Links and Notes for February 28th, 2025

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 They are intentionally succinct, else they’d be articles and probably end up in the gigantic backlog of unpublished drafts.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

• Public Policy & Politics
• Journalism & Media
• Economy & Finance
• Philosophy, Sociology, & Culture
• Technology
• LLMs & AI
• Programming

Public Policy & Politics

People in Europe and Switzerland are starting to proudly boycott U.S.-American products, as if they’re standing on a principle or something. They are not anti-Empire. They are anti-Trump. They are pissed at Trump for having “abandoned” Ukraine and Europe, leaving them wide open to be invaded within weeks by what they call the U.S.‘s new ally Russia. They are just as stupid as Trump: doing the right thing by accident, for utterly invalid and wrong-headed reasons. We’ll take it, though! Why not take that truffle that the blind pig found. The problem is, as always, that when people do the right thing by accident because they wildly misunderstand their world, they are just as likely to an even worse thing tomorrow, for the exact same reason.

The Tip of Russia’s Spear by John Lechner (The Baffler)

This article, based on his book, was somewhat interesting, but it was written in such a dense and tedious style. It was also pretty standardly russophobic, in that it used extremely flowery language to describe Russia’s military—“A new Cold War was emerging” (That’s what they always call it when the opponent starts to fight back.) and “Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, a vainglorious nationalist slaughter” (He doesn’t use the same language to describe Iraq, which was truly full-scale) are just two examples—so it’s distracting because it’s biased against its subject and toward its subject’s antagonist (the U.S.) and also because it’s just written kind of poorly.

“In 2007, RSB worked with American security companies guarding convoys in Iraq. “Everyone has the same task—to make money,” Krinitsyn later told Russian state-affiliated media. “Where the U.S. Army appears, private military companies follow. If you imagine a war on foreign territory as a hunt by predators for herbivores, then the American army is a lion, and PMCs are jackals that eat up the carrion of the king of beasts.””

China Has Already Become the Leader in Advanced Critical Technologies by Vijay Prashad (Scheer Post)

“The United States loses nothing if it enforces a ceasefire in Ukraine. Russia is not a major threat to US control over the world economy. It is merely a commodity exporter, namely of oil, natural gas, and other minerals and metals. The US knows that Russia will not attack it with its nuclear arsenal because that would be suicidal, and the US knows that Russia merely would like a security guarantee that its cities not be threatened by intermediate nuclear weapons held in neighbouring states.”

“That benefit came in the way of technology and science transfer in exchange for market access, a deal that the companies of the Global North – eager for a high-quality workforce and low wages – accepted. The Chinese government funded its higher education systems, provided incentives to private innovation, and used the surplus from exports to build infrastructure. The planned advances enabled China’s industrial sector to improve its productive forces and not rely merely on labour-intensive production or production using old technologies.”

“The Australian Strategic Policy Institute , established by the Australian government in 2001 and partly funded by the Australian military, has developed a Critical Technology Tracker that keeps close records of sixty-four critical technologies. Their latest report in August 2024 provides a twenty-one-year assessment of which countries lead in the development of critical technologies. Between 2003 and 2007, the United States led in sixty of sixty-four technologies, while China led in only three of them. Between 2019 and 2023, however, the US led in only seven of the sixty-four technologies, whereas China led in fifty-seven of the sixty-four.”

“During the pandemic, the watchword in US allies like India was ‘collaboration, not confrontation’. It would be so much better if the United States decided to collaborate with China for the well-being of the planet rather than trying to force the country to reverse its development.”

It’s Time for the Left to Take Another Look at Secession by Nicky Reid (Exile in Happy Valley)

“I have long held the unpopular belief that if that nest of genocidal serpents were allowed to secede during the declining economic climate for chattel slavery of the mid-nineteenth century, that this would have likely only made a slave revolt capable of achieving the kind of independence secured by Toussaint Louverture’s Black Jacobins in Haiti inevitable in Dixie and on a much larger scale. And just which side do you think that this Freeman’s Republic would have taken during the Indian Wars that won the west for white power?”

“However, as an anarchist I also refuse to resort to Westphalian style nationalism to achieve this dream. I’m much more impressed by my fellow rural minorities in the Amish community who have managed to establish a successful communal society that can coexist with the “English” without borders while still maintaining autonomy both economically and culturally.”

Trump DISRUPTING the DC Status Quo Should be Celebrated by Glenn Greenwald (YouTube)

I’m a bit confused … does Glenn think that Chris Hedges supports the continuation of the empire? Chris’s admonition is not a lament for the end of the empire, it is more a warning to pay attention to and to influence what will replace it. I think Glenn should have Chris on his show to make himself more familiar with his work. I think they have a lot of points in common.

Listening to the relatively short seven-minute video, while I think Glenn is right to be optimistic that things are going in a more peaceful direction, I think Glenn is taking too jubilant a tone, not at all considering that the Republicans and Trump don’t exactly have a good track record of being anti-war and pro-government-reduction. They have a terrible track record of it. I’ll believe Trump is heading in the right direction when we actually see a reduction in the military and homeland-security budgets, which are ginormous.

I think it’s correct to consider everything with cautious optimism, since the Trump administration is saying and doing some things that will rein in some of the excesses of empire. The Democrats are just as wrong to lament the end of the empire (they mostly don’t even understand that there is an empire, so they have no idea that they’re lamenting the end of it).

The Un-Banality of MAGA: Trump is Not Unprecedented, He’s Just Obnoxious by Nicky Reid (Exile in Happy Valley)

“The only thing really unprecedented about Donald Trump is his total lack of shame. He is the one overprivileged despotic asshole who is actually proud of being an overprivileged despotic asshole. Sadly, this cocky bravado is also what seems to convince an electorate despondent after decades of empty promises and cheesy pick-up lines to believe that Donald Trump is some kind of Beltway outsider even though he once bankrolled most of his supposed rivals.

“This is also the only reason that certain classes of Donald’s fellow elites despise him. They don’t oppose his sickening behavior; they oppose his refusal to keep it behind closed doors like the rest of them [do]. The last thing that a bunch of greedy imperialists want is to advertise to the world exactly how the sausage is made […]”

“This is the one silver lining on the toxic smog belching from Donald Trump’s smokestacks and the results are occurring in real time as we speak. Europe’s leaders are openly discussing cutting ties with Washington and courting their own more regional spheres of influence rather than delegitimizing their own slippery grip on power by licking an irate imbecile’s boot. America has never been more openly despised by the typically compliant quislings on its borders and the Middle East is more united than ever over their opposition to a more public Nakba than what they have become accustomed too. This is how empires die […]”

Look, this might be what is happening. It’s the story we’re forming right now. Maybe if we cosplay it enough, it will come true.

“When we fail to recognize that Donald Trump is merely one of them with less table manners, we make his return or the return of another like him inevitable.

“We have to recognize that the state itself is the problem and that its existence in any form is one defined by violence and barbarism. Otherwise, this cycle of “legitimate” authority followed by “illegitimate” authority will only continue until there is nothing left to rule but graveyards dug next to a rising sea.”

European Leaders Voice Support for Zelensky Following Heated Exchange With Trump by Kyle Anzalone (Scheer Post)

“Following the presser, Trump expelled Zelensky from the White House, and posted on Truth Social that the deal was off. “I have determined that President Zelensky is not ready for Peace if America is involved, because he feels our involvement gives him a big advantage in negotiations. I don’t want advantage, I want PEACE,” he wrote.”

That seems surprisingly clear. I guess that most people will interpret “PEACE” to mean “capitulation to Putin.” Their loss. I think he might mean it.

The example cited in the article was from,

“Nataša Pirc Musar, the President of Slovenia, posted on X, “What we witnessed in the Oval Office today undermines these values and the foundations of diplomacy. We stand firmly in support of Ukraine’s sovereignty.””

Yeah, and only Ukraine. No-one else’s sovereignty matters at all to the EU, NATO, or the U.S. Libya, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and on and on. Even Greece’s sovereignty didn’t matter more to the EU than paying its biggest banks back ¢100 to the € that they’d loaned to Greece. Don’t be fooled into thinking that the EU and its leaders have principles when they say things like this. They don’t respect sovereignty, they cynically pretend to respect some countries’ sovereignty when it serves their interests. Trump, at the helm of the U.S., is no different. Ukraine does not serve U.S. interests, as far as he and his administration are concerned, so they are dropping them like a hot rock. Of course, no-one in the current administration will acknowledge that it was many successive previous administrations—including the first Trump administration—that led Ukraine down this primrose path in the first place, but that’s honestly been the prerogative of the stronger partner since the dawn of time.

