Links and Notes for May 26th, 2023

Below are links to articles, highlighted passages[1], and occasional annotations[2] for the week ending on the date in the title, enriching the raw data from Instapaper Likes and Twitter. They are intentionally succinct, else they’d be articles and probably end up in the gigantic backlog of unpublished drafts. YMMV.

Table of Contents

• COVID-19
• Economy & Finance
• Public Policy & Politics
• Journalism & Media
• Science & Nature
• Art & Literature
• Philosophy & Sociology
• Programming
• Fun
• Video Games

COVID-19

Chinese health authorities warn of a new surge in COVID-19 infections with the XBB subvariant by Benjamin Mateus (WSWS)

“Xie Liangzhi, chairman of Beijing-based SinoCellTech, told the Global Times , “The vaccines based on original variants are not designed to prevent infection by new variants. The former cannot induce sufficiently effective neutralizing antibodies against the mutated strain, whereas the new generation of vaccines, which are more targeted, can induce sufficient and effective antibodies.””

“Such admissions only underscore the continued failure of the vaccine-only strategy that the WHO itself had previously warned against. They had openly stated that vaccination without mitigation of the disease to the utmost possible extent was untenable as a pandemic control strategy. Its adoption now by the WHO is a scientific retrogression and a capitulation to the political pressures the agency has faced from the beginning of the pandemic.”

Or you could say that it reveals the stark limits of even a worldwide organization seeking to tell the scientific truth while retaining enough relevance to be even partially effective. People don’t want to change. They prefer a higher risk of illness and death. They want to have their cake and eat it., too They prefer to say something evil doesn’t exist, if there’s nothing that they’re willing to do about it. It’s like the downgrading of long COVID: can’t fix it, so ignore it. It’s the same problem every time: if those who must change or sacrifice are not the ones at risk, little to nothing will be done.

“It should be added that although XBB’s pathogenicity remains similar to its predecessors, it is no guarantee that future variants will not evolve more lethal versions. Recombinant events could very well link a highly transmissible variant like XBB with a variant that has similar tropism in deep lung tissue like Delta, leading to a variant with both characteristics: greater infectiousness and greater deadliness. That it has not happened yet is simply a case of blind luck.”

“All the public health gains in the first two decades of the 21st century are quickly being erased. Global life expectancy has plummeted. Diseases like HIV, cholera, tuberculosis and malaria are making gains again as access to necessary health care is being destroyed due to capitalism. Meanwhile, the threat posed by novel emerging pandemic pathogens has only grown in the face of inaction by governments all over the world and the demise of effective public health systems.”

Yup. We’ve peaked in the context of the incentive system that we have. It can offer us no more than this. Saving lives is only valuable if it can be proven to lead to more profit for existing elites. Otherwise, their comfort trumps life-improvement for its own sake. Society does not value well-being or long life, unless it can be linked to higher productivity in the workforce, the value of which will be reaped by the elites, not the workers.

Economy & Finance

WGA Urges Netflix & Comcast Shareholders To Reject Pay Hikes For Companies’ Top Executives In Light Of Ongoing Strike by David Robb (Deadline)

“In the midst of a disruptive labor dispute, Netflix is asking shareholders to give retroactive advisory approval of the company’s 2022 reported executive compensation totaling over $166 million. By contrast, the proposed improvements the WGA currently has on the table would cost Netflix an estimated $68 million per year.”

Look at what hedge funds really do – and tell me capitalism is about ‘rewarding risk’ by Brett Christophers (The Guardian)

“The main performance fee earned by alternative asset managers is “carried interest” – effectively, a profit share. In the UK and US, most asset management firms pay tax on this revenue at the capital gains rate, rather than the usually higher income tax rate. This is because the asset manager has typically been understood to be “taking on the entrepreneurial risk of the [investment]” – a standard justification for taxation as capital gain. But as we have seen, this simply does not hold water. In 2017, the New York Times called the beneficial tax treatment of carried interest “a tax loophole for the rich that just won’t die”. It’s time to close it.”

The US Might Be Only AA+ by Matt Levine (Bloomberg)

“The rules for money market funds , for instance, used to require money market funds to buy only highly rated assets, but they were revised in 2015 to remove references to credit ratings. Now funds can buy an asset as long as they make a “determination that it presents minimal credit risks at the time the fund acquires the security.” They also have to “provide ongoing review of whether each security (other than a government security) continues to present minimal credit risks”: They have to keep evaluating the issuers of commercial paper to see if they have become riskier, but they don’t have to do that for Treasuries. Treasuries are in their own separate category, above petty worries about creditworthiness.”

“Or for bank capital, the rule is that a bank “must assign a zero percent risk weight to an exposure to the U.S. government, its central bank, or a U.S. government agency.” For insurance capital, the National Association of Insurance Commissioners sets standards for risk-based capital based in part on ratings; but there is “no [risk-based capital] requirement for bonds guaranteed by the full faith and credit of the United States … because it is assumed that there is no default risk associated with U.S. Government issued securities.” Nothing about ratings.”

Yeah, none of that irrational exuberance is going to bite us in the ass. When was the last time that giving certain securities a free pass because they were “bulletproof” caused any trouble? Oh, yeah. 2008. The little kerfuffle called the global financial crisis.

“Obviously many of the specific stories here are along the lines of “our business is great, we are rolling in money, we just cannot possibly spend it all and we’re giving some back to shareholders.” But I am not sure that that is the macro story. If you think that the economy is on the brink of a recession and business will be bad, and you are an investor, you might want to sell stock. If you think that the economy is on the brink of a recession and business will be bad, and you are a company, you might want to buy your stock.”

Either way, the macro effect is that inequality increases, money leaves the economy, and already-wealthy companies make obscene profits. Whatever you want to call it, it’s detrimental to a society that functions for all members, rather than a handful.

Yanis Varoufakis: Greece’s Debt Is More Unsustainable Than Ever by David Broder (Jacobin)

“[…] you care about the people of Greece, then all this is an Orwellian lie. If you are looking at Greece as a foreign investor, it is true. Greece is deeper in the hole of insolvency today than it was in 2010, when the whole world of finance — the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank, and the European Commission — said we were bankrupt. Back then, our debt was something like €295 billion and our income €220 billion, whereas today the debt is €400 billion and our national income, in real terms, €192 billion. Most of our debt is owed to the troika and to foreign investors. So, our dependence on the kindness of strangers is greater than ever.”

“[…] government bonds are trading at 3.6 to 3.7 percent yields — a very nice spread over German ones at 2.2 to 2.3 percent. Everyone knows that the Greek state is bankrupt and the bonds are junk. So, why do they buy them? The European Central Bank (ECB) has announced that it will back Greek bonds. It’s a political decision to declare Greece solvent, just as it was a political decision to declare it insolvent in 2010.”

“They can, for instance, buy a nonperforming loan of €100,000 but for just €3,000. They don’t expect to get the money back; but if they can sell the collateral for €50,000 they have extracted €47,000 in rent to the Caymans without paying a cent in tax. This can extract around €70 billion from a sub-€200-billion-a-year economy.”

“After my departure from the finance ministry, a “superfund” was imposed to manage public assets. This is a unique case in world history: since it is directly troika-controlled, Greece’s assets are formally, legally controlled by foreign powers, the worst kind of neo-neocolonialism.”

