Links and Notes for March 6th, 2026

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 They are intentionally succinct, else they’d be articles and probably end up in the gigantic backlog of unpublished drafts.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

Im Bogen um die Neutralität – Die Schweiz darf jetzt nicht einknicken by Daniel Funk (Bewegung für Neutralität)

“Und doch gibt es eine Lücke auf der Karte: die Schweiz. US-Militärmaschinen schlagen einen weiten Bogen um ihren Luftraum und derjenigen Österreichs. Das ist mehr als Vorsicht – es ist Respekt vor einer klaren Haltung. Anders als im Ukrainekrieg hat die Schweiz die Iran-Sanktionen nicht mitvollzogen. Militärische Überflüge sind bewilligungspflichtig, und im Fall einer kriegerischen Eskalation ist eine Sperrung des Luftraums nicht nur politisch opportun, sondern neutralitätsrechtlich geboten. Dass Washington diese Möglichkeit faktisch antizipiert, spricht Bände.”

“[…] keine militärische Parteinahme, keine logistische Beihilfe, keine schleichende Integration in fremde Kriegsarchitekturen. Ein Blick nach Zypern zeigt, wie schnell ein Land zur Mitpartei wird, wenn fremde Basen auf eigenem Boden stehen.”

“Neutralität ist kein sentimentales Relikt, kein folkloristisches Markenzeichen für Sonntagsreden. Sie ist ein strategischer Schutzmechanismus – hart erarbeitet, historisch bewährt, rechtlich verankert. Wer sie relativiert, riskiert mehr als diplomatische Verstimmungen: Er riskiert Souveränität.”

The Wrong Question about the War in Iran by Pascal Lottaz | Professor Yakov Rabkin (Neutrality Studies)

“Many experts, including retired American and British senior officers, doubt that the US will prevail in Iran and anticipate another debacle. They may or may not be right. However, what matters to Netanyahu is not the success of the American military, but the idea that Iran is likely to be weakened, whatever the outcome. If this does not materialize and Israel’s apartheid regime faces an existential threat, it has nuclear weapons to use as a last resort. All the talk about ‘Iran’s nuclear threat’ should not obscure the fact that two nuclear powers have jointly attacked a non-nuclear country.

“If Israel’s gamble fails, its cynical and self-centred political culture suggests it would use nuclear weapons rather than abandon Zionism and negotiate a political transformation of the current regime into a more inclusive system. Decades of weaponizing the Holocaust have convinced most Israeli Jews that only ‘the Jewish state’ can guarantee their survival. Israel would rather obliterate Iran, a country of 93 million people, than accept equality with the Palestinians it now controls in Gaza and the West Bank.”

Jiang Xueqin: The Iran War: The Watershed Moment That Changed the Middle East Forever by Dialogue Works | Nima R. Alkhorshid (YouTube)

“The problem with these GCC nations is that they don’t actually have the building blocks of nations. They don’t have access to fresh water. 60% of their water comes from desalination plants. They don’t have access to own food. They import 89% of their own of their food from overseas and they don’t have an indigenous population capable of 21st-century knowledge-economy. Okay. So they basically import their their knowledge workers as well from overseas. So these are not viable nation states. And for the longest time, people were so dazzled by the wealth, the glitz of the Middle East that people really didn’t understand this this fundamental issue. And so the entire GCC is this a giant mirage created by American empire as well as postcold war peace and prosperity. And now this Iran war, this mirage has been shattered. And now everyone understands how easy it is to destroy any of these nation states.”

“The American military for the longest time didn’t actually have to fight a real war. Okay. So, the last real war that it fought was probably Vietnam. The Persian Gulf in 1991 was not a real war. It’s a video game where you know you have these airplanes—high-tech airplanes—which were able to incinerate Saddam Hussein’s soldiers. I mean just look at the visuals from the first Persian Gulf War. It was not a real war. It was just a video game essentially.

“In 2003, when the Americans invaded Iraq. What people don’t remember is Saddam Hussein did not have any air defense. Not one. Okay. Why didn’t Saddam Hussein have any air defense? Because first of all, he had suffered over 10 years American sanctions. So his nation was too poor to have air defense. The second point is that he knew that he going to defend against an American invasion. So what was the point anyway in preparing like the Americans came you’re dead anyway.

“So he just gambled and felt that the Americans would not be would not be stupid enough to invade Iraq because if you invaded Iraq you would empower Iran. You would make Iran the hegemon or the main power in the Middle East. And why and why would the Americans want to do that? Okay. So clearly Saddam Hussein was wrong.”

“There’s a very good reason why there’s no footage coming out of Israel. The reason why is Israel was completely humiliated in a 12-day war. Remember Israel really thought that it would take them like a few days to destroy Iran because their entire strategy was decapitation, right? So they went in to kill the top leadership of the Iranians and, for the first few days, it was really impressive. They were killing these scientists, these generals, these officials, these clerics in their homes. And so that showed you the extent of the Mossad network in Iran. That show you the extent of the advancement of Israeli weaponry and it also showed you that Israel had complete dominance over the skies.

“And this happened because of the fall of Syria, right? So, after Syria fell to ISIS, this created this air corridor where now the Israelis can just fly uncontested directly to Iran. Before, Syria was the early air defense warning system for the Iranians. That’s why they had invested so much in protecting the Assad regime. So, in the first few days, it seemed as though Israel was on the brink of destroying Iran once and for all, but the Iranians prove much more resilient than anyone could imagine. And the Iranians started to fire back at the Israelis and the Israelis were actually suffering a lot of damage, especially in Tel Aviv.

“And the images coming out of Israel were shocking and actually humiliating. And so, the Israelis basically begged the Americans to come in and save them from losing to Iran. And that’s why Trump and the Iranians sort of orchestrated or coordinated or choreographed this conflict, right? You know, where one or two B2 bombers went in and blew up an empty mountain and then the Iranians struck back and attacked an empty US base in Qatar and that was it. Okay?

“And that was the end of 12-day war. And then, if you remember, Netanyahu went to talk to Putin, okay, and asked Putin to do him a favor and talk to Iranians and said, “Listen, Trump says that we’ve taken out your nuclear weapons program, your uranium-enrichment program, and that’s good enough for us. So I promise you, Iran, that we, the Israelis, will not provoke another conflict. There will be peace between us.” And Putin delivered that message that that was widely reported at that time.

“And we really thought that at the end of the 12-day war, we would have peace in the Middle East because Iranians have demonstrated to everyone that they will fight back and they can fight back and Israel doesn’t have the capacity to actually destroy the regime, the government in Iran.

“Unfortunately, that’s clearly not what they believe. And so, what I think they understood is, you know what, we still want to destroy the government in Iran, because that’s part of the great Israel project but, in the future, we’ll just censor media, we’ll just disguise the fact that we’re getting destroyed by the Iranians. And that’s what’s led to this blockade of information from Israel.

“You’re absolutely right in that there’s a lot of destruction. There should be a lot of destruction in Tel Aviv and other places, because we sort of see the missile barges of the Iranians and they’re quite impressive. But they really think that, if we just hide the fact that we’re getting destroyed, then people will think that we’re still invincible. Okay.

“So that’s a response to the loss of the 12-day war. There’s really is, like, ‘we just won’t admit we’re we’re being defeated.‘ But, I mean, right now, Israel does not have the capacity to continue this war for much longer. It needs America to send in ground troops. and that’s the situation we find ourselves in.”

“Go back to Russia-Ukraine war. I still don’t understand why this war is still going on. Russia won this war about two years ago. The Ukrainians have lost about a million fighting-age men. Now they are dragging elderly men, kidnapping them and putting them on the battlefield. A third of the country has already fled Ukraine. I don’t understand why this war is still going on.

“So, from a geopolitical perspective, from a historical perspective, from a military perspective, what’s going in Ukraine doesn’t really make any sense to me. Why hasn’t Ukraine just surrendered and negotiated terms? All right, Putin doesn’t even want all of Ukraine. He just wants what is traditionally Russian, okay, which which includes the Donbass up to the the Dniper River and then he might want Odessa as well. But, you know, who cares? You’ve lost the war. Uh, just give it to him and let’s just have peace, right? Why are you still fighting?