I can’t believe that the only one supporting a move toward peace is,

“Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said, “Strong men make peace, weak men make war. Today President [Trump] stood bravely for peace. Even if it was difficult for many to digest. Thank you, Mr. President!””

“If Europe moves forward with a large arms transfer to Kiev, it could interfere with Trump’s negotiations with Putin to end the war. Additionally, NATO member states voicing support for Zelensky following the argument with Trump, could invoke the president’s ire. Trump often expresses that the US subsidizes too much of Europe’s defense.”

That brings to mind Ghostbusters,

“Ray Stantz: Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies! Rivers and seas boiling!
Egon Spengler: 40 years of darkness! Earthquakes, volcanoes!
Winston Zeddemore: The dead rising from the grave!
Peter Venkman: Human sacrifice, cats and dogs living together, mass hysteria!”

Trump Officials Enraged at Zelenskyy for Ignoring Advice Before Oval Office Meeting (Scheer Post)

“The Trump White House blamed Zelenskyy for the “meltdown” that occurred, and claimed that they had communicated their position to Ukraine beforehand, and senators also advised the Ukrainian President to “not litigate the issue of wanting stronger security guarantees to [Trump’s] face.””

“Trump appears to be disappointed with Zelenskyy’s behavior at the meeting, as after the confrontation “Zelenskyy’s aides suggested that Trump meet with Zelenskyy one-on-one to calm tensions. But Trump officials declined the offer, according to two people familiar with the matter.” Trump views the prospect of further talks with Zelenskyy as “unproductive…because…Zelenskyy was unwilling to sign a peace agreement with Russia.””

Israel Begins Choking Gaza Again, Backed By Adelson Stooge Trump by Caitlin Johnstone (Substack)

“[…] it is Israel who is rejecting the ceasefire, not Hamas. Hamas already agreed to a ceasefire, and has been honoring it. It is Israel who is pushing to change the terms of the deal instead of moving forward with the deal as agreed. Israel is doing this because moving ceasefire negotiations on to their second stage would entail moving toward a commitment to lasting peace and the removal of Israeli troops from Gaza.

“A new deal isn’t even necessary to extend the first phase of the ceasefire; as Muhammad Shehada noted on Twitter, phase one would renew automatically as long as phase two negotiations are ongoing. Phase one of the ceasefire isn’t the issue here: killing phase two is.

“And it’s important to understand that Netanyahu never intended to move forward to the second phase of the ceasefire. As soon as the agreement was signed in January the Netanyahu-aligned factions of the Israeli press were already asserting that the prime minister would never allow the ceasefire to move on to phase two.”

“It used to be considered an antisemitic conspiracy theory to say that Trump is controlled by Adelson cash; back in 2020 Roger Waters was internationally denounced as an evil Jew hater for saying what Trump himself openly admitted to last year. Now here we are, watching Trump rush weapons to Israel and push to permanently ethnically cleanse Gaza of all Palestinians while Netanyahu happily commits war crimes in full confidence that he will be supported by the Adelson asset in the White House.”

Zelensky’s hostility to peace triggers White House meltdown by Aaron Maté (Substack)

“Those who insist that Zelensky was ambushed are overlooking the cordial, lengthy exchange that occurred before the meeting turned testy. In a room full of aides and news cameras, Trump, Vance, and Zelensky held court for more than 40 minutes. It was Zelensky who became confrontational each time the two US leaders spoke favorably about negotiations with Russia.

“In his opening remarks, Trump criticized his predecessor Joe Biden for refusing to “speak to Russia whatsoever” and expressed his hope to bring the war “to a close.” Zelensky responded by calling Vladimir Putin a “a killer and terrorist” and vowing that there would be “of course no compromises with the killer about our territories.” In a paranoid threat, he also declared that unless Trump helps him “stop Putin,” then the Russian leader will invade the Baltic states “to bring them back to his empire”, which would draw the US into the war, despite the “big nice ocean” shielding the US from Europe: “Your soldiers will fight.”

“Trump did not interrupt or object to these initial, belligerent comments. The closest he came to a direct criticism occurred when a reporter asked about Zelensky’s avowed refusal to compromise. Trump replied that “certainly he’s going to have to make some compromises, but hopefully they won’t be as big as some people think you’re going to have to make.” Trump even promised that “we’re going to be continuing” US military support to Ukraine.

“Yet because Trump also stressed that his goal is to end the war through diplomacy, Zelensky grew agitated. The tipping point came when, after 40 minutes, a reporter asked whether Trump has chosen to “align yourself too much with Putin.” Vance responded that, in his view, “the path to peace and the path to prosperity” entails “engaging in diplomacy.” It was here that Zelensky lost his composure and directly challenged Vance: “What kind of diplomacy, J.D., you are speaking about? What do you mean?”.

“This drew a sharp reaction. Vance reminded Zelensky that his military is brutally nabbing Ukrainian men off the street to send them to the front lines, and that the US seeks “the kind of diplomacy that’s going to end the destruction of your country.” Zelensky then doubled down by challenging Vance to visit Ukraine and reviving his attempted fearmongering. “You have a nice ocean and don’t feel it now,” he said, referring to the Atlantic, “but you will feel it in the future.” That veiled threat angered Trump, who proceeded to call out Zelensky for, among other things, “gambling with the lives of millions of people,” and “with World War III.”

“In opting to confront Vance, Zelensky showed that he is so reflexively hostile to the notion of negotiating with Russia that he is willing to berate his chief sponsor, in public no less, for daring to suggest it.”

It took me more than a couple of minutes to find the video, as dozens of links to only the last ten minutes show up in the search results first. I ended up searching directly with “C-SPAN” (which is the official U.S. government video-publishing service). The top link was to Facebook, where the full, 49-minute video was available. There was also a link to President Trump Meets with Ukrainian President Zelensky (C-SPAN) on their own web site. Now that I had the title, I was able to find the video on C-SPAN’s own channel, linked below.

President Trump Meets with Ukrainian President Zelensky by C-SPAN (YouTube)

Trump bans transgender athletes from entering the United States by Isla Anderson, Evan Winters (WSWS)

So petty and stupid. How in God’s name is this a priority of the State Department? Rubio goes from a press conference for advancing peace with Russia to another one announcing that trans-athletes will be banned for life from entering the U.S. because they’re “lying” on their visa applications? Are they really willing to spend political capital on something so hateful and petty? Or do they think they have endless political capital? Why can’t we have peace with Russia without the harassing of minority groups? The people who will absolutely explode about this new restriction—and quite rightly—are also the ones who want to keep the Ukraine steamroller going at all costs. And neither party is interested in justice and less killing of the Palestinians. The “ceasefire” (Israel never ceased firing; they ceased bombing) was a good initial ruse that Trump hopes to be remembered by, but he will instead be remembered for continuing the flattening of Gaza that Biden nearly completed.

New York governor accedes to prison guard demands to loosen restrictions on solitary confinement by Philip Guelpa (WSWS)

“The main feature of the tentative agreement involves the suspension of regulations, under the Humane Alternatives to Long-Term Solitary Confinement Act or HALT, that place some limits on the use of solitary confinement in state prisons. The guards staged the work stoppage, which affected all but one of the 42 state prisons, based on their claim that the minimal limitations on the use of this barbaric practice shifted the balance of power between them and the inmates in favor of the latter. The unspoken subtext is that it weakened the guards’ ability to impose control by terror, supposedly creating an unsafe environment for them.”

What a shitshow. Ten guards and other staff have been indicted for straight-up murdering an inmate on camera in December. The video is unequivocal. The wildcat strike was almost certainly to distract from this whole proceeding and it’s inconceivable that their demand was to exert more solitary confinement, when solitary confinement is against the convention on torture. Such animals.

Russian Political Prisoner Boris Kagarlitsky on the Moscow-Washington Axis by Boris Kagarlitsky (ZNetwork)

“Now we understand that US hegemony is indeed coming to an end, but its destroyer is the US administration itself — because hegemony is a burden of obligations and responsibilities that Trump refuses to carry.

“The end of hegemony does not mean the end of imperialism. On the contrary, we are witnessing the most aggressive and shameless form of imperialism, where the US interacts with its neighbors through a “big stick” policy. Washington’s new orientation is towards dominance, one that does not take into account the interests or rights of others. Russia is being openly offered the role of a junior partner in this enterprise — one directed against China, Europe, and indeed the entire rest of the world, including even Canada.

