2025-07-13

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• Life, Work, Death and the Peasant, Part I: Households

  we generally estimate these societies to have consisted of upwards of 80% peasant farmers, often as high as 90 or even 95%. Yet when we talk about these periods, we are often focused on aristocrats, priests, knights, warriors, kings and literate bureaucrats, the sort of folks who write to us or on smiths, masons and artists, the sort of folk whose work sometimes survives for us to see. But this series is going to be about what life was like for the great majority of people who lived in small farming households.

• Mark Twain describes the coyote

  The cayote is a long, slim, sick and sorry-looking skeleton, with a gray wolf-skin stretched over it, a tolerably bushy tail that forever sags down with a despairing expression of forsakenness and misery, a furtive and evil eye, and a long, sharp face, with slightly lifted lip and exposed teeth. He has a general slinking expression all over. The cayote is a living, breathing allegory of Want. He is always hungry.

  He is always poor, out of luck and friendless. The meanest creatures despise him, and even the fleas would desert him for a velocipede. He is so spiritless and cowardly that even while his exposed teeth are pretending a threat, the rest of his face is apologizing for it. And he is so homely!—so scrawny, and ribby, and coarse-haired, and pitiful. When he sees you he lifts his lip and lets a flash of his teeth out, and then turns a little out of the course he was pursuing, depresses his head a bit, and strikes a long, soft-footed trot through the sage-brush, glancing over his shoulder at you, from time to time, till he is about out of easy pistol range, and then he stops and takes a deliberate survey of you; he will trot fifty yards and stop again—another fifty and stop again; and finally the gray of his gliding body blends with the gray of the sage-brush, and he disappears. All this is when you make no demonstration against him; but if you do, he develops a livelier interest in his journey, and instantly electrifies his heels and puts such a deal of real estate between himself and your weapon, that by the time you have raised the hammer you see that you need a minie rifle, and by the time you have got him in line you need a rifled cannon, and by the time you have “drawn a bead” on him you see well enough that nothing but an unusually long-winded streak of lightning could reach him where he is now.

  He does not mind going a hundred miles to breakfast, and a hundred and fifty to dinner, because he is sure to have three or four days between meals, and he can just as well be traveling and looking at the scenery as lying around doing nothing and adding to the burdens of his parents.

Horseshit

• Can men and women be just friends?

• The Broad Decline in Health and Human Capital of Americans Born after 1947

  I present evidence of across-cohort decline in the health and human capital of Americans, beginning with those born after 1947 and continuing until those born in the mid-1960s. Education, men's wages, women's maternal health (proxied by their infants' birth weight), and mortality all exhibit trend breaks near the 1947 cohort, such that each outcome worsens for subsequent cohorts relative to prior trend. The decline is large enough to drive educational declines in the 1960s, increases in low birth weight in the 1980s, and mortality increases since 1999 and to contribute substantially to wage stagnation since the 1970s.

• AI research exploring how humans could speak with pets – and what could go wrong

• Why do so many American workers feel guilty about taking the vacation they've earned?

celebrity gossip

• Amelia Earhart's Lockheed Electra 10E May Have Been Found

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• King Charles's fiery gathering that shone a light on his beliefs

  In the sunny gardens of the Highgrove estate, I stood in a circle with King Charles and an eclectic group who were attending his first "Harmony Summit". We raised our arms in honour of nature as we stood around a fire, which was burning within a ring of flowers. Presiding over the fire ceremony, in which we rotated as we honoured the north, south, east and west and then Mother Earth, was an Indigenous leader - an Earth Elder - wearing a headdress and a dazzling robe of blue feathers. A conch shell was blown. Butterflies flew around the flowers. And, in a concession to modernity, as well as holding up feathers in a blessing for the King, the elder was reading his incantations from an iPhone. There were people reaching to the sky, wearing colourful face paint and elaborate necklaces, while I held my palms up self-consciously, melting in my M&S suit.

  The summit was a celebration of the King's philosophy of harmony with nature - an inaugural event that the King's Foundation hopes will become a regular gathering. It brought together representatives from Indigenous peoples, including from tribes in the Amazon, along with environmentalists, climate campaigners, organic farmers, herbalists, educators, crafts people and philanthropists. For good measure, there was Dwight from the US version of The Office, or at least actor Rainn Wilson, a director of a climate change group. There were other visitors from Amazon too. A film crew from Amazon Prime, making a documentary for next year, who were poring over every moment as the sacred smoke coiled up over the apple trees in Gloucestershire.