“In fact, the Europeans are saying, you know, like we’re going to draft man, like Germany, Romania, they’re like passing laws to draft man into military service. I think that the Europeans are planning by 2029 to enter the war fully in Ukraine. And you’re like, well, this makes no sense at all. Why are you doing this? What’s the point? The war is lost. Why are you sending young men to die in Ukraine? And no one even knows why they would want to do this as well. Remember, Russia has nuclear weapons. You don’t want to poke their bear too much because then you might end up destroying the world.

“So the traditional understanding of how wars are fought, why they’re fought, I don’t think you can use them anymore. Okay? I think we’re living in a very special time. And the framework that I think you have to use is eschatological, religious. They’re doing this not to win wars, to control resources, to obtain oil, to control trade routes. They’re doing this for religious purposes, to achieve a certain world that they believe will reflect the divine will of God.”

“These people are insane. They’re crazy. This entire thing is crazy. Take whatever you believe about the world and throw it out the window. Okay? Just do that and then you might understand what’s going on. You might understand what’s going on. But if you insist on reading history and say, “Well, you know, in 1979 the shah was overthrown and the Americans are pissed about that.” You’re not getting anywhere here.”

“Today, okay, we live in the law of the jungle. Who is strong wins. Who is weak dies. Who is strong are those who are willing to fight for what they believe in. If you are willing to commit military power, you matter in this world. If you are not willing to commit military power, you don’t matter in the world. It’s that simple.

“Forget BRICS. It doesn’t matter. Forget this like, you know, Shanghai/Gold corridor. Forget about, you know, this unit currency. Forget about trade. None of this matters anymore.

“We are now in a new world where it’s a lot of the jungle. Might makes right. If you’re willing to die for what you believe in, if you’re willing to send troops to fight for what you believe in, then you matter. If you are not willing to do so, then you’ll just sit back and be destroyed one by one. It’s that simple. Yeah.”

“Because, again, you have these assumptions about how the world works and how power is controlled. You need population; no, you don’t. Nowadays ,with AI, with technology, what you can do is this. You can import labor—and I’m saying after this war is over When millions are dead and the Gulf states are destroyed, mean you have a lot of loss of life in Iran as well, and in Israel as well.

“And Israel is trying to be the global empire, so it needs labor. As you point out, right? So what do you do? Well, you import the labor from India, from China, and from the Philippines, and what do you do? You microchip them, right? So that you can surveil them, you can control their emotions. You feed them drugs. They’re your slaves. You have like millions and millions, 100 million of these people who will be the humanoid robots of your empire. And it can all be done with current technology.

“You don’t have to actually build new technology to do this, but you will need an AI surveillance state. And that’s why Palantir is so valuable, right? Because the idea is for these companies, these AI companies are now are now being incubated in the United States, Palantir specifically, to come over to Pax Judaica to come over to Israel and run the surveillance state. That is the plan.”

“It’s all about the willingness of your population to fight wars and to die for what they believe in. And there are exactly four nations in Southeast Asia that have have a history of dying for what they believe in. Okay, this includes Japan, South Korea, North Korea and Vietnam. The war for Southeast Asia will be between these four nations.”

“Russia is clearly winning the war in Ukraine and Russia will become a dominant power in Europe, which will force the rise of Germany as a response to Russia. So, what’s going to happen is that the American Empire is going to finance and support the rise of Germany as a counterweight to Russia.

“But I think that even though they may fight some wars, I think in the long term what will happen is a grand alliance between Germany and Russia. And that is the new power in the world. I think a grand alliance between Germany and Russia will be unstoppable. In Southeast Asia, the new power will be Japan. So these are the three major powers in the world, a German/Russian alliance Israel in the Middle East and then Japan in East Asia.

“America will emerge in the Western Hemisphere, because they have no competitors. But we can expect that America will have a lot of issues. It’ll have civil wars. It will have to defend its territories in South America in the Caribbean against guerilla insurgents who want their sovereignty. But the world is heading towards a new place, a brave new world. We’ve never seen it before. It’ll be complete chaos.

“And quite honestly, the goal is to kill as many people as possible because because the world can’t sustain eight billion people. So you’re trying to create as many conflicts as possible to reduce a population so that the population will be easier to govern to create compliance.”

“Look, your understanding of the world is limited. You think the United States actually matters. You think the United States went into Afghanistan, went to Iraq to win the war, to control these places. But Julian Assange, he said something really important. What he told was this. The point is not to have successful wars. The point is have never-ending wars.

“So that a military-industrial complex this transnational security system can steal from the American taxpayer. So what you need to understand is this America—this nation state—it’s just a host. What matters is the parasite. What matters are the secret societies, these transnational capital groups that’s who controls the world. And these were ones behind every everything. All right? China and Israel and the United States and they choreograph these wars in order to extract as much wealth as possible from their nation-state host before the nation state collapses. All right, that’s what’s happening. These parasites intend for America to lose its war in Iran so that they can collapse the entire American economy and drive millions and millions into abject poverty where they will own nothing and be happy.”

“What I mean to say. 80% American people do not want this war in Iran. 80% of the American people are like we don’t want this war. Most people are against this war even though traditionally once a nation enters a war the public is very supportive of the military but the American people are not supportive at all of this war. Then there’s talk of ground troops. America and the American public again do not want ground troops in in Iran. Guess what? Doesn’t matter. No one cares. No one cares what the American public wants. About 99% of Americans say, you know, we don’t want this war. They’re still going to fight this war. So clearly, America is not a democracy. All right?”

“The United States will invade Iran and the Iranians will destroy the American invasion force, but what I’m saying is that’s what they want you to focus on. That’s what they want you to think about. And I’m saying none of this actually matters.

“What really matters is for us to understand who is actually behind the curtain pulling these strings. Okay, someone is doing this. It’s probably not Trump because, I mean, it’s not Trump who’s doing this. It’s other people who are doing this.

“So first question is, like, who is actually doing all this and how are they actually able to pull this off and this is actually something that we need to truly understand. That’s the war we need to fight.

“This is not a war about between United States and Iran that doesn’t really matter in the end. It’s really about a war of self-knowledge. Do each of us have the will, have the courage to seek the truth out even though the truth can shatter our very sense of reality?

“So, let me end with this with this note. Let me tell you what you what we need to do if we are to win this war individually. Plato’s allegory of the cave. Plato’s allegorical cave is this. Everyone is chained to the floor. All right, you’re shackled to the floor. You can’t move. Even your head, you can’t move because of a chain. You can only stare ahead. You’re staring at an empty wall. Behind you is a fire. Behind you is this fire.

“And then there are certain people, the elite, the true power in the world. They put up these puppets that the fire then reflects as shadows onto the wall. And then what we do is we look at the wall and we create our own reality. We give them, we create a language. We make up stories about these shadows on the wall. And that’s the reality that we live in today, where we think it’s all real, but it’s all an illusion. And the people behind the fire pulling the strings. They’re the real power.

“The United States, Russia, China, this war between United States and Iran. That’s all an illusion meant to distract you from trying to turn around and figure out what’s really going on behind the scenes. And that is a challenge for us as human beings, to not be lied into this conflict before us, to think that it really matters who wins, the United States or Iran. It doesn’t really matter.

“It doesn’t really matter if Israel becomes empire or not. It doesn’t really matter. It matters if BRICS is successful or not. It doesn’t matter. None of this matters. What matters is our understanding of the world. What matters is our desire, our courage to seek the truth no matter how painful the truth is. That’s what matters.”

Well, it matter to the people in those countries, my dude.

This entire interview is fascinating: densely packed with ideas and information and solid analysis. He’s not afraid to consider very high-level drivers and implications. Toward the end, he extended far beyond what I’m willing to commit to, but it was intriguing. I agree that we need to do that high-level analysis but we also happen to live in the real world, with real people, who are getting hurt and killed. I suppose Jiang would say that, as long as we keep ignoring the real “man behind the curtain,” we’ll never figure out how to get him to stop killing us for profit. He’s got a strong point.

