‘We need to remake the US high court so Americans don’t suffer future decades of oligarchy-facilitating rule …’ ( via The Guardian)

‘Some species officially bid us farewell this year.

They may have long been gone, but following more recent assessments, they’re now formally categorized as extinct on the IUCN Red List, considered the global authority on species’ conservation status.

We may never see another individual of these species ever again. Or will we?…’ (Hayat Indriyatno via Mongabay)

‘Researchers have discovered that Alzheimer’s disease may be reversible in animal models through a treatment that restores the brain’s metabolic balance. This study, published in the journal Cell Reports Medicine, demonstrates that restoring levels of a specific energy molecule allows the brain to repair damage and recover cognitive function even in advanced stages of the illness. The results suggest that the cognitive decline associated with the condition is not an inevitable permanent state but rather a result of a loss of brain resilience.

For more than a century, people have considered Alzheimer’s disease an irreversible illness. Consequently, research has focused on preventing or slowing it, rather than recovery. Despite billions of dollars spent on decades of research, there has never been a clinical trial of any drug to reverse and recover from the condition. This new research challenges that long held dogma.

…The researchers focused on a molecule called nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide, known as NAD+. This molecule is essential for cellular energy and repair across the entire body. Scientists have observed that NAD+ levels decline naturally as people age, but this loss is much more pronounced in those with neurodegenerative conditions. Without proper levels of this metabolic currency, cells become unable to execute the processes required for proper functioning and survival.…’ (Karina Petrova via PsyPost)

‘Earlier this month, the company behind the pioneering smart vacuum, iRobot, filed for bankruptcy. The remainder of the business will go to its primary manufacturing partner—the one it owes all that money to—Shenzhen Picea Robotics. It’s a stark reminder that the longevity of a connected smart device depends entirely on the financial health of the company that made it.

…Whether you have a Neato, a Roomba, or another robot vacuum approaching the end of its connected, you can mirror my steps to keep your device cleaning.…’ (Florence Ion via Lifehacker)

When Blaise Metreweli spoke recently, she didn’t issue the usual warnings about rising powers or looming catastrophe. Instead, she described something more unsettling: a world that has quietly slipped beyond the post–World War II order.

 In this world, wars are rarely declared, borders are routinely ignored, and power no longer rests only with nation-states. Conflict now unfolds through AI-enabled drones, autonomous weapons, hyper-targeted psychological operations, and algorithms that rival states in influence. Information itself has become a weapon.

 This isn’t a future scenario. It’s the terrain we’re already standing on.

 The conflicts Metreweli outlined don’t begin with explosions. They begin with destabilization—confusion, economic pressure, disinformation, and the slow erosion of democratic trust. The front lines are no longer just physical; they are digital, cognitive, and economic. War now moves from sea to space, from battlefield to boardroom, and from social media feeds directly into our heads.

 Perhaps most alarming is her core observation: power is becoming radically diffuse—shifting from governments to corporations, platforms, and even individuals. Private actors now control satellite networks essential to warfare, shape elections through information systems, and deploy AI faster than laws can meaningfully constrain them. This is conflict without uniforms and accountability without borders.

 What gives this warning real weight is what’s happening quietly alongside it. Across Europe, democracies are preparing. Britain’s military leadership is calling for a “whole-of-nation” response. Germany and France have reintroduced forms of national service. Europe is rapidly restructuring defense production, supply chains, and industrial capacity.

 These are not symbolic gestures. Democracies don’t mobilize like this unless multiple intelligence streams are telling the same story.

 The unsettling implication is simple: the war Metreweli described isn’t coming. It’s already underway. (Via Dean Blundell)

‘From mudstones on Mars to strange gases in exoplanet atmospheres, tentative evidence for extraterrestrial life is starting to come thick and fast. But when we’ve found it, how will we know for sure?…’ (Miriam Frankel via New Scientist)

‘Astronomers have made a truly mind-boggling discovery using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST): a runaway black hole 10 million times larger than the sun, rocketing through space at a staggering 2.2 million miles per hour (1,000 kilometers per second).
That not only makes this the first confirmed runaway supermassive black hole, but this object is also one of the fastest-moving bodies ever detected, rocketing through its home galaxy at 3,000 times the speed of sound at sea level here on Earth. If that isn’t astounding enough, the black hole is pushing forward a literal galaxy-sized “bow-shock” of matter in front of it, while simultaneously dragging a 200,000 light-year-long tail behind it, within which gas is accumulating and triggering star formation. …’ (Robert Lea via Space)

So the shortest day came, and the year died,

And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world

Came people singing, dancing,

To drive the dark away.

