news

How long before the US is going to use AI to run its economy?

I feel like this is now a very distinct possibility and will certainly have a disastrous outcome. Maybe the empire is really going to collapse under its own weight by chasing the AI crap lol.

Is the Fasces in the Capitol intentionally shaped like a dollar or is the dollar intentionally shaped like the fasces?

Rep. Gerry Connolly dies at 75

Vaxxed?!

'Recovered' Assange promotes Cannes documentary wearing Gaza T-shirt (WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange appears at the Cannes Film Festival wearing a t-shirt listing the names of 4,986 children killed by Israel.)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cq8037dd3p9t

I guess these are the 'concrete actions'

UK suspends Israel trade talks and summons ambassador over 'intolerable' Gaza offensive

yield watch hype: briefly crossed into 5% inside the day. also japan is a little bit imploding, but gotta wait and see.

also nothing ever happens.

p.s. tel-aviv delenda est

Khaled Barakat (his organization Samidoun was repressed out of the North American continent last year) had this to say about the denazification in the American capitol:

Palestinian writer Khaled Barakat, a member of the Executive Committee of the Masar Badil, the Palestinian Alternative Revolutionary Path Movement, stated that “the shooting incident that occurred in the U.S. capital, Washington, targeting employees of the “Israeli” embassy, is a natural consequence of the Zionist entity’s crimes in the Gaza Strip.”

Barakat added: “It is impossible to separate the reaction from the broader political and humanitarian context, by which we mean the ongoing Zionist massacre in Gaza for over twenty months — one of the most heinous genocidal crimes of the twenty-first century. It is a massacre that continues to this moment and will lead to further anger and violence toward the Zionist presence as a whole, and toward all those who support this entity in occupied Palestine and across the world.”

He continued: “‘Israel,’ with the support and complicity of Western governments — foremost among them the United States — has committed a series of crimes that claimed the lives of tens of thousands of Palestinians, including thousands of children and women, through bombing, siege, and starvation, all amid a disgraceful international silence. Why do some express surprise at the human reactions to these horrific massacres? It is only inevitable that those who sow fire in Gaza should expect to reap a harvest of fire, in Gaza and in cities and capitals around the world.”

He concluded by saying: “This explosion of anger in the heart of the U.S. capital is neither isolated nor random, but one of the manifestations of pain and deep rage stemming from the international community’s disregard for the suffering of Palestinians, and its complicity in shielding the killers and granting them impunity. We affirm that the occupation is the original crime, and that those who seek to criminalize the reactions while remaining silent on the massacre are complicit in the ongoing crime.”

Net Approval — Harvard/Harris poll; May 2025:

Republicans: +4%

Democrats: -16%

Net Approval — Harvard/Harris poll; August 2020 (height of the racial justice & civil rights protests):

Republicans: -12%

Democrats: +0%

Some positive US news… SCOTUS delivered a split 4-4 decision on whether or not state funds can be used to support religious charter schools. The split decision means the lower court’s decision to not allow this will stand.

Charter schools are private schools within the public schools system. They tend to be for-profit secular schools that sidestep unionized teachers and pay less in order to profit. And this drains resources from public schools. Religious nuts have long targeted public schools because they think it’s “unfair” to have to pay taxes for schools and then pay tuition at their little religious indoctrination schools.

I haven't seen this posted, but I learned about today from breakthrough news about Project Esther

Leaked Documents Reveal Trump Admin Plan To Destroy Palestine Movement https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QN8QKCfQHa0

The Group Behind Project 2025 Has a Plan to Crush the Pro-Palestinian Movement https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/18/us/project-esther-heritage-foundation-palestine.html or archive link https://archive.ph/Bx3c3

Project Esther: NYT Details Right-Wing Plan to “Rebrand All Critics of Israel” as Hamas Supporters https://www.democracynow.org/2025/5/19/project_esther or archive link https://archive.ph/fBdaI

So with China apparently experiencing the greatest surge in household consumption the world has ever seen over the last 1-2 decades and being the biggest consumer market in the world for most goods, already outperforming in per capita sales of goods any other remotely comperable in income level country, how much faster should consumption be growing for China to solve all those oh so terminal weak consumption problems? Should consumption have been growning at double the rate of gdp somehow? Should they, on a per capita basis, already be consuming near level of the average american somehow instead of idk 60% as much? Should they be eating more , buying more cars and smartphones? They are already the largest market by far of just about any product (cars, phones, appliances, furniture, luxury etc) so should they be that by multipliers of 2-3 or 5 already?

