Too Scents,
 
any insight into the Swiss Ski resort Bar explosion that killed 40 over New Years Eve ? 

Posted by: Exile | Jan 1 2026 17:28 utc | 4

any insight into the Swiss Ski resort Bar explosion that killed 40 over New Years Eve ? 
 
Posted by: Exile | Jan 1 2026 17:28 utc | 4
 
—
 
Not yet.  Everyone is still very discrete. 
 

Posted by: too scents | Jan 1 2026 17:31 utc | 6

Posted by: Polli | Jan 1 2026 17:25 utc | 3  Minnesota is supposed to be a blue state. My experience in a red state is that no, there’s not enough money in day care subsidies to steal that much. Welfare fraud is as far as I can tell very much like shoplifting. The real losses are not to amateurs but a ring of professionals and even more often, insiders. The big bucks stolen in social spending seem be in health care, where the insurance executives and physicians can work on a big scale. 
 
That said, for small-time local politicians, a little project like a local day care seems to be an enticement to graft, or for power over the operators. For a very small scale example (in a red state, formally WV was Democrat but it has always been conservative, which is to say, very corrupt,) see They’ll Cut Off Your Project: A Mingo County Chronicle (WEST VIRGINIA & APPALACHIA): Perry, Huey, Biggers, Jeff: 9781933202792: Amazon.com: Books
 
It’s a question of moral value in the end. Which is worse, poor people stealing pennies, or rich people stealing millions or billions? Political conservatives will trumpet every offense to try to justify their scorn for the poor and their subservience to wealth. 

Posted by: steven t johnson | Jan 1 2026 17:37 utc | 8

Latest NewsMTV’s 24-Hour Music Channels Go Dark Worldwide As Era Officially Ends
 
Meanwhile, MTV HD will continue broadcasting, focusing on reality television and pop culture programming rather than music.

 
CBC
Dozens feared dead, more than 100 injured after ‘nightmare’ blaze in Swiss ski resort bar on New Year’s Eve
1 hour ago
BBC
‘I hid from a wall of heat’: Eyewitnesses describe escape from Swiss bar inferno
1 hour ago

Posted by: Laurence | Jan 1 2026 17:43 utc | 10

on King Tides
 
Over the next couple of days, Friday and Saturday, planet Earth is more stretched than usual by Sun and Moon both snuggling up at the same time, resulting in historic king tides all over the place. Here in the San Francisco Bay Area, the tidal high combines with storm surge from an atmospheric river to really moisten some walkways. What with ongoing concurrent sea-level rise, Monterrey could score an all-time high.
 
Our experience of terrestrial Earth is that this planet is a hard rock, but it’s actually squishy AF (as they say). The ocean stretching is the most visible sign of the whole planet getting a little bit stretched. I wonder if anyone has found a statistical correlation between earthquakes and king tides.

Posted by: Aleph_Null | Jan 1 2026 17:52 utc | 12

Opinion | The rise of the global majority: A new world is already here – and the old powers cannot stop it
The louder the old powers shout, the more they punish, the more they try to frighten the world back into the old system, the clearer it becomes that their time of exclusive privilege is over.
 
https://english.dotdotnews.com/a/202601/01/AP695622bae4b0c32d4f64c447.html
 

Posted by: arby | Jan 1 2026 17:58 utc | 14

Omens. …
 
Trump’s ‘unprecedented’ diplomat recall sparks concerns over politicization of foreign service https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/diplomat-trump-ambassadors-recall-9.7031008
 

“This is entirely unprecedented,” said John Dinkelman, who is also a former foreign service member.
…
The chiefs of mission in at least 29 countries were informed that their tenures would end in January. All of them had taken up their posts during the Biden administration.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯
 
 

Posted by: Laurence | Jan 1 2026 18:01 utc | 16

#9 2026/01/01

What happens when an experimental LLM, a malfunctioning spell checker and the residual brain of a dead drunkard are connected together in a creative way.

Some light fun for the new year…

Posted by: Careless Whisker | Jan 1 2026 18:03 utc | 18

Pechorin@1754:  My take is that you got the hell outta “The $itties”, as many rural Minnesotans call that megalopolitan monstrosity.  More than 50 years ago, a friend relocated from the metro where he had a pretty good and very stable job and hied back to the Northcountry and took over a failing enterprise, which he turned around and became a general success.  On the back bumper of his car, back in the day was a sticker which read:  “The Rat Race is Over.  The Rat won”.  
 
A few nights ago, I lingered over a Grain Belt Premium beer at the main local watering-hole.  Seated at the catbird corner at the “L” of the bar; that zone was fairly soon occupied by local working class guys who are deep into ice-fishing.  They downed pisswater suds such as Bud Blight and Miller Swiller…watery stuff which vaguely resembles beer.  That said, they possess a plethora of practical skills and do pay close attention to the world in which they swim around.  Seems they travel a fair amount and three of them soon discussed the traffic situation in the 80K or so St. Cloud area, some 65 miles up I-94 from the $itties. They can’t stand driving in that rapidly urbanizing scene any more.  Insanity on wheels.  Down in the $itties themselves, hardly anyone from rural Minnesota care to drive down there any more.  Rush hour freeway traffic has long since eclipsed mere insanity…it has become a nerve-wracking nightmare.
 