They lighted candles in the winter trees;

They hung their homes with evergreen;

They burned beseeching fires all night long

To keep the year alive,

And when the new year’s sunshine blazed awake

They shouted, revelling.

Through all the frosty ages you can hear them

Echoing behind us — Listen!!

All the long echoes sing the same delight,

This shortest day,

As promise wakens in the sleeping land:

They carol, fest, give thanks,

And dearly love their friends,

And hope for peace.

And so do we, here, now,

This year and every year.

Welcome Yule!!

‘The speech was a jumble of his usual false or even impossible claims — like a promise to reduce prescription drug costs by an impossible 400 percent — smashed together in no particular order. The speech began with a discussion of the cost of living, a subject he would drop and then return to as if just remembering that it was the number one reason his polls were low. Even the delivery was weird: Seemingly under network time constraints, the president read off the teleprompter angrily and quickly, speaking with the motormouth intensity of a 20-something banker who just discovered cocaine and now has a really great idea for a new restaurant.

So why am I writing about it at all?

Because the fact that it happened at all tells us something much more important: that the Trump administration is sinking, and his White House has no idea what to do about it.…’ (Zack Beauchamp via Vox)

‘Trump went to North Carolina to talk about the economy and ended up explaining how Melania organizes her underwear drawer.

President Trump traveled to Rocky Mount, North Carolina on Friday to deliver what the White House billed as an economic message. Ninety minutes later, he had covered his wife’s lingerie organization system, the proper arm shape for furniture, and why beating Hillary Clinton was more fun than he expected.…’ (Ellsworth Toohey via Boing Boing)

‘”Historians will study how bad this book is. English teachers will hold this book aloft at their students to remind them that literally anyone can write a book: Look at this, it’s just not that hard to do.”

That’s how Scaachi Koul describes American Canto, a memoir by journalist and political operative Olivia Nuzzi. Koul reviewed the book for Slate. This review is one of several collected by Literary Hub for a roundup of the most cutting book reviews for the past year.

Other books considered and then eviscerated are the first novel by comedian Louis C.K., a memoir by former White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, and a posthumously published collection of short stories by Harper Lee.…’ (John Farrier via Neatorama)

‘Ryan Coogler’s bloodsucker blockbuster is all about Black creative freedom. No wonder the industry saw it as a threat.…’ (A.A. Dowd via American Prospect)

‘The internet makes most information instantly available. What if that’s why mass culture is so boring?…’ ( W. David Marx via The Atlantic )

‘1. Enact a statutory right to vote for every eligible citizen.
This may surprise you, but there is no general federal constitutional right to vote. …’ ( via Democracy Docket)

‘…(S)omeone with a big audience pushed a post claiming Trump is on an Alzheimer’s-specific infusion drug, linking it to everything from bruises to sleepiness to “confusion.” Sadly, the post is spreading.

Well, circumstantial click bait evidence doesn’t hold up in court. On the surface some may seem like they fit. Plus, many people wrongly confuse Alzheimer’s with dementia in general and lump all the symptoms together.

It’s wrong. It’s naive. It’s dangerous. A serious symptom analysis quickly debunks Alzheimer’s.

Trump’s symptoms are consistent with another, less common but more disruptive and, in his case horrific, disorder — Frontotemporal Dementia (FTD). There are a couple of subtypes with important distinctions, but his changes in personality and behavior, along with specific language and physical problems, are consistent with FTD variants.

This isn’t guesswork pulled from thin air. This is the conclusion drawn from analysies by hundreds of clinical and research experts in mental health.

What is FTD?
Frontotemporal dementia (FTD) refers to a group of disorders caused by progressive nerve cell loss mainly in the brain’s frontal lobes (the areas behind your forehead) and/or its temporal lobes (the regions behind your ears).

Brain regions impaired in FTD are the ones responsible for self-monitoring, impulse control, and reality-checking. The nerve cell damage caused by FTD leads to loss of function in these brain regions, and in bvFTD, the nerve cell loss is most prominent in areas that control conduct, judgment, empathy and foresight.

…Watching Trump is witnessing a malignant narcissist without the brain’s guardrails — judgment, restraint, empathy — leaving an unhinged finger on the big button and a hunger for validation, control and vengeance.
That’s what makes this moment so volatile, and so dangerous.