  Harmony is the King's philosophy, it means that we should be working with the grain of nature rather than against it. Or "her" as, he describes nature, in his book on the subject, published in 2010. It's about the inter-connectedness of all life, infused with a strong sense of the spiritual, and the idea that the human and natural worlds can't be separated. It's the philosophy that stitches together his many different pursuits - on the environment, climate change, sustainable farming, urban planning, architecture, protecting traditional craft skills and building bridges between different faiths. The King's views, including on the environment, were "once seen as an outlier, but now many elements have been accepted and adopted as conventional thought and mainstream practice, embraced around the world".

  • He has certainly been one of the wellheads of new age totalitarian thought for 50+ years. "Conspiracy theorists" began to talk seriously about the dent the English Crown was putting in societies around the world in the 80s. Now this man can stand proud and proclaim his life's work, confirming all those accusations. Read the Mark Twain book quoted above to get a real understanding of what it is "to be in harmony with nature."

Musk

• France launches criminal investigation into Musk's X over algorithm manipulation

• Tesla sales rise in Norway and Spain, boosted by Model Y

• As Tesla Stumbles, SpaceX's Finances Go from Strength to Strength

• Grok 4 will always snitch on you and email the feds if it suspects wrongdoing

• Elon Musk Reportedly Asked Curtis Yarvin for Advice on Starting Third Party

• XAI seeks up to $200B valuation in next fundraising

  • XAI prepares a new fundraising round at a valuation of $170B to $200B

• SpaceX to Invest $2B into Elon Musk's XAI

Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation

• White-sounding names get called back for jobs more than Black ones, study finds

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• Marc Andreesen says universities will 'pay the price' for DEI

• Harvard takes down sites for minorities, LGBTQ, and women amid DEI purge

• The truth behind the endless "kids can't read" discourse

  Every month or so, for the past few years, a new dire story has warned of how American children, from elementary school to college age, can no longer read. And every time I read one of these stories, I find myself conflicted. On the one hand, I am aware that every generation complains that the kids who come next are doing everything wrong and have gotten stupider and less respectful. I fear falling into this trap myself, becoming an old man yelling at cloud.

  (42 paragraphs of weasel waffle)

  US schools have never done a very good job at teaching kids to read, but it seems as though there’s meaningful evidence that we’re doing a worse job right now. While high-achieving kids are still reading the way they’ve read for decades, the ones to whom reading doesn’t come easily are failing more now than they used to. We don’t have clear data on what happens when kids get to college. Still, it’s certainly plausible that the problems being documented in the primary education years persist into secondary education as well. It’s not being old or out of touch to say so.

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• There appears to be media consensus: "Bluesky is dead."

  Commentators may be missing that success for Bluesky looks different: it’s trying to build a protocol-driven ecosystem, not a site. Twitter had one, but destroyed it as its ad-based business model took over. Both Bluesky and Mastodon, which media largely ignores, aim to let users create their own experience and are building tools that give users as much control as possible. It seems to offend some commentators that one of them lets you block people you don’t want to deal with, but that’s weird, since it’s the one every social site has.

• OpenAI to release web browser in challenge to Google Chrome

• Valve solved the attention problem using hardcore gamers who love a fat backlog

• ICANN fumes as AFRINIC offers no explanation for annulled election

• The FBI just shut down a Nintendo Switch piracy site

• Google Glass Wasn't a Failure. It Raised Crucial Concerns

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• OpenAI’s Windsurf deal is off, and Windsurf’s CEO is going to Google

• The Magical Thinking That's Killing Our Humanity

  We live in the most dangerous moment in human history—not because of nuclear weapons or climate change, though both threaten our survival, but because we are creating systems that threaten something deeper: our capacity to remain human. To make meaning. To experience genuine choice. To live lives worth living rather than optimized lives managed by algorithms and administered by bureaucrats. And our response to this existential crisis? Magical thinking. The comfortable delusion that simple solutions exist for complex problems, that we can have technological progress without existential consequences, that we can avoid difficult choices by pretending they don’t exist.