Now the $itties, with fewer than four million residents in the metroplex…even sweeping in three counties in nearby Wisconsin, are far from being the champs in traffic pandemonium.  Think Denver, Houston and LaLaLand in the west and gawd knows what on the Least Coast.  No common sense whatsoever.
 
Back to Minnesota and much closer to the gist of this diatribe:  The University of Minnesota is a prime culprit.  Those degrees they poop out by the boxcar load in pseudo-sciences such as political “science”, anthropology, sociology and psychology have virtually NO practical skills.  Some of them even eschew shoe-laces and go for velcro.  Analog watches and clocks…not quite hardly.  But they need jobs.  So they end up as social workers and various similar bureaucrap slots.  Some of them are well-meaning idealists, but tend to become wokier and wokier…no common sense whatsoever.  Almost to a woman, and sometimes to a man, they are devout supporters of the institution created by Hube the Cub Humpfree…I call it the Democrat Former Labor Party…the DFL (they prefer Democratic (fuck no) Farmer (no more real farmers, but government supported heavy equipment operators and chemical warfare applicators) Labor (biggest union in the country is the one which is constituted as government “workers”).
 
 Nothing democratic about an entity which is run from the top down via a Central Committee, based on the traditional Bolshevik model. From my understanding, the GOP too has a central committee…as they are the flipside of the DFL as the second pea in the pod encased within the orbit of the moneymongers.
 
 So that’s the current state of Minnesota.  Rural folk are more and more utterly disgusted with the Megalopolis and all its works and all its ways.  Thus, there are two widely disparate Minnesotas.  Likely this state of affairs needs to be divided into two entities. The populous one would include the metro and its urbanized tendrils extending to Rochester (home of Mayo); Mankato and the aforementioned St. Cloud.  Those entities are beyond any possible redemption.  The rest of the state (the Restive Us) still retains elements of elementary common sense and how to do it sensibilities.
 
 “Country folk can survive”.  That assessment fits most of non-urbanized America.

Posted by: aristodemos | Jan 1 2026 18:26 utc | 20

David Levin,
 
your anti-Christian racist  hate is showing. 

Posted by: Exile | Jan 1 2026 18:32 utc | 22

David Levin, your anti-Christian racist  hate is showing. 
Posted by: Exile | Jan 1 2026 18:32 utc | 22

What did I say that was anti-Christian or racist? I didn’t express any opinion about whether Somaliland had legitimate grounds to formally separate from Somalia. I addressed only the vacuousness of the Russian diplomat’s statement.

Posted by: David Levin | Jan 1 2026 18:37 utc | 24

Posted by: Pechorin | Jan 1 2026 17:54 utc | 13 Because Minnesota is pervasively corrupt. Because the same politicians who created the funding also funded “community organizations” and “legal aid” which uniquely enabled their Somali pawns (unlike average entrepreneurs) to access these funds.

 
In other words, what Pechorin is telling us is, the Trumpery is blaming the Somalis as a group, while letting off their local corrupt politicians taking a slice. But Tim Walz, a Democrat who ran for VP, is to be blamed for everything. And of course (irony alert!) this has nothing to do with 2026 elections. 
Obviously the bulk of the comment was repeating the standard talking points. I will note the bland assumption that the corruption is uniquely Democratic is nonsense. The idea that President Band-Aid, whose motto was too little, too late (and take it back as soon as you can) flooded the country is wrong. In particular invoking Build Back Better, a program that wasn’t even passed, is misleading. The notion that offering funds for private entrepreneurs was ever a good idea is also wrong. The notion that putting scare quotes over “underrepresented” is a legitimate argument is also wrong. The idea that white applicants should have priority even when for some mysterious reason (irony alert!) there have been very few others hired, is the same as insisting that the jobs are white, and whites should be selectively chosen. I do tend to believe the sister couldn’t find any subsidized day care, because there was very likely never enough money allocated to provide universal coverage, even if every penny was somehow more wisely spent. (Plenty of companies are inefficient, shocking a thought as that may be.) And I congratulate Pechorin on rejecting the conservative position that single mothers should not have their, ah, lapses, paid for by society, to undermine the the family. 

Posted by: steven t johnson | Jan 1 2026 18:41 utc | 26

@Aleph_Null #12 17:52

Dissipative processes related to tidal forces and the tendency towards a tidal resonance of some kind, may indeed exert a very significant influence over the physics of some planetary bodies.

Our highly asymmetrical Moon constitutes an obvious example.

Similarly, some models dealing with a “traumatic” generation of the Moon, do assume a wide range of geophysical effects, because of those events.

However, that was billions of years ago, with a much closer orbiting Moon, amongst many other things.

For several reasons (including, as hinted by @persiflo, the crustal hypocentre depth of earthquakes meaningful to humankind) this is not the case, for present day Earth.

