them; I did not see that in Tulsi. She seems more like a Press Secretary than a tough as nails, cunning head of DNI, ready to take on the heart of darkness, Deep State. It’s too important of a position, I think Trump needs to find someone else (assuming he is sincere).

Posted by: Deniz 152 | Jan 30 2025 19:43 utc | 28

The Fragile State of Turkey: A Nation on the Brink of Collapse[link]
Posted by: Dogon Priest | Jan 30 2025 17:15 utc | 5
Erdoğan has been PM or President of Türkiye for 20 years, walking a diplomatic tightrope among all major world powers and local interests. It is a wonder he and Türkiye have survived this long. Türkiye is in the center of the most tempestuous locations on the planet.
After assassination and regime change attempts, it is obvious the US would prefer his country to be under US control. The al Qaeda associated new leader of Syria controls a small part of Southern Turkey, might want more than just Syria. Israel now occupies more of Syria, might occupy Türkiye if it could. The US occupies NE Syria, the Kurdish area bordering Eastern Turkey. Turkey and the Kurds don’t get along. Armenians in the Southern Caucasus have no love for Türkiye. The EU has ‘considered’ Turkish admittance for decades, apparently wants its status to stay the same, providing inexpensive manufactured goods and not stirring up the large Türkish population in Germany. Erdoğan has annoyed Russia but they must maintain good relations. Türkiye is a member of NATO but remains on the list as a possible member of BRICS. Türkiye has economic ties with China. Anatolia is a major intersection between Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. It is also a transit point for energy supplies in the region. It controls access to the Black Sea. If the country fails, the chaos that would ensue might be devastating.
Like Putin, Erdoğan has faced existential crises for decades. I wish them both continued success.

Posted by: Samu | Jan 30 2025 19:51 utc | 30

Posted by: Jack M | Jan 30 2025 19:14 utc | 26
Yawn. Anti-virology is like the theory of relativity: it’s triumphantly and conclusively, loudly and angrily, proven again and again, every month, because none of the previous proofs hold.

Please read the information I posted. It contains important details.
Virology and theory of relativity are pseudosciences. They have been disproven or never been proven.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CSL702JSdY
https://drsambailey.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/A-FAREWELL-TO-VIROLOGY-Expert-Edition.pdf
https://drsambailey.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/SETTLING-THE-VIRUS-DEBATE-Source.pdf
http://www.wissenschafftplus.de/uploads/article/Dismantling-the-Virus-Theory.pdf
http://wissenschafftplus.de/uploads/article/wissenschafftplus-the-virus-misconception-part-1.pdf
http://wissenschafftplus.de/uploads/article/wissenschafftplus-the-virus-misconception-part-2.pdf
http://wissenschafftplus.de/uploads/article/wissenschafftplus-the-virus-misconception-part-3.pdf

Wake me up when the anti-virologist conspiracy theorist losers explain chicken pox or rabies. Until then fuck off.

“Chicken pox” is caused by poisoning. “Rabies” is caused by neurotoxins.
https://odysee.com/@drsambailey:c/What-About-Rabies:a
https://odysee.com/@drsambailey:c/chickenpox-parties-and-varicella-zoster:f
Please refrain from personal attacks as they make conversation very difficult.

Posted by: KOB | Jan 30 2025 20:14 utc | 32

Rest In Peace Marianne Faithfull, Working Class Hero
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2SDRQJrawU

Posted by: Chas | Jan 30 2025 21:01 utc | 34

Trump needs to stfu.
First he immediately blamed air traffic control for asking if the BH could see the plane instead of telling them what to do. Which they did in the next sentence & probably there is a protocol & reason for doing what they did in the sequence that they did it.
Now he’s blaming DEI because reasons.
Wait until it turns out to be a technical malfunction.
It’s a personal bugaboo but I really despise idjits who think they’re experts at everything that they’ve never done in their lives & couldn’t do if their lives depended on it precisely because they’re idjits.
Meantime, officials say the BH was supposed to be at 200′ & the plane at 350′ & they’ll need the blackboxes to confirm what happened, but it appears the BH was 150′ too high.
The pilot being evaluated had 500 hrs flt time, the evaluator had 1,000 hrs & the guy in the back 40 yrs experience.
Altimeter malfunction?