“It seems that the people in power in Moscow have little choice but to accept these terms, especially since Trump will accommodate them on the Ukraine issue (to the extent that it does not interfere with the interests and ambitions of his own team). Beyond that, all that remains is to hope for good fortune and the ability of European diplomats to keep the situation under control. But the Moscow-Washington axis is clearly taking shape.”

“[…] the Trump administration not only tolerates Russia’s current leadership; it sees it as ideal. A partner unconstrained by public opinion, unconcerned with the opposition, and indifferent even to the economic interests of its own country — such a partner is perfect. For Russian liberals who still believe that the US embodies the forces of good, this will be an unpleasant revelation. Likewise for those in the “Global South” who had hoped to find in Vladimir Putin an ally against US imperialism. However, such disillusionment was inevitable in any case.”

Some Thoughts On Ukraine by Caitlin Johnstone (Substack)

“It makes sense for there to be criticism of Russia for its role in this war, and for people to be horrified by the nightmare that’s been happening in Ukraine these last few years. What makes absolutely no sense whatsoever is for western liberals (or “progressives” or whatever they want to call themselves) to assign ZERO PERCENT RESPONSIBILITY to their own government and its allies for their extensively documented role in sparking this conflict and ONE HUNDRED PERCENT RESPONSIBILITY to a foreign government with no power over them. That’s pathetic, bootlicking behavior, and it’s utterly inexcusable.

“Stop performing mental gymnastics to defend the abuses of your rulers. Have a little dignity for god’s sake.”

“I am not grateful to Trump for ending this nightmare, I’m just disgusted with anyone who’s against doing so. The proxy war in Ukraine was going to end sometime relatively soon anyway; the only way for NATO to reverse Russia’s steady gains at this point would be to intervene more directly in ways that would risk nuclear consequences that western leaders aren’t willing to receive. This was always a chess game for them; they’re not going to put their own necks on the line. So the war had to end  to make way for other imperial projects— the Trumpists are just the faction that the empire has tasked with advancing this agenda.

“I will not waste any gratitude on Trump rolling back a failed imperial bid to weaken Russia, but I will absolutely scream my fucking lungs out at anyone who insists Ukrainians should keep throwing their bodies into a war that Ukrainians themselves no longer support. If you want the Ukraine war to continue, then go enlist and put your body on the line so that Ukrainians don’t have to. The Ukrainian Foreign Legion is still accepting volunteers. If you want this horrific war to continue, either go and fight or shut the fuck up.”

“The western empire provoked this war. The western empire sabotaged peace talks in the early weeks after the invasion. They refused off-ramp after off-ramp in pushing Ukraine into this situation, and as a result Ukraine is going to be much worse off than before this all started.”

Farewell to Volodymyr Zelensky, the GEICO Lizard of the New World Order by Matt Taibbi (Racket News)

“I generally have sympathy for people like Zelensky. The former Soviet Union is a place where success is mostly reserved for men of violence, and anyone outside that club who manages to rise usually needs a big bag of other extraordinary qualities. But this politician allowed his persona to become just another legend “in line with U.S. foreign policy objectives,” forgetting that voters decide what those objectives are, not contractors who don’t answer the phone, or Keir Starmer, or Jens Stoltenberg, or any of a hundred other officials who think they know what wars we must support. I’m tired of being lied to about why this mess can’t get fixed and just want to move on. Is there really anyone left who doesn’t feel the same way?”

Netanyahu V Nasrallah by Tadhg Hickey (YouTube)

Hickey attended Nasrallah’s funeral, for which he and others have received opprobrium from all sides. He compares Nasrallah to Netanyahu (not his original name) and asks whether anyone would be derided for attending Netanyahu’s hypothetical funeral, even though he’s an international and national criminal responsible for a slew of war crimes and an active genocide.

Journalism & Media

Don’t End the War with Russia! by Jason Kottke

“Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth last week ordered U.S. Cyber Command to stand down from all planning against Russia, including offensive digital actions.” Because the US is a Russian ally (or satellite?) now I guess.”

I gave Kottke’s post a snarky title (he doesn’t title them because they’re more like tweets) but this is literally what he’s lamenting. He’s lamenting that the U.S. might be following through on ending hostilities with Russia. He mocks it as being “allied” with Russia, which is, apparently, the worst thing he can imagine. He is an 80s Republican and he has no idea how brainwashed he is.

Here’s his very next post: The NY Times told me to believe that Zelenskyy is an untouchable hero by Jason Kottke:

“My god, Trump and Vance are just total fucking assholes. The US is openly aligning themselves with Russia against Ukraine and Europe, a major shift in international relations that dates back to the 1940s. I am so embarrassed to be an American right now.”

Once again, I’ve given his pathetic post a title that matches his sentiment. I wonder if Kottke will ever look back and feel any shame for how simplistic his take on foreign affairs is. Will he ever regret having sided with continued war when the chance for peace was available? Does he ever wonder why the U.S. needs to be at war with Russia?

He even cites a piece of what Trump said to Zelenskyy, after the Ukrainian leader had interrupted and talked over him, essentially berating him for not just rolling over and giving him another $100B when Zelenskyy literally just told him that the U.S. is in grave danger from Russia, and the Ukraine is doing not just Europe, but also the U.S. a favor by fighting Russia. He’s drunk his own Kool-Aid, I guess. Here’s how Trump responded,

“You’re gambling with World War III, and what you’re doing is very disrespectful to the country, this country that’s backed you far more than a lot of people say they should have,”

Um, yeah! I kind of feel like Kenan Thompson on Black Jeopardy when Tom Hanks gets another question right.

Look, Trump is doing a lot of things. Try to focus your outrage on the things that are actually bad, like ethnically cleansing Gaza, rather than things that sound promising, like decreasing the chances of nuclear armageddon rather than increasing them.

Kottke is not alone, of course, in joining the obligatory chorus of “anyone who thinks that Trump wasn’t disrespectful to ally Ukraine is a Russian plant”. The article Grovel Before The Great And Powerful Trump by Scott H. Greenfield (Simple Justice) writes,

“But while the cadre of the Trump-dependent spew the talking points to gaslight a nation that watched the debacle in real time that it was Zelensky being disrespectful of Trump, the rest of the world isn’t buying. Russia loved it, watching Trump suck up to Putin, but European countries, one after another, watched in dread as they came to the realization that the post-World War II structure of the world had come to an end.”

You see? He barely has to put any thought or effort into it. It just writes itself. Trump is a Putin-loving agent of Russia, just like his favorite news sources have been saying all along. Anything short of nuclear armageddon is a sign that you’re not being American hard enough, that you’re a Putin-loving traitor. If you’re not willing to blow up the entire world to defend the empire, then you’re worth nothing.

And honestly: I would absolutely welcome the end of the post-World War II structure of the world, in which the Global South has continued to be economically colonized and subjugated by a globe-spanning empire that enforces its will through violence. It’s not that there’s nothing to save! But there is a lot to tear down. I had hoped we would get someone who was tearing things down for the right reasons—and Trump has cited a few good reasons like “too many people have died for nothing”—but this is what we got instead.

It’s a fascinating study in psychology how in thrall to Ukraine the west is. It goes beyond self-interest. I think it’s that Zelenskyy has a charisma that works on a lot of powerful people, much like Netanyahu somehow does. Much like Trump does, as well. Trump even pointed it out, respecting Zelenskyy’s game in being able to waltz into the U.S. again and again, leaving a couple of days later with another promise of dozens of billions of dollars for his country. Now the unstoppable force of one con man has come against the immovable object of another.

The message in a good part of the western press is that Trump is only an idiot, whose every single move is idiotic and harmful, whereas Zelenskyy is a war hero. It’s always edifying to observe brainwashing at work. Most of the people espousing this viewpoint would say that they’re against war and for peace. Or would they? Are we really in a place that even people who would place themselves socially on the left support an empire, with its war-making and conquest? Do they really continue to believe, after decades of indoctrination, that it’s always, always, always the chosen enemy who is alone evil? Even after having been proven the opposite so many times in the past? Or do they just miss all of those memos?