Posted by: MoaMetal | Jan 1 2026 18:47 utc | 28

the phony-baloney carbon dioxide narrative 
Posted by: aristodemos | Jan 1 2026 17:43 utc | 9

 
Even the insurance companies get it you numbskull.
https://sustainabilitymag.com/articles/allianz-how-climate-change-is-unravelling-insurance-markets

Posted by: drinky crow | Jan 1 2026 18:55 utc | 30

@27 too scents
 
And don‘t forget the most dangerous item „Bergkäs“ 

Posted by: M | Jan 1 2026 18:56 utc | 32

David Levin@1827:  It is essential to bear in mind that Ukraine is not a nation…a national state.  It is but a Frankenstein Monstrosity, first created by the Khazarian Bolsheviks in the early 1920’s.  Before then, there was no such animule as a political entity called Ukraine.  The Ukrainian people, per se, speak a dialect analogical with the Texan one here in the $tates.  Yes, the Ukrainian language is a variant of Russian.
 
The Talmudist Bolsheviks, after the Russian Civil War between the Reds and the Whites, added ethnic Russians and Russian speaking Ukrainians to their political blend…all under the Central Committee and the Politburo in Moscow, as part and parcel of the USSR.  After Stalin demolished the old Bolshies in ca 1937; a more nationalist Russia replaced the Third International which was the brainchild of the brainy Lev Bronstein (Leon Trotsky).  Following the horrors of WWII, Stalin himself added parts of Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, Poland, the three little Baltic statelets and Germany as buffer zones for Mother Russia.
 
Worst of the inclusions were the “Uniat” appendage to “Holy” Mother Church.  That mostly Galician entity had long been under the Jagellonian Empire of Poland and Lithuania and latterly under the Austro-Hungarian Empire.  Over time those peoples became more and more westernized and as they perceived it, civilized.  They despised Russians, Jews and Orthodox Christians in that approximate order.  So with the war between the Germans and the Russians, many of those Uniates joined up with the 3rd Reich and even became more Nazi than the Nazis themselves.
 
Likely that when peace comes to the Eastern Slavic states and a Russian sponsored but independent NovoUkrainia, would agree to eschewing and “liberating” the Uniat regions to become an independent, disarmed entity…a scene where they could stew in their own juices…unless instructed to become the new version of the Pale of Settlement.  Refugees from liberated Palestine would need to be welcomed into that stewpot surrounding Lviv or Lvov.  Monied and energetic, that inclusion into that entity, those folks would bless that mess with their presence, ultimately developing that small state into a world-class zone of entrepreneurial excellence. 

Posted by: aristodemos | Jan 1 2026 19:05 utc | 34

aristdemos 9 – completely agree, the EU is destroying the agricultural and energy infrastructure of members states that allow their insane green socialist agenda to impact their nations.
Ireland’s energy sector is in the first stages of collapse, with the highest utility rates in the EU (even higher than non EU UK); total system unreliability; shutting down their own reliable power plants including their coal and turf fueled plants, only the massive Clare power station is in operation and it now is fueled by bunker oil instead of coal; and continued attacks on Irish farmers with absurd regulations designed to force Irish farmers into bankruptcy (more land for Black Rock to acquire); total failure to develop the off shore oil and gas fields at South Cork and West Galway/Mayo; and dependence on ugly, hideous and unreliable wind and solar farms.
Ireland energy crisis is at hand, and the useless socialist coalition government of twiddle dee twiddle dumb in the personage of Martin and Harris or Harris and Martin are mere marionettes of the EU dictatorship.
 

Posted by: tobias cole | Jan 1 2026 19:08 utc | 36

arby 33 – apparently Iranian internal security has no completely eliminated the Mossad agents operating inside Iran………………this is so obvious.  Again the filthy hands of Bibi and the War Cabinet are all over these ‘demonstrations’.

Posted by: tobias cole | Jan 1 2026 19:12 utc | 38

26

steven, you seem to be making some assumptions about me which are very off base. Maybe you are the one who is enthralled by the R-D game, it sure isn’t me. I didn’t talk about Republicans ruining MN (they’ve ruined many other places) because Republicans by and large are not the regime there: it has been ruled by the DFL almost unbroken for decades. So while both capitalist parties are equally bad, one of them is more responsible for Minnesota particularly than the other. 
 
In short, Minnesota corruption is Democratic not because Democrats are different than Republicans but because Democrats, not Republicans, have ruled Minnesota in its era of tragic decadence…
I wasn’t using scare quotes, I was using real quotes for the term they use (underrepresented) to justify formal, overt Title VII civil rights discrimination against whites like myself. Candidates for positions should be selected by merit, but a formal quota system that puts an unqualified Black over a well-qualified white is neither just nor beneficial for either race. You can be pro-Black Power and anti Affirmative Action, as indeed many are and all should be. Affirmative action (“The Philadelphia plan”) was invented by the Nixon administration with the explicit goal of continuing Black—white antagonism in a post civil rights era. It created a framework where Blacks were told that they were entirely dependent for access and fair treatment on Federal or State charity (instead of their own structures of collective bargaining or their own manifest and indisputable merits) and that whites were shown (accurately) that their access to positions was contingent on credentials and qualifications that the “privileged” recipients of AA were able to get in without. It’s bad for everyone and should be replaced by true racial justice, which is a redistribution and equalization of property between white and Black communities so that nobody’s personal attitudes (racial bias) would have any social consequence. In an economically equal world, the only victim of racism is the racist himself (and not the target) because the target is not deprived materially in any way and the racist is deprived by their bias-blocked inability enjoy ordinary and wholesome relationships with the objects of their bias. 