For years, clinicians and researchers, myself included, have been sounding the alarm on Trump’s malignant narcissism—his grandiosity, paranoia, total lack of empathy, and need for vengeance.

When Bandy Lee published The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump in 2017 — bringing together 27 experts — it wasn’t sensationalism. It was a professional alarm bell. The Duty to Warn organization followed, representing tens of thousands of mental-health professionals.

Back then, most people rolled their eyes. Today, the term “malignant narcissism” (MN) is showing up everywhere: on cable news, in congressional hearings, even late-night comedy…  

But what wasn’t widely understood is how a dementia like FTD alters an already disordered personality.

MN and FTD feed off each other. FTD erodes impulse control, self-monitoring, and reality-testing — the brakes a malignant narcissist desperately needs but never had much of to begin with.

Meanwhile, without the inhibition, the malignant narcissism thrives unchecked: rage, paranoia, reckless decisions. It’s not just additive—it’s synergistic. You’re seeing it in action every day.

FTD on its own is tragic; together, they make a uniquely combustible threat.

• The grandiosity that once had a shred of calculation now comes out as unfiltered delusion.
• The sadism breaks free to wreak vengeance and cruelty on perceived enemies and innocent victims.

This is why you’re suddenly hearing a lot more people talk about Trump’s cognition. The MN made his behavior impossible to ignore; the FTD makes his decline undeniable and frightening.

Now for some action you can use right now:
Knowing the signs breaks the spell.
You move from a stressful “Why the fuck is he saying this!?!” to an objective “Hmmm, another confabulation story.” Here’s a quick field guide for keeping your sanity, especially when the news cycle gets overwhelming:

1. Confabulation: It’s not lying — it’s filling gaps with invented memories he believes.
   Watch for: highly specific claims that are clearly false.
   Malignant Narcissism twist: the invented memories are usually grandiose ,self-serving, or feeding off a vengeance.
2. Phonemic Paraphasias: Speech sounds scrambled (“Obamna,” “United Shates”).
   Malignant Narcissism twist: he never self-corrects. Instead he blames equipment, pretends it’s intentional, or calls someone “stupid.”
3. Tangential / disorganized speech: Losing the thread, drifting into non sequiturs.
   Malignant Narcissism twist: he reframes it as “the weave,” demands applause, and calls it genius.
4. Impulse-control failures: The frontal lobes can’t filter impulses.
   Malignant Narcissism twist: hostility, threats, public rage, sending sycophants to do his dirty deeds, persecution narratives.

Weirdly, There’s a Silver Lining

As disturbing as the symptoms are, everyone is finally noticing. It’s no longer theoretical. It’s happening live in decaying color. People who ignored the psychological concerns are now asking needed questions. It’s long overdue. And necessary.

The challenge now is whether the world can survive his decay turned up to eleven.’ (via Frank George PhD)

‘After criticizing media coverage about him aging in office, Trump appeared to be falling asleep during a Cabinet meeting at the White House on Tuesday.
But that’s hardly the most troubling aspect of his aging.

In the last few weeks, Trump’s insults, tantrums, and threats have exploded.

• To Nancy Cordes, CBS’s White House correspondent, he said: “Are you stupid? Are you a stupid person? You’re just asking questions because you’re a stupid person.”
• About New York Times correspondent Katie Rogers: “third rate … ugly, both inside and out.”
• To Bloomberg White House correspondent Catherine Lucey: “Quiet. Quiet, piggy.”
• About Democratic lawmakers who told military members to defy illegal orders: guilty of “sedition … punishable by DEATH.”
• About Somali immigrants to the United States: “Garbage” whom “we don’t want in our country.”

What to make of all this?
Trump’s press hack Karoline Leavitt tells reporters to “appreciate the frankness and the openness that you get from President Trump on a near-daily basis.”

Sorry, Ms. Leavitt. This goes way beyond frankness and openness. Trump is now saying things nobody in their right mind would say, let alone the president of the United States.
He’s losing control over what he says, descending into angry, venomous, often dangerous territory.

Note how close his language is coming to violence — when he speaks of acts being punishable by death, or human beings as garbage, or someone being ugly inside and out.
The deterioration isn’t due to age alone…

I think older people lose certain inhibitions because they don’t care as much about their reputations as do younger people. In a way, that’s rational. Older people no longer depend on their reputations for the next job or next date or new friend. If a young person says whatever comes into their heads, they have much more to lose, reputation-wise.