“Another institution we propose is a free, digital payments system, based on the software of the Greek tax office. People could receive and make payments based on their tax-filing number, effectively a transaction system outside of the ECB, private bankers, Mastercard, or Visa. While it would save €2 billion every year, this is a controversial proposal because it is independent of the ECB, which would thus be unable to blackmail the Greek banking system as it did in 2015.”

Public Policy & Politics

The next escalation in the war against Russia: US sends largest warship ever constructed to Norway by Andre Damon (WSWS)

“On Wednesday, the USS Gerald R. Ford arrived in Oslo, Norway. The USS Ford is the largest warship ever constructed and the first of a new generation of such carriers commissioned by the United States. The carrier strike group led by the Ford includes two nuclear-powered attack submarines, two Ticonderoga-class cruisers and a squadron of destroyers.”

“[…] the carrier strike group would travel north to the Arctic to carry out “freedom of navigation” operations—a term used by the United States to describe provocatively sailing ships into contested waters. In other words, this massive armada with its thousands of troops will sail near the Russian coastline under conditions of a rapidly escalating proxy war that Biden said last year would threaten a nuclear “Armageddon.””

“The clear conclusion is that strikes inside Russia, including the assassination attempt on Putin—which the press now admits was carried out by Ukraine—are done in the closest coordination and with the approval of the United States.”

“In its own desperate and reckless response to the provocative US efforts to expand the conflict, Moscow announced that it would be stationing tactical nuclear weapons in neighboring Belarus. “In the context of an extremely sharp escalation of threats on the western borders of Russia and Belarus, a decision was made to take countermeasures in the military-nuclear sphere,” Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said.”

“Confronting military setbacks in Ukraine and an escalating economic, social and political crisis at home—above all, in the explosive growth of the class struggle—the capitalist ruling elites, as Trotsky wrote on the eve of World War II, “toboggan with eyes closed” toward catastrophe.”

How the U.S. War on Taiwanese Semiconductors Might Benefit Japan by Vijay Prashad (CounterPunch)

“By “location,” Buffett meant Taiwan, in the context of the threats made by the United States against China. He decided to wind down his investment in TSMC “in the light of certain things that were going on.” Buffett announced that he would move some of this capital towards the building of a fledgling U.S. domestic semiconductor industry.”

He’s not doing that. He’s farming government subsidies. He’s a soldier in the U.S. war on China. A very well-payed one.

“In August 2022, U.S. President Biden signed the CHIPS and Science Act into law, which will provide $280 billion to fund semiconductor manufacturing inside the United States.”

See? Buffet is just going for free money.

“At the December 6 announcement, Biden said, “American manufacturing is back,” but it is only back at a much higher cost (the plant’s construction cost is ten times more than it would have cost in Taiwan). “The most difficult thing about wafer manufacturing is not technology,” Wayne Chiu—an engineer who left TSMC in 2022—told the New York Times. “The most difficult thing is personnel management. Americans are the worst at this because Americans are the most difficult to manage.””

“On May 2, 2023, at a Milken Institute event, U.S. Congressman Seth Moulton said that if Chinese forces move into Taiwan, “we will blow up TSMC. … Of course, the Taiwanese really don’t like this idea.””

“These outlandish statements by O’Brien and Moulton have a basis in a widely circulated paper from the U.S. Army War College, published in November 2021, by Jared M. McKinney and Peter Harris (“Broken Nest: Deterring China from Invading Taiwan”). “The United States and Taiwan should lay plans for a targeted scorched-earth strategy that would render Taiwan not just unattractive if ever seized by force, but positively costly to maintain. This could be done effectively by threatening to destroy facilities belonging to the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company,” they write.”

“In June 2022, Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry (METI) announced it would put in 40 percent of a planned $8.6 billion for a semiconductor manufacturing plant by TSMC in Kumamoto. METI said in November that it has selected the Rapidus Corporation—which includes a stake by NTT, SoftBank, Sony, and Toyota—to manufacture next-generation 2-nanometer chips. It is likely that Berkshire Hathaway will invest in this new business.”

Groundhog Day 2023 by Boris Kagarlitsky (Russian Dissent)

“This lack of consequence for any event, even the most scandalous, has come about for systemic reasons. The narrow circle of the oligarchy, gathered around Putin, has no other goals or objectives than to remain in power and physically reproduce themselves (while maintaining, of course, their current status). If these people had any other tasks, even imperialist ones, they would be forced to respond to the changing situation, on which the resolution of these tasks would depend. But as soon as there are no tasks, then it is possible to not react to anything, except for what poses an immediate threat to personal physical existence. Whether things are going well or badly in Russia is not particularly important in this case. The main thing is to prevent radical changes that could force the rulers to leave their palaces and offices.”

In the U.S. the same. Exactly the same.

Is Putin Trolling? by Matt Taibbi (Racket News)

“What good will it do Americans if they read this list really, and try on their own to learn more about what companies like Raytheon, General Dynamics, General Atomics, In-Q-Tel, Lockheed-Martin and BAE Systems really do, or why they’d be on a list with a gazillion Atlantic Council Board members […]”

A Very Simple Request by Boris Kagarlitsky (Russian Dissent)

“To my Western colleagues, who, after more than a year since the beginning of the war, continue to call for an understanding of Putin and his regime, I would like to ask a very simple question. Do you want to live in a country where there is no free press or independent courts? In a country where the police have the right to break into your house without a warrant?”

Here I must note that I can only tell that he’s talking about Russia rather than the U.S. because his last name is Kagarlitsky.

So Russia needs to shake itself free of Putin and his oligarchs. How to do that? The war needs to end. But how? If Russia “loses”, then Putin loses, and Russia has an opportunity to replace him. Will they be able to? Will they be allowed to? Of course not. That is not the world we have.

I read the author’s plea that western so-called progressives stop sympathizing with Putin, seeking a way to ameliorate the situation with a Russia led by him and his cronies. This is a good point: Russia is suffering immensely under that kleptocratic regime.

It is arguably suffering more than the U.S., but its people are suffering in the same way. They are all deep in the clutches of oligarchs bent on accumulation for accumulation’s sake.

What would happen if Putin were removed? A so-called power vacuum. We should worry less about what might sweep in from Russia to fill it, and more about what the West would rush in to fill it with. Russia would not be left to solve its post-Putin problem. There is no conceivable future in which the West simply provides support for a country recovering from deep, self-inflicted wounds. No, the West would pounce and take what they’ve long sought. China would be powerless to resist these moves. They have, on multiple occasions, expressed their intent to avoid meddling directly in other countries’ affairs. The rebuilding of Russian democracy would seem to be such an affair that concerns, most primarily, its own people.

So, while removing Putin and his ilk is a noble goal in Russia, doing so at this time would almost certainly lead to a situation in which Russia ends up being run by the CIA. There is no conceivable future in which the U.S. and NATO and Europe simply leave the country to recover at its own pace.

We have recent history as a guide. Look at what happened in post-Glasnost Russia. The vultures swooped in and laid the groundwork for Putin. They ensured that Yeltsin was elected and that he funneled as much of Russia’s wealth as he could either out of the country or to pliant oligarchs who could be counted on to work within the confines of the piratical capitalist system. They are no different than the West’s own oligarchs.