Posted by: Mary | Jan 30 2025 21:16 utc | 36

Posted by: c1ue | Jan 30 2025 17:36 utc | 14
Excellent analysis, thanks.
However, it may be crudely distilled into one idea:
“The pioneers get slaughtered, settlers prosper”
Daymond John

Posted by: canuck | Jan 30 2025 21:24 utc | 38

Washington air accident.
6min SkyNews report. Old Aussie ex fighter pilot puts the blame 100% on the Blackhawk.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEYEGx1Nnps

Sky News aviation expert Byron Bailey has discussed the fatal crash near an airport outside Washington DC between a regional American Airlines flight carrying 64 people and a Black Hawk military helicopter.
“This was definitely the military failing to obey, having told air traffic control they had the airliner in sight – it was up to them, their responsibility to pass behind as they were instructed to do and they didn’t,” he told Sky News host Paul Murray.
“So that unfortunately will be the finding.”

Posted by: Melaleuca | Jan 30 2025 21:40 utc | 40

Continuing on from my comment @13 above: The first 17-minutes of Ray McGovern’s chat with Nima is all about Gabbard’s confirmation hearing as well as some on Pattel’s, with an interesting aside about the Edward Snowden drama.

Posted by: karlof1 | Jan 30 2025 22:03 utc | 42

richard d wolff is pretty hard on dear leader trump, lol…

Posted by: james | Jan 30 2025 22:32 utc | 44

@karlof1
Thanks for that link to that video of Hudson et al.
@Deniz 152
Tulsi Gabbard has been at war with the Deep State not just in America but the Global Deep State for many years ( see Tulsi Gabbard: Enemy of T̷h̷e̷ Their State), these hearings are not real, they are fake, all decisions have been made before they start with the Democrats all serving the same agenda regardless of anything else. What you saw is a show for TV–so anyone who knows that, like Tulsi does not take it seriously.

Posted by: kana | Jan 30 2025 22:52 utc | 46

Question: How can the daughter of Baroness Erisso, who sent the girl to be educated at an exclusive convent, become a woman who just died and has lived a life of self-indulgent excess, then be described as a ‘working class hero’?
Maybe one day all people will eschew beat-up media bullshit.
Posted by: Debsisdead | Jan 30 2025 21:52 utc | 41

No Mars bar for you Debs!

Posted by: Ново З | Jan 30 2025 23:19 utc | 48

Virology and theory of relativity are pseudosciences. They have been disproven or never been proven..”
Posted by: KOB | Jan 30 2025 20:14 utc | 32
You are 100% on the right track; most of the morons here will never have head of Antoine Bechamps whom Louis Pasteur , on his deathbed, confessed that he, Pasteur was was wrong and Bechamps was correct:
“In 19th century France, while Pasteur was advocating the notion of germs as the cause of disease, another French scientist named Antoine Bechamp advocated a conflicting theory known as the “cellular theory” of disease.
Bechamp’s cellular theory is almost completely opposite to that of Pasteur’s. Bechamp noted that these germs that Pasteur was so terrified of were opportunistic in nature. They were everywhere and even existed inside of us in a symbiotic relationship. Bechamp noticed in his research that it was only when the tissue of the host became damaged or compromised that these germs began to manifest as a prevailing symptom (not cause) of disease.
To prevent illness, Bechamp advocated not the killing of germs but the cultivation of health through diet, hygiene, and healthy lifestyle practices such as fresh air and exercise. The idea is that if the person has a strong immune system and good tissue quality (or “terrain” as Bechamp called it), the germs will not manifest in the person and they will have good health. It is only when their health starts to decline (due to personal neglect and poor lifestyle choices) that they become victim to infections.
You can see this when a group of people go hiking in the woods. It often seems that the mosquitoes attack only one or two people out of the group. And as it turns out, it’s always the same person that always gets attacked by the mosquitoes. This person is usually the one who always catches the latest flu and has the weakest immune system. This is because these germs (including insects) are opportunistic in nature and only attack the weak.
To treat illness, Bechamp’s cellular theory also applied. Bechamp was less concerned with killing the infection and focused more on restoring the health of the patient’s body through healthy lifestyle choices. Bechamp saw the infection as a footnote to the state of illness and not the primary cause. As the person restored health through diet, hygiene, and detoxification the infection went away on its own…without needing measures to kill it.
Pasteur and Bechamp had a long and often bitter rivalry regarding who was right about the true cause of illness. Ultimately Pasteur’s ideas were accepted by society and Bechamp was pretty much forgotten. The practice of Western medicine is based on Pasteur’s germ phobia which gives rise to the use of vaccinations, antibiotics, and other anti-microbials.
The irony is that towards the end of his life, Pasteur renounced the germ theory and admitted that Bechamp was right all along. In the 1920’s medical historians also discovered that most of Pasteur’s theories were plagiarized from Bechamp’s early research work.”