But Trump’s outbursts signal something more than the normal declining inhibitions that come with older age. Trump no longer has any filters. He’s becoming impetuous.
This would be worrying about anyone who’s aging. But a filterless president of the United States who says anything that comes into his head poses a unique danger.

What if he gets angry at China, calls up Xi, tells him he’s an asshole, and then orders up a nuclear bomb?
It’s time the media reported on this. It’s time America faced reality. It’s time we demanded that our representatives in Congress take action, before it’s too late.

Invoke Section 4 of the 25th Amendment.’ (via Robert Reich)

‘President Donald Trump on Monday blamed Rob Reiner’s outspoken opposition to the president for the actor-director’s killing, delivering the unsubstantiated claim in a shocking post that seemed intent on decrying his opponents even in the face of a tragedy.

The statement, even for Trump, was a shocking comment that came as police were still investigating the deaths of the director and his wife, Michele Singer Reiner, as an apparent homicide. The couple were found dead at their home Sunday in Los Angeles. Investigators believe they suffered stab wounds and the couple’s son Nick Reiner was in police custody early Monday.

Trump has a long track record of inflammatory remarks, but his comments in a social media post were a drastic departure from the role presidents typically play in offering a message of consolation or tribute after the death of a public figure. His message drew criticism even from conservatives and his supporters and laid bare Trump’s unwillingness to rise above political grievance in moments of crisis.

Trump, in a post on his social media network, said Reiner and his wife were killed “reportedly due to the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME.”

He said Reiner “was known to have driven people CRAZY by his raging obsession of President Donald J. Trump, with his obvious paranoia reaching new heights as the Trump Administration surpassed all goals and expectations of greatness.”…’ (Michelle Price via AP)

‘Planning a trip to Cuba, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, or southern China? The CDC would like a word. The agency has issued Level 2 travel advisories — “practice enhanced precautions” — for all four destinations due to outbreaks of chikungunya, a mosquito-borne virus with no treatment and a name that sounds like it was invented to be unpronounceable by English speakers. Brazil, Colombia, India, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Thailand are also flagged as higher-risk destinations.

…Chikungunya won’t likely kill you, but it will make you miserable. Symptoms include fever, joint pain, headaches, muscle aches, swelling, and rash, typically showing up three to seven days after a mosquito bite. Most people recover within a week. The virus is vaccine-preventable, though, so if you’re heading to affected areas, get the shot and bring the bug spray.…’ (Ellsworth Toohey via Boing Boing)

‘…Sacks spent decades in therapy exploring why he couldn’t stop embellishing. He called his writing “symbolic autobiography” — projecting his own psychological conflicts onto patients. The healer who saw the hidden genius in broken minds was, in some sense, trying to heal himself through fiction he labeled fact.…’ (Ellsworth Toohey via Boing Boing)

‘There’s no better way to close out the year than with an awe-inspiring display of fireballs streaking across the sky. The Geminids are set to peak during this weekend under perfect conditions, giving sky-watchers a chance to marvel at up to 100 meteors an hour.

The annual Geminid meteor shower should peak on Saturday night and continue onto early morning on Sunday while remaining visible until December 20. This year, the prospects of viewing bright streaks of light are high with the Moon being in a waning crescent phase. That means Earth’s natural satellite will not hamper your viewing opportunities of the shower.…’ (Passant Rabie via Gizmodo)

 

‘We once denied the suffering of animals in pain. As AIs grow more complex, we run the danger of making the same mistake …’ ( via Aeon Essays)

‘The 2024 election was widely viewed as a referendum on diversity, equity and inclusion and, once in office, President Donald Trump wasted no time in dismantling programs in the federal government and pressuring the private sector to follow suit.

With DEI programs under attack from the administration, many companies scaled back or eliminated them. Others had already rolled back diversity commitments after facing anti-DEI campaigns from activists.…’ (uthor: Jessica Guynn via USA Today)

‘As BBC Sport reports, President Trump is now the proud recipient of the inaugural FIFA Peace Prize, an award that definitely existed before this week and wasn’t just invented by his close ally Gianni Infantino. The ceremony took place at the Kennedy Center before the 2026 World Cup draw, where

Trump received a large golden trophy, a medal, and a certificate — the full participation trophy experience.