While the plea is understandable and the desire to fix Russia is large, it’s impossible for me to conceive of this ending well for anyone.

If we consider Kagarlitsky’s plea, it could be made from the U.S. as well. I often think, when reading about how things are going in Russia, that the Russian and the American people have a lot in common. They are led by avaricious idiots who spare not a single thought for the well-being of the people, except to mouth the words a couple of times per year.

“[…] when someone tells you that the Putin regime is a threat to the West or to the whole of humanity, this is complete nonsense. The people to whom this regime poses the most terrible threat is (aside from the Ukrainians, who are bombarded daily by shells and missiles) the Russians themselves, their people and culture, their future.”

“[…] the former officer, who knew the laws, objected that the conversation had been a private one. And such a charge was meant to apply to public statements only. “But it was public,” objected the intelligence officers. “After all, we heard it!””

“[…] the crisis that has been going on for the past three years, the war and total corruption, have led to irreversible shifts, in which the preservation of the existing political regime turned out to be incompatible not only with human rights and democratic freedoms, but simply with the elementary preservation of the rules of modern civilized existence for the majority of the population. We must deal with this problem ourselves. How quickly this will happen, how many trials will come along the way, how many more people will suffer, no one can know. But we know exactly what will occur. The decay of the regime will inevitably lead the country to revolutionary changes, which the supporters of the existing government will write about with horror.”

Netanyahu’s Tactical Mistake: A Fragmented Israel Faces Palestinian Unity by Ramzy Barzoud (Scheer Post)

“There are reasons why Israel’s propaganda is living its worst days. Aside from the power and influence commanded by Palestinian intellectuals, social media activists and the numerous platforms made available to them through innumerable solidarity networks around the world, Israeli hasbara has itself grown weak and unconvincing.”

Poor Edward Said. He didn’t have Twitter.

China, India, and the Emerging New World Order by Michael Klare (Scheer Post)

“After the expected Ukrainian spring/summer offensive, which is unlikely to dislodge all Russian troops from the lands they’ve seized since last February, India and China will almost certainly be nudging both countries toward a peace settlement aimed more at restoring the flow of global trade than upholding fundamental principles of any sort.”

Klare doesn’t read Russian or Chinese dispatches. He’s just knee-jerk repeating the U.S. line that, because the U.S. doesn’t have principles, it’s obviously much more evil enemies couldn’t possibly have them. China (sometimes with Russia) has very much been shouting principles from the rooftops. For example, Chou en Lai’s five principles of non-inteference, and advocating replacing empire with a renewed adherence to the U.N. as governing body.

“Many analysts believe that the 2015 summit would never have succeeded had it not been for the combined leadership of Obama, Xi, and Modi. Needless to say, that budding partnership was upended when Donald Trump entered the White House and terminated U.S. adherence to that agreement.”

Klare promulgates the myth that the Paris agreement meant anything. Not a single country in Europe did anything close to what it promised. Sad. It was all voluntary, torpedoed by the U.S. and Canada. Trump bad, Obama good.

“Again, all too sadly, such antagonisms are more likely to prove the norm in U.S.-China relations than that brief outburst of cooperation in 2014-2015. And while India has grown closer to the United States in recent years — in large part to balance China’s growing economic and military might — its leaders are loathe to become overly dependent on any foreign power, however closely aligned they might be in political terms.”

Jesus, Klare. You’re just phoning it in. No mention of the U.S.‘s actively aggressively predatory role?

The Good, the Bad, and the Befuddling: A Review of Philip Short’s Putin by Natalyie Baldwin (Antiwar.com)

“Putin is an arbiter of several different interests in Russia. Two of those interest groups have been the pro-Western neoliberal technocrats and the military and security services who were always much more hardline and suspicious of the US-led west. Over the years, as Russia got the short end of the stick in its relations with the west, despite its cooperation in many areas, and no consideration of its most basic security interests, the hardliners appeared vindicated in their criticisms of Putin from the right for not being proactive enough in dealing with the US-led west’s machinations. These machinations include NATO expansion up to its borders, active support of the 2014 coup in Ukraine that installed a government that was hostile to Russia, and abrogation of several key nuclear arms treaties, to name a few.”

“Putin isn’t corrupt by Russian standards and he explains what corruption actually means in Russia compared to western countries. This tracks with what program developer Sharon Tennison and diplomat John Evans – both of whom interacted with Putin while he was deputy mayor of St. Petersburg in the early 1990’s – have said about Putin’s relative honesty.”

“[…] he takes too much of the western establishment narrative about the poisonings of Alexei Navalny and Sergei Skirpal at face value. I don’t claim to know exactly what happened in either of these cases but I do know that subjecting either of the western narratives on these poisonings to even minimal scrutiny shows them to be far-fetched to put it charitably. Giving the reader a description of the western narrative and then letting the reader know about counter-arguments available would have been helpful in letting the reader use their critical thinking skills to make up their own minds.”

The Nord Stream Explosions: New Revelations About Motive, Means, and Opportunity by James Bamford (The Nation)

“In addition to depriving Ukraine of much needed revenue, the project would also make Europe far more heavily dependent on Russia, Ukraine’s bitter enemy since the annexation of Crimea and the Kremlin’s support for pro-Russian separatists in the Donbas in 2014.”

Bitter enemies? They were other’s greatest trading partners, share a language, etc. This is more horseshit designed to build the myth that NATO is simply acknowledging an existing animosity and is solely on the side of justice.

“In Kyiv, the resumption of work was viewed as nothing less than an act of war.”

Oh FFS.

“The threats posed by the pipeline, the spy agency warned , ranged from espionage—“NS2 is also a potential intelligence tool. The Kremlin might place surveillance capabilities along the pipeline”—to war: “The NS2 launch will increase the probability of additional Russian military action against Ukraine.””

Both just cited without a word about credibilty. This is shameful. Surveillance. Sure, sure, that makes sense. As the author says later, the U.S. has absolutely carpeted the north sea bed with listening devices, but the primary concern is that the Russians might have a couple—on a sea that they border.

“Another bitter foe of Moscow, Poland also had profitable Russian pipelines running through its territory—along with a similar fear that the new route would increase costs and strengthen Moscow’s grip on Europe.”

What? Other than the pipelines it already had? Running through its own country? This makes no sense. Just a hash of words.

“This is perhaps an unprecedented case of its kind in history,” he said . Among the incidents, according to Minin, was one involving a Polish trawler, SWI-106, that tried to ram the Fortuna , but was prevented by the intervention of a support vessel, the Russian icebreaker Vladislav Strizhov, that absorbed the collision. Afterward, the Polish captain apologized for the accident.”

If true, it’s fascinating that such lawlessness would go not only unreported, but not chastised and certainly not prosecuted.

“One place with experience in blowing up things that Ukraine wanted gone is the SZRU’s sister military spy agency, the Main Intelligence Directorate (MID). It is the organization believed to be responsible for masterminding the massive explosion that destroyed part of the Kerch Strait Bridge, which links Russia to Crimea, as well as drone strikes deep within Russia. Including, possibly, the double drone attack on the Kremlin on Wednesday, which may spark a devastating retaliatory strike on Kyiv.”

What the actual fuck is that unsubstantiated-allegation-filled sentence.

