90-year-old tortoise becomes father of three BBC
Loneliness and the Trinity of Creativity: Ada Lovelace, the Poles of the Mind, and the Source of Her Imaginative Powers The Marginalian (Chuck L)
Posed Riddles Drift Magazine (Anthony l)
#COVID-19
What Worked Against Covid: Masks, Closures and Vaccines Wall Street Journal (Dr. Kevin)
7.6% DEATH RATE for hospital acquired COVID infection in Victoria. Increasing numbers of hospital acquired COVID infections through 2022.
But sure, remove all mitigations in hospital, because that makes total sense. https://t.co/Z7oNInSlGM
— Dr David Berger, aBsuRdiSTe cROnickLeR (@YouAreLobbyLud) March 16, 2023
How a nasal vaccine could reduce the risk of COVID infections — and new variants Marketwatch (ma)
XBB.1.16 has a 140% growth advantage over XBB.1.5 (103.21%-177.41%)
It is far more aggressive than XBB.1.5. And probably faster than XBB.1.9 2/
— Vipin M. Vashishtha (@vipintukur) March 17, 2023
Climate/Environment
Minnesota Nuclear Power Plant Leaks 400,000 Gallons Of Radioactive Water OilPrice (resilc)
Big Oil Plans to Artificially Freeze the Melting Arctic to Drill More Oil Vice (furzy)
Ocean Farming: Seaweed Is Having Its Moment In the Sun New York Times (Dr. Kevin)
Global Fresh Water Demand Will Outstrip Supply By 40% by 2030, Say Experts Guardian. We’ve been warning for years what potable water was the natural resource that would come under acute pressure first.
China?
US and other Western nations wary of Xi’s trip to Moscow South China Morning Post
China-proposed initiative on global civilization hailed China Daily (resilc)
TikTok’s Plan To Stave Off Government Intervention: Flood DC With influencers Politico
China-Argentina on verge of region-rattling fighter deal Asia Times (Kevin W)
India’s Impending BrahMos Deal With Indonesia Could Shift ASEAN’s Military-Strategic Dynamics Andrew Korybko (Micael T)
Pakistan Police Raids Ex-Premier Imran Khan’s Lahore House: TV Bloomberg
Old Blighty
Workers in England are going on strike and shutting it down, hundreds of thousands at a time. We might want to pay attention. pic.twitter.com/JMCKbTRxq7
— More Perfect Union (@MorePerfectUS) March 17, 2023
UK Pension Funds Flee the Equity Market, Adding to London Woes Bloomberg
UK Backs Rolls-Royce Project To Build a Nuclear Reactor On the Moon CNBC(cnbc.c
La belle France
Fury in France as protesters block Paris ring road following Macron’s forced pension reform France24
BREAKING: France, electricians and gas workers sing “Emmanuel Macron, if you continue, there will be complete darkness at your place!”
Moments later: The ”Fort de Brégançon”, Emmanuel Macron’s official residence, was deprived of electricity by pic.twitter.com/8hvPWCtcyZ… https://t.co/ck6mANtcnX
— Antonio Sabato Jr (@AntonioSabatoJr) March 16, 2023
New Not-So-Cold War
ICC judges issue arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin over alleged war crimes Guardian. We talked about Ukraine resorting to stunts (mainly of the terrorist sort) because it can’t win the wor. Now we have this. As chris remarked:
So the court we don’t recognize, and that Russia doesn’t recognize (both for the same reasons), is going to limit Putin how? And his ability to do things is going to be affected because why?
Let’s not forget this:
The United States threatened Monday to arrest and sanction judges and other officials of the International Criminal Court if it moves to charge any American who served in Afghanistan with war crimes.https://t.co/UqPTwxr5VI
— The Sirius Report (@thesiriusreport) March 18, 2023
In Ukraine, US focused on delivering weapons, not diplomacy — secretary of state TASS
Understanding the Scale and Brutality and the Global Stakes of the War in Ukraine Larry Johnson
The Gathering Storm Douglas Macgregor, American Conservative
Kiev issues warning to countries that don’t support Ukraine RT (Kevin W)
Türkiye moves to ratify Finland’s NATO bid in parliament Anadolu Agency
Banned From Russian Airspace, U.S. Airlines Look to Restrict Competitors New York Times. This will simply make the US less attractive a destination by increasing transit times for all passengers who would otherwise use trans-Russian routes.
