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‘I feel like a man from another era’: Neanderthal hunter Ludovic Slimak Guardian (Kevin W)
Look into the secret world of numerology and puzzles in Bach aeon
Inside the forgotten third World Trade building occupied by CIA that burned down on 9/11 New York Post (David L). Amazed anyone is trying to relitigate this.
Anti-Vaccine Dog Owners Could Bring Back Rabies RealClearScience (Dr. Kevin)
How Close Is Science to Solving the Problem of Consciousness? Discover (David L)
Turmeric as effective for acid reflux as pharmacy drugs, trial shows New Atlas (furzy)
Researchers gave 200 people $10,000 each to study generosity Big Think (Micael T)
#COVID-19
Covid’s new normal has set in amid another rise in cases STAT (Dr. Kevin). In the old days, this was called “defining deviancy downward.”
Nearly 19,000 Americans were hospitalized with COVID-19 last week, the highest since March pic.twitter.com/gWp9kUJ8TY
— BNO News (@BNOFeed) September 11, 2023
We find that BA.2.86 has low infectivity in 293T-ACE2 cells, similar to @yunlong_cao results, but high infectivity in CaLu-3 cells – actually the highest among all Omicron variants tested. pic.twitter.com/rqG19EmEwQ
— Shan-Lu Liu (@ShanLuLiu1) September 11, 2023
GM translates:
HEK293 cells are kidney-derived
And WT grows poorly there too compared to Omicron
Calu-3 is a lung epithelial cancer cell line, and BA.2.86 grows best there out of all Omicron. Halfway between WT and other Omicron strains. In simple terms, if this is indicative of how it behaves in actual humans, it should hit the lower lungs harder than anything we’ve seen since BA.1 first swept
PFIZER VACCINE CONTRACT REVEALED – Our Government has been lying to us.
A South African court has ordered that the Pfizer vaccine contract between the SA Government & Pfizer be made public.
And here it is : https://t.co/wXId5CUGTA
It‘a reasonable to assumed that the terms and… pic.twitter.com/SM5D0VOyqx
— Craig Kelly (@CKellyUAP) September 9, 2023
Climate/Environment
Extreme heat is forcing America’s farmers to go nocturnal Washington Post (Kevin W)
Microsoft Is Using a Hell of a Lot of Water to Flood the World With AI Gizmodo (Kevin W)
Coal Use In Europe Rises In Shocking Reversal OilPrice. Not sure why anyone is surprised.
China?
At this point, they might as well bring back anti-miscegenation laws against Chinese.
The Anti-Chinese-Banging law https://t.co/AxPZoWwPmg
— Carl Zha (@CarlZha) September 11, 2023
U.S. Marines shifting focus to China, threat is “real”: top general Kyodo Times (guurst)
China Sows Disinformation About Hawaii Fires Using New Techniques New York Times (David L)
Shut out of Western Markets, Top Exec Arrested, Access to Chips and Other Technologies Denied by the US: Instead of being Destroyed, Huawei is Reemerging Stronger than Ever! Eastern Angle (Micael T)
South of the Border
Why’d Lula Flip-Flop On Whether Brazil Will Arrest Putin If He Visits? Andrew Korybko (Micael T)
European Disunion
I am told by a colleague who reads the German press daily that Sahra Wagenknecht will be forming a new party. This might put some lift back in what used to be the left plus will take votes from AfD, so the orthodox will support her up to a point just to check the AfD.
Important. Please click through to read in full:
A helpful reminder of what De Gaulle used to say about NATO and American hegemony over Europe.
This is all extracted from the book “C’était de Gaulle” which gathers his words as compiled by his confidant Alain Peyrefitte.
De Gaulle said: “France’s objective is to build Europe… pic.twitter.com/AmX2gTUfD4
— Arnaud Bertrand (@RnaudBertrand) September 10, 2023
Europe’s Economic Outlook Worsens as High Prices Plague Consumer Spending Associated Press
Scholz’s “Germany Pact”: A war alliance against the population WSWS (Micael T)
New Not-So-Cold War
Baerbock promises help – and calls for reforms Taggedeschau via machine translation (guurst)
An Endgame for the Ukrainian War w/ John Mearsheimer, Alexander Mercouris and Glenn Diesen YouTube
After “climbdown” at G20, US plans to step up involvement in Ukraine war WSWS. Note this contradicts the reading of The Duran gentlemen, who think that the Blinken visit to Kiev was to tell Zelensky to accept a frozen conflict. Per our article yesterday on Has the West Closed All Its Project Ukraine Exits?, if this is what Blinken fancies, it is just underpants gnome thinking:
Ceasefire > *Magic* > Russia goes away with its tail enough between its legs that we and Ukraine can declare victory
It also ignore that Russia did not stop prosecuting the war while it negotiated in Istanbul.
Ukraine offensive could have only 30 days left – US Army chief BBC (Kevin W)
IAEA sees no problem with depleted uranium weaponry – Grossi RT (Kevin W). The same way it never saw who was shelling the Zaporzhizhia nuclear power plant.