I’ve read other takes that describe this as a disgraceful sellout of Ukraine. Did they not read that the Biden administration admitted that they never had any intent of admitting Ukraine to NATO? That they never had any intent of supporting it with boots on the ground? What is happening in these people’s heads? Are they such ethically shallow people that they think it better to continue to pour money into Ukraine, while lying to them about the depth of the alliance? They can’t all be shilling for the weapons companies, so some of them have just bought the propaganda, hook, line, and sinker.

Yeah, it wasn’t pretty, but it was 100% USA. It was also refreshingly honest about the actual situation. The US is no longer interested in supporting an unwinnable war that is killing hundreds of thousands per year. How did they think it would end? With Ukraine’s victory? How realitätsfremd. Europe is free to jump in and “defend itself” from the Russian invasion they can’t seem to shut up about. Either they legitimately fear this nonexistent threat or they’re cynically trying to support the only industry in Europe that even makes anything anymore: armaments. Europe is in deep shit economically, so what do they do? They kick up war. Ho hum. There is no reason that anyone with a brain should believe these narratives.

Just to be clear, though: Greenfield is openly for the continued genocide of Palestinians, so it’s not like he’s a moral compass. Kottke has never written a single word about the genocide because he’s afraid of losing subscribers. So, it’s not like leading lights of ethical clarity who are supporting Ukraine here.

And it’s not about “supporting” Ukraine or not. Ukraine is an internationally recognized nation. No-one should be invading it. They were ethnically cleansing Russians in the eastern part of their country, in a grinding, long-running civil war that Zelenskyy was elected to end. Their giant neighbor had a problem with that but it left those Russians mostly to defend themselves.

The problems began when Ukraine began working with the U.S. and NATO nations to set up “defenses” against Russia, right on its border. Ukraine went from being a huge trading partner to an actively hostile neighbor that was being funded by a giant empire that had been intent on ending Russia for decades.

None of what Russia did is surprising. It’s unclear what its alternatives were: capitulation? What could it have done other than to lay down and die? Should it have just allowed high-powered weapons on its borders—weapons that we all very well know would have eventually been used?

Once again, for the cheap seats: the invasion is illegal but it was not unprovoked. Russia is a large nation with an oversized military and a population that is small relative to its size. It was cornered and forced to react or be caught up in a net and trapped. It chose to fight back.

No-one supporting Ukraine considers anything that the U.S. did to Russia over the last 30 years to have been “attacking” it: not the sanctions, not the putsch in Ukraine, not the many “color” revolutions instigated by USAid and the CIA. Almost no-one either ever knew about those things or they’ve cheerfully forgotten, as it complicates their narrative. And they sure do love their narratives simple. Like Star Wars simple. LOTR simple.

Most of these fools have internalized that diplomacy is for pussies, that only force is worth an investment. If Eu countries were to talk to Russia or China, then they’d be consorting with the enemy and would have appeased. It’s laughable and childish and dangerous. Sit down and shut up while the adults talk. Trump is not an adult, and even he understands that you can’t just not talk to other nations. I welcome that we’re opening embassies again. FFS, how can that be a bad thing?

I just saw a tweet that read,

“The liberal outrage and hatred for trump is largely because his lack of all pretence & decorum destroys the fairy tale of a benevolent US & reveals the thuggish empire it is. They always care more about appearance, rhetoric, and performance than actual policies and their impact.”

Amen. The policies are the same. Trump’s just got the mask off. Go ahead and be appalled, but be appalled for the right reasons rather than demanding that useless and evil wars continue. FFS.

Insult To Injury: Trump Changes Netflix Password And Now Zelensky Has To Get His Own Account (Babylon Bee)

😂 😂 😂

The big idea: what do we really mean by free speech? by Farrah Jarral (Guardian)

“What the right calls cancel culture, philosopher Arianne Shahvisi writes, “is often just the supersized celebrity version of what the rest of us experience all the time: consequences for our mistakes and bigotries. You do something shitty and people distance themselves from you, especially if you refuse to acknowledge your wrongdoing and make amends.””

This is why the Guardian is utter lowbrow trash: they cite a philosopher, who expresses such a lowbrow analysis to reassure everyone that even philosophers agree with their dumb-ass interpretation.

The problem isn’t with being ostracized for doing “something shitty”. Obviously, that’s how people work. No-one wants to hang around shitty people who annoy or enrage them. The problem is when people are ostracized for having the wrong opinions, which are perfectly legitimate opinions. Everyone has a different list of what they consider to be “firing offenses”. Some would think you should get fired for not supporting Israel hard enough. Is it being shitty to not support Israel? Is it shitty to not support Ukraine? Is it shitty not to care either way.

This is just another article from a supposedly left-leaning periodical by a supposedly left-leaning author citing what is almost certainly a philosopher who considers herself to be left-leaning, all of whom espouse principles about freedom of speech on a first-grader level and that would be have been right at home in Khmer Rouge Cambodia or the Cultural Revolution in China. Get the fuck out of here with your utterly simplistic analysis, Guardian. You’re trash.

I didn’t bother reading the rest of the article because what’s the point of wasting time when it starts like that? If it redeems itself later, then congratulations for burying the lede, I guess.

Facebook & Content Moderation: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) by John Oliver (YouTube)

I’ve included the link but not as a playable video because I don’t think that this show is really worth watching anymore. It was getting very hit-or-miss—and kind of always has been—but it’s just far too superficial and supercilious now. Now that Trump is in office, Oliver and staff don’t even really have to try anymore—and they are showing all signs that they won’t. They’re seemingly content to subside into the same mud-pit where you can find Seth Meyers, Stephen Colbert, and Jimmy Kimmel, all of whom used to be much more subversive and interesting than they are now. Now they kowtow to Empire.

In the video linked above, Oliver takes pains to convince his audience that Facebook never really censored anything while simultaneously lamenting that, without censorship, Facebook will become a cesspool.

Who does he think is to blame? Zuckerberg, kind of, but it’s really all Trump’s fault. Whereas Oliver explains that the Biden administration didn’t influence Facebook at all—or not really, not the way it’s been portrayed by that dastardly right-wing media, which comprises anyone reporting anything that Oliver and his PMC clique don’t already believe—Trump has completely changed how Meta is running one of its major properties.

It couldn’t possibly be because (A) Facebook’s user base skews toward 60+, (B) older people skew rightward, and (C) they all believe they’re being censored. Maybe it was just pure financial calculation to keep its user base? Or, maybe, it was really a belief that moderation couldn’t be what it had become, which was prophylactic censorship that kept PMC prudes like Oliver delighted because they never, ever saw anything that might offend their delicate sensibilities. Not just right-wing stuff but also left-wing stuff. Progressive and true left-wing organizations experienced the most brutal censorship and will honestly probably continue to do so.

Almost no-one thinks that the most adult way to discuss the issue of censorship is to ask how we determine what’s bad and what’s OK. The tendency has been to censor unwanted political opinions. That makes it quite easy to then censor things by first deeming a group or organization fascist or extreme right-wing or even nazi and then you’re free to just ban all of that group’s posts and no-one would care because, well, what are you, a nazi-lover?

People are so banal and superficial in their opinions in that they have to constantly be reminded why censorship is bad because, unless they realize that they are being actively censored or they are aware that information that might be interesting to them is being censored from them, they simply don’t care because they just assume that bad people are not getting their bad information.

People are so shockingly anti-intellectual that the discussion pretty much stops there. If they stop thinking about it for a second, then they completely forget that censorship is even happening. They literally have no object permanence. That’s how dumb they are. For a similar albeit more polite discussion, see survivorship bias and the algorithmic gaze: you can’t see what you can’t see by Etymology Nerd (Substack).

Part of the backlash against censorship in the U.S. and Europe comes as a reaction to a disastrous COVID-information policy, during which information was brutally controlled, with the narrative shifting all over the place. Some opinions being consistently blocked as misinformation turned out not to have even been misinformation, even were you to believe that censorship is okay when the information is incorrect. I personally don’t because you never really know, do you? At any rate, people are pissed and the AFD surge in Germany counts the backlash against the state’s COVID propaganda as a big reason.

I will take John Oliver more seriously when he says the word palestinian on his show even once. The genocide is well into its second year and comprises three seasons of his show and he’s never shown any indi indication that he will make a single show about the Middle East or Israel. Weird, right? It’s almost like he has no principles. He did manage to mention a genocide in this most recent show but it was a reference to the Myanmar genocide, which Facebook was apparently alone responsible for.

I was shocked to hear them talking about a genocide and then even more shocked to realize they were joking about a genocide that happened years and years ago, without mentioning the brutal information management and censorship surrounding Israel’s ongoing genocide. You can express whatever support for Israel on Facebook and Instagram that you want—and you can say the most horrific things that you want about Palestinians—and none of that has ever been censored.

