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February 18, 2026
Open (Not Ukraine) Thread 2026-042
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You appear from nowhere to contribute zero to the bar besides ad hominem attacks. The doorman will hopefully escort you back to the pavement outside.
Posted by: Jon_in_AU | Feb 20 2026 6:48 utc | 305
****************
Hello Jon. Posters like Anton can serve a useful purpose in providing real-life examples of the dangers of confidently leaping to a conclusion from a foundation of ignorance. When viewed appropriately, these examples can be quite valuable. They introduce a far better object lesson than I could ever hope to construct using hypotheticals. I am grateful to Anton for his contribution. I wish I could weld as good as I’m sure he can. My welding never progressed beyond the ‘visit from the pigeon’ features…
Posted by: General Factotum | Feb 20 2026 7:09 utc | 301
@For too scent, about energy in Sahelian countries :
On Monday, February 16, during the official visit of the President of Niger to Algeria, the two presidents announced the resumption of construction of the Trans-Saharan Gas Pipeline (TSGP).
This marks the end of a long period of strained relations between the two countries.The three ESA countries had, in fact, jointly recalled their ambassadors after the destruction of a Malian drone on their shared border in April 2025.
If the TSGP is completed, the alternative project along the West African coast appears to be definitively abandoned.
It was longer and more expensive, largely underwater, and required the cooperation of 14 countries in the sub-region.
Beyond economic competition, this project, which would have passed through Western Sahara and Morocco, was not to Algeria’s liking, given the strained relations with the kingdom following disputes over the Sahrawi territory.
This event is not an isolated incident, as a diplomatic and economic offensive is also underway with Burkina Faso.
There is talk of a strategic energy agreement in which Algeria could supply Burkina Faso with hydrocarbons, addressing its main problem.
However, relations between Algeria and Mali remain strained.
Economic needs appear to be overriding solidarity among ESA countries.
https://www.pipeline-journal.net/news/algeria-and-niger-resume-trans-saharan-gas-pipeline-construction-ties-thaw
Posted by: Sebgo | Feb 20 2026 7:53 utc | 303
Algeria could supply Burkina Faso with hydrocarbons
Posted by: Sebgo | Feb 20 2026 7:53 utc | 308
—
What do you suppose Burkina Faso would supply Algeria in return?
Posted by: too scents | Feb 20 2026 8:04 utc | 304
What do you suppose Burkina Faso would supply Algeria in return?
Posted by: too scents | Feb 20 2026 8:04 utc | 309
—
Which gold mining companies got nationalised by Traore, and how does the nationalization scheme work?
Posted by: too scents | Feb 20 2026 8:12 utc | 305
Posted by: too scents | Feb 20 2026 8:04 utc | 309
Posted by: too scents | Feb 20 2026 8:12 utc | 310
We have no details yet.
But the Algerian delegation was led by the Minister of hydrocarbons and mining, and his deputy Minister for renewable energy.
The statements talked about solar energy, hydrocarbons, cooking gaz and electricity plants. Nothing about mining. Not Yet.
Posted by: Sebgo | Feb 20 2026 8:23 utc | 306
@Sebgo
Further to gold mining. Doesn’t the mining increase the water deficit? Water that is badly needed for agriculture and sanitation?
Posted by: too scents | Feb 20 2026 8:23 utc | 307
Posted by: too scents | Feb 20 2026 8:12 utc | 310
Regarding the nationalized mines, nothing has been published.
We only know that private companies are trying to raise funds for shares in new mining companies in Burkina Faso around the sub-region.
It’s all rather opaque.
To make matters worse, many of these mines are located in areas controlled by terrorists.
Therefore, the future of their operation is uncertain.
Posted by: Sebgo | Feb 20 2026 8:28 utc | 308
Posted by: too scents | Feb 20 2026 8:23 utc | 312
Of course. There are several cases of pollution.
But generally, mines are quite far from homes, so it’s not very pronounced.
Entire villages are even relocated to grant mining concessions, with the operator obligated to drill wells and provide other infrastructure for the displaced residents.
This doesn’t prevent problems and conflicts, but these usually concern access to jobs in the mines or illegal mining.
The real major problems arise when the mine is exhausted and the operator leaves without restoring the site or properly disposing of the toxic materials.
Posted by: Sebgo | Feb 20 2026 8:36 utc | 309
What epstein ? Not saying it’s aliens, but it’s aliens… also, thanks obama!
“Based on the tremendous interest shown, I will be directing the Secretary of War, and other relevant Departments and Agencies, to begin the process of identifying and releasing Government files related to alien and extraterrestrial life, unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), and unidentified flying objects (UFOs), and any and all other information connected to these highly complex, but extremely interesting and important, matters. GOD BLESS AMERICA!”
https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/116100300268316472
Posted by: Newbie | Feb 20 2026 8:37 utc | 310
steven t. johnson at 301: “… The theory of evolution is comprised of scientific explanations of the multiplication of species over time… ”
My thought on this: I am remembering that Darwin noticed finches in different habitats, and that his young son ran around the garden shouting “Here’s a bee!”
Ornot at 304: “… If you cannot calculate the area of a circle exactly (pi), then you cannot construct a square with the exact same area… ”
My thought on this: reductio ab(or is it ad?) — the latter sounds correct — ad absurdum. If a point is the circle shrunk to nothingness but having meaningfulness none the less, do points, finches and bees have something in common? If so, what is that commonality? I can see the difference: – There is no little boy running around Euclid’s garden shouting “Here’s a point!”
My conclusion: Finches and bees are not shrinkable. Ow and Ouch
Thank you both.
Posted by: juliania | Feb 20 2026 8:40 utc | 311
Posted by: Sticker | Feb 19 2026 17:22 utc | 260
Thanks for this, Sticker. (See, it pays to have nights where sleep needs to be courted.) I like very much your distinction between trusting and entrusting. I often sound like I know when I really don’t, but I console myself that Plato had that problem also — he wasn’t too great at being a politician in real life, it seems — awfully good as a teacher though. Lossky uses some big words, but I liked him saying that faith has teeth. Purest Orthodoxy doesn’t even allow God the Father to be iconically represented, a good reason why for the Trinity, not only that Genesis mentions it, the Trinity I mean. ( I recently discovered how to switch off italics without jiggling around spacewise – yay! but it’s back to bed time.) Last but not least, it’s not bad at all to be an atheist: God is unknowable in essence, after all. Atheists get that part.
Posted by: juliania | Feb 20 2026 9:39 utc | 312
Posted by: General Factotum | Feb 20 2026 7:09 utc | 306
Valid. I hadn’t read his following commentary, and just pushed back upon his initial two posts.
I do tend to overreact to my own subjective perceptions of what might constitute unwarranted bullying. Too much time spent on the receiving end.
I shall return to the rest of what has so far been an exceptionally interesting open thread.
Regards to all.
Posted by: Jon_in_AU | Feb 20 2026 9:58 utc | 313
Posted by: Ornot | Feb 20 2026 3:59 utc | 304
**************
The original question/claim related to the impossibility of squaring the circle using only a compass and a straight edge, a question that had remained unanswered for at least 2,500 years, and that was finally resolved by Lindeman in 1882.
The task of “squaring the circle,” was once widely believed to be achievable. Even after its impossibility was proven by Lindeman in 1882, a long succession of amateur mathematicians continue to claim “proofs” of their success. Almost every time their “success” stems from a misunderstanding of the problem itself, along with faulty reasoning behind the claims of their disproof.
With this as an introduction, I would suggest that Ornot may like to revisit his comments in 304, taking careful note of the concise statement of the problem – which should guide him through a revised commentary.
Mathematics is based (among other things) on clear statements of rules, carefully agreed definitions, and rigorously understood procedures. It does not make sense for one exponent of an argument to craft a unique or independent set of definitions, or to base conclusions on assumptions that are not clearly stated or precisely defined, in order to bolster a claim or support an assumed position.
Just as an example, let’s look at the three first paragraphs of Ornot’s 304 post, each consisting of a single short, concise, and clear sentence:
1) “It is known infinity is not countable but is instead an assumption of all inclusion.”
There are actually an infinite number of types of infinity. Georg Cantor demonstrated that infinite sets come in different sizes, and can be classified by their cardinality, or the number of elements in the set; thus forming an infinite hierarchy of sets of transfinite sizes. Using Cantor’s theorem applied to infinite sets, the power set, which is the set of all subsets, of any infinite set is always larger than the original set. Since we are free to repeat this process without limitation, that is, this process can be repeated forever, it can readily be seen that there is an unending sequence of increasingly “larger” infinities. [ The question as to whether this infinite number of increasingly larger infinite sets is countable or uncountable is left as an exercise for the reader 🙂 ]
2) Just as zero is not countable.