Posted by: Pechorin | Jan 1 2026 19:18 utc | 40

lex talionis@19:06
 
Thanks lex just what I need – free at last, free at last 
 
Ever catch Fizzarum? One was called “Phut of Flex”, fine tune, similar take on blips and buzzes, though maybe not as sparse. Maybe same era? Who knows? 

Posted by: will moon | Jan 1 2026 19:23 utc | 42

Posted by: will moon | Jan 1 2026 19:23 utc | 42
Thanks!  I’m on the hunt!

Posted by: lex talionis | Jan 1 2026 19:30 utc | 44

Steven T.Johnson@1852:  Condescension on steroids.
 
 Attending a Solstice Party some 20 miles from my home in one of the most low-income counties in Minnesota…I was fortunate to gather with an assembly of peers.  Average I.Q. in that setting was probably in the 120 range…not terribly low, one must admit.  Several of them sported degrees, inclusive of a handful of educators…real ones, I would aver.
 
 Some four of us deliberately dropped out of those diploma mills, such as the industrial scale U. of Minn.  On a personal basis, being not nearly as quick witted as my fellow Northwoodser, one Robert Zimmerman, better known as Bob Dylan, dropped outta that miserable institution after only one semester.
 
 Being of primarily Scandinavian descent, I tended to be a much slower learner than the 20th Century’s premiere Jewish prophet channeler…it took me to the final quarter of my senior year there with five credits to go for a history honors degree with a double major in English…to finally in that seminal year of 1968…dropped that constipated and constipative institution…and never looked back.
 
The University system, developed under the aegis of “Holy Mother Church” as the University of Bologna in the latter 13th Century…has become an obsolescent dinosaur.
 
 Our depth and breadth of accelerating consciousness and understanding is such that the University needs to be replaced by the Cosmoversity concept, where a collegium comprised of scholars from a variety of disciplines, would (with significant contributions from those “country bumpkins”  you so denigrate) from the ground up in a rural setting…far from the madding crowd…build a new iteration of scholarship where syncretism amongst disciplines would be the prime motif.
 
 Similarly to the monasteries and convents of old, those professionals would invest two or three hours on a daily basis to develop and maintain the bulk of their own nutritional needs.  Deep connexion with Mother Earth and all of the natural world would sooth their souls and elevate their spirits, while the daily REAL exercise would energize their bodies. NO workout gymnasiums required.
 
If humankind finally gets it and prevents a massive fall into the chasms…AND if we are sufficiently peacefully engaged and thus becoming accepted by the alluded Galactic Council…we may just possibly finally create our own paradise…and instead of conquering this great green garden…we would assume our designated roles as stewards of our material environment.
 
Yes, this set of probability factorings may appear to most normies as unreal and even incredible.  However, the prime mindset of the present majority would inevitably fall so far out of spiritual balance that we would conquer the entire planet while shriveling our own souls and spirits…and in the process destroy the whole thing.

Posted by: aristodemos | Jan 1 2026 19:34 utc | 46

CSX derailed another train outside Trenton Kentucky. nothing to worry about. neighbors helping neighbors and people sticking together is what CSX is all about, thru Mordor’s flames and sulfurous clouds. just ask the people of East Palestine. CSX knows no sweeter job title than “Volunteer Firefighter” and you will never find a bigger cheerleader for the heroic sacrifice of a volunteer charging into a mushroom cloud, esp when the USG will make sure CSX pays no monetary damages, incl for problems they were repeatedly warned about.
 
Every American is waiting for that “airborne toxic event” (from Delillo’s “White Noise”), incl with every firecracker that goes off. People in the US are so degraded and abused that the truth is there is no reason for the disenfranchised not to burn the United States to the ground. There is no reason to be careful with the fireworks because the slave has nothing to lose. and the slave is right.
 
since everyone is in competition with everyone else for things like toilet paper and soap, there is no reason not to shoot your neighbor.

Posted by: duck n cover | Jan 1 2026 19:44 utc | 48

Posted by: aristodemos | Jan 1 2026 19:34 utc | 46

Im sorry bro, but to a just-now middle aged American Marxist-Leninist (up the ACP!), this sounds like another variety of Boomer nonsense (“anti-authoritarianism”) that destroyed our country and left our generation so much worse off than the one that could financially afford to “drop out” circa the late 60s. We weren’t doing acid and making love 2005-15. We got pain pills (then fentanyl) and we worked retail jobs to afford them (because we sure couldn’t afford to move out of our parents basements on retail wages). 
Universities and education build the productive forces by enabling the masses to access scientific thought and express their industrial potential. University education is a pillar of the actually existing socialism that has made China and others great. Obviously in bourgeois America a degree does not ensure any intellectual attainment or quality, but even nonetheless our universities are centers of intellectual and scientific excellence and it’s the utmost foolishness to dismiss them. Everything I am today is a product of the intellectual self-development achieved during my journey through the University system. I may have an unserviceable debt burden that may eventually cause me to flee the country, but I am pleased to know that when I land in a non-insane destination that my linguistic and scientific skills credentialed through the university will still have value.  

Posted by: Pechorin | Jan 1 2026 19:49 utc | 50

Pechorin@1918:  Right on by lauding meritocracy as the essence of reasonable and honorable governance.  We can harken back to traditionalist China, the last entity being the Ming Dynasty.  They would send “recruiters” out into the countryside to discover worthy candidates to serve the Celestial Kingdom.  Didn’t matter if they were from miserably poor peasant backgrounds. Those recruiters had intuitive and educated talents calculated to discover genuine merit…with the polar opposite in this devolving culture being Bu$h the Le$$er, a privileged midwit at best.
 