“This is your prize, this is your peace prize,” Infantino told Trump, in case anyone was confused about whose prize it was. Trump called it “truly one of the great honors” of his life. And who wouldn’t be honored by getting a shiny medal from an organization famous for bribery, racketeering, and money laundering?…’ (Ellsworth Toohey via Boing Boing

‘CNN’s KFile unearthed multiple appearances where the then-Fox News contributor warned that service members had a duty to refuse illegal commands. “The military’s not gonna follow illegal orders,” Hegseth said on Fox Business. “You’re not just gonna follow that order if it’s unlawful,” he said on Fox & Friends.…’ (Ellsworth Toohey via Boing Boing))

‘The post-modern philosopher Jean Baudrillard infamously argued in 1991 that the Gulf War did not take place, by which he did not mean that no fighting had actually occurred, but that the real events were something entirely separate from the carefully choreographed presentation the world saw thanks to the novel phenomenon of 24-hour cable news.

It’s tempting to wonder what Baudrillard would have made of the current US military buildup targeting Venezuela, a campaign that often appears to be driven by narratives with only a tangential relationship to actual events taking place.

Take, for instance, President Donald Trump’s dramatic announcement on his Truth Social platform a little over a week ago: “To all Airlines, Pilots, Drug Dealers, and Human Traffickers, please consider THE AIRSPACE ABOVE AND SURROUNDING VENEZUELA TO BE CLOSED IN ITS ENTIRETY.”…’ (Joshua Keating via Vox)

‘The Court’s Republican majority… plans to remake the separation of powers among the three US branches of government into a kind of hierarchy. Under this new vision, Congress’s power to create “independent” agencies that enjoy some insulation from the president must yield to a more powerful executive. And the executive’s authority over these agencies must, in turn, yield to a more powerful Supreme Court.…’ (Ian Millhiser via Vox)

‘What could it even mean to say we are all one person when we undeniably have separate minds?
Yet, the idea appears across philosophical traditions. Arthur Schopenhauer, a 19th-century German philosopher, claimed we are all manifestations of the same underlying phenomenon, somehow seeking to experience itself as separate individuals. He was long preceded, though, by a similar view recurring in the Hinduistic Vedas: that our true selves (Atman) are all the same and identical to a single universal consciousness (Brahman, in turn identified with God). In other words, whereas Buddhism sees the self as an illusion, Hinduism declares it permanent and immortal, although we still suffer an illusion by conceiving of it as individual.
For a real understanding of how this could be true, however, the Hindu texts largely point toward meditation and spiritual practice, because the doctrine of a shared, universal self is considered not truly graspable by rational thought. Schopenhauer does not fully resolve its paradoxes, either. In today’s West, the view that we are somehow “all one” seems most often reported as a realization following a psychedelic trip, incommunicable to those who haven’t shared a similar experience.
Must the idea remain mystical? Perhaps not—or at least much less than one might think. In recent decades, a few philosophers within the contemporary Western tradition have looked at it with new eyes. According to their arguments, the view that everyone is the same person is not only perfectly coherent, but also quite plausible…’ (Hedda Hassel Mørch via Nautilus)

‘….The psychedelic compound DMT disrupts a key brain rhythm linked to self-awareness, providing new insights into how the brain shapes our sense of self.

The research, published in The Journal of Neuroscience, investigated how DMT alters the coordinated brain rhythms linked to self-referential thought and internal narrative known as alpha waves. The team noticed this connection when they identified a neural signature associated with ego dissolution in study participants during the peak effects of DMT.…’ ( Austin Burgess via The Debrief)

‘But once you go back, you might not like what you find.…’ (Caroline Delbert via Popular Mechanics)

‘Across the internet, during the 2024 election and in the first year of his second term, MAGA influencers have increasingly used the R-word to insult and scandalize conscientious “woke” liberals, normalizing a slur that had been largely purged from the national vocabulary. The trend reflects not only a coarsening of public discourse under Trump but new depths of callousness and cruelty in America, with disability advocates warning of the term’s dehumanizing effect. Elon Musk alone has dropped the word more than 30 times on his X account since early 2024, while Joe Rogan has said that its return represents an important win for right-wingers. “The word ‘retarded’ is back, and it’s one of the great culture victories,” the podcaster crowed in an April episode of his show.…’ (Miles Klee via Rolling Stone)

 

‘A major seafood company wants to farm octopuses for their meat. Activists and academics say it’s impractical and cruel.…’ (Kenny Torrella via Vox)

‘The Mari Lwyd is a Welsh tradition in which a group of people carry a horse skull mounted on a pole — draped in a white sheet with the operator hidden underneath — to your door at Christmas and demand entry through song.