In vote of confidence, Europe parking massive amounts of gas in Ukraine Upstream Brunches with Cats
Inside Ukraine’s assassination programme International Affairs (Micael T)
Zelensky Threatens To Terrorize Europe Moon of Alabama
🇺🇸The USA and NATO will deploy tactical nuclear weapons carriers 150 kilometers from the Russian borders
Under new agreements between the United States and Finland, American aviation will begin to use the infrastructure of Rovaniemi Airport in Lapland, which is located less than… pic.twitter.com/jvPQLHILJ8
— Zlatti71 (@djuric_zlatko) September 8, 2023
Syraqistan
Thousands feared dead as flooding sweeps Libya BBC (furzy)
Bad Taliban, good Taliban: Britain falls victim to its own propaganda The Cradle (Micael T)
Osama Bin Laden: The First Great Man Of The 21st Century Ian Welsh (Micael T)
Big Brother is Watching You Watch
Top US Spies Meet With Privacy Experts Over Surveillance ‘Crown Jewel’ Wired (Dr. Kevin)
Lithuania Was the Country That Secretly Wiretapped the World for the FBI 404Media
Imperial Collapse Watch
A Deep Dive Into US Navy’s Epic Shipbuilding Failure qCaptain (guurst)
US threatens sanctions if North Korea sells arms to Russia Aljazeera. Kevin W: “Headline unintentionally funny.”
SO, Kim Jong UN will be visiting Russia. Yes, it’s happening. And the pro-western countries in the region are already shitting in their pants.
The west/their media machinery have been condescendingly claiming that Russia is begging for weapons from Kim, and I ask: what’s wrong… pic.twitter.com/2M7Ou8nMUl
— J. C. Okechukwu (@jcokechukwu) September 11, 2023
Biden
Energy Secretary’s Electric Vehicle Roadtrip Devolves Into ‘Scene Out Of VEEP’ Daily Wire (Kevin W)
Remember the air raid sirens were staged. Russia had been told of Biden’s visit and played nice:
“In the middle of a war zone, Joe Biden showed the world what America is made of. That’s the quiet strength of a true leader who doesn’t back down to a dictator”
This is just as risible, if not more so, than any of the most rank “War on Terror” campaign propaganda pic.twitter.com/ee99mREitr
— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) September 12, 2023
Gabbard has flows as a candidate but she is a great foil:
Hearing Biden lecture us about OUR responsibility to defend democracy as he and his admin do everything they can to undermine it is insulting beyond words. From the politicized prosecution of Trump, altering DNC rules to ice out RFK Jr, directing FBI & Big Tech to censor… pic.twitter.com/AHi4MesRKj
— Tulsi Gabbard 🌺 (@TulsiGabbard) September 12, 2023
The Wisconsin G.O.P.’s Looming Judicial Attack New Yorker (furzy)
Our No Longer Free Press
Twitter appears to throttle New York Times Sempfor (Userfriendly)
Facebook now has a blanket ban on searches with the term “covid” on its new social media platform Threads. If you search that term or similar phrases, you get a blank screen and a link to the CDC website https://t.co/6UX0anWmiY
— Lee Fang (@lhfang) September 12, 2023
Elon Musk has Massively Transformed Politics and Media to Help the Right Town Hall (Chuck L)
Antitrust
Google monopoly trial: Is the US losing the fight against Big Tech? BBC
AI
Algorithm Warfare: How Elon Musk uses Twitter to control brains FrameLab (furzy)
US Copyright Office Denies Protection for Another AI-Created Image Reuters
Investors Say US Consumption Spending Will Shrink Bloomberg
(furzy)
The Bezzle
Sam Bankman-Fried’s lawyers request pre-trial release citing poor internet connection Cointelegraph. BC: “Lead Trial Balloons…”
Credit Card Disputes Keep Rising at Visa as E-Commerce Booms Bloomberg.
Major claim (second tweet in tweetstorm is false. I can name one study I was involved in that was discussed in an old Manhattan Inc story in great detail because one partner and members of the team talked to the reporter, who even read key client presentations. However, this was a study from the 1980s and most of the partners had some ethics. The rot started in the later 1980s when the three partners competing to be Managing Partner together decided it had try to compete with Wall Street on pay (I was actually in on those meetings, long story as to why) and then later when Rajat Gupta became Managing Partner. He drove the firm aggressively in the direction of increasing revenues. Nevertheless, will have to read to calibrate how far the firm has fallen:
I finally got a chance to tell a story that I’ve been keeping to myself for 6+ years. My first fulltime job was as a consultant at McKinsey. At the time, it seemed like a dream job—a way to work with brilliant people, learn a lot, and maybe even improve things from the inside 🧵 pic.twitter.com/2E2ilP7YrR
— Garrison Lovely (@GarrisonLovely) September 7, 2023
Class Warfare
Medical debt is putting some Americans at risk of homelessness NPR (furzy)
Bernie Sanders proposes an 18% cap on credit card rates. “I don’t think the fact that Wall Street has gotten its way for 30 to 40 years running in this country has proven to be a good thing,” he said.
Sorry, I got confused, that’s Josh Hawley. https://t.co/GM5hhxu3jm
— Matt Stoller (@matthewstoller) September 11, 2023
Antidote du jour:
And a bonus (Chuck L):
Elephants in Thailand have learned to exploit their right of way and stop passing sugar cane trucks to steal a snack.. pic.twitter.com/Ad6nRbthDs
— Buitengebieden (@buitengebieden) September 11, 2023
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