Posted by: canuck | Jan 31 2025 0:39 utc | 50

Today’s effort is ad hoc as my major essay is unfinished, but most will find this informative, “More on Russia’s Imploding Economy: The Transport Sector”.

Posted by: karlof1 | Jan 31 2025 1:28 utc | 52

Investopedia
U.S. Trade Deficit Soars As Buyers Race To Beat Trump’s Tariffs . . here
The Basics of Tariffs and Trade Barriers . . here
Key Takeaways
Tariffs are a type of protectionist trade barrier that can come in several forms.
While tariffs may benefit a few domestic sectors, economists agree that free trade policies in a global market are ideal.
Tariffs are paid by domestic consumers and not the exporting country, but they have the effect of raising the relative prices of imported products.
Other trade barriers include quotas, licenses, and standardization, all seeking to make foreign goods more expensive or available in a limited supply.

Posted by: Don Bacon | Jan 31 2025 2:09 utc | 54

Posted by: karlof1 | Jan 30 2025 18:13 utc | 16
Thank you again, karlof1 for that interesting Dialogue Works discussion. I was with the guys all the way through the first half, and partway through what they were saying about tariffs. I’m just not sure why they moved past the good critique about the costs of bringing industry back to the US that depend on beneficial government practices for workers. That was an excellent point. We haven’t yet seen that side of things – – health care, education, etc. Trump has made promises in those areas, and he has people undergoing Congressional approval for his cabinet that are sympathetic to those aims. We’ll see. But that is up to Congress.
I don’t think the critique of the way the illegals are being handled was a balanced one. Certainly the examples Dr. Wolff was citing are not good; nobody wants those issues, Trump included. But there was a real problem because the wide open border was a problem.
But overall I’m glad the two addressed the international issues positively.

Posted by: juliania | Jan 31 2025 2:31 utc | 56

@ c1ue | Jan 30 2025 17:36 utc | 14
@ snake
I wonder what you think of Yanis Varoufakis’ thinking on cloud capital, capitalism and techno feudalism.
Varoufakis argues that cloud capital was not challenged this week with the release of DeepSeek.