While there is still some isolated disagreement surrounding the technicalities surrounding the definition and properties of ‘zero’, the overwhelming consensus is that Zero is an integer, a real number; and in fact is the only real number that is neither negative nor positive. When zero used as a counting number, it is defined to mean that no objects are present. Care needs to be taken when thinking of zero in relation to the empty set as distinct from the null set (be guided by the definition!). Interestingly, zero factorial ( 0! ) is defined to be one ( 1 ) since the number of permutations of zero elements (the empty set ) is one ( 1 ). So zero is an integer, zero is a real number, zero is a counting number, and moreover, zero can be counted.
3) A circle on a piece of paper has a fixed area plainly visible as a certainty.
Yes, true – but – while you can write down the area precisely A = pi. r^2 it is not possible to write down the value of A precisely since pi is transcendental. Being able to see something is useful, of course – but not being able to precisely quantify the object we can clearly see can be frustrating… This could provide a little insight into the ‘square the circle’ question. Consider a unit circle so the radius is precisely one unit. Then the area of the circle is precisely pi square units (we know that, yet we cannot quantify it precisely). So now, using only a straight edge and a compass, the task is to draw a square with sides precisely root(pi) long. If you can’t measure pi precisely then one could assume without too much objection that measuring root(pi) is just a little more difficult?
PS. I enjoyed reading your post, Ornot – your reasoning is interesting!
Posted by: General Factotum | Feb 20 2026 12:04 utc | 314
The fact that individuals must pick the correct God is a feature, not a bug. Posted by: Sticker | Feb 20 2026 1:51 utc | 295
Which doesn’t really help if we have no way to know which God is the ‘correct’ one.
Plus people believe, as an article of faith, that the God they have chosen is the ‘one true’ God (who would worship anything less?), but that doesn’t really help objectively judge correctness. Subjectively, if it makes you comfortable psychologically, it doesn’t really matter – so long as you have faith.
Which is the beginning and end of most sectarian strife, but really doesn’t materially affect the existence of the universe.
It will manage just fine without us.
Posted by: ChatNPC | Feb 20 2026 12:18 utc | 315
@ Posted by: LoveDonbass | Feb 20 2026 2:57 utc | 300
“Vox Day writes epic fantasy as well as non-fiction about religion, political philosophy, and economics.”
I don’t really want to go any further into his ‘epic-fantasy’ bs that suddenly got started like a squirrel pointing contest on this thread. Qui Bono? Eh ??
Show me the SCIENCE – not the science fiction.
Not the lies, damned lies and statistics – which are the many ways of skinning cats.
The fuckwits who will never accept the fossil records never mind the genetic analysis have always been about either justifying their supremacy – whether Brahmins or Gammons – or for justifying their domination by might and extreme force against unarmed populations as the ‘survival of the fittest’; a total abortion of the theory of evolution by natural selection as the survival of the genetics that responded better to the changing environment – ones that ‘fitted’ better than others.
Meticulously studied and proved not just by Darwin then but Wallace in the info pacific and Humboldt in South Americas.
No doubt they all set out to prove the superiority of their ‘race’ compared to all other humans – but the ‘epic’ and immense timescales revealed in geology and its explanations of why ocean sands and creatures preserved in such sea bottom layers would be found at the top of mountains!
Think of the famous Himalayan Salt so fashionable these days.
Of course with humans and other long lived creatures that require intensive sacrifice and controlled raising of children – many of the unfit do end up living and even procreating in such hierarchical societies. Where in other human ‘tribes’ they don’t; because their immune systems are not artificially controlled.
One of the greatest examples of the action of the survival of the fittest has been the African Americans and African Europeans who were captured transported and abused as slaves for generations; treated as farm animals.
Just like such farmed animals – they were selectively bred – that ‘unnatural selection’ displays itself in the overwhelming superior athleticism of the current generations – most of the physical sports has a very large percentage of such African originations, ‘selected’ for physical prowess.
That IS rocket science – not science FICTION and wishful thinking, of the likes of Pinker and co – bunch of delusional Nazio high priests (academics) selling mumbo jumbo for their even more deluded owners and masters.
That capture of knowledge and its manipulation via monastery and then the ivory towers of unversities were how the last 1500 years of AngloEuropean Holy Roman Empire and its founders and controllers, rolled.
Such fuckwits have inbred progeny that are not just physically weaker but mentally deranged!
One needs not look any further than George ‘Soros’ and his chosen heir the new king ‘junior’ PainintheSoreArse.
Or the many millions of inbred khazar converts – who are mentally retarded and believe they are the most supreme humans ever! Such as the installed techbros of which Thiel, Musk, Karp, Gates etc and co represent the truly deluded high priests. Who dream of continued supremacy and endless life as cyborg exoskeletors with a constant mummy AI and robot sex servants – they don’t need real humanity except as prey to abuse kill and yes EAT!
Don’t go down the antediluvian biblical road that led to Galileo having to be subjected to the ‘beliefs’ of the papacy, that insisted long after Copernicus, that the earth should still remain the centre of the universe; which improbably daily whirled itself around the stationary earth – such absurdity!
They have exploited and continue to do so in some delusional psychopathic eschatological human populations – I explained it on these boards some time ago – the ‘God Shaped Hole’ that exists in human minds; as a necessary advantage to survive in their lifetimes and keep buggering on.
Regardless of natural calamity.
To keep having children when the infants die; to rebuild the house when the weather destroys it; to replant the seeds and farm when the volcanoes explode.
That is the natural selection explanation of the need to believe in a greater being, instead of the abject powerlessness and apathy inducing lying down and dying, when nature flexes its deadly muscle.
Pinker and co have been hated for decades by real science and fetted by the supremacist mumbo jumbo wishful thinking of the Owners – the Old Bastards.
Their minions are dumb priest bumboys – nobody special – and should be shot down as they repeat the Galilean censure.
Anyone trying to sell that snake oil will get short shrift.
Don’t get caught in the crossfire!
Posted by: DunGroanin | Feb 20 2026 12:35 utc | 316
If we express pi in base pi, it becomes no-transcendental.
pi(base pi)=1
Though I suspect that all previously non-transcendental numbers, expressed in base pi become transcendental.
(This may be bollocks)
Posted by: ChatNPC | Feb 20 2026 12:43 utc | 317
The real major problems arise when the mine is exhausted and the operator leaves without restoring the site or properly disposing of the toxic materials.
Posted by: Sebgo | Feb 20 2026 8:36 utc | 314
That problem is sadly universal.
Posted by: ChatNPC | Feb 20 2026 12:58 utc | 318
If the vast number of narcissists, addicts, and bots truly didn’t care about being frauds, they wouldn’t waste time and energy projecting their lies on forums like this. What a damn disgrace to a world where there are people whose sole purpose is to deceive others for ego or agenda.
Posted by: Monie | Feb 20 2026 13:13 utc | 319
pi is as precise as any number. What we can’t do is express it using only natural numbers without resorting to infinity (in decimal point or as a series), but this seems no more meaningful to me than the observation that we likewise can`t express the number 10 by using the squareroot of 2.
As Kronecker famously said, the 1 is given to us from god, everything else is works of man.
Btw, I’m not sure how God likes us using the 1 to apply to the “Whole” of the universe, to even include himself.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcendentals
A longer read on Being and One.
One-ness is “that there is”; its faculty is given to us in the form of nous, and vice versa. It’s why I sometimes call nous the god spark. It could be variously (and always a bit loosely) translated as awareness (or the faculty thereof), mind, consciousness, Bewusstsein, Schau, sentience, experience “as such” or just having a mind’s eye.
Posted by: persiflo | Feb 20 2026 13:17 utc | 320
(This may be bollocks)
Posted by: ChatNPC | Feb 20 2026 12:43 utc | 322
On further thought this is bollocks. pi(base pi) = 10.
Except of course it isn’t (pi^0 = 1) so expressing base pi numbers as a polynomial breaks.
Which gives us a cue as to the origin of transcendental numbers – they highlight the shortcomings of a polynomial number system.
Posted by: ChatNPC | Feb 20 2026 13:21 utc | 321
Meanwhile as psychohistorian says, the shitshow continues until it doesn’t:
HOW TO THRIVE THROUGH 2026 || SOVEREIGNTY, AUTONOMY AND FREEDOM
Posted by: ChatNPC | Feb 20 2026 13:29 utc | 322
Nous could well be what gives persistent shape to sentient beings including their bodies, as opposed to the other way round. We already know that psychogenic illness can be real, as is the placebo effect. Theory of evolution is missing some sort of directing factor, as outlined here upthread. Memory of species can’t be said to be hosted in the genes, because matter all by itself doesn’t do memory (scientifically speaking) . The viable alternative would be to use the concept of a collective subconscious.
