World’s Largest Organism Being Slowly Eaten, Scientist Says Scientific alert
Sounds made by stressed plants are airy and informative Cell (!!).
Why investment complexity is not your friend the morning star
Climate
The Incredible Disappearance of Doomsday Harpers (AL).
Glittering in the sunlight, dancing like an otter The Narwhal. Kelp (see CN here).
Heat pump sales up 11% worldwide in 2022, record 40% in Europe, driven by energy crisis Andalusian Agency
Water
As hydroelectric dams suppress the life force of the Mekong, what are the costs mongabay
Landslides in the Mekong Delta increasingly severe Saigon News
Projected seasonal changes in future rainfall erosivity over the Lancang-Mekong River Basin under CMIP6 scenarios Hydrology Journal
China?
COVID-19 exposes weaknesses in rural healthcare in China The Diplomat. Making Xi’s decision to bow down to the Five Eyes and “Let ‘er rip” – because TINA, presumably – all the more chilling and disturbing.
‘Dare to fight’: Xi Jinping unveils China’s new world order FT
Taiwan’s Ma Ying-jeou policy referring to “descendants of yan huang” South China Morning Post
India
40% rise in cases in one day: Will a new wave of Covid-19 hit India? Trade standard. Comment:
It seems time again for this mathematician to post @vb_jens great cartoon about exponential growth. pic.twitter.com/Ppr1GLXlGY
—Mark MacLean (@marktmaclean) August 14, 2021
South Africa mulls options after ICC arrest order for Putin Voice of America
European disunity
The French uprising New Left Review (AL).
Dear old Blighty
Yousaf accused of ‘insulting’ Scots with creation of independence minister post holyrood
New not so cold war
Why Strength Fails Foreign Affairs
Russia urges UN to hand over full list of Bucha victims; Press for an international investigation Republic World
* * * Cheerleading versus spine chills: What will Ukraine’s upcoming counter-offensive bring? Gilbert Doctorow
Hosting Russian nuclear weapons will have far-reaching consequences for Belarus Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
START Treaty: Russia stops sending information on nuclear weapons to the United States AlJazeera
Can Chernobyl’s dogs teach us new survival tricks? PA
* * * Turkish parliament ratifies Finland’s NATO membership application France 24
Belarus calls NATO troop deployment near border ‘irresponsible escalation’ Andalusian Agency
* * * Terrifying impact 130 meters underground of a Russian Kinzhal supersonic missile at the NATO command center in Ukraine! (Google translation) Pronews.gr. Big so true.
* * * “Only Russia can already face the whole West…” India Punchline (Rev Kev).
‘It’s not pretty’: Russian support grows in developing world CNBC
It’s morally repugnant, but isolationism on Ukraine makes sense FT
You will hardly find this in the news… Andrei Martyanov, Reminiscence of the Future (Chuck L). Dedollarization.
China and Brazil strike deal to ditch dollar for trade Straits Times (notabanker). More dedollarization. But:
There is no ongoing dedollarization. At all.
Here is the share of major currencies in global transactions since 1989. pic.twitter.com/iDUEAzsCbL
— ʎllǝuuop ʇuǝɹq (@donnelly_brent) March 30, 2023
The Caribbean
Biden Administration
2024
Donald Trump indicted by Manhattan grand jury on more than 30 counts related to business fraud CNN. 30 ! “The indictment has been filed under seal.” So everything right now is meta—
Statement from Trump:
JUST IN – Trump’s statement: “This is political persecution and election interference at the highest level in history.” pic.twitter.com/LQo2yYiemA
— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) March 30, 2023
Donald Trump has been indicted. Don’t hope. Elie Mystal, The Nation. After liberalgasm, a cigarette.
Why Trump’s Accusations Don’t Bar Him From Running For President The hill. Re: separation of powers: “The good Thufir* is a Mentat and has anticipated this moment. –Frank Herbert, Dune NOTE* That is, James Madison.
Donald Trump’s indictment plunges a divided nation into a new chapter of chaos FT
Baaaad Banks
Either the G20 cooperates or the banking crisis worsens, says Jeffery Sachs Trade standard
Volcker killed inflation. Bernanke saved the Banks. Can Powell do both? Bloomberg
Our famous free press
A guide to understanding the hoax of the century Jacob Siegel, The Tablet. Read with–
Tablet’s big opus on the anti-misinformation complex Matt Taibbi, The Racket:
[Siegel] ends with a growing chain of anxiety-provoking propositions. The first is that our first windows into this new censorship system, like Stanford’s Election Integrity Partnership, may also be our last, as AI and machine learning seem poised to step in to do the job at large. ladder. The National Science Foundation just announced that it was “building a set of use cases” to allow ChatGPT to “further automate” the propaganda mechanism, as Siegel puts it. The messy process that people like me could see, barely, in the outlines of Twitter emails made public by a one-in-a-million fluke, may not show up in recorded human conversations in the future. “Future battles fought through AI technologies,” says Siegel, “will be harder to see.”
* * * Covering (up) the anti-war protest in US media FAIR
Where are they now? : The Experts Who Were Wrong About Iraq The present age. They are doing very well. Exactly as the experts who got it wrong on Covid do and will do. Now, however, there is the AI….
sports office
Does the floor of a baseball field influence the players? Soils matter, get the scoop
Meet the American who is the “true father of baseball”, New York doctor Daniel “Doc” Adams FOX
Freight train derailment sparks intense fire in Minnesota Jalopnik
Class struggle
The puzzle of financialization Harry Magdoff, Paul M. Sweezy Monthly Review
LOADED: Corporate interests dominate official US government trade advisory system Rethinking Commerce
I used AI to bet on horse racing. Here is what happened FT. Repellent clickbait title, must-read article. What happens when All turns into playing ponies?’ Why is there no over/under on Covid deaths, for example? Or maybe there are!
Vatican rejects ‘Doctrine of Discovery’ that justified historic seizure of indigenous lands Andalusian Agency
Antidote of the day (via):
See Yesterday’s Links and Today’s Antidote here.