Iran War 6-7: When They Enter Vertically And Leave Horizontally by Indrajit Samarajiva (Indica)

Red alerts in Israel

Citing from a message from the Iranian military to the Israeli people, delivered in Hebrew. The message lands just as well for U.S. citizens.

“The triangle of military-industrial contractors, your generals and military personnel, and politicians only use you as a human shield. The spiral of silence formed is the result of a financial oligarchy, arms manufacturers, media, and journalists who have molded your minds so that you do not realize the fall and decline of the occupying regime. Where are your politicians, statesmen, military, key elements, and security institutions during the days when you are under fire and it has become difficult for you to distinguish day from night?”

I can corroborate anecdotally from having chatted with an Israeli coworker (who lives and works just north of all of those alerts). He said that they are going to the shelter four or five times per day and that it’s nearly impossible to work or do anything. The article linked above shows a lot of tweets translated from Hebrew that complain of the same thing. After less than a week, their patience is wearing thin, and Israel is taking damage, both physically and psychologically. Iran is getting it worse but they seem to have a longer fuse.

“[…] this infrastructure is never getting replaced. America can’t rebuild a bridge in Baltimore, there’s no way they’re building complicated radars in Bahrain.”

The incentive is higher to build the radar, to be honest. I wouldn’t rule it out. However, logistics rears its ugly head. The article cites Foreign Policy magazine,

“Beyond the sheer volume of munitions, the loss of high-value assets introduces another layer of complexity. The destruction of two advanced U.S. radars, the AN/FPS-132 in Qatar and the AN/TPS-59 in Bahrain, highlights a problem where the total weight of the “mineral bill” is less of a concern than the extreme fragility of the supply chain and the extensive timelines for replacement.

“Per our analysis, for the AN/FPS-132, it will take five to eight years for Raytheon to build a new radar at a cost of $1.1 billion. Meanwhile, Lockheed Martin will require at least 12 to 24 months and an estimated $50 million to $75 million to replace the AN/TPS-59M, based on the original Bahrain Foreign Military Sales contract adjusted for inflation. The biggest issue for the defense industrial base will be sourcing the 77.3 kilograms of gallium needed for both systems, a material for which China controls 98 percent of the global supply. This is not to mention the 30,610 kilograms of copper that will also be needed, a commodity facing surging demand from the technology sector.”

“America is a blinded cyclops, throwing rocks wildly. Meanwhile Iran is at the end of an arduous odyssey they have been on for decades, and have been hyping up for centuries. Forget the moral plane, as Americans have, on a morale level, the Americans are lame. They don’t even acknowledge their dead, they’re that ashamed. You can’t fight like that. You have to believe in something, or die for nothing.

“In another episode of Every Accusation Is A Confession, America has been making a big fuss about Iran running out of missiles. But Iran’s missiles are cheap and homemade, while America’s are expensive and rely on a Chinese supply chain. Iran is fighting a war on its own land with open supply lines to Russia and China. America has to airlift its ammunition in, and is fighting other wars simultaneously. We’re really witnessing a fire sale of the military-industrial complex. They’re going out of business. Just look at American procurement for FY24. They ordered 34 Tomahawk missiles total. This is a joke. A killing joke yes, but the joke’s on them in the end. They started two shooting wars in Asia and have nothing left to shoot off but their mouths, in the end.”

U.S. military strikes

“Pete Hegseth said they were switching to ‘gravity bombs’ which scared my wife for a minute until I told her that’s just a fancy way of saying dumb bombs that can only fall down. To drop those, they have expose their vintage bomber collection, which they’re scared to do. They’re still hovering at the border and lobbing stand-off missiles, which they’ve run out of […]”

“It’s important to understand that getting these planes up, keeping them running, and refuelling them in the air (because your bases on fire) is incredibly complicated. Meanwhile some Iranian just pulls up in a truck and pushes a button.”

Iran is fighting at home. The U.S. empire is extended very, very far.

tanislav Krapivnik: Iran STRIKES Again! US “Eye” Destroyed as Missiles OBLITERATE Israel & Gulf by Dialogue Works | Nima R. Alkhorshid (YouTube)

He mentions that, along with attacks on oil refineries—which are ad-hoc chemical warfare—Israel (probably) is now attacking desalinization plants, which is a war crime. It’s civilian infrastructure. There will be retaliation until no-one has desalinization plants. Those that have alternatives will limp on. Those without will complete die off.

“Israel as a territory is going to be dead. It’s going to be destroyed. It’s going to be economically dead. It’s already basically economically very, very damaged.

“And I want to congratulate the American tax peasant because you are going to be rebuilding all of Israel. Not your schools are going to get rebuilt. Your infrastructure get built. You don’t deserve it. You are a peasant and a surf for the betters. And your betters demand that you rebuild their country after they start a war that your sons and daughters are going to get to die in. Congratulations. You’re you’re lucky to be chosen by the chosen to rebuild the chosen. but you know, I guess if Americans don’t mind, they don’t mind. their own 40% of eighth graders can’t read in America. their literature rates insane. but hey, somebody else gets free healthcare and you don’t, you’re going to get to rebuild their country. But they can continue. They can continue for quite a while.”

This entire interview is absolutely worth the one hour (I listened at 1.5x speed because they both speak very clearly).

System Overloaded: Why Missiles Are Breaking Through U.S. Air Defense − Krapivnik and Diesen by Stanislav Krapivnik (YouTube)

“Of course, Russia’s giving information. It’ be insane not to give information.

“Iran is not going to fall. Iran will not fall. If Iran falls, the caucuses fall, Central Asia falls, and a lot of other things fall. US is not going to get its grubby hands on Iran. That’s it.

“The US is a genocidal regime. We see what it’s doing. The reason it’s blowing up civilians right now is the same thing the US always does when it runs out of targets. And it’s running out of targets, not because it’s destroyed Iran, Iran’s anti-air systems or anything else. it’s because it can’t find them.

“It did the same thing in Yugoslavia to the Serbs when they couldn’t find the military because the military dissolved into the mountains said, “We’re waiting for you. Come in. come and get us”.

“Oh, okay. Well, then we’ll go blow up women and children because, you know, those don’t run as fast and they don’t hide as well and they can’t shoot back. This is the same typical thing that US is doing right now. It’s committing genocide. It has always committed genocide.”

Krapivnik is a font of information.

Norman Finkelstein: Why the US-Israel Attack on Iran Is NOT Another Iraq War by India & Global Left | Jyotishman (YouTube)

“And the Russians this time were very forthright, saying that the British are rigging the Security Council. No shame. No shame. So you can’t even say what the US did was brazen because brazen implies that the act elicits outrage. But the aggression didn’t elicit outrage. It elicited outrage at Iran for daring to defend itself. It elicited outrage at Iran.

“I agreed with the Russian—look, I’m no great fan of Putin. I’m not a great fan of Russia. I recognize it’s repressiveness and its brutishness—but the guy, the Russian, he said it’s like the G3, the UK, Britain, and Germany. He said it’s like they live in a parallel universe. He said it was like through the looking-glass.

“Do you understand what just happened? The most brazen, outrageous, flagrant breach of article 2 of the UN—of the UN charter—and they’re blaming Iran. They’re blaming Iran. What did Iran do? It’s like nobody has even read the non-proliferation treaty. Article 4 says, of course, it says every country has the right to develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. What was Iran doing in violation of that? Where’s the evidence that Iran violated article 4?

“You know who’s violated the NPT for a half century? Do you know who has violated for a half century? The US, the UK, France, China, and Russia. Because there was a quid pro quo in that non-proliferation treaty. The quid pro quo was that the signatories who were non-nuclear powers would give up their right to develop nuclear weapons in exchange for peaceful development. But there was another article—article 6—article 6 says that the nuclear powers have to engage in serious negotiations to eliminate their nuclear weapons.