Maintaining the Chinese connexion, I highly recommend Alex Wei and his frequent podcast available on You Tube and presumably elsewhere.  A 23 Y.0. first generation American born of Chinese parentage, he grew up in New Jersey and aced all his advanced courses.  So with that set of credentials he presented them to ALL of the Ivies.  Not one single response from any of them.  The narrative the Universities follow is the DEI slop.  East Asians are not only more intelligent on average than most Americans.  They also happen to be diligent students/scholars.  Can’t have too many of them in our most privileged institutions, now can we.  
 
Not yet having achieved the status of full manhood (usually occurs around age 28) Wei is a wiz in representation of his cynical generation…a demographic with no hope for their future lives (unless from the financially provident) and disgusted with ALL major institutions.  Do check out two or three of his podcasts.  He tells it as he sees it…occasionally  even that “notorious” “F” word (despised by hypocrites and normies) pops up in his screeds.
 
To get some glimpses into the cutting edges of the younger generations, Wei would be an excellent starting point.
 

Posted by: aristodemos | Jan 1 2026 19:55 utc | 52

Posted by: Pechorin | Jan 1 2026 17:54 utc | 13
 
If the child care centres fraud is true, I say, it is about time the Africans took back from the West what was stolen from them over centuries, including the freedoms and deaths of many millions of Africa’s sons and daughters.

Posted by: Menz | Jan 1 2026 20:08 utc | 54

I addressed only the vacuousness of the Russian diplomat’s statement.

It is a taleTold by an idiot, full of sound and fury,Signifying nothing.

 
Get bent, Nazi.
 

Posted by: Laurence | Jan 1 2026 20:14 utc | 56

I’ll be commencing a new reading of T.S. Eliot’s FOUR QUARTETS,  so for anyone uninterested, please just ignore my posts here from now on.
 
I will first give my reasons for returning to these poems.  First, they were written during an interval between the two great wars our planet has experienced in recent history.  Second,  many of the lines of the poem were enigmatic to me in more ‘stable’  times.  I would like to understand them better.
 
And thirdly, some of our recent ‘philosophic’ discussions concerning good and evil and the existence of each seem to underly  the first lines of the poem, which to me were very obscure when I first read them.  I’ll reproduce those lines below:
 

BURNT  NORTON
 
Time present and time past
 
Are both perhaps present in time future,
 
And  time future contained in time past.
 
If all time is eternally present

All time is unredeemable.

 
This is where my first stumbling block occurred,  because I saw  at first only two ‘times’, present and past, within reality’s reach.  I didn’t see the power of the word  perhaps.
 
‘Perhaps’ is a powerful time reality in itself.  ‘Perhaps’ ,  in the minds of many,  forces them to make choices that seem to provide no alternative.   Is it what turns an SMO into all out chaos as some seem set on creating?  
 
Moving into the rest of the first stanza,  it seems to be looking at the present time of being in a place, Burnt Norton, that has died, perhaps because of a war, and visualizing a ‘might have been’ that has vanished now that war is ‘time past’.   
 
That’s as far as I have come,  wanting time to be redeemable,  not unredeemable.  Not to be forgotten is that this overall is a musical effort, and that means that the silences are also important.  I was made aware  of that silence, in the almost empty prairie surroundings I was in recently.  It was all mostly silence there.   And that silence was helpful, not harmful;  it was healing silence.
 
So,  here we are.

Posted by: juliania | Jan 1 2026 20:21 utc | 58

Femi Akomolafe’s latest article on the hypocrisy of the West’s and especially Europe’s sanctioning of Colonel Jacques Baud:
 
https://www.modernghana.com/news/1460385/european-values-the-strange-case-of-colonel.html
 

Posted by: Menz | Jan 1 2026 20:30 utc | 60

Posted by: Aleph_Null | Jan 1 2026 17:52 utc | 12
Correlation between seismic activity and tidal stress perturbations highlights growing instability within the brittle crust:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-11328-z
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidal_triggering_of_earthquakes
tl;dr
Yes.

Posted by: ChatNPC | Jan 1 2026 20:30 utc | 62

Posted by: aristodemos | Jan 1 2026 20:25 utc | 59
Genital mutilation is bad.

Posted by: lex talionis | Jan 1 2026 20:45 utc | 64

Pechorin@1949…the year after my kid brother was born as a first edition of the Boomers.  I’m a War-Baby, born on Mexican Independence Day in ’44 and a day before Marshal Montgomery attempted to “go a bridge too far” at Arnhem.  So you cannot hoist me upon that petard.
 
Unlike my kid brother, I’m not very high on money as my interests are not particularly materialistic OR miserly.  We did not grow up in privileged “reality” as you have presumed.  In Europe, my family would have been described as “Displaced Peasants”.  Small farm of a mere 17 acres…teensy,weensy here in the fruited plain.  The notorious Secretary of Agriculture, Butz, following the equally notorious Mormon Ezra Taft Benson; infamously preached to the American farmers “GET BIG OR GET OUT”. Those administrative appointees were likely sponsored by “Big Ag”…both the food industry and the farm equipment Boyz.  Also, the FIRE (Finance, Insurance and Real Estate) gangs were hot and heavy on centralization in the major cities and all the profits they could slurp up.  It was all about removing the small INDEPENDENT farmer of Jefferson’s dream and transmute them into industrial serfdom.
 