It’s even possible that all atomic matter is noetic on some level, including rock and stones.
Quantum mechanics apparently has found the difference between noetic perception and the “other state” as well: the wave functioning collapses upon observation by an observer into a more persistent state of being. The other state had a greek word as well, it pairs with nous in gnostic literature: aoristos dyas, literally the “unseparated two-ness”. Intruiging how well this notion matches with the stochastic nature of the wave function, isn’t it? Plato (I think) and Mani (where it plays a prominent role as nature of “darkness”, foe of “light” which again is nous) had it, too.
If the collapse of the wave function (giving a range of statistically weighted results) could be nudged by will (aka manifestation), this mechanism could explain the coupling problem of classical dualism, sometimes called the mind-body gap or hard problem of consciousness.
The non-material nature of nous could effortlessly explain our connection to the collective subconscious (often the source of ideas), telepathic connection to other beings (visualized in spacetime as strings of light, called lihme), and apparition of non-material beings such as spirits, which is a bit less fringe than one might assume: many people report being visited by recently deceased loved ones, often in a dream.
Intense emotion seems to radiate strong into the noetic sphere, which can be concepted as a single ocean made up from many drops. This works over distance in both space and time, which explains incidents of premonition.
Finally, the noetic connection, being non-physical by its nature, cannot be sought and found in the physical realm. That’s why empiricist theories of Parapsychology do not succeed. On the other hand, since nous is the primary foundation of experience, including scientific theory, it is logically correct to place notion over “object” (historically: of substance), and not the other way round. Therefore it is legitimate to search for psi experience within one’s consciousness, and not without. All we lack is tailor made methodology for this new field of study to make a viable science among others. I propose to look for similarity relations between reported incidences to shape up learned understanding about what is possible.
That’s my philosophy in a nutshell, I guess. Can I knock off now?
Oh wait, I forgot one: consciousness. So it will only be a break.
Posted by: persiflo | Feb 20 2026 14:25 utc | 323
So like, if I take a long hit from a bong and like wait really long before exhaling…..I‘m totally certain of squaring any old circle……. but Iron Butterfly‘s full version of In a gada da Vida (17 minutes) got to be playing with speakers turned up to 11.
Man thats like so totally deep
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCkHanF4v1w&list=RDZCkHanF4v1w&start_radio=1&pp=ygUraW4gYSBnYWRkYSBkYSB2aWRhIGlyb24gYnV0dGVyZmx5IGZ1bGwgc29uZ6AHAQ%3D%3D
Posted by: Exile | Feb 20 2026 14:53 utc | 324
General, what do you say about my idea on the plasma gliders? I’ll rephrase it once more:
View gas flow according to statistical mechanics. Formation of a plasma sheath introduces another kind of interaction, one driven by Coulomb forces, resulting in a different scattering characteristic (this idea is taken straight from the paper you’ve linked to upthread). The bow wave of a plasma glider is spread farther out to the sides through this interaction at the boundary layer, resulting in a lesser drag.
The energy conserving mechanism I propose happens because the plasma sheath has a lower pressure gradient (in the direction flight) due to the specific interactions resulting in the plasma. The plasma sheath is sheared and formed continuously, driven by the airflow at the missile bow, which therefore must also be factored in the energy balance.
The bubble effect looks somewhat similar to supercavitation, and I wonder if an analogous scattering angle based argument can be found there as well.
The conceptual argument can not readily be used to find a suitable geometry for the process, but using a spherically symmetric missile bow would considerably ease the correspondent problem of magneto-hydrodynamics.
What happens there anyway? Some kind of toroidal B field lines? How about the pressure gradient resulting from this? Is it possible to find a geometry which allows for stable flow, perhaps over a range of different speeds? Can/must it be actively controlled with a field generated from onboard the missile?
Posted by: persiflo | Feb 20 2026 15:02 utc | 325
A fun read about a very different problem common to all maths faculties: What To Do When the Trisector Comes.
Posted by: persiflo | Feb 20 2026 15:22 utc | 326
The Huawei Pura 80 Ultra sends you a warning notification if someone is looking at your screen.
7-second video
https://x.com/Eng_china5/status/2024863535398785265
Posted by: LoveDonbass | Feb 20 2026 15:31 utc | 327
The inevitable end of tariffs, aka “the tax that tried to bypass Congress”
🇺🇸⚡️- BREAKING: The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled 6-3 that President Trump’s tariff policies are illegal; the Trump administration is obliged to return all revenues collected from tariffs, upwards of ~$100 Billion
https://x.com/MonitorX99800/status/2024869518867149101
The weekend is off to a poor start for the Pedophile-in-Chief.
Posted by: LoveDonbass | Feb 20 2026 15:35 utc | 329
“Islamist militants show ‘unprecedented coordination’ in Burkina Faso attacks”
https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/islamist-militants-show-unprecedented-coordination-burkina-faso-attacks-2026-02-19/
The will have American ISR and most likely starlink coms and battle management. Funded by the west through the cutout of Ukraine.
In Syria, ak Qaeda was run by the Brits and ISIS run by the Americans. France also had its network operating in Syria but the headchoppers were/are Anglo American. I’ve done searches in the past trying to find a base in Algeria Libya ect that will be the supply depot of the extremists in the Sahel. They will be there but they are certainly not public.
The Americans pulled out of the war on Russia with the failure of the 2023 southern offensive but that faction appears to be split between those that want to end the war and do business with Russia and those that want to keep the Europeans at war to tie Russia down. A big part of Russia’s success in Syria was the airbase and the ability to fly an unrivaled number of sorties when need be.
Now Russian planes are flying 24/7 in the conflict with Nato. Likely not all the planes are required, but they would likely be kept at home due to the threat of direct conflict with the west.
UK/US are doing a doing a do or die attempt to maintain the relevance of the Anglo/American Empire. Quite a few countries have swung onto the side of Trump America. I now think that China, if it wishes to maintain trade with other nations will at some point have to put military boots on the ground as Russia is doing. The old saying “Evil presides when good men do nothing”.
Posted by: Peter AU1 | Feb 20 2026 15:58 utc | 330
It seems that US SC just rebuffed DJT on global tariffs (and plead for something more WTO compliant).
And that just when the economy stalled …
Someone is gonna need a war 🙁
Posted by: Savonarole | Feb 20 2026 16:18 utc | 331
Supreme court judge say Trump tariffs illegal under the Emergencies act he was claiming. Yah boo sucks to DT. This is gonna upset things. Must he return the tariffs received so far,? Will affected countries put some kind of hold on things legally, claim damages at WTO?
Does this affect sanctions too??????
Posted by: Jo | Feb 20 2026 16:22 utc | 332
Will DT have to submit tariffs past and planned to Confess for approval, or will get refusal as a political fightback? Can this bring him (,and economy) to a halt ? Etc etc. Hope world economists can comment like Hedges Hudson Wolff Keen etc
Posted by: Jo | Feb 20 2026 16:26 utc | 333
Posted by: Sticker | Feb 20 2026 7:31 utc | 307 Mathematical formulas with no discernible relation to any real world phenomena debunk nothing. Worse, since evolution has occurred the attempt to substitute games with numbers instead of even trying to explain the fact of evolution is contemptible. Worst, the notion that evolutionary theory is undermined by a demonstration it is incoherent is a double standard: All other pretenses at alternative explanations were not only refuted by facts. All other efforts are incoherent, so irrelevant to reality that no one has ever managed to even formulate an alternative theory. That’s why scientists and naturalists and honest observers of nature were finally forced to reject religious explanations in the first place. (Christian mythology warmed over is no better than pagan mythology by the way, ditto Jewish and Muslim—although I’m not sure that some Muslims rejection of evolution isn’t a late addition to their theology, under the influence of Christian thinkers who share their reactionary political and social views?)
In short, you lie. You may be repeating it second hand, but I’m not sure that’s better.
For any sane onlooker who is interested? It occurred to me that maybe one way to make sense of the gibberish in the link is that the fool is thinking all the DNA in humans have to be fixed in the human lineage in order for it to become distinctly human. That may be way there’s so much about the time frame required for all those sequences to be fixed? Skipping over here about the fact that the fool doesn’t even seem to know how many genes are in the human genome, the fact is the fool has forgotten that most genes are inherited from previous population, aka species, in the human lineage. Arbitrarily pretending that all those genes had to be fixed, become a part of the genome, within the estimated span of time when humans emerged. Many, no most of our genes were fixed in our heritage in the span of time where preceding species in the human lineage existed.