Or should they aspire to spend similar amount of money on rent and healthcare on average to catch up ?After all Chinese household consumption numbers usualy come in at levels similar to retail sales, while household consumption in the US is ~2-3x retail sales. Thats because not only ar services (largely rent, healthcare and education) a much larger burden for the american and western consumer but they are also (mis)calculated completely differenty in the chinese national accounting system which is still of leninist origin leading to these numbers above been undercounts funnily enough for china, as are ultimetaly the usualy circulated very low numbers of consumption as a % of GDP. For that and other factors uniqe to China, apples-to-apples, China’s household consumption share is probably 50-55% of GDP, only a bit lower than world average.

Even so ,Is the CPC neoliberaly holding down Chinese household consumption by having it grow only 2+ times as fast as any other country over the years instead of uhhh 4 times ? Where should and would those numbers in those graphs be if not for the missmanagement of Chinas consumer economy by the CPC? At 300% ? At what level should and chinese HH consumption be for it to become a "consumer country" or whatever ?

Interesting interview with a Russian drone developer

Guy's got a particular perspective (small Russian military drone manufacturer who wants to be better integrated into the Russian MIC) but very interesting overall. He talks about tactics such as using a fiber optic drone to hit the jamming source of an incursion, be it a backpack kit or vehicle with the EW hardware, then using cheaper radio drones to begin picking apart the rest of the force. He also talks about downsides of fiber optics - in particular light you can see the cables and track them to their source from a recon drone. You can also put a laser into a terminated optical drone's cable and use that to track it back to the source on the ground. Lots of interesting stuff.

Employee charged in killing of trucking CEO found after fire in Chicago suburb https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/chicago/news/employee-charged-killing-of-trucking-ceo-crestwood/

Come on new pope, excommunicate Joe Biden. He needs to be depressed as much as possible to lose against cancer

https://abc7ny.com/post/2-shot-1-fatally-outside-capital-jewish-museum-washington-dc-israeli-embassy-staff-among-victims-police-say/16500500/

Developing - Two Pissreal Embassy Staff shot in DC

Last night, a third ballistic missile over a 24 hour period was launched from Yemen towards Israel. The missile was likely intercepted outside of Israel by the Arrow 3 midcourse interception system, given there was no footage of a missile or interception over Israel. However, the air raid sirens in Israel were still sounded.

The EU is apparently gonna discuss hungarys voting rights on Tuesday https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/meetings/gac/2025/05/27/

Today Russia announced that it will create a large defensive buffer zone to protect Belgorod, Kursk, Bryansk, the Crimea, Zaporozhye, Kherson and the Donbass from NATO artillery fire: https://sputnikglobe.com/20250522/why-russia-wants-buffer-zone-along-ukraine-border-1122113142.html

Plus, a little combat footage.

A Russian Iskander-M missile strike destroyed a US-built “Patriot” SAM system (including its AN/MPQ-65 radar, the command/control cabin, and two launchers), near Ordzhonikidze (in Dnepropetrovsk oblast): https://www.rt.com/russia/618005-russian-iskander-destroys-ukrainian-patriot/

A DPRK self-propelled howitzer in action on the Kursk front: https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/9849289.html

Russian airborne troops captured and inspected an enemy trench (18+ footage, the Kiev regime military suffered many losses here): https://odysee.com/@Support4Z:b/%F0%9F%93%BD%EF%B8%8F-A-%F0%9F%87%AC%F0%9F%87%A7-%F0%9F%87%AB%F0%9F%87%B7,--%F0%9F%94%9EParatroopers-forest-belt,-trench-littered-with-corpses%F0%9F%94%9E:1

Today, Israeli authorities issued a displacement order covering 40 neighbourhoods in Khan Younis — an area encompassing most of the governorate, or about 23 per cent of the whole of the Gaza Strip. It is affecting thousands of people and hundreds of humanitarian facilities, including wells, including pumping stations, including health facilities and including schools. Overall, almost half a million people have been displaced across the Gaza Strip since mid-March.

Daily Press Briefing by the Office of the Spokesperson for the Secretary-General, 2025-05-19 | WebTV recording of the Press Briefing

CNN and BBC Team up to Help Bolsonaro - Telesur/Brian Mier

0 fact checking on gossip spread by Eduardo Bolsonaro on visit by US delegation fools Brazilian public into thinking David Gamble had arrived to sanction Brazilian officials

The US left is now tied with a Nepalese elephant for kill count of genocidal IOF baby killers.

The Wire (India): CPI (Maoist) General Secretary Nambala Keshava Rao Killed In Encounter in Chhattisgarh

The African lion, a circus lion in its cage.