“It never said that those who have nuclear weapons have a right to keep them. That’s not what the NPT said. It was to be the complete elimination of nuclear weapons for a very simple reason, which is stated in a preamble to the NPT the non-proliferation treaty. The preamble says that the use of nuclear weapons can cause untold devastation, the end of humankind. So if that’s their potential, of course you have to get rid of them. The NPT never said you get to keep them.x

“Everyone’s saying we have to make sure we have to make sure Iran can never have nuclear weapons. Really? First of all, folks, who just committed the genocide in Gaza? Was it Iran or was it Israel? Second, why do we have to make sure that Iran doesn’t have nuclear weapons, but we don’t have to make sure that Israel doesn’t have nuclear weapons? Why is that? That psychotic, lunatic regime, state, society. The whole place is completely bonkers. So that I have to say that I don’t understand. I’m listening to this Danish representative. Are you crazy? Do you not see what just happened? The degree of sheer moral cowardice.”

Israel’s Descent Into Madness: MJ Rosenberg on Gideon Levy’s Warning by ScheerPost Staff (ScheerPost)

“Rosenberg argues that the crisis now gripping Israel is not simply a matter of extremist leadership but of a society that has embraced war, vengeance, and ultranationalism as a collective identity.

“Drawing on Levy’s searing assessment—“Everyone in This Country Has Gone Insane”—Rosenberg contrasts Israel’s near‑total consensus for war with the fractured, contested politics of the United States, even under Trump. However bleak America feels, he writes, it is not a country where 93 percent of the population cheers on endless conflict. Israel, by contrast, offers almost no internal opposition, no meaningful dissent, and no political force capable of slowing the march toward catastrophe.”

From the article Ha’aretz on Israel: “A Country Gone Insane” by MJ Rosenberg | Gideon Levy (US Politics, Israel-Palestine, and AIPAC's Awful Power), which heavily cited from the article Everyone in This Country Has Gone Insane by Gideon Levy (ZNetwork) cited below,

“[…] barrages of brainwashing the likes of which have never been seen here before. That’s how it is after two and a half years without real journalism, without even minimal coverage of the war in Gaza.

“Try to find even a single voice of reason, someone with something to say, who actually knows something… Everyone is so gleeful…The orgy of assassinations is in full swing, every hit a cause for celebration.

“In journalist Sharon Gal‘s studio, the party is in full swing: Israeli arms sales will reach new heights, and everyone is buzzing in delight. “Assembly lines all over India. … We took India. … We need 1.4 billion Indians to manufacture for us.” What a promising, new world this war will open for us. Now it isn’t only about the redemption of the land but about money, lots of money.

“The incitement knows no bounds. A protester passing a TV broadcaster at breakneck speed is a national scandal that requires severe punishment. A settler who kills two farmers elicits nothing but a yawn. A tiny European donation to a human rights organization is depicted as foreign interference in state affairs. An attempt to overthrow a regime in a foreign country by bombing it is a legitimate democratic move. How far will we go?

“Any desperate attempt to hear even one intelligent voice is doomed to failure. While intelligent discussions about the war are taking place on foreign networks, here only stupidity and ignorance speak. While there, they are telling what is really happening in Iran and Lebanon; here, they are reporting from a wedding in a parking lot – unending nonsense is the main point, without substantive discussion. This is how the stupidity of the masses spreads like a radioactive cloud, destroying everything in its path.”

Scott Ritter: The U.S. Has Lost and Is Trapped in the Iran War With No Way Out by Dialogue Works | Nima R. Alkhorshid (YouTube)

Ritter provides a wealth of military information. He discusses how planning occurs, or how it should occur. But it doesn’t. The U.S. and Israel aren’t doing their homework, and they don’t respect Iran’s cleverness and planning. They are blowing up decoys, just as they did in Yugoslavia. Te U.S. is dancing about their missile strikes but most of the stuff they’re hitting isn’t what they think it is—because they didn’t do their research, and they don’t respect the possibility that Iran might know what they’re doing. The U.S. and Israel is used to bombing defenseless enemies from above.

He says also that the Iranians are holding back on killing soldiers. They are hitting military infrastructure as precisely as they can. They aren’t killing U.S. or Israeli soldiers or citizens, not versus what they could be doing. They’re all holed up in known locations and could be supersonic-ed to death. They’re holding back even though there are so many reasons to lash out: the schools, the Ayatollah, etc.

If Iran sticks to their goal as it appears to be now—making Israelis miserable but not dead—they will leave on their own. The Israelis are wealthy and can leave if there’s no water, fuel, or infrastructure. Since Israel and the U.S. opened up the shelling of infrastructure like desalinization plants, Iran might take out some of the same in Israel, where they depend on desalinization for water much, much more. Enough Israelis will leave on their own to collapse things there. The ones I’ve talked to are sick to death of war.

MIT Prof. Ted Postol: Iranian Missiles vs Israeli Air Defense: Who Would Actually Win? by Dialogue Works | Nima R. Alkhorshid (YouTube)

“ in this case it was very significant and because I have a lot of background knowledge as I’m sure is evident from this discussion uh I immediately realized that the whole the whole fraud the fraud that they’re going to be intercepting missiles independent of whether or not they run out of interceptors is now exposed. There’s no way this can they can be operating a missile defense system now. None. You know, they just don’t have it.

“So, um, so right now, uh, uh, they can launch interceptors, but they they really have almost no ability to acquire targets at long enough range to, uh, to be able to operate the THAD or the C-based systems, both of which were not functioning because all you have to do, we did not have, we do not have evidence of the performance of the fad. and the Arrow and the SM3 because they’re operating at high altitudes and we don’t have we just don’t have enough video of of of those high altitude engagements. You know, you’d have to be in Jordan looking I mean I found some videos from Jordan. There’s just not enough data.

“So, so when people ask me about how well they’re performing, I say I’m pretty sure they’re not performing because I’ve done a lot of work on these systems, but I can’t tell you I have data for that. But we do have data for that when you think about it because when you look at what we do see which is at the lower altitude systems where where we have basically only THAD sorry we don’t have that where we only have Patriot and Iron Dome. We see them being overwhelmed by missiles coming in. If the upper tier were working at all they wouldn’t be so overwhelmed.”

“ the system is no longer able to uh see to to to see these um incoming warheads uh and track them. And as a result, not only can it not launch interceptors, which could be important if if in fact the intercept rate was high, but the intercept rate has been near zero anyway. So it it that hasn’t changed the intercept, but it has changed the early warning situation because the radars if you’re in Tel Aviv and the and the attack is coming into Tel Aviv, not Haifa, I can alert Tel Aviv and so people can take shelter. I don’t want to alert Haifa and Beer Shiva and these other places because I don’t want people to, you know, to be disrupted by these uh these alerts and not have the attack come in.

“So, so I’ve lost my ability to localize where the attack is coming. I can tell an attack is coming because I can see the launch with my satellites, but I can’t track the systems. So let me just um uh quickly uh show you what we have in space because that’s working. So we still but the space-based system which has fantastic capabilities that are great that are remember knowing something is always better than knowing nothing.

“So the system is very limited but very capable in giving you some information and we can tell if there is a missile launched in Iran we can see it. In fact we can probably see the exhaust plumes uh from the drones when they are launched. We would see it with the satellite because the satellite’s so capable. We because the each of the drones have little rocket motors underneath them when they first launch even though just to get them up to speed and we can see those.

“We have no track information of any kind. It’s like someone lighting uh you know it’s a dark night and someone lights a cigarette in a moonless night and you see from a few kilometers away that there’s a little bit of light and then it snuffs out. You don’t if they’re coming at you, you don’t know what path they’re going to take or you don’t even know if they’re coming at you or going somewhere else. So it it it it tells you there’s something out there and something happened but you know doesn’t help you.

“Now, in the case of Israel, they see they can tell what kind of missile they’re seeing because the launch, the rocket um emits a certain amount of power. It has uh it has a flight path. So, it’s it’s bending over the plume. The plume is a certain length and as the plume of the rocket uh you’re looking from space you see more and more of the plume geometrically you can see a profile a change in the profile of the brightness. So it’s oh that’s an alpha tau oh that’s you know something else and so on. So you can tell but it doesn’t you know it’s of some use but you don’t know really where it’s going. You don’t know if it’s going to land in Haifa or Tel Aviv.”