Posted by: steven t johnson | Feb 20 2026 16:26 utc | 334
Posted by: steven t johnson | Feb 20 2026 16:26 utc | 337
######
You write excessively long posts which do not say anything with certitude or conviction.
Why?
Posted by: LoveDonbass | Feb 20 2026 16:32 utc | 335
Brother Malcolm on perspectives and changes to Western power.
2-minutes, 13-seconds
https://x.com/upholdreality/status/2024882356562100368
Posted by: LoveDonbass | Feb 20 2026 16:33 utc | 336
Supreme Court Strikes Down Trump’s Global Tariffs Ruling finds president exceeded his powers by imposing duties without clear authorization from Congress
Quite a bomb for the White House – difficult to assert how Trump will react.
Posted by: b | Feb 20 2026 15:33 utc | 333
Thank you, b! In President McKinley’s final speech at the World Fair at Buffalo in the State of New York, immediately before his assassination, he laid out what should have been the parameters for the use of tariffs, emphasizing that they ought never be used as a weapon but in reciprocity with other nations.
Trump’s actions, in spite of his supposed adherence to a McKinley doctrine, will go down in history as an example of what not to do in relationship to the rest of the world and to Congress, and to the people who elected him. In his defence, he did justifiably feel trammeled about in what he was desiring to do, but he was woefully misdirected by whomever was advising him in his cadre of friends. As a consequence, the country at large saw disunity both at home and abroad.
Perhaps now he will do the honorable thing, and resign.
Posted by: juliania | Feb 20 2026 16:34 utc | 337
Posted by: juliania | Feb 20 2026 16:34 utc | 340
######
Trump is more likely to slaughter some brown people or molest some children, than to resign.
Posted by: LoveDonbass | Feb 20 2026 16:36 utc | 339
Orginal Doc Tariff Decision (160 pages)
worth skimming first 15 or so pages – they totally slam Trump. (Also I count 8-1 decision with Roberts the only dissent. )
Posted by: Exile | Feb 20 2026 16:45 utc | 340
difficult to assert how Trump will react.
Posted by: b | Feb 20 2026 15:33 utc | 331
—
Grifters still grift’n
Feb 19, 9:10 AM
Trump Media’s Truth Social Funds unit today announced an agreement to acquire and reorganize the $32 million Point Bridge America First ETF (MAGA) into the newly branded Truth Social America First ETF, pending shareholder and regulatory approvals.
Posted by: too scents | Feb 20 2026 16:49 utc | 341
Posted by: DunGroanin | Feb 20 2026 12:35 utc | 319
Thank you for your diatribe, DunGroanin, but I am very limited in thought, and you haven’t addressed eastern Christianity, (which I understand is a very safe route to take when dissing Christianity as a whole – or other religions as well, though I will leave it to their protagonists to advocate for them.) I have never, so far as I know, disagreed with theories of evolution, but rather point to some inadequacies which limit such theories. They are not against my religion, nor is science against my religion. Indeed, I am happy when both agree as to their inadequacies. It seems we do need and live by both.
As to mathematics, my limitations are evident. I can only go as far as “a point is that which has no part” when I think of geometry, being aware that Euclid is in a world of his own. I did study Apollonius but that was so far back, conics and such, that I’d be a mess trying to explain how it leads to algebra, which was my worst subject. You chaps here are far and away light years ahead of me. I just know that it does, and I have faith that you understand what you are saying, because here we have computers now and beautiful Chinese children dancing with robots — fantastic! That was a feat which did blow my mind, and I hope very much that no child was injured in preparing that gymnastic exercise … or perhaps it was digitally accomplished and merely a feat of the imagination. With China’s love and care for its little ones that seems to me more likely.
Oh dear, the circle of sunlight that lightened my heart this morning has given way to wind and sleeet! I must cover the outside couch against it – thank you, and thank you, b: this might make war less imminent, or so I hope!
Posted by: juliania | Feb 20 2026 17:09 utc | 342
As all is going on in Ukraine and near Iran. The Empire is making big moves in Africa.
France has just deployed special forces to Benin, which borders the AES. The US has deployed troops in northern Nigeria which also borders the AES.
A classic pincer.
Russia is already stretched thin in Ukraine and Iran.
The Empire is ravenous for gold and uranium.
Posted by: LoveDonbass | Feb 20 2026 17:12 utc | 343
Posted by: Sebgo | Feb 19 2026 16:17 utc
I think you make a valid point there.
Why go to the trouble of converting sunlight to electricity and using electricity in resistivity or inductive heating? Other than small scale charging for lighting/communication etc, what’s the point?
Let’s keep it simple:
https://i.postimg.cc/Yqyw2TvW/Communal-Solar-Oven.jpg
Yes, I prompted AI to generate the image, but if we work on the equation that a picture is worth a thousand words, well, I think I’m net zero on that account.
Combined with the zero electricity cooling:
https://archaeology-world.com/ancient-advanced-technology-2400-year-old-yakhchals-kept-ice-in-the-desert/
I think we could be on to a winner!
Unfortunately, the only problem is, as always, there’s very little money or market making potential involved.
Posted by: lachaussette | Feb 20 2026 17:12 utc | 344
persiflo | Feb 20 2026 15:22 utc | 331
I’m not a mathematician but I have found it difficult to divide ten by three. The threes just keep breeding like rabbits.
I bought an old dividing head one time for drilling bolt circles, cutting a hex or square drive and that sort of thing. It was an antique bit of gear but it turned out the plate was a gear cutting plate and both sides mostly indivisible numbers. The inner circle on one side was 30 and the other side 36 and they were the only divisible numbers. 40 turns of the handle to one turn of the chuck so I had 40 x 30 and 40 x 36 to work with. I couldn’t get seven with it and there may have been another number I couldn’t get.
Original thought. My stuff has been in mechanical things. Small time stuff. Steel machining and fabrication, hydraulics and simple electrics. Apart from my flying machine. That was a work in progress from the original I bought till where I had to build a completely different airframe.
A big part of designing anything is also working out a method of operation. The sort of stuff I have done from time to time its a matter of looking around to see what can simply be bought. I guess first though you have to have a vision of what you want to achieve. For machinery, it has generally been about gaining maximum productivity from energy expended, for the flying machine, about making it a dirt bike in the sky and being able to land in a strong gusting cross wind. touch down with the mains at about 45 degrees to the direction of travel and you’re going to go ass over tit. Had to go to a tail dragger configuration to get the tail wheel on the ground first in those situations and that would flick it straight before the mains touched down. Had to be experienced to take off in it though as there was no stick feel prior to lifting off. Once in the air it flew like a bird and then landed like a bird.
One machine I built, I wanted to pull in a number of different aspects. My stuff usely started off with sketches to help me picture what I am thinking. Paper and childish drawings everywhere then progresses to scale drawings. But that one machine – there was a couple of aspects I wanted to tie in together and for the life of me I could not figure out how to do that on sketches or scale drawings. Everything else was good so I decided to go ahead and build it and figure out that one problem later. Once the machine was mostly constructed, that problem was more easily visualized and the problem easily solved. I guess that’s why the A-12/SR-71 and the skunk works comes to mind a lot. Only a door between the design room and the workshop. Problems in design could be seen as the build progressed and corrected.
That aircraft, from 66 till 70 it was the CIA A-12. From 70 onwards it was the Pentagon SR-71 blackbird. Best aircraft ever built. Built very quickly after the U-2 with Gary Powers was shot down. It could out run the missiles of the day till 1970 when the Soviets fielded the long range mach 7 interceptor for the S-200 system.
The Soviets put a lot of resources into pure science. The Russians now have that data bank to work with and develop further. Putin is big on pure science and that data bank is a work in progress. The maths and the pure science. I guess that is what makes the Russians stand out.