“According to the MID’s chief, Kyrylo Budanov, “Ukrainian intelligence is able to conduct operations in any part of the world, if necessary.””

Like Chicago? The Ukrainian agencies just can’t stop exaggerating and bragging.

“A British defense source told the London Times that a “ premeditated” sabotage could have been prepared by undersea drones that laid the explosives weeks beforehand.”

I’m reading this because Jeffrey St. Clair of CounterPunch said it was more believable than Hersh’s account. He obviously has an ax to grind with Hersh or he’s a fool or he didn’t read this. There are no sources here, just a description of a vague theory.

“According to NATO, much of the training, including “complex multi-vehicle UUV missions…was conducted off the coast of Bornholm, Denmark,” as part of the organization’s BALTOPS 22 exercises. “The BALTOPS Mine Counter Measure Task Group ventured throughout the Baltic region practicing ordnance location, exploitation, and disarming in critical maritime chokepoints,” said a press release issued by the US Sixth Fleet.”

But this is the same thing as Hersh said. This author just absolves everyone involved except mysterious and unnamed Ukrainians. This is not seriously intended to help find out who perpetrated this crime, but to explain why no-one will care to pursue it.

“German intelligence is reported to believe that at least one of the boats used in the attack was a 15.57-meter, single-masted sloop, the Andromeda . It was rented on September 6 by six people, allegedly including several Ukrainians and others with fake passports, from a small marina on the Baltic Sea in Rostock, Germany.”

This is the same horseshit theory advanced by the Times. This is not a new interpretation.

“A search of the boat later turned up small traces of “ military-grade ” explosives that matched the batch of explosives used on the pipeline.”

Wait, what? How and when did they determine which “batch” of explosives was used?

“At the opening ceremony on September 27, as enormous volumes of gas were still bubbling from the Nord Stream’s gaping blast holes, a smiling President Duda, along with Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, symbolically opened the valve of a bright yellow pipe. “The era of Russian domination in the gas sphere is coming to an end,” Morawiecki happily declared . “An era that was marked by blackmail, threats and extortion.””

Holy shit. Just uncritically reporting that blowing up 20 billion dollars worth of economic rivals’ infrastructure combats criminal activity. It simply replaces Russian criminal activity with Polish criminal activity. Great.

“[…] beyond reporter Seymour Hersh’s elaborate, largely unsourced and self-published allegations, is there any evidence or indication that the United States itself was behind the blasts.”

Fucking hell. Self-published allegations. Neat trick, Nation. Ostracize, then denigrate the pariah for being a pariah. The only reason Bamford gets published is because his narrative will be the official one. The pipeline is gone and blame remains only for a nation that NATO will claim was legitimately defending itself in wartime, and was in no way acting as a proxy. Ukrainians are super-spies. They’re everywhere at once. No need to investigate further.

What’s Your Sign by Mr. Fish (Scheer Post)

““Can you stand somewhere else, buddy? Your sign is confusing and we’re trying to make the world a better place by getting the megacorporations we work for to pay us more money so we can get back to work helping rapacious billionaires continue to profit off the stranglehold they have on all the news and information outlets in the country while simultaneously distracting the public away from the fact that the democracy is collapsing by convincing them that it is better to remain as passive consumers of scripted virtue and heroism than to suffer the inconvenience that comes with actively participating in dismantling a fascistic corporatocracy that has corrupted our collective understanding of truth and justice by commodifying everything we experience and making anti-authoritarianism a bad investment.””

You Can’t Vote Your Way Out Of A Mess You Never Voted Yourself Into by Caitlin Johnstone

“US presidential elections are a performance designed to trick Americans into thinking they have any meaningful control over the major decisions that will be made by their government. They’re the unplugged video game controller you give your baby brother so you can stop him from whining to play without actually letting him.”

“The fact that a literal dementia patient sits in the White House currently is all the proof you could possibly need that this is the case. All that’s required of a US president is to not get in the way while the empire managers do their thing. A bottle of kombucha could do Biden’s job, and do it just as well.”

“You never voted to create this freakish dystopia where all political oxygen gets funneled toward vapid culture war debates which threaten the powerful in no way while any effort to effect meaningful change is ground into the dust.”

“This doesn’t mean there’s nothing anyone can do to make things better, it just means nothing will be made meaningfully better by the results of the US presidential election. If a building is on fire and everyone’s pushing on a fake door that’s painted on the wall, that doesn’t mean it’s impossible to escape the building, but it does mean they need to stop pushing on the fake door and start looking for real exits if they’re going to get out.”

Trump Is Bad Because He’s Similar To Other US Presidents, Not Because He’s Different by Caitlin Johnstone

“Donald Trump spent four years proving to everyone that he wasn’t bad because he was similar to Hitler, he was bad because he was similar to Obama. He wasn’t terrible because of the ways he differed from other presidents, but because of the ways he was the same.

“The tiny smattering of violence that occurred in the US because of Trump was microscopic compared to the death and destruction he inflicted upon the world outside the nation’s borders. But the mainstream worldview can’t acknowledge those actions, because the mainstream worldview is designed to support and facilitate those actions.”

Roaming Charges: The Shame of the Game by Jeffrey St. Clair (Roaming Charges)

“Trump is setting himself up to run to the left of DeSantis. He may end up to the left of Biden…Trump in Iowa this week: “I don’t like the term ‘woke,” because I hear the term ‘woke woke woke’ — it’s just a term they use, half the people can’t define it, they don’t know what it is.””

Lower down, St. Clair included this tweet, as well. Pigs and truffles, indeed.

Trump trashes Musk

“According to Bloomberg, China has reached peak CO2 emissions seven years ahead of schedule. Next year the country’s reliance on fossil fuels will begin to settle into a long-term decline, largely because China is now adding three times as much solar as it did only 2 years ago and a third of all new vehicle sales are EVS.”

“Richard Burton on Rex Harrison: “Rex came to dinner. God he is a simpleton. As self-righteous as only the genuinely stupid can be. He talks of Nixon as if he were a God. He is a perfect fascist in embryo. Were Hitler to arise here he would think him a great man & would join the Nazi party in a flash.” Diary entry, May 31, 1970.”

The Biggest Problem With The Western Left Is That It Doesn’t Exist by Caitlin Johnstone

“[…] by leftists I of course don’t mean Democrats or “progressives” or anyone who just wants a few adjustments to be made to the capitalist empire so that they can afford medicine or a college degree or whatever. I mean real socialists, communists and anarchists who oppose capitalism and imperialism and seek the drastic, revolutionary changes this civilization urgently needs. Those who understand that the system is not broken and in need of repair, but is working exactly as intended and is in need of complete dismantling.”

American life expectancy is dropping — and it’s not all covid’s fault by Steven H. Woolf and Laudan Aron (Washington Post)

“Young and middle-aged Americans are now more likely to die in the prime of their lives, devastating families and communities and taking a hard toll on our economic productivity. Even more disturbing, in a change never recorded in the past century, the probability that children and adolescents will live to age 20 is now decreasing.”

Life expectancy in wealthy countries

As pointed out in Roaming Charges: The Shame of the Game by Jeffrey St. Clair (Roaming Charges), while discussing the impact of Henry Kissinger’s war crimes, the Cambodians would be justified in feeling more than a little Schadenfreude.