We Are The Villains In This Story by Caitlin Johnstone (Substack)

“Daniel Crimmins from the US Army 3rd Infantry Division wrote the following about the Iraq War in 2015:”

“Then you realize you haven’t seen anything to support the idea that these poor fuckers are a threat to your home. You look around and you see all the contractors making six figure salaries to fix your shit, train Iraqis, maintain the ridiculous SUVs the KBR dicks ride around in. You consider the fact that every 25mm shell costs about forty bucks, and your company has been handing those fuckers out like shrapnel flavored parade candies. You think about all the fuel you’re going through, all the ammo and missiles and grenades. You think about every time you lose a vehicle, the Army buys a new one. Maybe you start to see a lot of people making a lot of money on huge amounts of human suffering.

““Then you go on leave, and realize that Ayn Rand has no idea what the fuck she’s talking about. You realize that Fox News and Limbaugh and John McCain don’t respect you or your buddies. They don’t give a fuck if you get a parade or a box when you get home, you’re nothing to them but a prop.

““Then you get out, and you hate the news. You hate the apathy, and you hate the murder being carried out in your name. You grew up wanting so bad to be Luke Skywalker, but you realize that you were basically a Stormtrooper, a faceless, nameless rifleman, carrying a spear for empire, and you start to accept the startlingly obvious truth that these are people like you.”

“One of the most stunting liberal beliefs you have to uproot is that the United States bumbles its way into the horrors it creates rather than facing the fact that they are calculated decisions on behalf of capital. It’s not short-sightedness or miscalculation, it’s empire.”

‘Iran Is Not Gaza’: Read Arundhati Roy’s Scathing Speech on the US-Israeli War by Arundhati Roy (ZNetwork)

“Iran is standing up to them, while India cowers. I am ashamed of how gutless, how spineless our government has been. Long ago, we were a poor country of very poor people. But we had pride. We had dignity. Today, we are a rich country with very poor, unemployed people who are fed on a diet of hatred, poison, and falsehoods instead of real food. We have lost pride. We have lost dignity. We have lost courage. Except in our movies.”

We have lost principles. Or we never had them.

Ramadan War: Falling Planes by Indrajit Samarajiva (Indica)

“America has already retreated from all of its bases in the Persian Gulf and is repeating from the Arabian ones as well. This is turning into a rout, however you want to spin it. America is trying to spin this as all own goals because their racism won’t let them admit it, but they do realize that’s worse, isn’t it?”

“Iran has completely blown up American bases in Bahrain, UAE, Qatar, and Iraq. They are just now finishing the job in Saudi Arabia and Jordan. Then there’s nothing left but ‘Israel’, where they seem to be using the civilian airport, and Cyprus, both of which will get their turn. In the end, it doesn’t matter how many planes the Empire has if they have no place to land them.

“America is trying to get around this problem in two ways. With aircraft carriers and refuelling planes. But Iran has an anti-access plans for these as well.

“With aircraft carriers Iran could just wait, these crews are already over-extended and their ships undermaintained, and they have to refill VLS (vertical launch missiles) in friendly ports, of which none are nearby available. But Iran is not just waiting, they are harrying these carriers until they go further (and less usefully) away.

“With refuelling planes you can extend the flight range of fighter planes, but these refuelers are not stealthy and are big, fat flammable targets. America thought they were avoiding this by flying high (above MANPAD range) but since Iran and if wider resistance has loitering drones (358/359), that all changes.

“Furthermore, both of these workarounds are workaround and do not compare to having land in any meaningful way. Aircraft carriers and refuelers are incredibly expensive, are fat targets in themselves, and will simply break down if used in this way.”

“Iran has good enough Area-Denial over Iran, and now a surprising (not to them) Anti-Access shield over Iraq. Without access through Iraq, occupied bases in Cyprus or even Romania are useless. And their Saudi/Jordan bases are too close and already going up in smoke. America does not actually have its own bases in ‘Israel’, and they have their own problems.

“Where does America go on this map? They have to go off the map, to Diego Garcia, which is still in range of Yemen and probably Iran. Or retreat to Europe which stretches their refuelling to the limit. The one wild-card they have left is the mutual defense pact between Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, but that’s World War III even for them, with wildly unpredictable results. What’s even happening here? This is not a retreat, it’s a rout.”

Andrei Martyanov: It’s OVER: Iran Just EXPOSED the Weakness of US-Israel Air Defense by Dialogue Works | Nima R. Alkhorshid (YouTube)

“You cannot explain to moron that he is moron because he is moron.”

“You look at Dubai, it’s western made. It’s basically built by primarily western engineers and slaves from Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan, you know. So I have no actually sympathy for them. It is what it is. It was all of a fake plastic, you know? World created with this model which is unsustainable of the prestigious what’s the name of it tourism and investment with all kinds of garbage like those you know palm the jumera whatever the name of this thing. Only morons would buy things there, I mean, but yeah, when you have money it doesn’t mean that you’re smart. Very many of those people are dumb as stumps so and they go for prestige for this overpriced junk they sell in their shopping malls and drive Lamborghinis. Whatever. It’s just all garbage.”

Journalism & Media

The web is bearable with RSS by Cory Doctorow (Pluralistic)

“[…] much of the web (including some of the cruftiest, most enshittified websites) publish full-text RSS feeds, meaning that you can read their articles right there in your RSS reader, with no ads, no popups, no nag-screens asking you to sign up for a newsletter, verify your age, or submit to their terms of service.

“It’s almost impossible to overstate how superior RSS is to the median web page. Imagine if the newsletters you followed were rendered with black, clear type on a plain white background (rather than the sadistically infinitesimal, greyed-out type that designers favor thanks to the unkillable urban legend that black type on a white screen causes eye-strain). Imagine reading the web without popups, without ads, without nag screens. Imagine reading the web without interruptors or “keep reading” links.

“Now, not every website publishes a fulltext feed. Often, you will just get a teaser, and if you want to read the whole article, you have to click through.”

“Firefox has a built-in “Reader View” that re-renders the contents of a web-page as black type on a white background. Firefox does some kind of mysterious calculation to determine whether a page can be displayed in Reader View, but you can override this with the Activate Reader View, which adds a Reader View toggle for every page.”

Opera and Safari also have a reader view, built right in. Just toggle it to disappear everything but the article you’re reading. Magic.

Labor

An Existential Threat to Organized Labor’s Ability to Help People by Hamilton Nolan (How Things Work)

“[…] Mercor, one of several companies in the business of hiring economically desperate professionals—not just lawyers and scientists, but screenwriters, designers, PhD’s, and experts in a wide variety of academic and professional fields—to train AI models to become better in their areas of expertise. Major AI firms hire Mercor to improve their models. Mercor recruits the appropriate pool of expert works, all as contractors, all working remotely, and then, with no predictable schedule, tosses them batches of work, which they all compete to finish as quickly as possible. Workers do not know the end client. Workers are monitored by software that tracks their actions scrupulously the entire time. Workers can be deactivated and cut off from their supply of work for any reason at all. Workers describe a process of the company cutting rates for the same tasks over time—from $30 an hour, for example, down to $16 an hour. Mercor’s 22 year-old founders became billionaires last year.”

• No worksite. Remote workers are hard to organize.
• No full time employees. Independent contractors cannot legally unionize.
• Workers are in competition with one another for piecework, rather than cooperating on tasks. The nature of the job encourages workers to see one another as threats, not as peers with whom to foster solidarity.
• Total technological control of the work process by the company. Absolute monitoring of tasks, absolute lack of transparency by workers into the company’s operations and what their coworkers are doing, and absolute ability of the company to fire workers at will.
• The success of the company contributes to the economic precarity of its own workforce. These workers, already unable to find jobs that can support them after years of training, are employed to improve the AI models that will automate their own industries. The better Mercor’s workers do their work there, the fewer good jobs for humans there will be in their own fields.

“The speed at which the AI industry is moving relative to the federal government means it is pretty unrealistic to expect any of us to be saved by the law any time soon. This is very bad—even for the lucky slice of workers who are members of strong unions today. A guillotine is being constructed, by our own desperate peers, that will be capable of rendering today’s version of organized labor more or less obsolete, at least in many of today’s industries that host strong unions. We are heading to a place where not only are workers exploited, but organized labor as it is currently constituted has no moves to make to help them. I confess I don’t have the answer here. But we had better get our fucking thinking caps on, fast.”