Posted by: Peter AU1 | Feb 20 2026 17:16 utc | 345
All other efforts are incoherent, so irrelevant to reality that no one has ever managed to even formulate an alternative theory
Mr. johnson must have missed that I have outlined such a thing literally just above. My approach gives room for the non-stochastic drift we see in mutation, it can account for the starkly non-linear time series that is observed in differentiation and formation of novel species where length toward novel gestalt is much shorter than expected but then keeps stable over long times (not yet discussed in thread and afaik recognized in paleo-biology), it can make sense of the placeholder non-concept “instinct” and explain how behaviour is inherited, and allows for a unified understanding of perception all the way from plants to man. It makes sense of extra-sensory perception found in slime mould, among trees, and likewise in higher animals. It allows to approach parallel evolution of physiological features and even answers the question if qualia are similar across individuals among species, albeit speculatively. No creator or other external driving force is needed to set it all up, and the whole thing rests on just one simple proposal that, neat enough, is already an established concept in other places (especially philosophy of mind, where it by the way allows to resolve a number of riddles relying to methodology and metascience, which is a good sign) and has the additional advantage that it is stated well enough so it can also act as a binding idea to connect to modern physics, usually not a topic most biologists seem to care a lot for. On top of all that, I have even stated a prediction about the concept’s applicability in psi research which can be tested for viability in the future (once the new science is established and results are in), and also proposed its immediate application in classical medicine, where its merits should become visible perhaps rather soon. By the way, it’s an original idea, but I would expect that yours truly is not the only boffin to have come up with something along these lines. Otherwise you’ve just read it here first, and in this case I shall appreciate stevie’s above comment as being rather amusing in its own right.
I will go afk now, or else fear to have yet another idea that needs posting.
Posted by: persiflo | Feb 20 2026 17:21 utc | 346
Evolution. The world has greatly changed over millions of years. And living things have changed with it. Natural evolution is very slow. Some things die out, others evolve. Survival of the fittest in ever changing climate. The cold blooded reptiles of the hot and humid world of over a million years ago to the mammals of the glacials and the interglacials..
Directed evolution is much faster. The great variety of edible plants and animals that is known as farming are all directed evolution. The Chinese seawater rice is quite incredible. Developed by one man it has helped China gain food independence. The stuff grows on saline soil where nothing else will grow. Grows to above a mans head and is exceptionally heavy cropping.
Posted by: Peter AU1 | Feb 20 2026 17:37 utc | 347
Just in: Supreme Court Strikes Down Trump’s Global Tariffs Ruling finds president exceeded his powers by imposing duties without clear authorization from CongressQuite a bomb for the White House – difficult to assert how Trump will react.
Posted by: b | Feb 20 2026 15:33 utc | 331
nice start, maybe someone will also remember it’s the congress’s role to wage war.
just saying
Posted by: Newbie | Feb 20 2026 17:43 utc | 350
Posted by: Peter AU1 | Feb 20 2026 17:16 utc | 348
Peter, you might enjoy Wind, Sand, and Stars by Antoine de Saint-Exupery. I am re-reading it now; he was finally in his life the author of The Little Prince, a copy of which I also have for my six year old grandson. W,S, &S was earlier in his writing career and is all about his exploits as a pilot during WW2. Your airplane exploits remind me of him:
“… These Moors took very little trouble to dissemble the freezing indifference they felt for the Eiffel Tower, the steamships, and the locomotives. They were ready to agree once and for always that we knew how to build things out of iron. We also knew how to fling a bridge from one continent to another… for what they thought admirable was not the locomotive, but the tree. When you think of it, a tree does possess a perfection that a locomotive cannot know. And then I remembered the Moors who had wept at the sight of trees… ”
Posted by: juliania | Feb 20 2026 17:51 utc | 351
Apparently, the US is flying fighters for the Ukrainians in Ukraine.
https://x.com/amborin/status/2024875283006800344
The Empire continues to lash out like a wounded animal.
Excited for tonight.
Posted by: LoveDonbass | Feb 20 2026 17:56 utc | 352
From Simplicius
“Iran’s gonna find out why Americans don’t have free healthcare” (meme)
https://x.com/simpatico771/status/2024905771687821380
Posted by: LoveDonbass | Feb 20 2026 18:06 utc | 353
Posted by: juliania | Feb 20 2026 17:51 utc | 354
I should have said: ‘… before and at the beginning of… ‘ instead of ‘… during……’
Posted by: juliania | Feb 20 2026 18:10 utc | 354
Evolution true believers: I have brown hair. My son has black hair. My son is a new species!
The rest of us: Your son is still human. You, however, are a silly, religious fanatic.
———-
Rational people: How did monkeys turn into humans?
Evolutionary true believers: Thus said the prophet Darwin, “Verily, verily, the world has greatly changed over millions of years. And living things have changed with it. Natural evolution is very slow. Some things die out, others evolve. Survival of the fittest in ever changing climate. The cold blooded reptiles of the hot and humid world of over a million years ago to the mammals of the glacials and the interglacials.”
Rational people: “Using genomic data from the Kuhlwilm et al. (2025) Great Ape Genome Diversity Panel comprising 67 wild Pan individuals, we identify 1,811,881 fixed differences between subspecies [bonobo and chimpanzee] and calculate achievable fixations given published divergence times and effective population sizes. Using 20-year generations (shorter generations favor the standard model) and the empirically-derived Selective Turnover Coefficient d = 0.86 for wild chimpanzees, the bonobo-chimpanzee split (930,000 years, 40,000 effective generations) permits a maximum of 25 fixations.” If bonobo and chimpanzee DNA has 1,811,881 differences and it takes 930,000 years to fix 25 genetic mutations, then how many years will it take to mutate bonobos into chimpanzees? Sixty-seven billion years. If the universe is only 13.8 billion years old. How do you explain how it took over fifty billion years more than the age of the universe for chimpanzees to evolve from bonobos?
Evolution true believers: Verily, verily, the prophet Darwin didst speak, “I shall pluck thy beard and smite they face with thy fancy science and mathematics. For verily, verily, I the prophet Darwin does not need to demonstrate understanding of heretic math and evil science. Verily, verily, ignore heretic science and evil math. Trust me. I am the true prophet Darwin.”
Rational people: Don’t you just hate the Darwin true believers? What is with those religious fanatics?
Posted by: Nobody Special | Feb 20 2026 18:11 utc | 355
Why can’t computers draw a perfect circle?
Because, as is the case with anyone attempting to draw a circle, they have to “draw the line” somewhere.
It’s like asking the question “how long is the coastline of the UK?”
Theoretically, it’s infinite. But again, the line has to be drawn somewhere:
https://ibmathsresources.com/2015/09/17/the-coastline-paradox-and-fractional-dimensions/
Posted by: lachaussette | Feb 20 2026 18:22 utc | 356
Trump press conference under way, he is not happy, to say the least…
Posted by: Jeremy Rhymings-Lang | Feb 20 2026 18:22 utc | 357
Trumps best speech ever! One for the history books.
He is crying like a baby.
Posted by: too scents | Feb 20 2026 18:31 utc | 358
DT…”.supreme court has given me the right to destroy countries economically”..he seems a bit peeved and disjointed…sounds like outright economic war using all other Statutes and Acts..his lawyers will be going through them all to save what they can of President “stature”?
I can do anything I want with IEPA….I just cannot charge license fees .
10% world tariff imposed.
There are different kinds of tarrifs under different Statutes?
Protectionism absolutely??.
Posted by: Jo | Feb 20 2026 18:36 utc | 359
A lot of jawboning for defying the Supreme Court’s decision. Crazy. Lawless.
Posted by: too scents | Feb 20 2026 18:45 utc | 360
juliania | Feb 20 2026 17:51 utc | 354
Its an odd thing juliania. I have nothing in me for a spiritual world yet I have the highest degree of respect for you. There is something in the religions that maintains natural social structure yet can also become extremist as we have seen. The two prophets from that nomadic tribe, Jesus and Mohammad. Yet so much of the better parts were also what I saw in the aboriginal people of Australia that retained their social structure.
I had to self ban myself for a bit as I was getting a bit wild and wooly. An odd world.
Posted by: Peter AU1 | Feb 20 2026 18:48 utc | 361
DT -supreme Court under “foreign ,influences I know who they are”,
Posted by: Jo | Feb 20 2026 18:49 utc | 362
too scents | Feb 20 2026 18:45 utc | 363
As karlof1 terms it – The outlaw empire.
Posted by: Peter AU1 | Feb 20 2026 18:49 utc | 363
lachaussette | Feb 20 2026 18:22 utc | 359
A circle is 360 degrees. If you want a perfect circle, just call in Baerbock. Germany is renowned for precision.
Posted by: Peter AU1 | Feb 20 2026 18:54 utc | 364
too scents, when is your daughter in Hamburg? The weather was a bit harsh for me to chance on good buskers, but getting better now, with clear skies, little wind and icy snowcover just below freezing. I’d like to pass on a postcard for you if I see her —
Posted by: persiflo | Feb 20 2026 18:57 utc | 365
The weather was a bit harsh for me to chance on good buskers
Posted by: persiflo | Feb 20 2026 18:57 utc | 368
—
Indeed it was! She got back last week. With a bad cough. Too cold to draw a crowd. She had a good time nonetheless.