Cambodian Life Expectancy: 1945 – 2019

EU im Wirtschaftskrieg? by Jens Berger (YouTube)

This was a great 100-minute talk by one of the head journalists of the NachDenkSeiten. It’s in German and discusses the first year of the war in Ukraine, focusing on the hypocrisy of European countries. For example, you can see that even the biggest proponents of the sanctions on Russia ended up importing more fossil fuels from Russia in the last year than they had in previous years. He explained that Belgium and the Netherlands, for example, were able to use exceptions to the sanctions to continue imports. Great Britain—another very vocal hater of all things Russia—switched its imports from Russia to the Netherlands. But it’s still Russian fossil fuel—just one derivation removed.

Change in Russia fossil-fuel imports 2022

Is the US Losing Control of Ukraine? by Ted Snider (Antiwar.com)

“Putting an end to Ukraine’s negotiations with Russia, State Department spokesperson Ned Price remarkably said that “this is a war that is in many ways bigger than Russia, it’s bigger than Ukraine” and insisted that Ukrainians go on fighting and dying for “core principles,” for US goals.”

“Ukraine is now pursing its own security interests in a way that is extraordinarily dangerous to US security interests. And they seem to be disregarding US restrictions in pursuing them. Months of US permissiveness, months of US failure to say no to Ukraine at each crossing of a red line has seemingly emboldened Ukraine to ignore US limits and conditions on the use of American supplied weapons.”

It’s perfectly understandable that Ukraine does this, I suppose. They just seem to be ignoring the risks of a larger conflagration that will take them down first. I suppose that they feel the same existential threat that Russia claims to be defending themselves against. It’s just that Ukraine’s ability to take us all down this path with it, is contingent on the massive weapons stores provided by NATO. So, NATO is not only complicit, but to blame, if things go south from here.

“At the beginning of the war, the US pushed aside Ukrainian interests and insisted that Ukrainians fight and die in pursuit of American goals. The ironic blowback from that is that, fourteen months later, Ukraine is pursuing security concerns created by that insistence in a way that is in direct contradiction to US security concerns. The US seems to have lost control of Kiev, and Ukraine is now pursuing its own goals in a way that ignores US goals by increasing the danger that the US and NATO could get drawn into a war with Russia.”

This is not surprising in the least, given the way that Zelensky has had all other leaders wrapped around his finger, from the very beginning. The Ukrainians are probably shocked at how incompetent the U.S. mafia actually is, as compared to their own.

The Debt Ceiling Deal Is an “F You” to Poor People by Matt Bruenig (Jacobin)

“Elsewhere, social assistance at least nominally answers the question of how certain kinds of people who fall through all the cracks of the ordinary income system are supposed to live. These are usually very stingy benefits with very strict means tests, but they at least exist and serve this important function as a last-ditch protection.

“But what is our answer to how these kinds of people are supposed to live in the United States? It’s weird that we don’t even seem to ask the question, let alone make any real effort to answer it.

“What do we want a fifty-two-year-old who does not have a job and gets cut off of food stamps to do exactly? Beg on the streets? Die? Do crime? Seriously, what’s the idea? Does anyone know? Does anyone care?”

Journalism & Media

The Russiagate Fraud Revisited by Rob Urie (CounterPunch)

“70% believe that the US intelligence agencies are 1) rigging American elections and 2) should be prevented from doing so in the future. This view finds support in the recently released report from Special Counsel John Durham that concluded that the FBI colluded with the 2016 (Hillary) Clinton campaign to concoct and promote the Russiagate fraud. The apparent plan was for the FBI to help Clinton win the election, or to disempower Mr. Trump if he was elected.”

“Mueller’s indictments of foreign individuals and corporations were political in nature because they were unlikely to be contested. What foreign national would voluntarily come to the US to face the charges? In fact, one of the companies charged, Concord Management, did precisely that. The Mueller team instantly dropped the charges. Russiagate is a fraud. Read the Durham Report.”

“A large and intrusive Federal effort to counter ‘disinformation’ was created to prevent revelations that now appear to be true from ever reaching the public. In other words, the task of the Federal (and private) disinformation industry is to insure that only Federally-sponsored disinformation and malinformation gets distributed.”

“[…] they saw the Russiagate fraud for what it now appears to have been— a Clintonite scam to convince fragile and deeply cloistered city and suburb dwellers that they are God’s chosen people. And it worked. A political economy of Trump-derision emerged, with sad, gray, opportunists finding their callings repeating CIA talking points.”

“Joe Biden’s campaign staff, led by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, has now been credibly accused of colluding with the CIA to rig the 2020 election in Biden’s favor. And recent revelations now place dozens of Federal agents in key positions during the Capitol riot of January 6, 2021.”

“[…] the ‘plot’ to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer was conceived, organized, financed, and partially carried out by the FBI and its informants (see here, here, here, here, here). These informants outnumbered the alleged conspirators by 3:1. Of course, the FBI had already been accused of entrapping young Muslim and Black men in fake ‘terrorism’ plots over the fifteen years that preceded the riot. Anyone doing left political organizing over the last half-century would have been aware of the presence of the FBI in organizing circles.”

“Most Americans have likely forgotten the state of panic that was achieved when retired grandparents living in tiny towns across the US were convinced by the George W. Bush administration that Saddam Hussein was going to rape them in their sleep (poison them with biological weapons made by the US military). The bourgeois panic over Trump had pundits whose skillsets were limited to tying their shoelaces demanding that Trump nuke Russia in retaliation for events that the Durham report makes clear never took place. Again, Russiagate was a fraud.”

John Durham and the Burying of American History by Patrick Lawrence (Scheer Post)

“Those among us willing to look squarely at events and evidence without fear or favor in the true meaning of this phrase understood years ago that the Democratic Party and the Federal Bureau of Investigation—among others, I have to add—conspired to concoct the Russiagate ruse in the service of Hillary Clinton’s bid for the presidency. The Durham Report gives us a lot of detail as to just how this was done. We are now able to follow the bouncing ball once Clinton, personally so far as I understand it, got it rolling by way of what Durham calls the Clinton Intelligence Plan.”

“I do not think Russiagate’s perpetrators, criminal as they were and remain, ever intended the anti–Trump operation to grow to the magnitude it did. No, when the Clinton Intelligence Plan and Crossfire Hurricane were set in motion they were intended to last only a few months. Clinton would win in November, and what may be the greatest subversion op in our history would take its place among the countless other cases of our republic’s political rambunctiousness, and so fade away.”

“The mind goes back 60 years—60 years, can you believe it?—to the Kennedy assassination. How long did it take, due to the perspicacity of Oliver Stone, the filmmaker (JFK , 1991; JFK Revisited, 2021), David Talbot, the author (The Devil’s Chessboard, 2015), and a few honorable others to establish the CIA’s culpability beyond a reasonable doubt? And how much longer before the truth of Nov. 22, 1963, is disinterred and given its place in our history?”

“People without a history are condemned to remember and remember and remember—memory as burden. It is only when people are confident their story is inscribed in history that they can begin to leave behind their memories, lifting a great weight from their shoulders and proceeding with a light, life-embracing step.”