Economy & Finance

The Whole Economy Pays the Amazon Tax by Cory Doctorow (ZNetwork)

“[…] everyone who isn’t in that top 10% is pretty goddamned broke. It’s not just decades of wage stagnation and hyperinflation in health, housing and education costs. It’s also that every economic crisis of this century has resulted in a “K-shaped” recovery, in which “economic recovery” means that rich people are doing fine, while everyone else is worse off than they were before the crisis. For decades, America papered over the K-shaped hole in its economy with debt. First it was credit cards. Then it was gimmicky mortgages – home equity lines of credit, second mortgages and reverse mortgages. Then it was payday lenders. Then it was “buy-now/pay-later” services that let you buy lunch at Chipotle on an installment plan that is nominally interest-free, but is designed to trap the unwary and unlucky with massive penalties if you miss a single payment. This produced a median American who isn’t just cash-poor – they are cash-negative, drowning in debt.”

“The average American worker has $955 saved for retirement:”

“[…] sellers have to sell on Amazon, and that means they’re losing $0.50-$0.60 on every dollar. The obvious way to handle this is by raising prices. But Amazon knows that its power comes from offering buyers prices that are as low or lower than the prices at all its competitors. Amazon could ban its sellers from raising prices, but if they did that, they’d have to accept a smaller share of every sale (otherwise most of their sellers would go broke from selling at a loss on Amazon). So instead, Amazon imposes a business practice called “most favored nation” (MFN) pricing on its sellers. Under an MFN arrangement, sellers are allowed to raise their prices on Amazon, but when they do, they must raise their prices everywhere else, too: at Walmart, at Target, at mom and pop indie stores, and at their own factory outlet store. Remember: Amazon doesn’t have to have low prices to win, it just needs to have the same prices as everyone else. So long as prices rise throughout the economy, Amazon is fine, and it can continue to hike its junk fees on sellers, knowing that they will pay those fees by raising prices on Amazon and everywhere else their products are sold.”

Trump’s Crazy Stock Returns Won’t Finance Your Retirement by Dean Baker (CounterPunch)

“While the stock market has historically provided returns that were higher than the economy’s rate of growth, this was possible because the PE in the stock market has averaged around 14 to 1. It is currently close to 40 to 1.

“The simplest way to calculate the real rate of return consistent with a stable PE is to simply take the reciprocal of the PE ratio. When the PE ratio is 14, the sustainable real rate of return is 7.1 percent. Adding in inflation that has averaged close to 3.0 percent gets the 10.0 percent that we can see going back 100 years.

“But with the current PE close to 40, this sort of rate of return is not possible unless the PE gets ever higher. The sustainable real rate of return would be just over 2.5 percent. Adding in projected inflation of 2.3 percent gets us to 4.8 percent, well below the Bessent-Lutnick promise.

“The moral of this story is that just as no one in their right mind would take health advice from RFK Jr., no one in their right mind should take financial advice from the Bessent-Lutnick gang.”

Cracking Down on Corporate Tax Scams by Dean Baker (CounterPunch)

“This reflects a larger problem with designing the tax code. Many corporations have adopted complicated accounting practices, largely to avoid taxes, but sometimes for other dubious purposes. They then demand Congress and/or the I.R.S. adjust tax law to accommodate these practices.

“This is 180 degrees opposite of the way tax law should work. It is the responsibility of companies to accommodate themselves to the law, not the other way around. If there is a provision in the law that really does impede normal business practices, then it should be changed. But it doesn’t make sense to adjust the law to make it easier to avoid taxes or get around other laws.

“Allowing partnerships to get limited liability without paying the corporate income tax is perhaps the most extreme example of this sort of accommodation, but it is a far more general problem. The point of the corporate income tax is to raise revenue from corporations, not to provide a playground for clever tax lawyers and accountants.”

Science & Nature

The one science reform we can all agree on, but we’re too cowardly to do by Adam Mastroianni (Experimental History)

“If you’re lucky again, your paper gets accepted by the journal, which now owns the copyright to your work. They do not pay you for this! If anything, you pay them an “article processing charge” for the privilege of no longer owning the rights to your paper. This is considered a great honor. The journals then paywall your work, sell the access back to you and your colleagues, and pocket the profit.”

“We can satisfy both the scientists and the scalpel-wielding politicians by ridding ourselves of the one constituency that should not exist. Of all the crazy parts of our crazy system, the craziest part is where taxpayers pay for the research, then pay private companies to publish it, and then pay again so scientists can read it. We may not agree on much, but we can all agree on this: it is time, finally and forever, to get rid of for-profit scientific publishers.”

“[…] for-profit scientific publishers arose to solve the problem of producing physical journals. The internet mostly solved that problem. Now the publishers are the problem. These days, Springer Nature, Elsevier, Wiley, and the like are basically giant operations that proofread, format, and store PDFs. That’s not nothing, but it’s pretty close to nothing.”

“In 2023, the federal government estimated it paid nearly $380 million in article processing charges alone, and those are separate from subscriptions. So it wouldn’t be crazy if American universities were paying something like $2.5 billion to publishers every year, with the majority of that ultimately coming from taxpayers.”

“In a punk rock kind of way, it’s kinda cool that so many American scientists can only do their work thanks to a database maintained by a Russia-backed fugitive. But it ought to be a huge embarrassment to the US government.”

“Instead, for some reason, the [U.S.] government insists on siding with publishers against citizens. Sixteen years ago, the US had its own Elbakyan. His name was Aaron Swartz. He downloaded millions of paywalled journal articles using a connection at MIT, possibly intending to share them publicly. Government agents arrested him, charged him with wire fraud, and intended to fine him $1 million and imprison him for 35 years. Instead, he killed himself. He was 26.”

“[…] solution here is straightforward: every government grant should stipulate that the research it supports can’t be published in a for-profit journal. That’s it! If the public paid for it, it shouldn’t be paywalled.”

“Fifteen years ago, the open science movement was all about abolishing for-profit journals—that’s what open science meant. It seemed like every speech would end with “ELSEVIER DELENDA EST”. Now people barely bring it up at all. It’s like a lion has escaped the zoo and it’s gulping down schoolchildren, but when people suggest zoo improvements, all the agenda items are like, “We should add another Dippin’ Dots kiosk”. If you bring up the loose tiger, everyone gets annoyed at you, like “Of course, no one likes the tiger”.”

“If we want better science, we should catch the tiger. Not only because it’s bad for the tiger to be loose, but because it’s bad for us to look the other way. If you allow an outrageous scam to go unchecked, if you participate in it, normalize it—then what won’t you do? Why not also goose your stats a bit? Why not publish some junk research? Look around: no one cares!”

Art, Literature, Music, & Cinema

America's Most Misunderstood Filmmaker by Like Stories of Old (YouTube)

A 1-hour documentary about the oeuvre of Harmony Korine.

00:00 America’s Most Misunderstood Filmmaker [introduction]
02:44 The Young Provocateur [Kids, Gummo, Julien Donkey-Boy]
19:05 A Herzogian Search for Truth [Mister Lonely, Trash Humpers]
32:51 Liquid Narratives [Spring Breakers, The Beach Bum]
48:10 A Sensory Post-Cinema [EDGLRD: Aggro Dr1ft, Baby Invasion]

Watching Amazon Prime While The Iranians Burn by Caitlin Johnstone (Substack)

““Hoho this will hurt Trump in the midterms”
the liberal chortles,
masturbating furiously
while ruined parents pull ruined schoolbags
out of ruined schools.
Frolicking on lawns with hamburgers in both fists
doing patchouli tai chi
in clothes made by slaves
as black rain waters gardens
of severed limbs and blown-out eyeballs.

“This is our culture.
This is our religion.
Praying to Pornhub while children scream,
telling ourselves it will all be worth it
when Iranian women can do OnlyFans
to pay for boob jobs and butt lifts
and go to Capitalist Heaven when they die.
Jizzing Taco Bells and bail bonds firms
all over the global south,
our bellies full of the flesh of children,
our veins full of plastic
and our mouths full of Lexapro,
dancing at the ballroom covered in blood and brains,
gyrating to AI-generated music
cranked up to maximum volume
to hide the sounds of the explosions
and the gasps of our dying souls.”