  Artificial intelligence has the potential to augment human creativity in remarkable ways—providing new tools, expanding possibilities, enabling forms of expression previously impossible. But it also threatens to replace human creativity entirely when we mistake sophisticated pattern recognition for genuine innovation. When machines can generate art, music, and writing that satisfies human aesthetic preferences while eliminating the human struggle that makes creativity meaningful, we face a crucial choice: do we use AI as a tool that enhances human capacity, or do we allow it to substitute for human agency altogether?

• Zuck Races to Build Godlike AI, Women and People of Color Aren't Invited

  Of the 18 names confirmed so far by Zuckerberg in a memo and by media reports, just one is a woman. There are no Black or Latino researchers on the list. Most of the team members are men who attended elite schools and worked at top Silicon Valley firms. Many are of Asian descent—a reflection of the strong presence of Asian talent in global tech—but the group lacks a wide range of backgrounds and lived experiences.

• What Could a Healthy AI Companion Look Like?

• Google to Pay $2.4B in Deal to License Tech of Coding Startup, Hire CEO

• Not So Fast: AI Coding Tools Can Actually Reduce Productivity

  METR performed a rigorous study to measure the productivity gain provided by AI tools for experienced developers working on mature projects. The results are surprising everyone: a 19 percent decrease in productivity. Even the study participants themselves were surprised: they estimated that AI had increased their productivity by 20 percent. If you take away just one thing from this study, it should probably be this: when people report that AI has accelerated their work, they might be wrong!

  • Measuring The Impact Of LLMs On Experienced Developer Productivity

• Cops' favorite AI tool automatically deletes evidence of when AI was used

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Florida's Brightline Train Defers Bond Payment as Woes Mount

• First U.S. Rare Earth Mine in 70 Years Opens in Wyoming

• Intel facing a BlackBerry moment as thousands laid off

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• DOJ Statement of Interest on Suppression of Competition Through Deplatforming

  The lawsuit — led by plaintiffs allegedly deplatformed for sharing independent news and opinion related to the COVID-19 pandemic — alleges that the Washington Post, BBC, AP, and Reuters colluded with one another and with the large digital platforms to suppress competition from independent perspectives that rival mainstream media. The statement of interest explains how the antitrust laws protect viewpoint competition in news markets.

• One California worker dead, hundreds arrested after cannabis farm raid

  A California farm worker died on Friday from injuries sustained a day earlier when U.S. immigration agents raided a cannabis operation and arrested hundreds of workers, according to a farm worker advocacy group. Separately, a federal judge in California ordered the Trump administration to temporarily halt some of its most aggressive tactics in rounding up undocumented immigrants. Dozens of migrant-rights activists faced off with federal agents in rural Southern California on Thursday. It was the latest escalation of President Donald Trump's campaign for mass deportations of immigrants in the U.S. illegally.

  The Department of Homeland Security said approximately 200 people in the country illegally were arrested in the raid, which targeted two locations of the cannabis operation Glass House Farms. Agents also found 10 migrant minors at the farm, the department said in an emailed statement. The facility is under investigation for child labor violations, Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Rodney Scott posted on X.

• Before Tragedy, Texas Repeatedly Rejected Pleas for Flood Alarm Funding

  • FEMA Didn’t Answer Thousands of Calls From Flood Survivors

Trump

• FBI's Dan Bongino clashes with AG Bondi over handling of Epstein files

  FBI deputy director Dan Bongino took a day off from work Friday after clashing at the White House with Attorney General Pam Bondi over their handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files, four sources familiar with conflict told Axios. The dispute erupted Wednesday amid the fallout of the administration walking back its claims about Epstein by determining the convicted sex offender didn't have a celebrity "client list," and that he wasn't murdered in his New York City prison cell in 2019.

  • Metadata Shows the FBI’s ‘Raw’ Jeffrey Epstein Prison Video Was Likely Modified | WIRED

  • Trump, Epstein and the Deep State

  The refusal by the Trump administration to release the files and videos amassed during investigations into the activities of the pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, should put to rest the absurd idea, embraced by Trump supporters and gullible liberals, that Trump will dismantle the Deep State. Trump is part of, and has long been part of, the repugnant cabal of politicians – Democrat and Republican – billionaires and celebrities who look at us, and often underage girls and boys, as commodities to exploit for profit or pleasure.