There were so many, many Instagram videos of IDF soldiers committing war crimes that they themselves posted—and none of it was ever censored, even when Meta was still censoring information. John didn’t mention that censorship cutout, oddly enough. Still, maybe that kind of stuff will get a community note now? Nah. I bet those will also be suppressed.

The Right Wing Politics of Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi by Chris Green (ZNetwork)

“ At present Greenwald hosts a podcast called System Update on Rumble, the right-wing video platform in which the reactionary Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel has been a heavy investor. Thiel’s company Palantir was involved with the American national security state during the Obama administration in secretly digging up dirt on persons involved with supporting Wikileaks and Edward Snowden—this was, of course, before Greenwald made his right-wing turn. It should be noted that although Greenwald’s podcast substantially panders to right wing audiences, he has also used his forum to righteously attack Israel for its genocidal war on the people of Gaza.”

This Eoin Higgins guy’s book is gaining a lot of attention, I guess. I like how everyone I’ve heard talk about it, including this review, seems not to have watched a second of Greenwald, or read a page of Taibbi before calling them right-wing cucks. People are just not interested in accuracy because it’s not necessary in order to gain popularity with the people whom they consider to be the cool kids.

Read through the citation above. Notice the phrasing. Rumble is not just a video platform, but a “right-wing video platform”, an accusation made again and again not because its purveyors are right-wing, or because only right-wing content is allowed on it, but because the site doesn’t censor the things that these censorious snowflakes can’t stand having exist in their world. Peter Thiel is not a reactionary; he’s a radical, taking the world apart to suit his personal need.

These people are smug scolds of the worst kind, who cannot understand that one would be horrified that the state would persecute someone like Trump for a complete bullshit like Russiagate because, to them, the target is the important thing, and not the reasons you’re shooting at it. To them, they already know that something like Trump is bad, so it doesn’t matter whether a given accusation is accurate; he deserves whatever you can throw at him because he is the devil incarnate.

That leaves fools like this author writing about things like Russiagate without once mentioning that it was a complete scam, a hoax that deluded a nation and turned an entire supposedly left-leaning liberal class into rabid warmongers who still haven’t woken up from their nightmare.

As usual, anyone who associates with anyone who is not pre-approved is considered not a journalist going after a story but a fellow traveler, guilty by association. Anyone who dared go on Tucker Carlson’s program to spout socially left-wing talking point was immediately written off as a traitor. This is how these people think. It’s not even really fair to call it thinking, as that’s unfair to people who actually do think. It’s small-minded, mean-girl-clique bullshit that should have nothing to do with national discourse, but instead positively dominates it. Philosophically, most people embrace George W. Bush’s dictum, that “you’re either with us, or you’re against us.” They double down on this attitude by ostracizing anyone who doesn’t believe everything they’ve been told to believe with the fervor that they’ve been told to as heretics, banishing them to a wilderness filled with so-called fascists and so-called right-wingers.

That Greenwald tempered his attitude toward idiots like Alex Jones is not a bad thing. There’s a lot to learn about why Jones has appeal to so many. He is obviously unhinged but he’s also built an enormous media empire. People like Higgins and the author of this piece are completely uninterested in finding out why that is because they’ve long since determined that they will censor people like Jones out of existence using state and corporate-media power rather than figuring out he ticks and why people gravitate toward him. In so doing, you could address the problem of people following uninformed demagogues through education rather than punishment. But that’s not their style, because they’re also convinced that anyone who doesn’t already agree with them about everything is too stupid to do so. Or too racist to do so. Or whatever.

I only skimmed the remainder of the article (2/3 or so) because it went on to document how horribly right-wing Matt Taibbi is, a claim that is belied by simply reading anything that Matt Taibbi has written or watching five minutes of him on an interview or podcast. Taibbi’s great crime is thinking that free speech applies to everyone, rather than just people like Higgins, the author, and the opinion elites that they worship.

March 5, 2025 by Heather Cox Richardson (Letters from an American)

“This system enabled leaders to avoid the censorship from which voters would recoil by instead creating a firehose of news until people became overwhelmed by the task of trying to figure out what was real and simply tuned out. Essentially, this system replaced the concept of voters choosing their leaders with the concept of voters rubber-stamping the leaders they had been manipulated into backing.”

If you didn’t know that this lady’s entire essay had been about Russia so far, you would think that she was describing the last 30 years of U.S. politics. She doesn’t mention the coincidence at all, which leads me to believe that she doesn’t notice it.

Similarly, when I read a prior paragraph, I kept waiting for her to mention that this view of U.S. so-called democracy was flawed, at best, and wildly unjustified, at worst.

“When the Cold War ended with the crumbling of the Soviet Union at the end of the 1980s, those Americans who had come to define the world as a fight between the dark forces of communism and the good forces of capitalism believed their ideology of radical individualism had triumphed. In 1989, political scientist Francis Fukayama famously concluded that the victory of liberal democracy over communism meant “the end of history” as all nations gravitated toward the liberal democracy that time had proven was fundamentally a better system of government than any other.

“Forty-five years after Churchill warned that the world was splitting in two, it appeared that democracies, led by the United States of America, had won. In that triumphant mood, American leaders set out to spread capitalism into formerly communist countries, believing that democracy would follow since capitalism and democracy went hand in hand.”

Again, I was left wanting, as she didn’t indicate in any way that this isn’t her actual viewpoint, held by an actual adult, and one who purports to be a historian, no less. This woman is being cited from all over the liberal mediaphere, completely unironically and completely uncritically. They consider her to be a beacon in the darkness. I feel ill.

I fear that her wildly inaccurate characterization of Ukrainian history is what counts as the standard view in her sphere, despite none of the main points lining up with the facts, particularly Paul Manafort’s involvement, which was part of the Steele Dossier, which was made up out of whole cloth by Hillary Clinton’s campaign. None of this is controversial and yet none of it is known in elite circles, for whom I can only imagine Richardson’s letters are intended.

“To resurrect his political career, Yanukovych turned to an American political consultant, Paul Manafort, who had worked for both Nixon and Reagan and who was already working for Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska. With Manafort’s help, Yanukovych won the presidency in 2010 and began to turn Ukraine toward Russia. In 2014, after months of popular protests, Ukrainians ousted Yanukovych from power and he fled to Russia.”

There is, to no-one’s surprise at this point, any indication that Ukraine suffered an unconstitutional coup, just that they “ousted” their president, as you do. In democracies, a president fails to be reelected, not “ousted”. It is clear that Richardson and the worldview she represents, only cares about details like this when she’s been ordered to deride a country that has been designated an official enemy.

There follows several paragraphs of a tired re-hashing of the standard Russiagate fare that I skimmed rather than read in detail.

As usual and as expected, she spends an inordinate amount of text condemning Trump for his lack of decorum. That his predecessors were all also violent warmongers, far more so than Trump doesn’t matter because it’s the language of violence that matters, not the effects of actual physical violence.

Since I’d seen this lady mentioned a few times, I decided to give one of her missives a shot, although with obvious trepidation. I was ready to be pleasantly surprised but instead I’m disappointed to find that a bunch of people I’ve been following for a while are now absolutely quaffing this kind of uninformed tripe posing as scholarly research and analysis all day long.

Nowhere in the entire missive does she take Trump to task for the actually evil things that he’s doing, like gleefully helping Netanyahu stomp Gaza even flatter. No, instead, she condemns Trump as a traitor for trying to end the war in Ukraine. i have neither the time nor patience for such stupidity. You can take issue with Trump’s methods but, if you don’t start by acknowledging that bringing this war to early end is a good thing, then you’re a criminal and a fool who has no idea what’s going on.

One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Jason Kottke

Meanwhile, this fool—who also recommends Cox Richardson at every chance he gets—is recommending the book of the same name as the article’s title by Omar El Akkad.

This is from a guy who hasn’t written about Israel even once because he’s terrified of losing his upper west-side and upper east-side subscribers from New York City. This is, in fact, the first time that I can recall him even obliquely referring to Gaza, although he calls it the “war in Gaza”, which is exactly what the NY Times—which he also reads religiously—wants him to call it, if he’s to refer to it at all.

He literally seems to have no idea that the entire book is about people like himself who are easily capable of ignoring a genocide until it’s safe not to ignore it.