Philosophy, Sociology, & Culture

AI WEIWEI: A CASE OF AN AUTHENTIC ETHICAL STANCE by Slavoj Žižek (ŽIŽEK GOADS AND PRODS)

“In an interview with The Art Newspaper, Weiwei said”

“I did what I should. And that sacrifice is very little compared to all of the lives lost and compared to those children who cannot talk about the future. They don’t even exist. What I did is nothing. I feel I’m a little bit ahead of time. Everybody would say whatever I said was very conservative. It’s not controversial at all.”

“This is a properly ethical stance: not to boast that one did a big controversial daring act, but to insist that “whatever I said was very conservative. It’s not controversial at all.” The true problem is societies which censor such acts.”

“In his new publication On Censorship, Weiwei discusses issues around censorship, saying: “Every society – whether authoritarian or part of the so-called free West – employs different forms of indoctrination to guide behaviour, shaping people’s cognition, capacity for action and modes of thinking.””

Technology & Engineering

The Chinese Computer: Competition or Cooperation? by Victor Mair / David Moser (Language Log)

“Mullaney makes a case that the speed of the new Chinese input methods is due to an increasingly common mode of digital-age writing that he calls “hypography.” Simply put, hypography is “writing-by-retrieval.” That is, the sequence of alphanumeric symbols inputted do not directly represent the output text, and those input symbols are then used to retrieve the intended characters as visible text on the screen. This mode of writing is in contrast to the direct “what-you-type-is-what-you-get” principle of inputting alphanumeric symbols on the keyboard.””

Almost no system has what-you-type-is-what-you-get: most editors have auto-ligatures (at least on the Mac), UNICODE is handled correctly, etc.

“I invite the same user to switch their computer back to English-language mode and enter the string sicttasdtamlamt. Did your machine catch this comparably famous passage by Shakespeare? Chances are slim.”

Well yeah because you wouldn’t do it like that in English. try “compare thee” in any search engine you’ll get the phrase you’re looking for.

“Mullaney points out that the Wang Wei poem is quite well-known poem and thus has already been encoded into the Cloud. If one were to choose a more obscure poem, it might not have been uploaded into the Cloud, and the user would have no recourse other than straightforward pinyin entry.”

Machine guesses things it knows. Not good at things it doesn’t know. News at 11.

“Huang made use of Wubi (五笔), a structure-based entry method that was popular in the 1980s and 90s. As fast as the method is, mastering the Wubi system constitutes a very steep barrier for the vast majority of Chinese people, who have already learned Hanyu pinyin in grade school. While Wubi is still used in certain technical contexts, pinyin entry dominates.”

It’s like nobody uses Colmak or Dvorak or stenography.

“Pinyin was developed on the basis of many compromises, and, as Mullaney stresses, was probably not the best possible system for Chinese character input. (No system could be.) But due to many factors (including the mandate and support of the PRC government), generations of users have become accustomed to this method, and it is permanently entrenched in Chinese online culture. English spelling is famously inconsistent, and for many years there were various plans to systematize the orthography. Then came computers and automatic spell-check, and now users need not grapple with the chaos of English spelling.”

“One of the contributions of Mullaney’s historical narrative is the realization of how early these technical developments were taking place, and to what extent Chinese computer scientists were actively involved. His account is a corrective to the common assumption that computer technology was primarily the fruits of the West.”

“The upshot is that character amnesia is no longer considered a crisis, because the act of writing itself (mutatis mutandis) continues apace in daily life, and with increased speed and efficiency. Thus, counter-intuitively, character amnesia entails no fear of imminent societal collapse because communication via Chinese characters continues as usual – only digitally.”

This attitude forces all non-verbal communication through digital mediation. Every interaction is cataloged and mediated, usually through the cloud. Write something for the person in front of you? Online form, with login. Don’t Underestimate the strength and reach of the shackles you willingly take up. No personal touch on cards, etc. All mediated by the cloud, by AI, by our masters.

“Medical science is on the road to developing brain-to-text systems, or Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCIs), enabling paralyzed individuals to translate mental, heard or spoken language directly from neural activity into text. Perhaps in the future, not only pen and paper will be obsolete, but even computer keyboards will be a quaint artifact of the early 21st century. But whatever technology we will be using, it will be – as ever – the collective product of the ingenuity and dreams of the entire human race.”

Fuck bro. You people are simply not qualified to discuss the impact of technology on society. This is blinkered and subservient thinking. It is so painfully naive.

Are you permanent underclass? by Etymology Nerd (YouTube)

50 years ago, the creator of the most primitive “AI” we can imagine was already impressed by people’s penchant for anthropomorphization and rounding up.

LLMs & AI

The L in “LLM” Stands for Lying by Steven Wittens (Hackery, Math & Design)

“Every society has to draw a line somewhere on the spectrum between “traditional artisanal cheese” and “fake eggs made from industrial chemicals”, if they don’t want people to die from malnutrition or poisoning. But it’s the ones that understand and maintain the value of foodcraft that don’t end up with 70%+ obesity rates.”

“Open source software maintainers have been one of the first to feel the downsides. They already had a ton of difficulty finding motivated contributors and bringing them up to speed on the project’s goals and engineering mindset. The last thing they needed was to receive slop-coded pull requests from contributors merely looking to cheat their way into having a credible GitHub resumé.”

“Being on the receiving end of this is both demeaning and absurd, as the only thing the vibe-coder can do with the feedback you give them is paste it back into the tool that produced the errors in the first place.”

“Experienced veterans who turn to AI are said to supposedly fare better, producing 10x or even 100x the lines of code from before. When I hear this, I wonder what sort of senior software engineer still doesn’t understand that every line of code they run and depend on is a liability.”

“The salient difference here is whether an engineer has mostly spent their career solving problems created by other software, or solving problems people already had before there was any software at all.”

“Consider that many companies still primarily running on Excel. What’s the Excel of JSON? There is none. So yeah, of course users think they need a machine to translate their intent into code so they can run it.

“Even then, what’s the Jupyter notebooks of JSON? There’s jq of course, but keep in mind that originally it was SQL that was framed as the solution that was going to free businesses and their workers from having to rely on dedicated tools. Look how that worked out… the more things change, the more they stay the same. Is there a standard CRDT-like protocol for syncing editable graphs yet?”

“It turns out vibe-coding an Electron app is still preferable to vibe-coding on multiple platforms and delivering a tailored experience for each. So where is this famed 100x? If even Apple can’t maintain proper form and iconography in their latest OS anymore, what chance does an AI trained on web-slop have?”

“AI output should be treated like a forgery unless and until proven otherwise.

“The solution to the LLM conundrum is then as obvious as it is elusive: the only way to separate the gold from the slop is for LLMs to perform correct source attribution along with inference. This wouldn’t just help with the artistic side of things. It would also reveal how much vibe code is merely just copy/pasted from an existing codebase, while conveniently omitting the original author, license and link.”

“The implications of sourcing-as-a-requirement are vast. What does backpropagation even look like if the weights have to be attributable, and the forward pass auditable? You won’t be able to fit that in an int4, that’s for sure.”

No one wants to read your AI slop by Cory Doctorow (Pluralistic)

“Emailing a stranger a blob of unverified AI output is not a form of dialogue – it’s an attempt to coerce a stranger into unpaid labor on your behalf. Strangers are not your “human in the loop” whose expensive time is on offer to painstakingly work through the plausible sentences a chatbot made for you for free.”

Programmers will document for Claude, but not for each other by Mark Dominus (The Universe of Discourse)

“For larger projects, I’ve taken to having Claude maintain a handoff document that I can have the next Claude read, saying what we planned to do, what has been done, and other pertinent information. Then when I shut down one Claude I can have the next one read the file to get up to speed. Then I have the Claude n + 1, update it for Claude n + 2.”

“I’d been throwing away Claude’s handoff documents at the end of each project. Why do that? It’s no trouble to copy the file into the repository and commit it. Someone in the future, wondering what was going on, might luckily find the right document with git grep and learn something useful.