“Was he urged to conclude—this reminds me of Al Gore’s moment in 2000—that the truth, the whole, and nothing but of Russiagate would threaten the stability of our republic (as I think it would) and so avoided telling it?”

“The Times and the major dailies that routinely ape it continue to report allegations of malfeasance at the FBI as mere “conspiracy theory.” You see what is going on here, I trust. Allow the Deep State and its appendages to bury our history in this manner and we will lose our ability to see anything clearly—you name it: the war in Ukraine, Joe Biden’s senility, the conjured nonsense of “domestic extremism,’ and in the end even ourselves, who we are, and what kind of nation we live in.”

Why the Conspiracy Theory About Trump and Russia Won’t Go Away by Chris Hedges (SubStack)

“Myths are impervious to facts. They fulfill an emotional yearning. They are a short circuit from reality into a world of childish simplicity. Hard and painful questions are avoided. Thought-terminating cliches are spat out to blissfully embrace a willed ignorance.”

“The cynical con the Democratic Party and the FBI carried out to falsely portray Donald Trump as a puppet of the Kremlin worked, and continues to work, because it is what those who detest Trump want to believe.”

“When you feed a public consoling myths — the most absurd being that America is a good and virtuous nation — there is no accountability. Myths make us feel good. Myths demonize those blamed for our self-created debacles. Myths celebrate us as a people and a nation. But it is like handing heroin to junkies.”

“The FBI, the report reads, authorized an investigation “upon receipt of unevaluated intelligence” and “without having spoken to the persons who provided the information.” The FBI did no “significant review of its own intelligence databases,” did not collect and examine “any relevant intelligence from other U.S. intelligence entities” and did not interview “witnesses to understand the raw information it had received.” None of the “standard analytical tools employed by the FBI in evaluating raw intelligence” were used.”

“The report documents a systematic abuse of power by senior members of the FBI to advance Hillary Clinton’s campaign. FBI officials were aware that there was no reason, other than an institutional hatred of Trump, to open the investigation. The FBI “discounted or willfully ignored material information that did not support the narrative of a collusive relationship between Trump and Russia,” the report reads. FBI officials “disregarded significant exculpatory information” and used “investigative leads provided or funded (directly or indirectly) by Trump’s political opponents” to prolong the investigation, feed the media frenzy and obtain search warrants.”

“The liberal class, by clinging to this conspiracy theory, is as disconnected from reality as the QAnon theorists and election deniers that support Trump. The retreat by huge segments of the population into non-reality-based belief systems leaves a polarized nation unable to communicate. Neither side speaks a language rooted in verifiable fact.”

They’re all unhinged, yes. However, new evidence has surfaced that Biden’s 2020 campaign was assisted by the FBI as well. It seems like the Democrats have found a winning formula.

“If those you oppose are evil — and rhetorically we are close to embracing such apocalyptic rhetoric — anything is permitted to thwart the enemy from achieving power. This is the lesson of the Durham report. It is an ominous warning.”

The Origin of the Specious by Patrick Lawrence (Scheer Post)

“Donna Brazile, the longtime Democratic Party hack, as corrupt as they come but taken seriously nonetheless, published a piece in The New York Times a few weeks back under the headline “The Excellence of Kamala Harris Is Hiding in Plain Sight.” This is not merely ridiculously unserious, the essence of our bullshit politics, if you will excuse the infelicity. It is a form of psychosis.”

“Nobody has captured this interim more astutely than Chris Appy, the distinguished UMass historian, who got it down in American Reckoning: The Vietnam War and Our National Identity (Viking, 2015). It is a brilliant work of history and social psychology that traces precisely the way America transformed the Vietnam War from an act of U.S. imperial aggression into a conflict that left Americans the victims.”

“That’s a way of worrying about what the war did to us, particularly to our own soldiers. I still have students who grew up persuaded that maybe the most shameful thing about the war was the way we treated returning veterans. That’s a classic example of how we transformed [Vietnam] into an American tragedy.”

“Henry “Old Rock” Benning, who fought for slavery at Antietam and so dishonored Black people, must go. In comes Harold “Hal” Moore, a soldier who front-ended the most shameful of America’s many 20th century aggressions, leaving behind three million brown people as casualties.”

“[…] features 40 graphic—to put it mildly—drawings by Abu Zubaydah that depict scenes of torture at the Guantánamo prison over the past two decades. That is how long Zubaydah has been held there, nearly how long the U.S. has known and acknowledged he is innocent, and we are still counting the duration of this atrocity, for Zubaydah remains at Guantánamo as we speak.”

Everything’s Getting Way More Dangerous And Way More Stupid by Caitlin Johnstone

“Are you ready for a year and a half of this? Because you’re getting a year and a half of this. A year and a half of all substantive questions about real policy of real consequence getting diverted into the most vapid culture war quagmires you can possibly imagine, because it isn’t the US president’s job to change the way the US empire operates, it’s the US president’s job to keep everyone dazzled with fake bullshit while the US empire marches along unimpeded by the wishes of the voting public.”

“Supporters of Israeli apartheid and America’s proxy war in Ukraine have been pretending to believe that rock icon Roger Waters donned a Nazi costume in support of Nazism at a concert in Berlin earlier this month, their feigned outrage leading to an investigation by German police despite the fact that literally everyone knows he was just portraying the fascist character from Pink Floyd’s The Wall that he’s been performing for over four decades.”

“There is darkness, but there’s also light. Far more of it than most people realize.

“So do your worst, Stupid Dystopia. We’ll fight with all we’ve got and enjoy the ride for as long as we’re here.”

Propaganda Restricts Speech More Than Censorship Does by Caitlin Johnstone (Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix)

“In our civilization most people are thinking, speaking, gathering information, working, shopping, moving and voting exactly as our rulers want them to, because these mass-scale psychological conditioning systems have been imposed to keep human behavior aligned with the empire. We are trained to believe we are free while behaving exactly how our rulers want us to behave, and to look down on other nations and shake our heads at how unfree their people are.”

“You’ll never convince me it’s an organic phenomenon that the population always splits itself into two equal oppositional political factions which always leaves them in a deadlock unable to get anything done, and it always deadlocks in a way that benefits the rich and powerful.”

“It’s so destructive and degrading how the products of mainstream culture (movies, shows, music etc) are produced not based on how edifying, transformative and adventurous they can be, but on how much money they can make. The arts which get the most traction in our society wind up being not those which call us into the higher aspects of our being and encourage us to explore the bounds of human experience and potential, but those which deliver a quick ego hit and pump the brain full of fast reward neurochemicals.”

“Someday the leaders of ecocidal corporations will be put on trial for their crimes against our planet, and their defense that they did it to generate profits for their shareholders will be treated the same as war criminals saying they were just following orders.”

Most Propaganda Looks Nothing Like This by Caitlin Johnstone

Over and over and over again, day after day, we are fed seemingly small messages which add up over time. Messages like,

• The world works more or less the way we were taught in school.
• The media have some problems but basically tell the truth.
• The status quo is working basically fine.
• Democracy is real and voting is effective.
• This is the only way things can be.
• Our government might have its problems, but it’s basically good.
• You can earn your way into happiness by working harder.
• You can consume your way into happiness with more spending.
• If you think the system is dysfunctional, you’re the dysfunctional one.
• Those who oppose the status quo are weird and untrustworthy.
• Things might get better after the next election cycle.
• Any attempt to change things is a silly waste of time.