  The list of those who were in Epstein’s orbit is a who’s who of the rich and famous. They include not only Trump, but Bill Clinton, who allegedly took a trip to Thailand with Epstein, Prince Andrew, Bill Gates, hedge fund billionaire Glenn Dubin, former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson, former Secretary of the Treasury and former president of Harvard University Larry Summers, cognitive psychologist and author Stephen Pinker, Alan Dershowitz, billionaire and Victoria’s Secret CEO Leslie Wexner, the former Barclays banker Jes Staley, former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak, the magician David Copperfield, actor Kevin Spacey, former CIA director Bill Burns, real estate mogul Mort Zuckerman, former Maine senator George Mitchell and disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, who reveled in Epstein’s perpetual Bacchanalia.

  They also include law firms and high-priced attorneys, federal and state prosecutors, private investigators, personal assistants, publicists, servants and drivers. They include the numerous procurers and pimps, including Epstein’s girlfriend and daughter of Robert Maxwell, Ghislaine Maxwell. They include the media and politicians who ruthlessly discredited and silenced the victims, and strong armed anyone, including a handful of intrepid reporters, seeking to expose Epstein’s crimes and circle of accomplices.

• Trump intensifies trade war with 30% tariffs on EU and Mexico

• Trump threatens to revoke Rosie O'Donnell's U.S. citizenship

• Almost One Year Later, the Question Remains: Why Did Butler Shooter Try to Kill Trump? – RedState

Left Angst

• The unholy alliance that killed the AI moratorium

• The State Department is laying off 1,300 bureaucrats in a "massive restructuring plan."

• Fired Justice Department official warns we are "driving straight into an abyss" - CBS News

• Detained immigrants say there are worms in food and wastewater on the floor

• Senators might preserve, not slash, funding for US National Science Foundation

• Proposed NOAA Budget Kills Program Designed to Prevent Satellite Collisions

• Trump Tax Law Takes Aim at Popular Perk: Office Snacks

• The Supreme Court’s Ruling Practically Wipes Out Free Speech for Sex Writing Online

  Just in time for the Fourth of July, last week the Supreme Court effectively nullified the First Amendment for any writers, like me, who include sex scenes in their writing, intended for other adults. Their ruling green-lighted a wave of state-level laws that allow meddling parents in conservative states to team up with personal injury lawyers to sue people across state lines for untold damages (literally millions of dollars in some current cases) for a single paragraph of sexually-explicit speech on writers’ personal websites, if the parents think might harm the precious eyes and ears of their little munchkins.

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• Maine police caught lying about using AI to alter drug bust photo

World

• Britain and Europe need to get serious about air conditioning

• Bill tracking: Increasing cash tracking worries data protectionists

• Spain awards Huawei contracts to manage intelligence agency wiretaps

  • They're already doing the work, why duplicate the effort?

• Bodyguards Using Strava Fitness App Revealed Locations of Swedish Leaders

• India's richest man wants to turn every TV into a PC

Iran / Houthi

• They Fled War in Ethiopia. Then American Bombs Found Them

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• Russian use of chemical weapons in Ukraine is 'widespread' and growing

Health / Medicine

• Superpowers are real–these people are living proof

• The Fourth Wave: How Speedballing Is Creating a New Kind of Drug Crisis

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• Arizona resident dies from the plague less than 24 hours after showing symptoms

  • Northern Arizona resident dies from plague.

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Why U.S. Geothermal May Advance, Despite Political Headwinds

• Depopulation won't stop climate change

  Having more kids is unlikely to doom the world through climate change, so we can check off one worry.. The next one is that the kids will live in a worse world. That too can be discounted, because more people will tend to mean greater productivity and accordingly higher quality of life, if history is any indication.

• Earth Is Spinning Faster and Days Are Getting Shorter, for Now

• Dry, windy weekend heightens CA's wildfire risks, triggering power shutoffs

  • Nothing like rolling blackouts to remind the citizens that the miracles of modern existence depend on the whim of their betters.

• Killer whales appear to craft their own tools

• The great Malaysian cooking oil arbitrage

  Malaysian cooking oil subsidies and EU biofuel mandates have created an arbitrage opportunity where fresh oil can be bought cheap, relabelled as 'used', and sold at a profit to aviation fuel producers.