Though never having had an annual income as high as TEN thousand dollars (I did not want to support with my tax dollars the WarDefense Industry and bureaucratic featherbedding) I was only once briefly indebted between ’87 and ’91 in order to purchase a second hand for my entrepreneurial enterprise in the antiques road trade.  So I guess your indebtedness strikes me that you are indeed an urbanite…or even sub-urbanite.
 
As a devout Marxist, you are quite religious…in the universal sense.  Marx was excellent in calling the question…regarding capitalism…even though in the 1840’s most capitalistic enterprises were of the industrial iteration.  Today, of course, those white sharks have long been devoured by the Orcas.  Capitalism as it was back in the mid 19th Century is entirely obsolescent. The ruling elite across the planet may not count more than some 300 individuals.  
 
Being a man of modest means and NOT willing to submit to “Real I.D”, there is no way I could desert this sinking ship.  My perspective is something you will dismiss out of hand.  More than an intellectual, a status of which my personal physician accused me, rather I am more the artist AND one who walks the Spirit Path…or the Red Road as many Native traditionals describe it. Or to paraphrase Teilhard de Chardin:  “We are spirits living this lifetime in a material dimension of reality”.   As your dialect is one of materialism, it is probable that you will dismiss my perspective out of hand.
 
 However, I do you wish you the best in achieving your dream of relocation.   No doubt there are several lands where you could enjoy a far more fulfilling daily life than that in urban America.  One final note:  In terms of distribution credits I was excused from studying foreign languages at the U. of Minn due to the fact that I’d had three years of high school German and two of French.  Also, Ich kann das Deutsch sprechen vieleicht so gut als ein Drei  Jahre alt Deutscher Kinder, aber nicht so gut hohren.  Nicht ganz alles vergessen mit Ein und Achtig Jahren.
 
Gramatically, my Deutsch is far from perfect.  What floors me is that the “Die, Der, Das” system for explicating vowels is desperately in need of a Reformation.  It is poorly evolved.  English, with its grammatical and orthographic structure based on the Old Norse rather than any old Germanic dialect, happens to be far more evolved in its comparative simplicity.  Who the Eff needs to sexualize vowel movements.

Posted by: aristodemos | Jan 1 2026 21:19 utc | 66

ZH has a posting up about the tanker leaving Venezuela that the US Coast Guard has not been able to stop.
 
That tanker has changed its registration to be under Russia….and then
 
Russia Requests Trump Admin To Stop Pursuit Of Oil Tanker In Atlantic Basin
 
Who is playing checkers and who is playing chess?

Posted by: psychohistorian | Jan 1 2026 21:24 utc | 68

Duck n’ cover@2001:  Good posting.  You get it.  Pro$titicians in the Di$trict of Corruption emblemate the rampant greed and sociopathy which now dominates right across the fruited plain.
 
Believe it or not and hardly meant as I perceive it, John D. Rottenfeller did get one thing right in his transhuman waaay too long lifetime:  “Competition is a Sin”.  See what I mean?  Competition is not nearly as common in the natural world, especially within a given species…than it is amongst the Kali Yuga specimens of the human race.  Our culture is adamantly post-tribal…even though the Hillary’s aides fixed her up with a great line:  “It takes a village to raise a child”.  It was my good fortune that my pre-adult years were in a tiny village of less than 150 residents.  The adult population watched over all the kids, but only rarely confronted them.  Before the boobtoob ruined it, visiting clan members, neighbors and friends throughout much of the community.
 
That little village was loaded with farmer-owned cooperatives…the absolute opposite of dog eat dog competition.  After the crash, people may learn cooperation which IS the polar opposite of competition.  Village life was similar to that of Dumas’ “The Three Musketeers”…All for One and One for All”.  Or like in the days of the Yankee Clipper ships, when ocean conditions, particularly in the “Roaring Forties” down by Cape Horn, developed into massive storms and huge waves the word from the captain was “All hands on deck!!!”  A probability of a sinking ship required even the lame and the ill to do their part in saving the ship.

Posted by: aristodemos | Jan 1 2026 21:41 utc | 70

Refinnejenna@2123:  Thanks.  Someone needed to expose those truths.

Posted by: aristodemos | Jan 1 2026 21:42 utc | 72

Posted by: Pechorin | Jan 1 2026 19:18 utc | 40  Whatever I may have gotten wrong about you personally, I guarantee you that the MSM will keep reporting the narrative I described. The Trumpist faction is already vilifying a whole community and the other side will not counter-attack. That said, I disagree with Menz on the grounds that the Africans are not getting a bunch of money remotely comparable to what has been taken. A handful of Somali crooks and the white politicians running their ops getting money is no great benefit to Somalis. Besides… In general I don’t believe in collective hereditary guilt. 
 