By feeding us all these simple, foundational lies day after day, year after year from the time we are very young, they lay the groundwork for the more complex, specific lies we’ll be told later on. Lies like “Russia/China/Iran/etc is a real problem and its government needs to be stopped,” or “People are struggling financially right now, but it’s just because times are hard and it can’t be helped.”

“So that’s what we’re up against. There’s a failure to appreciate just how pervasive and powerful the empire’s propaganda machine is, even among those who are very critical of empire, because propaganda in our society is like water for fish — we’re swimming in it constantly, so we don’t see it. You have to step way, way back and begin examining our situation from its most basic foundations to get any perspective on how all-encompassing it really is.

“Finding your way out of the propaganda matrix takes a lot of diligent work, tons of curiosity, the humility to admit you’ve been completely wrong about everything, and more than a little plain dumb luck. But if you keep hacking away at it eventually you get there, and then you can help others get there too. It’s a hard slog, but if our chains are psychological that means they’re ultimately only made of dream stuff. All that needs to happen is for enough of us to wake up.”

Name the Kook by Ted Rall

The Florida mom who sought to ban Amanda Gorman’s poem says she’s sorry for promoting the Protocols of the Elders of Zion by Andrew Lapin

“Salinas challenged the Gorman poem — which she says she hasn’t read in its entirety — on the grounds that it contains “indirect hate messages.” The review committee said it “erred on the side of caution” in deciding to limit students’ access.”

“Reached by JTA on Wednesday, Salinas confirmed that the post about the “Protocols” was hers and apologized for it, saying she hadn’t read it beyond the word “communism.” Salinas said her aversion to communism stems from her Cuban identity. She added that English is not her first language.

““I see the word ‘communism,’ and I think it’s something about communism,” she said. “I didn’t read the words.””

As for the books and poems she got banned,

“She said she had only read parts of the books. “They have to read for me because I’m not an expert,” she said. “I’m not a reader. I’m not a book person. I’m a mom involved in my children’s education.””

This women reposted a post of a picture in German (which she can’t read), accompanied by text in English (which she doesn’t read well). By her own admission, she’s not a good reader in any language, just not really interested in it.

She is however, a poster. She wants to participate. So she posts stuff that has certain trigger words for her, like “communism”. She’s like an animal picking out her food bowl by color. She doesn’t really understand what’s going on. To what degree can she or should she be punished for what she’s doing? To what degree can we tell if she’s hiding behind a shield of feigned ignorance when she’s caught espousing noxious beliefs?

Her participation is not predicated on any sort of minimum level of understanding. Can she be punished for causing harm that she clearly didn’t intend? Is she more like a child or a mentally handicapped person? The world is complex. People are generally not capable of understanding all of its complexity. Our censorship and punishment laws are being built with the idea of perfect understanding on the parts of all involved parties. This is clearly not the case.

Science & Nature

The Neoliberal Model Is Destroying Innovation in Science by Simon Grassmann (Jacobin)

“Facing climate catastrophe and a crisis in wealth distribution should make us rethink this approach to organizing social life. But for science, the problem is obvious: the structure of a competitive marketplace is not conducive to good research in the first place. First, objectification of scientific exploration and innovation in the way that capitalism demands is not conducive to scientific breakthroughs, because most breakthrough discoveries, by their nature, are unpredictable .”

“Suppressing the autonomy and creativity of the trainees by turning them into wage laborers is detrimental for the future generation of professors, who then have lost their ability to think creatively and have been trained to take less risky options.”

Art & Literature

Roger Waters in Berlin: A powerful musical and political statement against fascism, militarism and war by Johannes Stern (WSWS)

“The method used by politicians and the media to crack down on Waters is as dirty as it gets. Using the charge of anti-Semitism, any opposition to the oppressive, anti-democratic and extremely belligerent policies of the Israeli government, in which far-right forces set the tone, is to be silenced.”

“The same message delivered at the beginning of every show then followed: “If you’re one of those ‘I love Pink Floyd, but I can’t stand Roger’s politics,’ people you might do well to fuck off to the bar right now.” In fact, no one went to the bar, but the message was greeted again with strong applause!”

“[…] nearly every song addresses the “pressing issues of our time: imperialist war, fascism, the poison of nationalism, the plight of refugees, the victims of state oppression, global poverty, social inequality, the attack on democratic rights and the danger of nuclear annihilation.””

You forgot climate change, but that’s OK. The other ones group together better.

“Waters left no doubt as to who were the main warmongers. For another anti-war song “The Bravery of Being Out of Range” from his solo album “Amused to Death” (1992), the portraits of all US presidents since Ronald Reagan were displayed—each with the slogan “War Criminal” and a list of their war crimes. Waters savaged George W. Bush for his lies “about weapons of mass destruction,” and Barack Obama and Donald Trump for their “drone murders.” In reference to incumbent US President Biden, he stated, “Just getting started….””

““Déjà Vu,” from Waters’ last album, “Is This the Life We Really Want?” (2017) and “Run like Hell” (“The Wall”—1979) form a unit and, based on the infamous “Collateral Murder” video, address US war crimes in Iraq.”

“It was a recurring feature of the show that the audience responded with applause, especially in Waters’ clear political statements, which were often displayed in large letters on the video screens. “Fuck all Empires,” “Fuck Drones,” “Fuck Bombing People in their homes,” “Fuck the Occupation” and “Human Rights.” The same strong reaction was given to the militant calls for resistance in “Sheep” (“Animals” – 1977): “Resist War,” “Resist Fascism,” “Resist Militarism,” “Resist Capitalism.””

Philosophy & Sociology

Psychotic Disorders Do Not Respect Autonomy, Independence, Agency, or Freedom by Freddie deBoer (SubStack)

“Every step we take towards seeing the severely mentally ill as inherently harmless and “valid” is a step we take away from fully and compassionately understanding the depths of their problems. Real severe mental illness is constantly painful, periodically debilitating, always ugly, and sometimes violent. If you aren’t willing to admit to those things you will never be a friend to the severely mentally ill.”

“It’s a good example of progressive sympathy for the mentally ill that leads them eventually to ignore and minimize the mental illness itself and leave the severely ill worse off.”

“What prevented Neely from having a place to live was not just poverty, or our perennial lack of housing, or discrimination. What also prevented Neely from having a home was his illness itself, which these people refuse to take seriously . The illness itself was a problem. The illness itself was an injustice. The illness itself was tragic, ugly, painful, and ultimately deadly. Why so many have decided that the way to take mental illness seriously is to absolve the illness itself, I’ll never know. I’ll never understand. And I don’t want to.”

“Sometimes we are compelled to choose between bad options. Sometimes there is no perfect solution. Sometimes we have to stumble along the best we can in an inherently broken world. What strikes me about Williams’s thread and the dozens of comments and quote tweets is the absolute absence of doubt, complication, uncertainty, pause, or humility.”

“Two weeks after the Harvard event, Brown was back on the street, panhandling, deluded, filthy. I’m guessing the ACLU lost interest; certainly the press did. She spent the rest of her life in and out of treatment, impoverished, resisting treatment, refusing services, periodically using heroin, and died at 58 years old. But, hey. At least she had her freedom.”