DeepSeek, a Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) company, this week changed the global AI landscape, not to mention caused $1 trillion losses in the New York stock exchange and the NASDAC. In the process, it demonstrated the difference between cloud capital, which drives technofeudalism onward and upward, and AI-services, which were always a bubble waiting to burst…
DeepSeek pierced the US AI companies’ bubble by decommodifying the results of the model’s training, shifting them from behind a paywall to the public arena. Within days, developers around the world started building their own models on top of DeepSeek’s.
This is was the nightmare for US Big Tech’s AI service providers who offered the results of prompts as a commodity, in the form of subscriptions…this means that the morsels of cloud capital …has lost its market value.
Nevertheless, and this is a huge nevertheless, it is only AI-as-a-commodity that has lost its (grossly exaggerated) value. In sharp contrast, cloud capital utilised not as a commodity producing piece of tech but as produced means of behavioural modification is not at all threatened by companies like DeepSeek. And since technofeudalism is powered by cloud capital working that way, rather than commodity-like AI services of the ChaptGPT type, our technofeudal order is not threatened by competitors such as DeepSeek.
…my basic point: Cloud capital is in a league of its own, beyond market competition from DeepSeek-like upstarts, because its power lies in its capacity to modify our behaviour and remove us from any market (e.g., to shift us from real markets to cloud fiefs like Amazon and Alibaba).
In conclusion, cloud capital’s capacity to drive technofeudalism is not challenged by companies like DeepSeek. Only companies like OpenAI, which invested so much and so foolishly in providing a commodified service, stand to lose enormously. Yet another sign that capitalism is dead at the hand of cloud capital while technofeudalism is going from strength to strength and, as it does so, fuels even further the New Cold War between the US and China which in my book, Technofeudalism, I have explained away as the clash of the two huge concentrations of cloud capital: the American dollar-denominated super cloudalist power and the Chinese yuan-denominated one…
https://www.yanisvaroufakis.eu/2025/01/28/cloud-capital-vs-ai-what-deepseek-means-for-technofeudalism-the-new-cold-war/

Posted by: suzan | Jan 31 2025 2:59 utc | 58

Posted by: kana | Jan 30 2025 22:52 utc | 46
Gabbard is supposed to be Director of National Intelligence and isn’t strategic enough to expose our feckless Senators? The CIA would run circles around her and it appears they already did.

Posted by: Deniz 152 | Jan 31 2025 3:16 utc | 60

Posted by: Mary | Jan 30 2025 21:16 utc | 36
I think an altimeter failure is unlikely. It uses a combo radar/baro altimeter. If the radar goes out, baro is the automatic backup. Baro is set at the beginning of each flight. At such low altitude, it would be accurate to 4 ft or so. Radar would be less than 1 foot.
If a crew with that much experience did have a radalt (using the lingo) failure they would be hesitant crossing into an active commercial flight path. As a helicopter, they can simply slow down and hover (with permission), and/or ask tower for a different course.
Having only 150 ft altitude separation in that scenario is extremely close. In flight, (I believe but I may be wrong on the downside) airliners keep 1,000 ft vertical separation in landing patterns, (where you fly in the same direction) 2,000 for main flight path.
I will wait to see if the “transponder off” really happened. No reason any experienced crew would do that. A transponder failure just a few seconds before seems unlikely timing. Again, crew would report it to tower and probably hover (at least request permission) while trying to reset it.
Crew experience is fine, but realize with a deployment, 500 hours could only be 2 or 3 years. More importantly is local area orientation (amount of time flown there, especially in daylight) is more important. Perhaps that is what the “evaluator” was doing? Providing guidance on night ops in local area?
Guy in back with 40 years? What freaking rank would he/she have after 40 years? Did they lose a 4 star?
Guy in back as flight crew would be the crew chief. That seat sits sideways behind the pilot/copilot, and had no operational controls for flying available.
(not attacking you, just my thoughts)
The other thing put forward is under staffed control tower. I think this more likely, and will be easy to trace.
I read an article 6 to 12 months ago warning about the ATC system with their DEI goals and initiatives. Hiring people not the best qualified, them promoting them quickly. The article concluded that safety was getting de-emphasized to meet the DEI goals, and that accidents were bound to happen. I will search for it.

Posted by: BroncoBilly | Jan 31 2025 4:05 utc | 62

…
Virology and theory of relativity are pseudosciences. They have been disproven or never been proven.
Posted by: KOB | Jan 30 2025 20:14 utc | 32
You should tell the folks in charge of GPS systems that they wasted their time adjusting the clock speed of the satellites for minor errors introduced by relativity due to altitude. It was done to improve accuracy.

Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Jan 31 2025 4:30 utc | 64

Deniz152@316 Jan the last
Tulsi humbled by hostile senators? Not apparent in the video clips I viewed earlier this evening. Skeletor Senator who attempted to take her down by clever questioning…typical lawyer trickery…did manage to retain his cool as she smoothly waltzed through his jabs. She was well prepared for his traps and sailed smoothly throughout.

Posted by: aristodemos | Jan 31 2025 4:42 utc | 66

Canuck@039 Jan31
Bit of support here by means of a personal anecdote. Perhaps 33 years ago on a sunny day here in the Northwoods of Minnesota; an Iowa couple came to visit me at the homestead. They were clad in pastel shorts and such. Perfume and deodorant were likely present. So we took a little tour of the place. I was wearing accustomed blue jeans, a tee shirt and sandals.
As we ambled up Echo Ridge, it was close to peak mosquito season…even on that sunny afternoon. There were some slaps, the occasional cuss words from the male and an observable discomfort by his mate. She was getting a bit red and he was sweating…even though Iowans do have rather hot summers…good for corn and hogs.
Didn’t take long before he suggested we repair to the house. No problemo. The tour took less than fifteen minutes. Guess I was a bit smug as effectually they were running interference for me. Not even one of those needle-nosed beasties alighted on me. Oh yeah, spending most of my daylight hours had given me a pretty good “farmer tan”. Native folks back in the day would have called them “palefaces”.
Too much indoor time in that city of Boone. Kinda ironic…Boone…Mamie Eisenhower’s home-town.

Posted by: aristodemos | Jan 31 2025 5:05 utc | 68

meanwhile in the heart of darkness
https://www.betootaadvocate.com/uncategorized/congo-glad-the-war-on-woke-is-over-and-the-usa-is-focusing-on-funding-rwandan-militia-to-butcher-the-congolese-because-their-valuable-mineral-resources-are-currently-being-mined-by-chinese-companies-a/

Posted by: tootabetoota | Jan 31 2025 5:21 utc | 70

Scientific theories need to be falsifiable. They aren’t “proven” or “disproved,” that’s not how science is done. Science accepts or rejects ideas. New evidence may come to light based on observation or experimentation (the scientific method) that changes perception and modifies existing ideas. But “science” cannot “prove” or “disprove,” meaning with 100 percent certainty, anything.
Posted by: James M. | Jan 31 2025 1:22 utc | 51

Disprove = falsify. Prove = apply the scientific method. This is what I meant. If part of your theory is a claim that something exists you must prove it exists, you cannot say it exists because there is no proof it doesn’t.
Virology is not science because it doesn’t follow the scientific method, but it has largely been falsified. General relatively is based on invalid mathematics, so the scientific method doesn’t apply. We don’t have science here we have “consensus science”.
If I claim that something exists but I have no proof of its existence or it cannot be disproven (unfalsifiable) and I don’t follow the scientific method and suppress all evidence that contradicts my claim from being published, would you call this science?

Posted by: canuck | Jan 31 2025 0:39 utc | 50
This is because these germs (including insects) are opportunistic in nature and only attack the weak.

This is not how nature works.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R26VJ2LL2Y0OGQ
Read: Can You Catch A Cold?: Untold History & Human Experiments by Daniel Roytas

vaccinations

Useless and dangerous poisons.
https://denisrancourt.substack.com/p/breaking-our-largest-study-of-its
https://denisrancourt.substack.com/p/did-the-c19-vaccine-kill-17-million

Posted by: KOB | Jan 31 2025 6:11 utc | 72

….The (Blackhawk) pilot being evaluated had 500 hrs flt time…….
WTF ???? I have around 1,000 hours left seat time (plus 2x that in the right seat) and there is NO WAY I’d ever try to fly at night 1/2 mile from the runway threshold of Wahington National. 500 hours is like still needing training wheels level of experience.
Have standards in the military plummeted that far ???

Posted by: Exile | Jan 31 2025 6:26 utc | 74

And then we see this
https://x.com/Kanthan2030/status/1884854234190839901
after Russia has designed anti-cancer treatments recently.
Can anyone tell me what the West does for humanity?