The full title, of the book is,

“One day, when it’s safe, when there’s no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it’s too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will have always been against this.”

I think Kottke thinks that the book refers to Trump. Just utterly missing the point.

Economy & Finance

Tipping: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) by John Oliver (YouTube)

I was kind of hoping for more from this video but it ended up being much vaguer and much more basic than the excellent video I wrote about in Tipping is even worse than I thought. Skip the John Oliver video and watch the one by Evan Edinger (YouTube) instead.

Will DOGE Slash the Pentagon Budget? by Lee Fang (YouTube)

This is an excellent interview with Danielle Brian of POGO (Project on Government Oversight) about corruption, waste, and fraud. Whereas you may deem anything the government spends money on that you don’t like or approve of as “waste”, “fraud” has a legal definition. Somewhere in the middle is “corruption”, which is when you’re paying far too much for services that you actually want or need. The major sources of corruption are the Pentagon budget and Medicare Advantage.

So far, she says, DOGE hasn’t found any fraud. What they have done is carry out a scattershot demolition of government programs and offices that are the best fraud-fighting ones, so their efforts will have the opposite effect—it will lead to more fraud and corruption, likely funneling money to oligarchs like Musk himself. This is utterly unsurprising.

I really like this lady because she sticks to the horrific facts of the situation without wasting any time discussing the characters involved. They don’t matter and aren’t relevant for an examination of why DOGE purported mission is just that—purported. She says that some of the things that DOGE says are true and there are honestly more than enough problems to tackle, but that they’re not tackling those problems. Right idea; wrong solution. Or, most likely, a deliberate scam, in which they steal more money for themselves while telling everyone that they’re saving money. Instead, what they’re doing is to redirect money from Congressionally sanctioned and legalized programs to bullshit like SpaceX.

“Waste is one of the places where there has always been an alignment between the parties. But, as you’ve pointed out, one person’s waste is not the same another’s. I did take it as a great opportunity for us to be able to testify before Marjorie Taylor Greene’s committee and say, yes, these are the places we want to look at them. And we have not at all been encouraged by what Doge has done yet. We did submit suggestions of places where they should be looking, and we’re not hearing back from them, but we’ll sit down with anyone and say, ‘this is what you should be doing.’ And I hope, maybe, at some point soon, they learn their lesson that the way they’re going about things is likely illegal and, so far, kind of incompetent. And we have a road map that could help them be successful if they wanted to.”

Vijay Prashad – The Collapse of NATO and Europe's Dilemma by acTVism Munich (YouTube)

At 04:56,

“Trump interestingly said, ‘look, this is not a prestige issue for us in the United States. We don’t care about winning or losing. We’re going to cut a deal, get out of this. It’s too expensive. There are no U.S. interests at stake now.‘

“For the Europeans, actually, they know, I mean Frederick Merz, the new chancellor of Germany is not a stupid man, okay? He knows that Vladimir Putin isn’t planning to send
tanks into Berlin. The Soviets did that already: that was to liberate Germany from the Nazis. Very unlikely that they’re going to send Russian tanks into [Germany],

“Frederick Merz knows that, for the Europeans, Ukraine has become a prestige issue, much more than a security question. They cannot afford to lose. Trump says, ‘I don’t care about the prestige United States is the greatest country in the world. We can destroy anybody. We don’t have any problems here. We are not embarrassed by this. We’re going to cut a deal, save lives.‘”

At 07:28,

“It’s a prestige issue; this is not a security issue. These people are intelligent. They’re not stupid.”

At 08:59,

“This whole episode, since vice president JD Vance’s comments at the Munich security conference, this whole episode demonstrates, in a sense, Europe’s utter subordination to the United States. There is really no NATO. NATO is being shown, in this period, as effectively a shell company owned by the United States. If the US is not in the game, the Europeans can’t act.

“There was a study done that showed that Germany has basically just a few days of fighting ability against an adversary like the Russians—if they had to fight the Ukraine war, just a few days. France doesn’t even have that. They have a nuclear umbrella but they don’t have the conventional ability. Which working-class German—precarious German—is going to go and fight in Ukraine? Who in Britain and France? They’re not going to fight there.

“It’s a curious class substitution that’s happening. The Ukrainian middle class is fleeing as refugees to Western Europe and now they are expecting working-class Western Europeans to go and fight their battle.”

At 11:58,

“The populations want the war to end. So, a democratic question is, let’s listen to people. End the war. Thirdly, this war is expensive and increasing military spending is nuts. In Britain, Rachel Reeves has said they’re going to cut welfare. Why? Because she said, ‘we have to make the tough choices.’

“Every time they say, ‘we have to make the tough choices’ and whether you say this in English, French, German, Italian, Polish, whatever language they are lying to you.

“It’s not a tough choice. It’s an easy choice. Because when they say we got to make the tough choices, they make the same choice, which is, ‘let’s screw the poor to increase the military spending.‘ So that’s also going to be hurtful for the reasons why the war should end.

“For most of Europe, there’s no security challenge. The people don’t want it. The inflation has to be brought down. Because this is ridiculous. It’s just painful for the population.”

The two sections comprising about 18 minutes and starting at 15:35, called “EU’s militarisation & Russia’s plans” and “EU’s fiscal discipline” are brilliant and are well-worth listening to in its entirety.

Philosophy, Sociology, & Culture

Thought-tinkering – the Korean German philosopher Byung-Chul Han by Josh Cohen (Aeon)

“I’m not suggesting that Han’s books are explicitly lachrymose. Their manifest tone is more one of dry-eyed anger, rendered melancholic by the absence of any outlet or remedy for it. Under his gaze, the political, financial and technological sectors are thieves to whom we have willingly handed over our lives and selves, along with any capacity for dissent or resistance.”

“Han sees capitalism’s penetration into the deepest reaches of psychic and cultural life as the key to this phenomenon. The Burnout Society insists that power today works not through repression and persecution but by sly and insidious means of ‘self-exploitation’. In a self-administered regime of this kind, revolution is almost literally unthinkable:”

“Because power so often involves coercion, Han argues, there has been a tendency to see them as inextricable. But it is only when power is poor in mediation, felt as alien to our own lives and interests, that it resorts to threatened or actual violence. Whereas when power is at the ‘highest point of mediation’ – when it seems to speak from a recognition of its subjects’ needs and desires – it is more likely to receive those subjects’ willing consent. One could conceive of a power, therefore, that has no sanctions at its disposal, but which is nonetheless rendered absolute by its subjects’ full identification with it.”

“‘An absolute power,’ writes Han, ‘would be one that never became apparent, never pointed to itself, one that rather blended completely into what goes without saying.’ This is precisely what happens in digital capitalism’s burnout society, where the power of capital consists not in its power to oppress but in the voluntary surrender of its subjects to their own exploitation.”

“This will to persist in one’s own existence, to cling to one’s own selfhood, is the basic premise of the Western mode of being. We can discern it at work in the empty narcissism of social media and the culture of self-display in which we’re all enjoined to participate. Self-exploitation is, in a sense, a twisted variant on the Cartesian cogito : I am seen therefore I am.”

“The accelerated time of digital capitalism effectively abolishes the practice of ‘contemplative lingering’. Life is felt not as a temporal continuum but as a discontinuous pile-up of sensations crowding in on each other. One of the more egregious consequences of this new temporal regime is the atomisation of social relations, as other people are reduced to interchangeable specks in the same sensory pile-up.”

“‘Social practices such as promising, fidelity or commitment, which are temporal practices in the sense that they commit to a future and thus limit the horizon of the future, thus founding duration, are losing all their importance.’”

“It is in Vita Contemplativa (2022) that Han ventures furthest beyond the confines of polemic to envision an alternative to the enervated politics and culture of the achievement society. The book mounts a philosophical defence of inactivity, conceived less in opposition to activity than as a possibility within it. Han cites a late fragment by Nietzsche on ‘inventive people’, which proposes that the authentically new can come into being only where there is sufficient time and freedom to think, apart from the imperatives of purpose and productivity.”

“In this regard, they risk colluding with the suffocating conditions they describe. Han’s prose can read at times as though impelled by an inverse smoothness, a pure negativity that crowds out the possibility of otherness with a determination that mirrors uncannily the compulsory positivity he decries. In other words, it is liable to merge into the very malaise it’s lamenting.”