You are expected to refuse, also through song.

What follows is essentially a medieval rap battle: the Mari Lwyd party sings their case for why they should be let in, you sing back why they shouldn’t, and this continues until someone runs out of verses. If you lose, the skeletal horse and its entourage get to come inside, and you have to give them food and drink.

The tradition dates back to at least 1800, and the groups typically included the horse carrier, a leader, and people dressed as stock characters like Punch and Judy.…’ (Ellsworth Toohey via Boing Boing)

‘ARMR’s experimental vaccine is designed to neutralize fentanyl in the bloodstream before it reaches the brain. Keeping fentanyl out of the brain would prevent the respiratory failure that comes with overdose, which causes death, as well as the euphoric high people get while taking fentanyl.…’ (Emily Mullin via Ars Technica)

‘In 2002, astronomers at Johns Hopkins University set out to answer a question nobody asked but everyone secretly needed answered: what color is the universe? Not the black of space you see at night — the average color of all the light from all 200,000+ galaxies they surveyed.

…The corrected answer, published in 2003: a pale, creamy beige. Hex code #FFF8E7. The team needed a name for this color, so they ran a poll. Suggestions included “cappuccino cosmico,” “Big Bang beige,” and “primordial clam chowder.”…’ (Ellsworth Toohey via Boing Boing)

‘According to Trump’s new national security strategy, America is done with “democracy promotion”… except in Europe.…’ (Joshua Keating via Vox)

‘The Court’s Texas decision is a victory for Republicans, and it is a terrible blow to all gerrymandering plaintiffs.…’ (Ian Millhiser via Vox)

‘Trump is living his best life in this second and final turn in the White House. Coming up on one year back in power, he’s turned the office into an adult fantasy camp, a Tom Hanks-in-Big, ice-cream-for-dinner escapade posing as a presidency.

The brazen corruption, near-daily vulgarity and handing out pardons like lollipops is impossible to ignore and deserves the scorn of history. Yet how the president is spending much of his time reveals his flippant attitude toward his second term. This is free-range Trump. And the country has never seen such an indulgent head of state.

Yes, he’s one-part Viktor Orbán, making a mockery of the rule of law and wielding state power to reward friends and punish foes while eroding institutions.

But he’s also a 12-year-old boy: There’s fun trips, lots of screen time, playing with toys, reliable kids’ menus and cool gifts under the tree — no socks or trapper keepers.
Yet, as with all children, there are also outbursts in the middle of restaurants.
Or in this case, the Cabinet Room.…’ (Jonathan Martin via POLITICO)

‘When people tell me that there’s been no resistance to the Trump administration, I wonder if they’re expecting something that looks like a guerrilla revolution pushing out the government in one fell swoop or just aren’t paying attention, because there has, in fact, been a tremendous amount and variety of resistance and opposition and it’s mattered tremendously. When will it be enough is a question that can only be answered if and when all this is over and we find out what comes next. Another source of disappointment seems to come from the expectation that there will be some sort of obvious and logical building up toward regime change, rather than the reality that tipping points in particular and histories in general are unpredictable animals …’ ( via The Guardian)

‘For some, Trump’s answer wasn’t just inappropriate — it confirmed their fear that he no longer understands the gravity of anything outside his own ego.

“Everything is about him,” one person wrote on Threads. “Despite his clear decline, which is difficult to assess because he has always been intellectually challenged, his narcissism remains intact.”

“Hey, monster, the subject is a young woman who has died because you need to be macho man,” another Threads user wrote. “Not you and your inflated sense of self.”

“No brains left,” one commenter wrote. “He definitely has mentally left the building.”

Another viewer noted that the question required nothing complicated, “The right answer was the simplest. ‘Yes.’”

“He is socially bankrupt,” one viewer wrote. “The words ‘I’m sorry for your loss’ are not in his vocabulary.”…’ (via Atlanta Black Star)

‘A rhino horn is worth up to £76,000 on the black market. Each rhino is effectively carrying a death sentence on its head, with an estimated 1,900 poached in the last three years across the African continent.

The demand for rhino horn is driven by their use in traditional Asian medicine, and their scarcity only increases prices, fuelling the illegal trade. Rhinos have become the face of extinction, with only around 22,540 left in Africa. The population is at risk from drought, not only because it reduces the amount of food available but because it pushes people already experiencing poverty to take desperate measures to try and support themselves.