I will still dispute that your suddenly dropping in the qualification of qualified whites vs. unqualified Blacks (and others.) I am not a credentialist, I think that a lot of credentials simply do not provide the expertise and competence alleged.  A Black applicant to a medical school with a fifty point lower score on the MCAT is not indisputably less qualified. Despite the best will in the world many metrics simply cannot measure these things that accurately. Worse, every metric can be gained. A Black applicant to medical school is better qualified to be able to serve the Black community…probably. As I said, no metric is perfect. 
 
Incidentally, technically speaking, equalizing communities is tricky because the communities are rarely simple wholes. Equalizing a Black ghetto could mean handing a bunch of Black clergymen the keys to the treasury (with under the table donations to street gangs.) Sure, the clergymen have the credentials provided by their churches. But I’m not a credentialist. As to the Black Power perspective and Nixon, much as I hate Nixon, I’m pretty sure that cultivating a Black petty bourgeoisie is in the long run bad for everyone because the petty bourgeoisie is in the long run doomed to bankruptcy or entering the service of the bourgeoisie. Plus it’s also more typical of modern Democratic Party and the openly racist elements in the Republican Party in particular loathe it. It’s Reagan that makes them horny, not Nixon. 
 

Posted by: steven t johnson | Jan 1 2026 21:53 utc | 74

PeterAU@2141:  Good posting.  Some of the posters here may not have accessed the same sites as some of us.
 
 Perhaps the Sahel cohesion is the response in a karmic sense to what the collective Waste did do Libya and Gaddhafi.  He was in the process of selling much of Libya’s oil for Gold.  His aim was to establish a non-usurious monetary system for ALL of Africa.  Needless to say, the Rottenchild Crime Clan was not pleased and neither were the French banksters…as THEIR ingestion of massive amounts of raw materials in the Francophony was established within all those former French imperialist colonies.
 
One of the primary ironies of that horrendous assault by bombs and paid mercenaries was that a significant element in the French “contribution” was their single aircraft carrier, the Charles de Gaulle.  Why the irony?  Because Le Grande Charles sought peace in Algeria where his country killed perhaps hundreds of thousands of the Algerian resistance (along with several thousand French soldiers and huge monetary outlays) in order to retain that resource base, plus over a million European settlers comfortable lives in someone else’s country.
 
 So DeGaulle, despite threats on his life by the Colons and even elements within the French military, pulled the plug on the French occupation of that battered land since 1830.  Using that carrier was essentially to spit in the face of that outstanding French patriot, who though long dead, was spiritually outraged by that outrage.

Posted by: aristodemos | Jan 1 2026 21:58 utc | 76

Steven T. Johnson@1:57:  As P.T. Barnum famously stated: “There is a fool born every minute”.
 
 So was your response simply a knee-jerk reaction, or did you actually engage your perfervid brain to come up with it?  The concept of the Central Committee was indeed coined by the Bolsheviks.  That the use of that term was my accusation that the Dumb Fukkin Liberals party was directly connected to the CPUSSR or the CPUSA, was NOT my intent.  The DFL simply liked the concept of a ruling body in what was presented as a democratic party.  
 
Tip:  To read between the lines is not, as the French say, not always “Apropos le Moment”….not appropriate in this matter.  I do tend to be quite precise in my commentaries.  If your understanding is a bit minuscule, refrain from jumping into a shallow pond headfirst OR into the deep end of the pool if you cannot swim.
 
Schools are great tools for teaching rules to fools.

Posted by: aristodemos | Jan 1 2026 22:07 utc | 78

That Swiss fire was motivated by antisemitism. The alps need a menorah projected on to them in solidarity with the true victims.

Posted by: Patroklos | Jan 1 2026 22:17 utc | 80

Washington State AG Warns Citizen Journalists To Stop Investigating Somali Daycares Or Face Potential Hate Crime Charges
https://nitter.net/zerohedge/status/2006785017624560011
 
“This is unsafe and potentially dangerous behaviour “

Posted by: Melaleuca | Jan 1 2026 22:41 utc | 82

aristodemos | Jan 1 2026 21:58 utc | 76
 
I guess I can get a bit tunnel visioned at times, especial when I am not drinking. I swamped the last thread and have to be careful about that but that poster did get me back into researching Africa again.
 
Ukraine funding the so called opposition groups. Ukraine, the black hole that hundreds of billions of dollar and a huge amount of weapons have been poured into. The Zelensky gang and anyone in official positions there have certainly enriched themselves, but I am also starting to think Ukraine has also been used as a conduit to funnel money and some weapons through to the terrorist groupings and so called opposition groups in Africa.
 
The coup belt in Africa – virtually all French possessions. French with their colonial currency and forcing the ‘independent’ former colonies to hold their reserves in France allowed the French to continue stripping them of their wealth. When it comes to poverty in Africa, the ‘former’ French possessions had it the worst. The Sahel confederation now has its own federal bank and this is what was required to give them full sovereignty and independence. Although the common language is french through the french possessions, The confederation uses English as its official language. It looks likely that English will be the common language for a pan Africa.

Posted by: Peter AU1 | Jan 1 2026 22:45 utc | 84

Fun fact (unconfirmed but convincing)
Money from fraudulent Somali daycare centres in the U$, was used to build an Israeli military base in Somalialand.