“Han’s 2023 El Pais interview ends with his suggestion, after the recorder has been turned off, that he and the interviewer relocate to his favourite Italian restaurant. Eating a dish of fish soup, he relaxes, jokes around, takes all the pleasure in free-flowing conversation that seemed absent in the formal interview setup. What might such an infusion of vitality and play do for his writing? Han would likely object that such glimmers of positivity would only blunt the negative edge of his thought. But I can’t help wondering if the opposite is the case.”

The Harold Rosenberg School of Historical Cosplay by Blake Smith (Hinternet)

“So much supposedly high-minded commentary consists of underemployed former humanities majors musing about whether the present moment is more analogous to interwar fascism, the last years of the Soviet Union, or, why not, the year 1587 of the Ming Dynasty. These exercises allow commentators, I ungenerously suppose, to feel as though, having as it were located themselves in time, and surmised in what sort of drama the timing of their birth has enrolled them, they can then discover the right course of political action.”

“[…] it’s tempting to envy what seems retrospectively like a high point of American intellectual seriousness, when the country’s best came close to imitating what they imagined were European standards. They tried to be Mann and Gide, we try to be them, and everyone keeps getting dumber.”

Man, they were always dumb. though. There was no high point of American intellectual seriousness that had any sort of wide audience. Perhaps Gore Vidal, but he spent so much time being catty and pursuing bon mots that he also often strayed from the path. Most of the others supported their respective empires and their wars.

“[…] I’ll note in passing, makes for an interesting divergence with Arendt’s interpretation of the French and American revolutions in On Revolution (1963), where she emphasizes what she sees as the wonderful, novel, enfranchising quality of authentic political action present in the experience of those revolutionaries. In contrast Rosenberg traces via Marx, with I think much more astuteness, the way in which the qualities of authenticity, novelty, freedom and so on that Arendt so valued in political life are only ever accessible through an often unconscious sort of cosplay.”

“The radicals of the first French revolution were, in a sense, delusional — out of their minds, or at least, out of their times. But it was only by imagining themselves as summoning up the forms and energies of a vanished past that they could act effectively in the present to move towards the future — even if their actions, and the consequences of those actions, were in fact as unlike what they thought they were doing as their real identities as bewigged small-time lawyers were unlike their fantasies about imitating toga-wearing classical heroes.”

“Marx was hitting on the idea, Rosenberg noted, that in order to be a real ‘actor’ in history (someone who can take action ) one must also be an “actor” in the sense of taking up a role in a drama we devise together.”

“And yet, Marx argued, the very pointlessness of the abortive second revolution served a historical function and brought the world closer to the next — the proletarian revolution by which the working class was to take power. It had stripped the working class of any illusions it might have had about the political competence of the bourgeoisie, or the value of the now quite antiquated republican “tradition of revolution”. France was now ruled by a dictator who desperately combined appeals to every group and cause, mingling vaguely socialist rhetoric with nationalism, Catholicism, a defense of the peasantry and property rights, militarism and the imperial legacy of his uncle, thus exhausting, Marx prophesied, the whole available repertory of political myth, and teaching the French proletariat to trust nothing but their own demands for radical change.”

“Marx tended to present the working-class as becoming so oppressed and degraded by capitalism that its members literally were no longer capable of thinking, let alone of the myth-making and play-acting that were the essence of all previous forms of political activity. Therefore their coming revolution, as Rosenberg noted, “would not need costumes or myths but would take off from the facts themselves.” They would abolish the need for political imagination.”

Yikes. How’s that working out for you?

“[…] the left’s persistent fantasy that it is, in fact, a good thing for ostensibly “progressive” forces to be defeated by “reactionary” ones (as in 1848) since this strips both sides of their pretenses of legitimacy, clearing the way for a more radical revolution. By this “obviously wrong” way of coping with defeat, the left has —again and again over the past one hundred and seventy years— persisted in imagining that the worse things get, the better things will somehow, eventually, be.”

“For Rosenberg and Arendt, it was critical to be able to articulate how politics has an inalterably aesthetic basis —one that can never be reduced to a logic (whether of history or of any other kind), but always depends on our having to convince other people, on an at least partially fictional basis, to identify with us and share our aspirations— without thereby falling into the totalitarian understanding of myth at work in Heidegger’s theory of art […].”

'The Globalists are the Racists:' Russian Analyst Aleksandr Dugin on the Loss of Cultural Identities by Glenn Greenwald (YouTube)

This was an interesting 21-minute discussion about the importance of multi-polarity, multi-civilizational humanity. Dugin points out how the globalism that we’re seeing trying to take over everything has deemed itself the winner and chooses not to integrate anything from other, “conquered” civilizations. He cites the Chinese Confucian approach to law and philosophy, the Russian Orthodox Church, and so on, as deep and ancient influences on cultures and civilizations. He calls out globalists for a devotion to “chronocentrism”, a focus on what is happening now, while ignoring everything that came before as ignorant and racist. Dugin is definitely conservative, but much more of the classic kind: in that he would like to keep that which has existed before. I think it’s a good counterweight to the “move fast and break things” liberalism sold by those who propose their changes because they know that the world will become more accommodating to how they would like it to be. It’s easy to be a radical when the changes are exactly what you want. Our modern-day radicals push their own culture and language into every corner of the world so that their rich asses can travel there with less discomfort.

I am aware that we’ve been taught to have a knee-jerk negative reaction to Alexander Dugin as a maniacal racist. This is not in any way the

There were several other videos in this interview that were also quite interesting.

• Is Russia an Authoritarian Regime?: Glenn Asks Russian Analyst Aleksandr Dugin in Moscow (5m)
• How Does Russia Define Victory in Ukraine?: With Russian Analyst Aleksandr Dugin (20m)
• Was Trump Ever Really Putin’s Puppet? Key Russian Analyst Aleksandr Dugin on Russiagate Hoax (5m)
• Was Trump Ever Really Putin’s Puppet? Key Russian Analyst Aleksandr Dugin on Russiagate Hoax (5m)
• Is Russia an Authoritarian Regime?: Glenn Asks Russian Analyst Aleksandr Dugin in Moscow (20m)

Technology

I know I’ve mentioned this many times before but I’m just going to keep screaming from the ramparts that the way the Apple streaming service works is not OK. They have some good TV shows and films but it is trapped within a barely adequate and quite frankly hostile user experience.

One of the worst offenses is when you finish a show and there are no shows left to watch in that series. The show ends; it segues into an occasionally well-chosen song, playing over the credits. You have perhaps been moved by the show; you have perhaps learned something; you are, perhaps, thinking about what happened. You are, perhaps, engaging with the show. You may even be basking in having experienced it. Apple does not care. They thrust another piece of content at you, often the thing that they have just created and are desperate for you to watch, and then give you five seconds to avoid starting a whole new show, right then and there. It startles you out of your reverie. If you’re not accustomed to this “the money’s on the nightstand, sweetheart” approach, then you are very, very rudely awakened. You are no longer basking, that’s for sure. You are instead fumbling for the remote control, trying to figure out how to prevent the awful series that Apple has selected from starting. (Press the < button.)

It does this with the next episode of a running series as well. There is no way to disable this behavior in the settings, as with Netflix. Netflix is somehow coming out the hero in this, for being a multi-billion-dollar company that managed to include one settings in their player. Apple can’t even do that.

This is, of course, when Apple TV even remembers which episode of a series I’m actually on. Sometimes it just plain forgets that I’ve watched an episode and cheerily starts playing the one that I’d just finished watching yesterday, drooling on itself as it presents its brain-damaged head for a congratulatory patting.

This EV could reboot medium-duty trucking by not reinventing the wheel by Tim Stevens (Ars Technica)

“A light pedal brush had the empty Harbinger delivery truck leaping forward. It’s hardly a Lucid Air Sapphire, but it still surged forward with the sort of instant acceleration that makes EVs so addictive. Braking, too, is far more sharp. I lurched against the racy orange seatbelt the first time I stepped on the left pedal, and the combination of regenerative braking and fresh disc brakes made for a far more effective slowing solution.”

““On a TCO basis, it’s easy: We blow diesel trucks away. But the whole point is to have the right acquisition cost from day one, and then the simpler operating costs deliver savings every day,” he said.”

“It’s a modest start for the company, which today counts 330 employees, but in an age of EV startups promising the moon and delivering little more than hype, the Harbinger’s focus on the basics is refreshing—and encouraging.”

LLMs & AI

You would be excused for thinking that the post Hallucinations in code are the least dangerous form of LLM mistakes by Simon Willison would be somewhat more cautious in recommending LLMs, but he writes,

“Hallucinated methods are such a tiny roadblock that when people complain about them I assume they’ve spent minimal time learning how to effectively use these systems—they dropped them at the first hurdle.