But no rhinos were poached in Kenya over that three-year period. A new documentary, Rhino, narrated by Tom Hardy, takes us to Borana Conservancy in central Kenya where the success of the species shows there is hope for its survival.…’ (via Big Issue)

‘What began as rare encounters off the Iberian coast now shows up in captain’s logs from Galicia to the Strait of Gibraltar, and in wary chatter on VHF. Experts say it looks learned, even coordinated. Insurers are watching. Mariners are changing habits mid-season.

It started like a shiver through the deck plates. A coastal freighter off Cape Finisterre rolled on a glassy swell, the night bridge lit soft blue, an ordinary watch with the engine ticking steady, when the helm shuddered as if from a hidden hand. The bow kept true, but the autopilot clicked off and the rudder felt heavy, like someone leaning against it from below. A deckhand ran aft and froze. Black-and-white shapes ghosted the wake, three, then five, their dorsal fins cutting the oil-slick moonlight. The ship wasn’t alone out there. Then the rudder stopped answering.…’ (via Jefferson.electric.co.uk)

‘Trump’s right wing billionaire friend Larry Ellison (and his nepobaby son, David) recently acquired CBS and likely co-ownership of TikTok. Like Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, the goal isn’t really subtle: rich, thin-skinned right wingers want to own the entirety of U.S. new and old media, then convert it into a giant propaganda and lazy infotainment bullhorn that blows smoke up their asses.

The Ellisons have since set their sights on Warner Brothers, CNN, and HBO. It won’t be cheap; it’s estimated that Larry and company will have to pay upwards of $60 billion for the acquisition. The Trump administration has openly signaled that they’d very much like the Ellisons to succeed here, in part to force a dying cable news channel (CNN) to be even friendlier to Trump than it already is.

While Ellison has some competing suitors with names like Comcast NBC Universal and Netflix, the winning bidder will need approval from the Trump DOJ and FCC. Knowing that they likely have a distinct tactical advantage via corruption, Ellison and Trump appear to be already measuring the drapes, discussing programming changes (and CNN hirings and firings) that will please the president:…’ (via Techdirt)

Nov 15, 2025: Follow Me Here turned 26. Here’s the first page. (Somehow, when I imported into WordPress years ago, the earlier Blogger posts got duplicated.)

In the long history of cinematic shock tactics meant to rouse us from our stupor about nuclear war — notably the 1983 American television film The Day After and more recently the 2025 apocalyptic thriller House of Dynamite —none has been more disturbing, direct, or effective than The War Game. Stripped of Hollywood’s emotional pacing, Watkins’ quasi-documentary avoided melodrama and instead presented nuclear catastrophe with the matter-of-fact tone of reportage. Its stark depiction of civil-defense futility and the predictable, overwhelming human suffering of a nuclear exchange pierced the collective denial of the subliminal existential dread permeating daily life. The film helped mobilize a generation struggling to articulate the scale of the nuclear threat, shifting public conversation away from abstract statistics, strategic doctrines, and sanitized civil-defense pamphlets. It became a cinematic touchstone for the antinuclear movement.

The BBC’s 20-year suppression of the film —  deeming it too disturbing but also seen by the British government as too effective  in serving the interests of those opposed to its nuclear arsenal — only amplified its impact. The ban became emblematic of establishment fear and denial, further exposing the absurdity of the nuclear arms race. Circulating clandestinely, the film acquired a charged mystique, reinforcing for many, myself included, the moral urgency at the heart of the antinuclear movement.

He would be the first to acknowledge that he was a propagandist and provocateur: 

“Is not the serious filmmaker in a double-bind situation, given the inevitable indoctrinating effect of his or her work?” Mr. Watkins asked [in a late-1970s film course he taught at Columbia University]. “Does the filmmaker have the right to subject a captive audience to his or her vision, especially if there is no potential for a return dialogue? Is there a difference between propaganda for the ‘good’ and for the ‘bad’?”