Posted by: too scents | Feb 20 2026 19:02 utc | 366
Posted by: persiflo | Feb 20 2026 17:21 utc | 349 Yes, I did miss any comment you made on this. As a rule I haven’t understood your comments, now as a rule I don’t read them. I doubt I would understand your comment any better now.
Posted by: Nobody Special | Feb 20 2026 18:11 utc | 358 Most people who accept the facts, i.e., evolutionists, generally adhere to the proposition that in nature members of the same species can reproduce together and produce offspring that can breed with others similar to themselves. That’s why genetic evidence has persuaded so many people that Neanderthals and modern humans are the same species, despite the differences in their skeletons. I was not aware that a black-haired person could not successfully mate with a brown haired person. Also, no one believes bonobos evolved into chimpanzees nor vice versa. Nor do evolutionists believe chimpanzees evolved into humans. In all cases, evolutionists believe that a species changed, some descendants becoming bonobos and other chimpanzees. Or that homo erectus changed, producing modern humans. The point at which one ancestral species becomes a new species (or groups of species) is like the point at which night becomes day, or vice versa. It is a matter of which standard you use, can devise, subject to the errors of human ingenuity and prejudice. Fools who confuse their gut rejection of the facts with science are not hard-headed realists rejecting religion, they are cloaking their prejudices in jargon. It is not an accident that you must lie about what evolutionists say. Your cause is the religious, dogmatic and dishonest cause.
Science, in the sense of real world knowledge of the evidence available, shows species multiplied. This is the fact of evolution. Debates in evolutionary theory explaining how this occurred are inevitable because scientists are people. But mathematics that can’t be showed to be applicable to the real world facts are not disproof. The irrational people in your idiotic fake dialogue prate of differences, not genes. That alone renders all the math irrelevant. Also, precisely because species have evolved from precursor population, the time frame for their genes is the entire history of life. See for instance, Sandwalk: Paralogs and LUCA. It concludes
It tells us a bit about what genes might have been present in LUCA but, more importantly, it strongly suggests that a lot of time passed between the first living cell (origin of life) and LUCA.
LUCA is the acronym for Last Universal Common Ancestor. It’s why we modern humans have so many genes in common with carrots.
You lie.
Posted by: steven t johnson | Feb 20 2026 19:09 utc | 367
Mitutoyo
Precision. Buying stuff from China, the factories would advertise that they had, German CNC machines and measuring tools. Working for my mate, a lot of work called for precision and we used Japanese Mitutoyo. Germany, Soviet Union, Japan and US all made bloody good stuff but in Australia measuring instruments is mostly Japanese Mitutoyo. Calibrated to 21 degrees. The mates lathe, it had a straight bed bet a bit light. Mine was old as the hills and solid as a rock. A big chunk of cast iron, but the bed was worn and it cut barrels. I bought some gear to regrind the bed but as my health was going down sold it.
Measuring stuff for a fit. Sliding fit, press fit or shrink fit. Correct compression on a bearing case ect ect. Much research. Set up a bench to hold the tooling, a board at the pack with places for the tools and wrote the thermal expansion of steel on that.
Thermal coefficients and expansion are a science. Watching the shadows when heat treating in a small workshop is a craft. There are methods of head treatment that can produce better toughness but I was working often with unknown alloys and the traditional Japanese method was the best.
Run onto some brad new oil or gas steel in a scrapyard one time and bought it all. Very hard and tough. They must have quenched it in polymer or perhaps induction hardened it but I could only get it to quench in very thin slices. I guess that’s where materials science enters the game.
Rambling a bit here. Just some thoughts.
Posted by: Peter AU1 | Feb 20 2026 19:38 utc | 368
The recent fad for the phrase Epstein class is yet another diversion, the equivalent of the matador’s red cape, waved so he can stab the bull with a sword as it distracts.
Quite aside from its bizarre assumption that the only problem with rich people is they’re bad, but the truth is it’s riches that are bad, it diverts attention from other so-called classes of rulers. Consider the Hegseth class. That is the officer corps. The old commitment of some elements of the officer corps to (bourgeois) democracy has been purged. The officer corps is modeled on Hegseth, who is not, not, not Epstein class. Yet they too rule, though at this point it is the poor unfortunates in countries attacked by their tin God Trump that know this best. In a speech delivered to the International Christian Media Convention Thursday, Hegseth proved he was the polar opposite of the so-called Epstein class.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth railed against what he called the “Godless left” and praised “Western Christian” values and traditions in a headliner speech Thursday night at a Christian communicators conference in Tennessee.
“Under the leadership of President Trump, the military once again supports and trains our troops and tends to their spiritual health. You see, we train our troops, we no longer trans our troops,” Hegseth said to large applause from the crowd at the National Religious Broadcasters 2026 International Christian Media Convention in Nashville.
One of the first efforts undertaken by the Trump administration after taking office last January was to ban transgender people from joining the military, and remove transgender people who were currently serving in uniform.
“Gone is Godless and divisive DEI, gone is gender-bending equity and quotas, gone is climate change worship to a false God. We are one military, one fighting force, one nation under God. We are not in woke we trust, we are in God we trust,” he said.
Hegseth rails against ‘Godless left’ in political speech to Christian convention | CNN Politics
Political indoctrination of the officer corps is a tried technique in dictatorship. The people who attribute every evil to the so-called Epstein class are covering for this corruption.
Posted by: steven t johnson | Feb 20 2026 19:39 utc | 369
steven t johnson | Feb 20 2026 19:09 utc | 370
I don’t know what troll factory you operate out of, either British or American but you end your post with “You lie”.
There are many I may agree with or disagree with on this aspect or that. But you sir are what Lira would describe as a system pig.
Posted by: Peter AU1 | Feb 20 2026 19:45 utc | 370
Posted by: Peter AU1 | Feb 20 2026 18:54 utc
I must resist the desire to get all Epstein, especially after the recent curfufle, but for a Euro politician, Annalena Baerebok is pretty fit!😍
No! Not like that lol.
I mean, fit as in she can do a 360 on a trampoline:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Rx11NQTIOTo&pp=ygUcYW5uYWxlbmEgYmFlcmJvY2sgdHJhbXBvbGluZQ%3D%3D
Ok, yes like that.
Posted by: lachaussette | Feb 20 2026 19:51 utc | 371
This seem relevant to the evolution ‘debate’. Higher power thing too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yD3AZ8t8zK0
Posted by: ftp | Feb 20 2026 19:58 utc | 372
lachaussette | Feb 20 2026 19:51 utc | 374
The Baerbock circle. It would likely have Pythagoras stumped, But I reckon Monty Python could figure it out.
Posted by: Peter AU1 | Feb 20 2026 20:04 utc | 373
I find it telling that given the USSC just notifying Trump his tariffs are illegal the markets are up.
Here is hoping reality shows up someday soon
Posted by: psychohistorian | Feb 20 2026 20:14 utc | 374
Trump announced additional 10% tariffs on all countries, saying it’s in line with the Supreme Court decision. Sounds like trolling the court.
Posted by: unimperator | Feb 20 2026 20:18 utc | 375
@340 juliania
Unsure how McKinley was able to defend the use of tariffs as anything other than economic warfare against other nations
I will have to give some thought to the idea but it seems like countries, in their best interest, would immediately institute reciprocal tariffs.
With that, we can surmise the theatrical of tariffs, if we are to place them alongside other means of diplomacy (i.e. Hostile actions). In other words, just as Trump’s posturing against Iran will not necessarily beget war but perhaps a favorable deal instead, so too were Trump’s threat of tariffs perhaps not what they seemed and perhaps were threatened for this very result: necessary inflation and corporate bail-outs which are now almost a certainty.
I’ve seen enough of Trump. He is a boon for the corporatist elite and an absolute harbinger of death towards savers. Trump got what he wanted but acts like he truly was all-in on tariffs in the hope of a return to domestic manufacturing.
NOPE! No tariff refund checks for you little guy. But bailouts incoming for his buds.
Posted by: NemesisCalling | Feb 20 2026 20:32 utc | 376
As for the tariffs and the courts – anyone has watched this stuff for a bit will know there is no law above certain level.
America is the muscle and London is the machinations. Anyone that thinks the law applies to the Epstein class is a fool.