“My cynical side suspects they may have been looking for a reason to dismiss the technology and jumped at the first one they found.

“My less cynical side assumes that nobody ever warned them that you have to put a lot of work in to learn how to get good results out of these systems. I’ve been exploring their applications for writing code for over two years now and I’m still learning new tricks (and new strengths and weaknesses) almost every day.”

That’s not been my experience, though. The point that (sane) people are making is that it’s hard to understand the hype and the drive to integrate these goddamned things into everything when they just generate a bunch of slop and wildly incorrect results, not just in code, but in everything.

I saw a picture of Trump supposedly licking Elon Musk’s feet on SNL, where they said that you could tell it had been generated by an LLM because Trump was able to bend over. Hilarious, obviously. But my partner pointed out that it was actually because Musk very obviously had two left feet. We wondered whether that was even medically possible.

I searched “two left feet in real life”.

Search results for 'two left feet'

The top result was two left feet − actual medical condition? − Factual Questions … (The Straight Dope), which even highlighted the smartest answer in the search results,

“On further thought; this isn’t what you were looking for, but there have been people born with two left feet, and two right feet; that is, they have four legs; it’s the same thing as when conjoined twins are born sharing the same hips/legs, it’s just that when the division is at the bottom end, we don’t call it two people.”

The second-ranked answer was from Can You Be Born With Two Left Feet (Ablison) was just straight-up botshit (AI-generated slop). If you quickly scan the page, you’ll see that it starts off with the factually incorrect “Yes, you can be born with two left feet” but then, further down—after a ton of mediocore, obviously generated, time-wasting, and soul-sucking text—it writes “while being literally born with two left feet does not occur”.

The LLM-generated summary at the top claims to combine two sources—Wikipedia and something called Gomerpedia—to come up with,

““Two left feet” is an idiom that typically refers to someone who is clumsy, especially when dancing. It can also describe a rare anatomical condition where a person has two left feet, which may affect their ability to dance but usually does not limit other daily activities.”

Again, this is not true. It comes from the Gomerpedia link, which is a satire/parody site, claiming to be a “medical encyclopedia” and has an entry for “Two Left Feet”, which writes,

“Two left feet is an anatomical condition in which a person is born with a left foot on his or her left leg and a left foot on his or her right leg. Though it may not limit walking or any other activities of daily living, it completely inhabits [sic] a person’s ability to dance, hence the phrase two left feet. Not many people know that it’s a real condition, so take care in making that comment. Interestingly, people with two right feet dance awfully well.”

After re-reading, I’m not sure what to think: is this just a joke site written by someone young or bored? Or is it also an AI-generated site that is now being incorporated into other AI-generated answers?

Here’s Willison’s conclusion,

“I’ll finish this rant with a related observation: I keep seeing people say “if I have to review every line of code an LLM writes, it would have been faster to write it myself!”

“Those people are loudly declaring that they have under-invested in the crucial skills of reading, understanding and reviewing code written by other people. I suggest getting some more practice in. Reviewing code written for you by LLMs is a great way to do that.”

I question whether that’s at all true. It seems to me that the quality of results is eroding and we can’t ignore where this is headed. While Willison seems to benefit from LLM-generated code, it’s unclear to me that he’s not so trapped and invested in this world by now that he literally can’t remember what it was like programming without these tools, or whether he used to produce better or more interesting/sophisticated projects without them.

I have been an avid reader of his posts and will continue to do so, but I don’t know whether he’s properly capable of evaluating the pro/con of LLM-generated code. “Just review it all” isn’t necessarily scalable when there is a lot of slop code to review. You may very well be faster, in the end, writing it yourself.

The other consideration is: is reviewing generated code what you truly want to be doing? I understand that this may be where programming is headed, but it’s a real question that people should ask: just because it’s heading that way, do I have to go with it? Is there room for artisanal code? And is the world of LLM-generated code really here to stay? Or is it going to erode?

I no longer see Willison writing anything about studies that keep showing code-duplication going way up, and maintainability and legibility going way down. I only see flip responses to write tests, which we know no-one does, and which will be cheerily constructed by the same LLM that thinks it’s medically possible to have two left feet.

No Regrets − What Happens to AI Beyond Generative? − Computerphile by Computerphile (YouTube)

I’m just going to quote a couple of the comments on this video,

“Modelling challenges aside, it’s super unclear to me that a meaningful notion of ‘optimal performance’ exists, because the space of all preferences is rarely totally ordered. In reality, you might have several non-comparable and ultimately conflicting behaviors. For example, insurance companies have antipodal interests in providing payouts (the product they promise consumers) and withholding them (upholding their profitability promises to shareholders).”

“The problem with trying to develop systems that are capable of trial and error learning, is that they need to already have an understanding of what goals are appropriate and useful. Unfortunately, we’re currently using reinforcement learning to teach these goals, and are unable to solidly define them. Surely [w]e should be thinking about the right way to make a wish rather than just focusing on how to make the genie.”

That’s what this video made me think, too. The problem isn’t with these technologies. The problem is with the system within which we are applying them. We used to have a world that emphasized safety to a nearly ridiculous degree. The understanding was that building a rock-solid trust in a system was worth a tremendous amount, as even a small amount of mistrust—or implication that you would have to balance risk vs. reward—meant that people would avoid doing things that society was trying to encourage. Nowadays, there seems to be less of an emphasis on safety and more on profit. That’s a problem because it will only ever lead to short-term profit, having cannibalized a trust that will be very costly to build back. The introduction of AIs and seeming dismissal of obvious shortcomings plays right into this. The right people will make much more money if they can sell products and services without having to tinker with safety as long as they used to. It’s the same thing with planned obsolescence.

I thought his point in the final third was salient: that a lot of work done in the last several years has been trying to shoehorn algorithms into existing hardware paradigms like highly generalized CPUs or graphics cards that are more amenable to parallelization of the algorithms than general CPUs are but are still inefficient. Pushing down to hardware is costly and involves much longer turnaround times and development cycles. You have to be sure you’re on a useful path in order to go through the effort of setting up the production pipeline for customized hardware. I wonder how well FPGA can emulate these different configurations or whether those, too, are fundamentally limited in emulating the bandwidth advantages offered by much more highly localizing processing units and memory.

Mistral OCR by Simon Willison

“I fed in the Mixtral paper as a PDF. The API returns Markdown, but my –html option renders that Markdown as HTML and the –inline-images option takes any images and inlines them as base64 URIs (inspired by monolith). The result is mixtral.html, a 972KB HTML file with images and text bundled together.

“This did a pretty great job!”

Look, that’s great. But the final sentence is what concerns me, since “testing” software has now regressed to “eyeballing it” for a few seconds. If it’s multi-page, that approach is going to be as hopeless as it ever was. I received a document from my building’s management company the other day, referring to a contract that we’d supposedly signed in “December of 2025”. it’s obvious to me what happened. This stuff matters, people.

Programming

I saw that the following error had been fixed in a code review the other day,

Classic primitive obsession error

The error you fixed was caused by a design smell called Primitive Obsession. This is where code is “obsessed” with primitives, in that it uses a much “wider” type than is actually acceptable.

Whereas C++ has a typedef, TypeScript and Delphi Pascal have a type, C# has … nothing easy. The linked article describes a hand-coded version for making “narrower” types (e.g., MeanLength or ShortFiber). Our go-to generated-source guru Andrew Lock describes a solution that uses the StronglyTypedId package, but also links to a series from 2020 by Thomas Levesque that uses records.

It looks like you can use something like public record MeanLength(int Value); to succinctly define a narrower type. While it’s nice that it autogenerates all the necessary machinery (equals, hashCode, etc.) for it, it’s also unfortunate that it’s necessary, as we’re usually just trying to disambiguate two ints without further validation or restriction.

Also, I’m not recommending you use whatever means you can to avoid primitive confusion with the type system in every code base! I’m just noting that the error that arose is so common that it not only has a name, there are well-defined solutions for avoiding that class of problems using the type system. You need to have everyone on board for using these types of solutions, as many consider them to be too heavy-handed (they suspect it affects performance somehow, and aren’t willing to trade any potential and unproven performance drawback anywhere for increased type-safety). Those are usually the same people who write code with a ton of primitive obsession and zero automated tests, so take the critique for what it’s worth in that context.