Posted by: Melaleuca | Jan 1 2026 23:00 utc | 86

Yanis Varoufakis: Deepfakes of me are taking over YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4tjjGrUrVw
 
UnHerd’s Freddie Sayers speaks with Yanis Varoufakis about the unsettling rise of AI-generated deepfakes, using Varoufakis’s own experience as one of the most synthesised figures on YouTube as a chilling case study.
 
The conversation delves into the “techno-feudal” power structures of Big Tech, where algorithms prioritise engagement and “rent-seeking” over truth, allowing misinformation to spread rapidly while the victims struggle to reclaim their own digital identities.
 
Moving beyond the personal, they explore an imminent future in which audiovisual evidence can no longer be trusted, debating whether this will lead to a new era where arguments are judged solely on their merits, or a return to a medieval-like state where high-quality information becomes a luxury for the elite while the masses are left to navigate a sea of fabricated content.

Posted by: Melaleuca | Jan 1 2026 23:04 utc | 88

Posted by: NemesisCalling | Jan 1 2026 23:05 utc | 89
 
My suspicion was always that the Daycare thing is a CIA/USAID outlet for al-Shabaab, Somaliland and now exposed to fund Israel’s military base.
 
There’s also a revelation in Australia, Somali daycares scam the state $750M AUD. To who is that money going?
 
Seems US vassals are all implementing their aid schemes and most of the money goes to fund Israeli projects or terrorist groups in Africa. And even Ukraine may be used as a conduit to do this.

Posted by: unimperator | Jan 1 2026 23:09 utc | 90

yughs. That comment wasn’t finished. I meant to put presence in italics, and give the German original which is

Alle Vergangenheit ist Gegenwart.

 
There is a discussion pertaining about the essence and nature of time in this, but I can’t do it right now. My mind is on the prairie with you now. The long freight trains in the distance. Good stuff.

Posted by: persiflo | Jan 1 2026 23:16 utc | 92

@Aleph_Null #77 22:06

As a non-specialist (though a physicist), I can only commend your statement about the partly uncertain present status of geophysics in general and seismology in particular.

I may surely be wrong or victim of outdated notions, however please note the following.

1. The quoted Nature article is just a proposal, based on a review of previous studies of planetary dynamics. The large effects of tidal forces and tidal locking processes, for some planetary bodies, are well known and I started my previous reply just mentioning those.

2. The proposed application of those models to the present-day Earth, is based on the estimation of REPEATED stress by SOLID EARTH TIDES. Not single, time-specific tidal events and not oceanic tides.

3. The article acknowledge the inadequacy and potential bias of the data sets used, especially for low magnitude events, for which the correlation is primarily proposed.

4. (Most important) The proposed correlation drops to strictly ZERO for magnitudes around 7.5 and higher. That is, those events especially relevant for their large effects on a part of humankind. And if you really live in close proximity of the St.Andreas fault, you are certain to fully understand that.

Posted by: MoaMetal | Jan 1 2026 23:19 utc | 94

Regarding the “AES” countries, a joint force to combat terrorism was announced as soon as the ESA was created in September 2023.
 
However, this force has never been operational due to a lack of personnel and funding.
Much fiction has been written about it, including an article in June 2024 that estimated it at 120,000 troops out of the goal of 200,000 men, trained in Russia and battle-hardened in Ukraine, operating under the command of a Russian General. A true adventure novel.
 
It is this long awaited operationalization that has just been announced, for at least the tenth time, in December 2025, proof at least that it wasn’t operational yet. Let’s hope this time it will be the good one.
 
The financial institution that has just been launched is the “AES” Development Bank.
There is no, and there will not be, a “AES central bank” in the short and medium term.
 
The three countries have committed to this agreement with other members using the CFA franc and the IMF in order to continue receiving essential financing. The agreement with the IMF runs until 2027 and will likely be extended.
 
Aside from questioning the very relevance of the action, the ESA countries have, for almost ten years now, had virtually no foreign exchange reserves to create a central bank or a currency.
They are using the common pool of reserves of the common central bank for imports and foreign debt payments, along with IMF aid.
 
These propagandistic announcements about creating a new currency and abandoning the CFA franc are counterproductive. The risk of insolvency associated with this action is very high, and investors are making us pay for it.
 
With each round of announcements, our credit rating falls, our sovereign debt rate rises, and we find it increasingly difficult to find buyers for our treasury bonds.
 
We are currently at 10-11% interest rates on our bonds, while other neighboring countries are at 6-7%. Those who are doing this are killing us financially and economically.

Posted by: Sebgo | Jan 1 2026 23:26 utc | 96

Thought is energy.  …
Posted by: aristodemos | Jan 1 2026 18:38 utc | 25
 
******************
 
Thank you for the clear concise statement. Could positive thoughts be ‘positive’ energy? And if so, I guess negative thoughts could be negative energy? And if a negative thought encounters a positive thought, do they mutually annihilate and produce matter – or do they just cancel; and if so, does it matter?
 
I hope you take the time to locate the nearest paralyzed person and let them know the new-found hidden power of thought.

Posted by: General Factotum | Jan 1 2026 23:42 utc | 98

China renamed the cities it lost in the unequal treaties to Russia to their Chinese names in their own maps. Their intent of keeping Russia afloat just enough to keep the war going but not to win it in hopes it will collapse is crystal clear. When Russia collapses they will take those back and who will say no?

Posted by: chx | Jan 1 2026 23:57 utc | 100