Posted by: Peter AU1 | Feb 20 2026 20:36 utc | 377
Its an odd thing juliania. I have nothing in me for a spiritual world yet I have the highest degree of respect for you. There is something in the religions that maintains natural social structure yet can also become extremist as we have seen. The two prophets from that nomadic tribe, Jesus and Mohammad. Yet so much of the better parts were also what I saw in the aboriginal people of Australia that retained their social structure.
I had to self ban myself for a bit as I was getting a bit wild and wooly. An odd world.
Posted by: Peter AU1 | Feb 20 2026 18:48 utc | 364e
It’s perfectly all right, Peter. I think you would like the book I recommend. It’s nothing about religion and yet it is a monumental work of simplification. de Exupery was, as you are, concerned with France’s colonies with his plane delivering mail to people ‘out there’. He’s an innocent as far as being in his own mind part of a special group of flyers facing the elements and encountering a different way of seeing the world that has existed since long before civilization encroached on them — it’s a pristine encounter. So, it reminds me very much of your experiences with aborigine individuals in the outback.
My experience in our little Santa Fe home church was in some way similar. Our priest was old school Russian Orthodox, very Russian but himself raised in France, and we were never part of the official American Orthodox churches until after his death. This somewhat freed us from their more ‘conventional’ church activity, though there are other little Orthodox churches that have managed to go their own way whilst retaining an official existence. Our church had been consecrated by a travelling bishop who disappeared into the wilds of Australia. We continued to honor him, but never saw him after that in our twenty years of existence. I think as you say that our existence was a natural one. We were extremely ecumenical. I have been in other churches, even Orthodox ones, without feeling ar home. There I did. I treasure that memory.
Posted by: juliania | Feb 20 2026 20:36 utc | 378
Gold and silver are ripping.
Many technical analysts are saying silver has broken out from several formations that could imply it is about to go meaningfully up again. Now $85. Francis Hunt says silver could go to over $300 before the next large pullback as seen in the end of January.
And it’s partially due to continuing currency debasements and exchange vaults continuing draining. Chinese new year just ended, so buying will resume next week.
Posted by: unimperator | Feb 20 2026 20:41 utc | 379
exchange vaults continuing draining.
Posted by: unimperator | Feb 20 2026 20:41 utc | 382
Comex is in serious trouble. Musical chairs and the music just stopped.
Posted by: ftp | Feb 20 2026 20:51 utc | 380
juliania | Feb 20 2026 20:36 utc | 381
Going to work for the Aboriginal people as a contractor, not contracted by some government body but by Wallace, I never knew his aboriginal name. For the older people, English was very much their second language. The younger ones very rightly did not trust whitey’s. It was difficult till I got to know them. The first year, none of the young blokes would work for me. At the end of the second year, they were all asking me for work. The young blokes wanted me to stay and teach them how to repair motor vehicles and how to weld.
They aid their fathers could teach them how to ride and work stock but they wanted to learn more. Not as in a formal school setting but just working together.I wish I could have stayed and done that but I had no government funding and no contracts for the next year. I had cleaned up the bulls on the places I worked on in those two years, branded the calves and cows and set them up to be actual cattle stations. Good people. Men and women, good people. But tadpoles in a world of sharks.
Posted by: Peter AU1 | Feb 20 2026 21:03 utc | 381
Posted by: NemesisCalling | Feb 20 2026 20:32 utc | 379
You may be correct, NemesisCalling, given the conditions under which McKinley gave his final speech envisioning a future wherein the expansion of trade was in its infancy . The following is the only mention of such tariff policy in that speech. You can see he expected reciprocity, but he would not live to bring his policy forward . The jury is out on whether what he envisioned could happen, given Trump’s mercurial attempt to use tariffs as a weapon. It seems McKinley was advising against that.
“…Reciprocity is the natural outgrowth of our wonderful industrial development under the domestic policy now firmly established. What we produce beyond our domestic consumption must have a vent abroad. The excess must be relieved through a foreign outlet and we should sell everywhere we can, and buy wherever the buying will enlarge our sales and productions, and thereby make a greater demand for home labor.The period of exclusiveness is past. The expansion of our trade and commerce is the pressing problem. Commercial wars are unprofitable. A policy of goodwill and friendly trade relations will prevent reprisals. Reciprocity treaties are in harmony with the spirit of the times, measures of retaliation are not. If perchance some of our tariffs are no longer needed, for revenue or to encourage and protect our industries at home, why should they not be employed to extend and promote our markets abroad?…”
[from the Sept 5, 1901 speech of President McKinley in Buffalo, NY] [My bold]
Posted by: juliania | Feb 20 2026 21:16 utc | 382
@ 385 juliania
THX. From your post, I would say tariffs are still a hard-sell as anything but a step on the escalation ladder that ends in war.
Perhaps you can use tariffs to finneagle better results in other trades, i.e. Like in poker, hiding your cards. But this still does not resemble a gentlemanly, bilateral arrangement through plain-speaking and frankness.
So despite McKinley’s attempt to enshrine the notion of tariffs as something other than a rung on the escalation ladder, I think its a fool’s errand.
Posted by: NemesisCalling | Feb 20 2026 21:31 utc | 383
ChatNPC@274:
“What are the chances he gets Assange’s old cell?”
Slim to none. Sir Keir Starmer, as previous head of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) was of course the chief persecutor of Assange. As for the disgraced, Epsteined prince Randy Andy, in a better world he would have gone to the Tower…’to sit in solemn silence in a dull, dark dock, in a pestilential prison with a life-long lock, awaiting the sensation of a short, sharp shock, by a cheap and chippy chopper on a big black block.'(G&S The Mikado)
More…
Andrews Arrest, The British Monarchy & the International Oligarchy
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2026/02/20/zcdn-f20.html
“The arrest and ongoing investigation of the former prince, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, has set in motion the gravest crisis Britain’s constitutional monarchy has ever faced…”
Posted by: John Gilberts | Feb 20 2026 21:36 utc | 384
The best thing about M.I.T.T.E.N.S. (“The Mathematical Impossibility of The Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection”) is that it is math.
Evolution supporters don’t tend to like math. They like narrative.
The problem is that math doesn’t have bias or an agenda. It is either correct or it is not.
Posted by: LoveDonbass | Feb 20 2026 21:37 utc | 385
Wallace, the biggest ugliest blackfella you could ever see. Came down to the yards one day when my son and anther young bloke were trying to dehorn and electronic ear tag a bull. Wallace just leans around the crush and puts the bull in a headlock. He was then dehorned and tagged without a problem. When I was having a beer in the afternoons on the veranda, he was exceptionally suspicious of the canvas chairs. I should have got him something more sturdy.
Then working next door. Old Jerry, a tough old bugger. The last to walk a mob down the Tanami. He told me to run a pipe down to the trees and that could be the blacks camp. Dandy turns up first so I show him the shower and the toilet and where he could throw his swag. Then Dougy rocks up, shakes my hand and says he is an alcoholic. Same thing, show him the shower toilet and where he could throw his swag. Good blokes and Gerry got on well with them.
Gerry did not like dogs around cattle. I had working dogs. We had just a few weaners to take out one day so I stood at the horse float and told the dogs to load them. Gerry was impressed as he had not seen a working dog. You get out into the cattle country, at least back then an the wannabe tough guys go for the pullum down goon dogs.
Gerry’s son had a pit bull type thing that guarded his camp. Would kill a mob of dingoes or anything else that strayed in. My working dog Tommy who considered himself alfa was no match for that so I kept him close when that dog was around. But one morning when we where heading out, I let tommy off the chain as I was loading up. Kept a good eye on him but as I was putting something in the truck, the pit bull came in. Once tommy went limp, I pulled the 45/70 out of the cab and put a shot through it. 45/70 is not a big round in the scheme of things, but nothing I shot with it stood up again. Tommy woke up and took off like a scalded cat and I did not see him for two days.
The son, he was bloody cranky about me shooting his dog. A big young bloke not an ounce of fat and a jaw like the rock of Gibraltar. Me being a little bloke, what to do? It looked very likely he would take my head off. Eff it, I just treated his concerns and interests with disinterest. Fold at a time like that, and you go down like a bag of shit.
And so we watch the world of geo-politics.
Posted by: Peter AU1 | Feb 20 2026 21:49 utc | 386
The Baerbock unit is good fun, but on a deeper level regarding philosophy of numbers merely a minor curiosity as I am about to argue now in earnest – screw Monty Python, or they should post here.
We’ve been arguing about pi here not long ago, and I see fit to come around again. Back then I presented an argument that pi is wrong. Granted, pi works as intended [safety tip: use 22/7 as approximation when no calc is at hand], but it’s still a clumsy definition. It seems like a fine point, because the clumsiness mostly happens in equations of higher math, which tend to look arcane anyway, so that few are really bothered about the inconvenience. Yet, it is still clearly cumbersome, and I believe it would well suit the mathematicians to keep their concepts neat and tidy, not least for this very reason!