In Finland news: A stabbing in a school. The 16 year old who did it apparently used chatgpt to plan his violence.

There have been widespread reports that the suspect, who Yle understands is a 16-year-old boy, published a manifesto saying he planned to use a knife in the attack and that his intended targets would be female pupils.

According to the manifesto, he wanted to do something "significant" and "exciting", with the stated aim of going to prison for two to four years.

The manifesto also claims he had no friends and did not want any. He reportedly planned the act for about six months, allegedly using ChatGPT as an aid.

‘Dilbert’ creator Scott Adams reveals same cancer diagnosis as Biden, says he has months to live - The Hill

Ok I need to know, why does pretty much every country go out their way to kiss zionist ass? From the gulf states to Vietnam and China, why is international politics so weak to try to do anything to barely slap "Israel"s hand? Serious, not shitposts.

Its mind baffling, it goes outside any logic or reason and I would even consider it against materialism. It's like giving reason to all right wing talks about zionist control over the world lmfao.

As Trump had a press conference about the "Golden Dome", the US Military received it's first radar for the Golden Dome project a few days ago: an upgraded AN/TPY-2 radar with a Gallium Nitride (GaN) front-end. Radars, unlike logical processors in consumer electronics, are one of the areas where GaN is actually highly useful

US takes delivery of first upgraded AN/TPY-2 radar

The new version of AN/TPY-2 has a longer range and can provide targeting coordinates to other missile defense interceptors beyond just the Army’s THAAD batteries, Jon Norman, Raytheon’s vice president for Air and Space Defense Systems Requirements and Capabilities, told Breaking Defense.

“What the TPY-2 does now, with the Gallium Nitride front-end in it, is it can see things twice as far, so we can make that command and control decision a lot earlier on which effector to use, whether it’s an SM series or it’s a Patriot, or it’s a THAAD,” he said.

The radar can be deployed as a standalone, mobile unit rather than being directly wired into a THAAD battery, Norman explained, which positions it as a potential contribution to President Donald Trump’s Golden Dome plan to create a comprehensive missile shield for the US homeland.

Double the range means a 6000km range, and given the inverse square law, much more power and target tracking capabilities at closer ranges, differentiating the target from decoys much sooner.

“If they have anything else falling off, you can discriminate very accurately and say, ‘This is the warhead. This is what we need to shoot. All the other stuff is just junk. It’s like litter on the road, so don’t waste the missile on the junk. Hit the thing that we want to hit,” he said.

The upgraded AN/TPY-2 can now “detect these very, very small targets, and you can detect them at the separation when the booster separates from the warhead,” he said, adding that with the longer range “we can shoot sooner, and we can hit it before it starts maneuvering.”

That last paragraph is what the US Navy was doing to ballistic missiles launched from Yemen towards Israel when they had the opportunity and SM-3s to spare. Early midcourse phase or late boost phase intercepts. A recent Senate meeting revealed that the US had fired "dozens" of SM-3s at missiles from Yemen. I came to this conclusion very early on in the US bombing campaign against Yemen. Now imagine the US doing the same thing, but to hypothetical Chinese or Russian ICBMs that would fly over the Pacific towards the USA... Place a GaN front-end AN/TPY-2 radar in East Asia, and some US Navy missile destroyers armed with SM-3s in the West Pacific, or an AEGIS Ashore facility in Guam, and this is possible with the massive increase in range and power of the upgraded AN/TPY-2.

China and Russia have said as much in a joint statement, that this aspect of the "Golden Dome" undermines deterrence and makes arms control and treaties like the previous INF treaty impossible:

Deeply destabilizing in nature is also the recently announced “Golden (Iron) Dome for America”, a large-scale program designed to establish unconstrained, global, deeply layered and multi-domain missile defense system to protect against any missile threats, including all types of missiles from “peer and near-peer adversaries”. First of all, this means a complete and ultimate rejection to recognize the existence of the inseparable interrelationship between strategic offensive arms and strategic defensive arms, which is one of the central and fundamental principles of maintaining global strategic stability. The project also provides additional impetus to the further development of kinetic and non-kinetic means providing for the left-of-launch defeat of missile weapons and the infrastructure that supports their employment.

i will break fedcobin in half i swear to god:

https://jacobin.com/2025/05/materialism-socialism-democracy-left-wing

like largely, on concrete paragraphs, the article is more good than bad (the author is dodgy in other ways, but not here), yet manages to completely substitute social materialism for economic agents framework in marxism.