Posted by: LoveDonbass | Jan 31 2025 6:32 utc | 76

@ LoveDonbass | Jan 31 2025 6:30 utc | 72 about the implications of Deepseek as Open Source…..thx…I agree
AI is a Western created techie investment strategy that has just been blown out of the water just like EV was by China out competing everyone.
The West is in serious trouble because AI was suppose to be a techie area they could lord over the RoW and that balloon has just been popped…..where is all that liquidity going to go? The Mars thing is a bit far out [pun intended], isn’t it?
My answer to my question is Trump’s crypto coins and other crypto currencies that are about to be instantiated as just as good as fiat US dollars by the Trump team………I don’t know how Trump expects to protect himself when crypto/tulip mania goes to ground when fiat money is exposed for the debt it represents.
Empire is having to face having lost the ability to project economic leading exceptionalism other than through nuke Might-Makes-Right…..will they resort to that because they are sore losers?

Posted by: psychohistorian | Jan 31 2025 7:18 utc | 78

I don’t care that much for nVidia , they don’t sell “AI chips” they sell GPUs with AI capability. It can be used in a variety of applications that doesn’t involve AI. The real value behind those chips is the ease of working with them because of a dedicated software stack : the CUDA toolkit.
See AMD for an example : they also sell AI chips (the “instinct” chips), but their software stack (RocM) is not as popular nor easy to use.
Same in the virtualisation context, it’s not that easy to share GPUs computing power between VMs with other brands.
As long as nVidia will deliver chips easy to work with that have good computing power per watt used ; they will have customers. Nobody buys higher TCO hardware…

Posted by: Hiro Masamune | Jan 31 2025 7:46 utc | 80

As long as nVidia will deliver chips easy to work with that have good computing power per watt used ; they will have customers. Nobody buys higher TCO hardware…
Posted by: Hiro Masamune | Jan 31 2025 7:46 utc | 77
—
Huawei’s Ascend has the best performance/Watt by a significant margin. It doesn’t carry nVidia’s legacy baggage.
SMIC is projected to make over 1 million fully localized Ascend 910C chips this year, on par with nVidia’s Hopper series production.
https://semianalysis.com/2024/10/28/fab-whack-a-mole-chinese-companies/