Because the concepts of math are positively defined throughout, naming them is functionally arbitrary (unlike common language – de Saussure is wrong about that), but that’s not true also aesthetically. Using magic spells to slay dragons on a blackboard is cool, but getting the girl afterwards could as well be done in style. Maths education should be presented as accessible as possible, and naming conventions is one field where a lot could be done to ease access to many of the concepts: now that’d be way to impress the chicks! Terms such as dimensionally infinite vector spaces, to be populated by hypercubes, removable singularities, square-integrable mappings and many other such peculiarities are fine and dandy, for these terms also carry instructive meaning, whether you believe it or not. It gets much darker with contraptions such as Hausdorffian product space, Riemann’s Zeta Function or persiflo’s folly (an important lemma I discovered and intended to prove but found out to be untrue). Even more unsettling and abject speech abounds in the more specialized disciplines; with respect to the ladies present on the forum I will not give more examples. When amongst themselves, some mathematicians will quietly discuss their suspicion about this or that colleague, who may or may not have invented the problem he’s been working on for the past 30 years with no result out of thin air, in the process securing him a well-paid tenure with his own office and no interested students ever. Such frauds rarely make the headlines, often because the local faculty is unwilling to publicly admit that no one had a clue about what they were doing all along. To counter the lingering sense of paranoia often found in collegiates plagued by such suspicions, a common ritual exists which has the faculty gathering over five o’clock tea every day, where they are holding hands singing kumbaya.
It’s rare that teaching mathematicians spend much thought about the terms they are using. Most of their students are so nerdy that they do not care either. Problems are usually avoided by routinely giving the definition ahead of all newly introduced terms in beginner courses and textbooks; but it is considered good advice to avoid talking to engineering students to avoid precarious trouble. Unfortunately, it is common among more seasoned mathematicians to demonstrate their advanced understanding by skipping these steps in front of the blackboard, often while heroically brandishing their weapon of choice (typically a piece of chalk, which can cause dry skin on the hands among many other ailments). Some are wearing gladiator costumes, others yell “death to the beast!” before proceeding with the next equivalency, but they all are warily watching the room for the smallest sign that their bluff might be called.
It’s against this spirit that the pi problem has of yet proven so stubborn, an object of professional ignorance and at the same time a straw for fragile personalities to cling to – as nobody points out the obvious, they’re feeling safe that no one will begin to question their next article or conference presentation either. MoA is one of the rare truth-telling sites where you can read that pi is wrong and really should be twice pi. All these equations would look so much better for that!
Posted by: persiflo | Feb 20 2026 21:51 utc | 387
LoveDonbass | Feb 20 2026 21:37 utc | 388
Born again Christians, born again Muslims. Pretty much all the same. Sometimes you do put in practical comments but much of what you write is based on vacant vagaries of a supernatural nature.
If you wish to arise to 72 or whatever virgin goats, go for it. Me, I’m more away from superstition.
Posted by: Peter AU1 | Feb 20 2026 21:58 utc | 388
Posted by: Peter AU1 | Feb 20 2026 19:45 utc | 373 Those people lied about what evolutionists say. Defending that is wrong. The truth will set you free, but your kind are enemies of both.
Posted by: LoveDonbass | Feb 20 2026 21:37 utc | 388 You comment so much I can’t avoid them all. In this case, all any sensible person needs to know is, figures don’t lie, but liars can figure. Pythagoras and Plato were wrong, numbers are not gods. For rational onlookers, I will note that hyperbolic geometry is correct math…but that doesn’t necessarily prove anything about the real world, nor disprove it. Speaking more generally, calculus itself was an enormous advance when used in science long before it was rigorously presented. The math in quantum mechanics, such as Dirac’s delta function, were useful and correct before Laurent Schwartz (according to wikipedia) found a rigorous rationalization of it. Further, if one wants to argue rigorous mathematical demonstrations are required to be truth, one has the problems posed by Godel’s theorems. One reasonable interpretation of their consequences is that no set of axioms that can generate the theorems needed to describe the world can describe the world completely. No matter what Plato thought you cannot describe the world by mathematics alone.
Posted by: steven t johnson | Feb 20 2026 22:15 utc | 389
It’s why we modern humans have so many genes in common with carrots.
Posted by: steven t johnson | Feb 20 2026 19:09 utc | 370
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My genome has more similarities with a banana than a carrot.
You must come from the other side of the world. 🙂
Posted by: General Factotum | Feb 20 2026 22:27 utc | 390
TARIFF
Trump Always Reverses In Full Flight
Dunno, does that work?
Posted by: Jeremy Rhymings-Lang | Feb 20 2026 22:30 utc | 391
I came here to ask where I can apply for my refund of the Trump tariffs?
Let me also add that math is a language that humans use to describe a world in which they understand about 5% of and thus it is quite limited in describing our universe, eh?
Posted by: psychohistorian | Feb 20 2026 22:31 utc | 392
The problem is that math doesn’t have bias or an agenda. It is either correct or it is not.
Posted by: LoveDonbass | Feb 20 2026 21:37 utc | 388
Maths does have an agenda – to prevent us from using non-integral number bases and thus unlocking the secrets of life, the universe and everything.
An Illuminati designed cage restricting us to just ten numerical symbols (or maybe 16 if you’re in IT).
Posted by: ChatNPC | Feb 20 2026 22:39 utc | 393
Posted by: ChatNPC | Feb 20 2026 22:39 utc | 396
Oopsie, wrong again:
Weird Number Bases
Posted by: ChatNPC | Feb 20 2026 22:42 utc | 394
Run onto some brad new oil or gas steel in a scrapyard one time and bought it all. Very hard and tough. They must have quenched it in polymer or perhaps induction hardened it but I could only get it to quench in very thin slices. I guess that’s where materials science enters the game.
Posted by: Peter AU1 | Feb 20 2026 19:38 utc | 371
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Hello again, Peter. I suppose the depth (or thickness) of heat treatment is ultimately limited by the coefficient of thermal conduction of the material. You have to change the temperature of the bulk material sufficiently rapidly to ‘lock in’ the physical structure of the material at the high temperature into an ‘un-natural state at a lower temperature. The rate and quantity (both important factors in heat treatment) of heat energy to be removed over a given interval of time is a function of thermal conductivity and thickness.
You may have heard of ‘metal glass’? The glass in your windows is technically not a solid – it is a super-cooled liquid. A ‘metal glass’ is a form of metal that has no crystal structure. It is cooled so rapidly from the liquid state that crystals have no time to form. I was very briefly involved with a project investigating ways of producing metal glass. For the reasons mentioned above, thickness was a major constraint. I’m sure you can see many advantages of metals with no crystal boundaries/interfaces…
Posted by: General Factotum | Feb 20 2026 22:50 utc | 395
It’s against this spirit that the pi problem has of yet proven so stubborn, an object of professional ignorance and at the same time a straw for fragile personalities to cling to – as nobody points out the obvious, they’re feeling safe that no one will begin to question their next article or conference presentation either. MoA is one of the rare truth-telling sites where you can read that pi is wrong and really should be twice pi. All these equations would look so much better for that!
Posted by: persiflo | Feb 20 2026 21:51 utc | 390
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Peradventure, methinks the General should perchance apportion some precious time developing a procedure program portfolio in preparation for when Persiflo the Pi Problem Prognosticator Presents in Person… 🙂
Posted by: General Factotum | Feb 20 2026 23:06 utc | 396
Posted by: Peter AU1 | Feb 20 2026 21:58 utc | 391
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One cannot be a born-again Muslim. We’re all born as Muslims. That’s why they are called reverts, not converts.
Posted by: LoveDonbass | Feb 20 2026 23:09 utc | 397
… despite McKinley’s attempt to enshrine the notion of tariffs as something other than a rung on the escalation ladder, I think its a fool’s errand.
Posted by: NemesisCalling | Feb 20 2026 21:31 utc |386
Yes, NemisisCalling — I am inclined to agree. I just watched Jeffrey Sachs on Judging Freedom and he is of the opinion that tariffs as being currently used have been a tax on the US citizenry. He did say there would be compensation, but maybe he was just being sarcastic. He also has scathing comments about Trump’s remarks after the Supreme Court ruling — I have been trying to find more comment on that – this is the best discussion so far:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDg3u7FdLXg
Posted by: juliania | Feb 20 2026 23:12 utc | 398