“I’m a little slow so it took me until this week to think of a better version of this: at the end of the project, I now ask Claude to write up from scratch a detailed but high-level explanation of what problem we were solving and what changes we made, and I commit that. Not just running notes, but a structured overview of the whole thing.

“I review these overviews carefully and make edits as necessary before I check them in.”

“Claude’s most recent project summary was around as good as what I could have written myself, maybe a little worse and maybe a little better. But it took ten seconds to write instead of an hour, and it didn’t take anything like an hour to review.”

I am continually stunned by how people keep inventing techniques that amount to “add important documents to version control.”

“Maybe this is obvious?”

Yeah, it should be. I’m really kind of surprised at how many people are cheerfully working in a completely unstructured way. This is neither science nor engineering, but neither is it surprising.

Every minute you aren’t running 69 agents, you are falling behind by George Hotz (the singularity is nearer)

“Social media has been extremely toxic for the last couple months. It’s targeting you with fear and anxiety. If you don’t use this new stupid AI thing you will fall behind. If you haven’t totally updated your workflow you are worth 0. There’s people who built billion dollars companies by orchestrating 37 agents this morning AND YOU JUST SAT THERE AND ATE BREAKFAST LIKE A PLEB!”

“The trick is not to play zero sum games. This is what I have been saying the whole time. Go create value for others and don’t worry about the returns. If you create more value than you consume, you are welcome in any well operating community. Not infinite, not always needs more, just more than you consume. That’s enough, and avoid people or comparison traps that tell you otherwise. The world is not a Red Queen’s race.”

Programming

RE#: how we built the world’s fastest regex engine in F# by ian erik varatalu

“[…] something that i want to claim is that we don’t actually need state machines to be finite at all. in a classical automata world, you would think i am crazy, but we can have an infinite number of states, and it’s fast, practical and also guaranteed to terminate. scrap the “finite” and just call it a “deterministic automaton”. this pulls the rug out from under the feet of a lot of theoretical work in automata theory, and it’s a lot harder to grasp, but it gives us a lot of freedom to do things that are impossible in the classical framework, namely context awareness via lookarounds.”

“RE# builds on top of .NET’s regex infrastructure. the parser comes from the .NET runtime with some modifications. the SIMD vectorization uses .NET’s excellent SearchValues<T>. the Teddy multi-string search algorithm was recently added to .NET 9, which boosted our results quite a bit. writing in F# means direct access to all of this with zero interop cost. not to mention RyuJIT has codegen comparable to native languages.”

“[…] here’s a subtle but important consequence: in RE#, rewriting your regex using boolean algebra is always safe. factor out common prefixes, distribute over union, apply de Morgan’s laws − the matches won’t change. your regex is a specification of a set of strings, and the engine faithfully finds the leftmost-longest element of that set in the input. no surprises from alternation order,”

“by the time we confirm a match, both the lookbehind and lookahead have already been matched − we report matches retroactively once all the context is known, instead of trying to look into the future or backtracking to the past or keeping track of NFA states. this is a very different way of thinking about regex matching, and it took me a while to wrap my head around it, but once you see it in action, i hope you appreciate how elegant and efficient it is.”

“RE# started as a research project to combine multiple things − first we wanted to bring boolean operators back from the 1964 paper where they originated, then we wanted to extend the .NET NonBacktracking engine, which was, the way i see it, being held back by backwards compatibility (i.e., a safe drop-in replacement for the PCRE existing engine, which meant that it had to support the same features and semantics). we wanted to break free from those limitations and see how far we can push the new engine without worrying about compatibility.

“the key ingredients were Brzozowski derivatives, minterm compression, lazy DFA construction without NFAs, and encoding context awareness directly into states. most of these ideas aren’t individually new − the magic is in the matching algorithm that puts them together in a way that is correct, fast and practical.”

“if there’s one thing i hope you take away from this, it’s that intersection and complement are genuinely useful operators that have been missing from regex engines for far too long. being able to describe what you want as a combination of properties, rather than cramming everything into one monolithic pattern, is a much more natural way to think about matching. and now you can do it with linear-time guarantees.”

An Elm Primer: Testing Strategies by Christian Ekrem

“In Elm, this test can’t exist, because the scenario can’t exist. If Profile.view expects a User, you can’t pass it Nothing without the type signature explicitly allowing Maybe User. The compiler won’t let you compile code that passes invalid data to a function. There’s nothing to test.

“React developers often write tests for:”

Null and undefined handling.

Elm has no null. Values that might be absent use Maybe, and the compiler forces you to handle the Nothing case.

Type checking at boundaries.

“Does this prop receive the right type?” In Elm, the compiler answers that question for every function call in the entire codebase.

Exhaustive case coverage.

“Did I handle all the enum variants?” Elm’s pattern matching is checked at compile time. Miss a case, and the code won’t compile.

State shape consistency.

“Is the state object shaped correctly after this update?” Elm’s model is typed. If update returns something with the wrong shape, it doesn’t compile.

“None of these need tests in Elm. The compiler is faster, more thorough, and never forgets to run.”

Why I Hope I Get to Write a Lot of F# in 2026 by Christian Ekrem

“Enterprise software is a cost center. It’s business-centric, not technology-centric. Projects live 5+ years with team rotation. Management is risk-averse. You need static typing, garbage collection, a backed ecosystem, cross-platform support, and code that’s maintainable even after the original team has moved on.

“When you run modern languages through that filter, most of them fall out (I’m paraphrasing Wlaschin here, but not by much):”

Python/Ruby/PHP

Maintainability goes out the window when you have more than 10K LoC

Haskell

“No gradual migration path — you are thrown in the deep end”

Scala

“Too many different ways of doing things”

Elm/PureScript

Frontend only, for now (Though projects like Lamdera are challenging that! And of course, if your project is frontend only then this might be an excellent choice.)

Go

Weak domain modeling with types

Rust/C++

Unnecessary complexity if you don’t need bare-metal performance

C#/Java

Adequate, but inferior defaults and weaker algebraic data type support

“
Three languages survive: F# on .NET, Kotlin on JVM, and TypeScript on Node.”

“Once data enters your domain layer, it’s been parsed and validated. The rest of your system works with values that are already guaranteed to be correct. And since everything is immutable, they can’t be corrupted later.

“I argued in Why TypeScript Won’t Save You that “you’re only as safe as your weakest any.” F# doesn’t have an any. No escape hatches. No unknown as Whatever. If the types say it’s valid, it’s valid.”

“Functional Dependency Injection

“I already showed this pattern with both Elm and F# code in my impossible-states post, so I’ll keep this brief. The idea — straight from Wlaschin — is that you inject dependencies as function parameters and use partial application to wire things up:”

type CheckProductCodeExists = ProductCode -> bool
type CheckAddressExists = Address -> Async<Result<CheckedAddress, AddressError>>

let validateOrder
    (checkProduct: CheckProductCodeExists)
    (checkAddress: CheckAddressExists)
    (unvalidatedOrder: UnvalidatedOrder)
    : Async<Result<ValidatedOrder, ValidationError>> =
    // implementation

“Dependencies first, input second, output last. Partially apply the dependencies, and you get a clean function with the right signature. Dependency inversion without interfaces, without IoC containers, without lifecycle management. Just functions.”

“F# isn’t just a nice language in a vacuum. It runs on .NET — the most widely deployed enterprise runtime there is.

“That means:”

• Azure, AWS, GCP — first-class support
• NuGet — massive package ecosystem
• Entity Framework, Dapper — database tooling that works
• ASP.NET — battle-tested web framework
• C# interop — you can introduce F# project-by-project into an existing C# codebase

“That last point is huge. Unlike Haskell (where you’re “thrown in the deep end”), F# lets you do a gradual migration. Start with one service. Prove the value. Expand. Your existing .NET infrastructure, your CI/CD pipelines, your monitoring — it all keeps working.”

“Simon Cousins, who built business-critical systems at a UK power company, put it bluntly: “I have now delivered three business critical projects written in F#. I am still waiting for the first bug to come in.”

“Sure, that’s quite a claim. But when your language enforces immutability, exhaustive pattern matching, and proper domain modeling, certain categories of bugs just… don’t happen.”

Fun

Mom and Dad's Divorce by WKUK: Whitest Kids You Know (YouTube)