“Ms. Williams will go on pursuing her busy little career for a nonprofit that will, like almost all nonprofits, do essentially no material good in the world. She’ll sit there full of that uniquely white self-satisfaction that you find only in the white person who wants you to know how much they love Black people, smiling that beatific smile.”

Goodbye to All That by Freddie deBoer (SubStack)

“Recent transplants are forever mooning on about how incredible New York is, about how “real” the people are and such, and to me it’s always transparently the case that they’ve been slapped in the face by the city a little bit and are overcompensating. People who’ve been here a lot longer and feel more secure as residents are much more willing to admit that, sometimes, this city can really fucking suck. I think the endlessly stupid bodega discourse is a vestige of this phenomenon. The people who are trying so hard to convince you that there’s really, truly a difference between the relationship they have with their “bodega guy” and the relationship someone has with the 7/11 employee they see every day in their New Jersey suburb…. I think this is a vestige of New York being almost uniquely demoralizing, at times. So people come up with all of this extra credit romanticized shit to offset the fact that they stepped in human excrement last week, that if they ask their landlord to fix a leak they’ll get put on some sort of blacklist, and that an extra value meal costs $17. This romanticism, as I’ve said before, is not necessarily out of line; certainly it’s understandable. It is, however, a big part of why many people from other places find New Yorkers insufferable.”

Programming

The Little Mocker by Robert C. Martin in 2014 (Clean Coder Blog)

“[…] stubs and spies are very easy to write. My IDE makes it trivial. I just point at the interface and tell the IDE to implement it. Voila! It gives me a dummy. Then I just make a simple modification and turn it into a stub or a spy. So I seldom need the mocking tool.”

“I don’t like the strange syntax of mocking tools, and the complications they add to my setups. I find writing my own test doubles to be simpler in most cases.”

UI as an afterthought by Michel Weststrate (Michel Codes)

“[…] we should approach building web apps from the opposite direction, and first encode what interactions our customers will have with our systems. What are the processes. What is the information he will need? What is the information he will send? In other words, let’s start with modelling our problem domain. The solutions to these problems are things we can code without reaching for a UI library. We can program the interactions in abstract terms. Unit test them. Build a deep understanding of what different states all these processes can be in.”

“Every dev on your team has a CLI (hopefully): the test runner. It interacts with and verifies your business processes. The fewer levels of indirection that your unit tests need to interact with your processes, the better. Unit tests are the second UI to your system. Or even the first if you apply TDD.”

“React is to me like a CLI lib, a tool that helps to capture user input, fire of processes, and to transform business data into a nice output. It’s a library to build user interfaces . Not business processes.”

“You will also discover that testing becomes simpler; you will write way less tests that mount components, fire events etc. You still want some, to verify that you wired everything correctly, but there is no need to test all possible combinations.”

“Back-end interaction like submitting mutations or fetching data is the responsibility of my domain stores. Not the UI layer. React-Apollo so far feels to me as a shortcut that too easily leads to a tightly coupled setup.”

“Suspense + React state is great to manage all the UI state, so that there can be concurrent rendering and such. Supporting concurrency makes a lot of sense for volatile state like UI state. But for my business processes? Business processes should be exactly in one state only at all times.”

Building a Signal Analyzer with Modern Web Tech by Casey Primozic

“OffscreenCanvas allows for true multi-threaded rendering to canvases. Once the OffscreenCanvas is created and transferred to the worker, the worker can take over completely. The browser handles all the details of synchronizing calls to the GPU and compositing pixel data together in sync with the monitor’s frame rate.”

“Wasm SIMD is used in some of the rendering code for the spectrogram as well as in the implementation of biquad filters which are used by a band splitting feature for the oscilloscope I’m working on. It greatly accelerates aspects of the visualizations, making it possible to render in higher quality and consume less CPU.”

“Also note that while SharedArrayBuffer is used to exchange the actual FFT output data with the worker, the async message port interface is used to handle initialization and runtime configuration. It enables structured data like JS objects and whole ArrayBuffers to be easily exchanged between threads, and it provides a fully typed interface to do so which is a huge boon to developer experience.”

“Lots of data moving between threads, but it’s the same methods as before: SharedArrayBuffer for rapidly changing data (raw audio samples in this case) and message port for structured event-based data.”

“[…] the AWP’s sole purpose is to copy the samples into a circular buffer inside a SharedArrayBuffer which is shared with the web worker. Once it finishes writing a frame, it notifies the web worker which then wakes up and consumes the samples. It was shockingly easy to implement the lock-free cross-thread circular buffer to support this. Atomics made its design obvious and it felt natural to build.”

“In the larger web synth project, I have UIs built with WebGL, Canvas2D, SVG, HTML/DOM, as well as Wasm-powered pixel buffer-based renderers all playing at the same time and working together. The browser handles compositing all of these different interfaces and layers, scheduling animations for all of them, and handling interactivity.”

“There is a small bit of handling needed to detect the DPI of the current screen and using it to scale your viz, but it really just consists of rendering the viz at a higher resolution and then scaling the canvas it’s drawn to. The whole thing is like 20 lines of code. The browser takes care of making it show up nicely the subpixel rendering.”

“It really feels like the working groups and other organizations behind the design of these APIs thought very hard about them and had this vision for them from the start.”

Fun

Stage 20 of the Giro d’Italia was a time trial that ended with an 8km climb over 900m.

Tarvisio − Monte Lussari

I generally don’t like the flat time trials, but this one was exciting because a climbing time-trial really separates the wheat from the chaff. Primož Roglič managed to take enough off of Geraint Thomas’s time that he ended up winning the Giro on this last stage. As a climber myself, I honestly can’t imagine racing something that averages 12.1% (I’m also old). There are two sections that go over 22%.

Video Games

Why Tears of the Kingdom’s bridge physics have game developers wowed by Nicole Carpenter (Polygon)

“Software engineer Cole Wardell put it another way: “Imagine the lava bridge above, when you grab the end of it, you pull part of it to one side,” he said. “Well, now that drags the other attached piece a little bit with it, and that piece moving makes the next piece move, and so on and so forth. And if any one element of the track collides with something, it has to be nudged or slid back into somewhere that doesn’t collide, which moves the pieces next to it which moves the pieces next to it.””

“Rocksteady Games senior gameplay and combat programmer Aadit Doshi on Twitter. “To be able to confidently present the player with a stack of blocks that are linked with chains that move in accurate ways, without clipping, without objects shaking like crazy as it tries to figure out what it needs to do is awe-inspiring.””

“God forbid you want the rope to collide with itself. Those collisions will cause more nudges, which is more movement, which ends up with your robe vibrating out of the map.””

““There is a problem within the games industry where we don’t value institutional knowledge,” Moon said. “Companies will prioritize bringing someone from outside rather than keeping their junior or mid-level developers and training them up. We are shooting ourselves in the foot by not valuing that institutional knowledge. You can really see it in Tears of the Kingdom . It’s an advancement of what made Breath of the Wild special.””

““In addition to the overall hard work of the team, the institutional knowledge is clearly a factor in why this ended up being so smoothly done,” Moon said. “The more stable and happy people are, the more they are able to make games of this quality. If you want good games, you have to give a damn about the people making them.””