Posted by: too scents | Jan 31 2025 7:55 utc | 82

Exile | Jan 31 2025 6:26 utc | 71
Blackhawk) pilot being evaluated had 500 hrs flt time……
>Have standards in the military plummeted that far ???
One of the pilots was female. (I’m not sure what sort. Maybe an original version. Might be a newer version with modified equipment)
Should we guess which one?
Was it a case of DEI = DIE?
Oh. And *allegedly* pilot was wearing night vision because… training.
~~~
My (female) younger cousin is a commercial pilot. Of course females can be competent pilots. I know in her case, she absolutely earned her career by merit.

Posted by: Melaleuca | Jan 31 2025 8:28 utc | 84

* BH was practicing continuity of government <== 👀 Posted by: Mary | Jan 31 2025 8:27 utc | 80

Posted by: too scents | Jan 31 2025 8:38 utc | 86

About the gold shortage

interbank gold lease rates which typically hover below 0.5% recently shot up to peak up around 12% and that is a massive jump and it’s forcing short sellers to unwind positions leading to a sharp rise in gold prices …
https://youtu.be/lrlY-wATnBg?t=180

Posted by: too scents | Jan 31 2025 9:13 utc | 88

Posted by: John Gilberts | Jan 30 2025 17:42 utc | 15
Thanks for the post. The DRC supplies almost 70% of the world’s lithium and the US and Europe and looking to secure exclusive supply by backing the Rwandan M23 Rebels. The lithium supplied by Rwanda has been smuggled from the DRC.

Posted by: Menz | Jan 31 2025 10:15 utc | 90

“Posted by: too scents | Jan 31 2025 9:13 utc | 88
Thanks for the link too scents, an article I read in Kitco Gold earlier trying to figure out why the prices of gold and silver are surging, your links explains:
Gold at $15K, silver at $70? ‘This is what happens when the U.S. prints fake money’ – Robert Kiyosaki
https://www.kitco.com/news/article/2025-01-30/gold-15k-silver-70-what-happens-when-us-prints-fake-money-robert-kiyosaki“
Posted by: Menz | Jan 31 2025 10:10 utc | 89
Yes, it is a simple equation: governments can print money but they cannot print gold or silver.

Posted by: canuck | Jan 31 2025 10:49 utc | 92

Less than 50 meters (150 feet) is very close and depending on the locations of the altimeters within each craft one can reduce it further by perhaps as much as a fifth!
I’m thinking something has already gone very wrong for them to be that close.
For reference it can require extreme skill and experience for helicopters to fly close to static objects such as cliffs and in this situation you have what could be thought of as a moving “horizontal cliff” appearing and changing the local atmospheric pressure and airflow.
Ordinary civilian collision detection systems (clearly not applicable to this case, whether by error or not) would/should have been going crazy for a long time before getting as close as fifty meters.
The reason for the collision might be something simple and ordinary but speculating out loud all kinds of very small, temporary, possibly random, and ordinarily unforeseen, and/or exotic changes could be enough to cause a collision when being that close.
It might perhaps be something as stupid as a small loss of lift caused by approaching the vicinity above the rotor blades lifting the helicopter (by pushing large amounts of air inwards and down; they’re keeping many tons of metal floating up in the air) or the helicopter gaining lift due to the oncoming changes in pressure caused by the approaching plane, or both (or neither, it could be something entirely different happening).
For the airplane it could alternatively be like suddenly experiencing a strange kind of negative (rather than the ordinary positive) ground effect since the air is being hoovered down.
If anything like that (it might not be) then it’s perhaps comparable to something a bit like trying to leap across a maelstrom with a speedboat…
Or maybe whatever it was only caused some relatively small instability that was enough to have some small part of each contact each other and then speed and momentum did the rest. When birds can be enough to bring airplanes down imagine what an errant tail rotor can do.
If it was anything like this the flight recorders may not be up to the task of explaining it.

Posted by: Sunny Runny Burger | Jan 31 2025 10:53 utc | 94

“Today’s effort is ad hoc as my major essay is unfinished, but most will find this informative, “More on Russia’s Imploding Economy: The Transport Sector”.”
Posted by: karlof1 | Jan 31 2025 1:28 utc | 52
I just read it-a wonderful article, thanks.

Posted by: canuck | Jan 31 2025 11:03 utc | 96

Re the Blackhawk which crashed into a passenger jet landing at a Washinton airport…
The pilot of the Blackhawk had its TCAS (anti-collision system) switched OFF. This made it electronically invisible to nearby aircraft – according to abc.net.au’s Aviation consultant.
Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Jan 30 2025 17:32 utc | 13

“The TCAS system is inhibited below 500 feet”, the 737 pilot said. “At that point, it’s expected that you are effectively concentrating on landing”.
ref: https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/adelaide-breakfast/american-airlines-crash/104881508
but they just went below 500″. so it must have been still active seconds before.
But if it was off on the chopper … This sounds like the US Navy crashes with merchant marine : AIS transponder off, no radar watch and traveling in ignorant bliss.

Posted by: MAKK | Jan 31 2025 12:55 utc | 98

“Underneath haphazard ideas lurked an announcement that lent a little clarity to the multipartisan strategy that the range of Canada’s parties seem to be pursuing: capitulation.
There is no doubt that Trump’s tariff threats pose a very real problem for Canada. The US accounts for almost two-thirds of Canadian trade volume and virtually all of Canada’s oil exports go south.
But responding to this threat with anything but capitulation will require a significant break from the decades of Canadian policy that opened the door to foreign ownership…”
To Respond To Trump’s Tariffs, Canada Should Nationalize Its Oil Industry
https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/to-respond-to-trumps-tariffs-nationalize-the-oil-industry

Posted by: John Gilberts | Jan 31 2025 13:34 utc | 100