Syraqistan
Will Bibi break Israel? Economist
Former Israeli premier urges world leaders to shun Netanyahu Associated Press (resilc)
For first time, Democrats sympathize more with Palestinians than Israelis: Poll Salon
Iranians are done with Kings and Ayatollahs, and look back to Mosaddegh for a Way forward Juan Cole
Iraq war: 20 years later and no lessons learned by war’s proponents, experts say Middle East Eye
Shock and War: Iraq 20 Years On, 4. The Inspectors BBC Radio 4 (resilc)
Saddam’s rusting yacht serves as picnic spot for Iraqi fishermen Reuters (resilc)
Big Brother is Watching You Watch
AI Fools Voice Recognition Used To Verify Identity By Australian Tax Office Guardian
Why Palantir’s latest NHS land-grab is such bad news for patients openDemocracy
Imperial Collapse Watch
The Trouble with AUKUS Daniel Larison
What the AUKUS sub ruckus means for regional security Responsible Security
Trump
Trump-commissioned report undercut his claims of dead and double voters Washington Post
Biden
Where the money went: The Bidens and Biden associates that received Chinese cash New York Post (furzy)
Per below, you have no expectation of privacy with respect to your garbage and abandoned property. This is just harassment of that poor schlub repair shop owner. However, if someone on the right were alert, they’d fund his defense, because repair shop owner would get to do discovery on Hunter.
Hunter Biden just sued the Delaware repair shop where he left his laptop for invasion of privacy and distributing his data.
The obvious premise is that the laptop was real and it came from that store – the exact opposite of what all corporate media claimed for the 2020 election: https://t.co/eL92l3QDuN
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) March 17, 2023
WHO’S YOUR GEORGE BALL? Seymour Hersch
Rural America and suburbs part company politically Asia Times
Our No Longer Free Press
The Twitter Files and the new censorship regime Andrew Lowenthal
Residents’ Right to Be Rude Upheld by Massachusetts Supreme Court New York Times (resilc). So individuals can be impolitic but not anyone with a megaphone.
B-a-a-a-a-d Banks
First Republic Rescue Effort Fails to Ease Investor Worries Wall Street Journal
UBS in talks to acquire Credit Suisse Financial Times
This is Fascism, SVB Bailout Edition CounterPunch. Nice shout-out!
Biden to Congress: Ban execs of failed banks from the industry Axios. Resilc: “You mean like Barney Frank?”
Wow. Boeing is arguing that it is not liable for victim suffering claims in Ethiopian Airlines 737 MAX crash because “victims died painlessly because the airplane crashed into the ground so fast that their brains didn’t have time to process pain signals.” https://t.co/5PE7782yvd
— Alec MacGillis (@AlecMacGillis) March 16, 2023
The Bezzle
Breaking
The London Metal Exchange has discovered bags of stones instead of the nickel that underpinned a small handful of its contracts at a warehouse in Rotterdam@mburtonmetals @megacontango https://t.co/8OQW00JT0m
— Jack Farchy (@jfarchy) March 17, 2023
Microsoft Is Testing a Built-In Cryptocurrency Wallet For the Edge Browser ars technica
Guillotine Watch
Kiss my a$$: Credit Suisse wife Lizzie Asher flashes butt amid $54B bailout Page Six. Resilc: “Where is ISIS when you need them to run burn cages?”
Class Warfare
“WHEN YOU’RE AN ACTIVIST, YOU’RE A STUDENT OF OTHER MOVEMENTS THROUGH TIME AND AROUND THE WORLD.” JENNY WEBER ON THE ART OF PROTEST Patagpnia (guurst)
Google nixes paying out rest of medical leave for laid-off employees CNBC. Resilc: “When does someone gun up?”
A perfect storm of food-stamp cuts and low tax refunds is looming — and discount chains like Dollar General and Big Lots could feel the pain Business Insider
How Mental Health Care Is Near-Impossible to Get on Medicaid Intercept
Antidote du jour (Tracie H):
And a bonus. Resilc’s sheep herd:
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