‘“After placing Laika in the container and before closing the hatch,” recalled Soviet engineer Yevgeniy Shabarov, “we kissed her nose and wished her bon voyage, knowing that she would not survive the flight.”…’ (via Vox)

‘Continent’s leaders suspect Russia of being behind barrage of increasingly disruptive attacks …’ (Bertrand Benoit in Berlin and Daniel Michaels in Brussels via WSJ)

This shift raises deeper cultural and existential questions. If AI becomes the primary reader and interpreter of human writing, the traditional writer–reader relationship changes, potentially diminishing human reading as a central cultural act. Yet it may also imbue writing with new urgency—what we produce now could influence how future intelligences “understand” us or even reconstruct aspects of our minds. How may authorship, creativity, and legacy transform in a world where machines, not humans, are increasingly the ones paying the closest attention? (Dan Kagan-Kans via The American Scholar)

‘Headphone listening—the act of playing a highly personalized soundtrack wherever we go—is a surprisingly radical invention, and we’re only beginning to contend with its implications. The visible barrier it creates between the listener and everyone else is obvious. Less obvious is the invisible barrier: The more time we spend in our own musical echo chambers, the less likely we are to share a collective cultural experience. The power of music has long been its ability to soundtrack a generation—to evoke emotion, as well as summon a specific time and place. Headphone listening not only isolates the listener; it shrinks music’s cultural footprint. …’ (Jonathan Garrett via The Atlantic)

‘…a bunch of rich guys who have been comically out of touch with normal people for many decades, and more recently have blowtorched their brains into a smoking pile of ash on Twitter…’ (Ryan Cooper via The American Prospect)

‘New York is quietly preparing for a Donald Trump takeover of the country’s largest city.
A wide range of New York’s most prominent civic leaders have for weeks been meeting behind the scenes to plan for the possibility of Trump sending in the National Guard or any other federal agents into New York City, according to multiple top elected officials.
Alarmed at what Trump may do in response to Zohran Mamdani’s election as New York City mayor, Gov. Kathy Hochul has devised a virtual war room and convened a series of conversations with law enforcement, business officials and activist groups to stop or at least mitigate any federal incursion. More meetings are being scheduled, including with New York’s leading clergy and veterans groups, some of whom will be gathering around Veterans Day next week.…’ (Jonathan Martin via POLITICO)

‘For decades, people around the world have been fascinated with the legend of bigfoot, sasquatch, yeti, or whatever you choose to call it. Sightings of a furry, upright biped and reports of beastly footprints have been reported from as far afield as the Himalayas. Although no definitive proof exists, the (often questionable) reports continue adding up. Outside plunged into the deep, dark corners of this subculture to compile the most famous—perhaps most convincing—bigfoot photos ever captured. Here’s the evidence. Is bigfoot real? You be the judge. …’ (Lauren Kent via Outside)

Donna and Keith were in what I consider the greatest configuration of the Dead. Her style was controversial and divisive for Deadheads of the era, with some cringing when she would cut loose and others feeling she goaded the mix to new heights.

‘Sunday (Nov. 2) marked the 25th anniversary of continuous human occupation of the International Space Station (ISS), which has carved out a spot in the history books as one of our species’ grandest (and most expensive) technological achievements.
Don’t save any confetti for a semicentennial celebration, however — the ISS is in its home stretch. NASA and its partners plan to deorbit the aging outpost toward the end of 2030, using a modified, extra-burly version of SpaceX’s Dragon cargo capsule to bring it down over an uninhabited stretch of ocean.
And not just any stretch — the “spacecraft cemetery,” a patch of the Pacific centered on Point Nemo, which is named after the famous submarine captain in Jules Verne’s 1871 novel “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.”
“This remote oceanic location is located at coordinates 48°52.6′S 123°23.6′W, about 2,688 kilometers [1,670 miles] from the nearest land — Ducie Island, part of the Pitcairn Islands, to the north; Motu Nui, one of the Easter Islands, to the northeast; and Maher Island, part of Antarctica, to the south,” officials with the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration wrote in a brief Point Nemo explainer …’ (Mike Wall via Space)

‘The United States is now a nation run by public servants who behave no better than internet trolls, deflecting criticism with crassness and obscenity. The White House press secretary answers a question from a member of the free press—a serious question about who planned a meeting between the American and Russian presidents—by saying, “Your mom did.” The secretary of defense cancels DEI and other policies by saying, “We are done with that shit.” The vice president calls an interlocutor on social media a “dipshit.” The president of the United States, during mass protests against his policies, responds by posting an AI-generated video of himself flying a jet fighter over his fellow citizens and dumping feces on their heads.
These are not the actions of mature adults. They are examples of crude people displaying their incompetence as they flail about in jobs—including the presidency—for which they are not qualified …’ (Tom Nichols via The Atlantic)