Author: nick

[ad_1] Kevin O’Leary, in a social media video, claimed paid activists turned out this week to protest his massive Utah data center. Screenshot via Facebook. This week in the Anthropocene. Let’s start with the bad. Carbon dioxide levels just hit a new record of 431 parts per million. Some of you may remember that 350 was the safe upper limit for atmospheric carbon. Oh, how times have changed. What does this mean for the planet? We’re already seeing the consequences of out-of-control fossil fuel consumption. Corpus Christi, Texas (population 317,000), may be the first major city in the country to…

[ad_1] Armed assailant (Cole Tomas Allen) sprinting through supposed secure area, Washington Hilton, April 25, 2026, FBI Field Audio/Video. Bad assassins In a recent conversation, a friend and I casually discussed, as one does, the declining skills of American presidential assassins. In the first two hundred years (roughly) after the nation’s founding in 1776, we noted, there were nine attempts, four of which were successful – Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, and Kennedy (44%). Since that time, there have been seven attempts, none successful (0%). The most obvious reason for the decline is improved presidential protection. But given the many demonstrable failures…

[ad_1] Neither of the two previous quagmires was revealed in its calamitous stupidity as swiftly as Trump’s war on Iran, writes Mitchell Zimmerman. Satellite imagery of black smoke rising from the Port of Salalah on March 13, during Iranian strikes on Oman. (CC BY 4.0 /Wikimedia Commons) By Mitchell ZimmermanCommon Dreams As Donald Trump’s War shambles on with no end in sight, the U.S. president asks us to put his “little excursion” “in perspective.” Compared to Vietnam and Iraq, Trump says, the Iran conflict has lasted “not very long at all.” Does anyone find comfort in comparing the Iran disaster…

[ad_1] Much of the current discourse on the Middle East remains fixated on the US midterm congressional elections this coming November. This vote, in particular, is being framed as a pivotal turning point for everything from the survival of Gaza and Lebanon to the future of Iran and beyond. To a large extent, one can understand why US corporate media is obsessed with this date. US political power is divided between two ruling parties, each deeply embedded in an intricate system of powerful political and economic elites. For these groups, election results are decisive in shaping the overall direction of…

[ad_1] Back in November 2021, Congress quietly added a clause to the sprawling “Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act” that would make Orwell blush. Section 24220 authorizes the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to require that every new passenger car include “advanced drunk-and-impaired-driving prevention technology.” The provision is sold as a way to save lives, but alleges to do so by commanding vehicles to monitor drivers and refuse to operate when the software suspects impairment. In other words, AI will determine whether or not you can drive should you buy a new year model vehicle starting in 2027. This is…

[ad_1] New York State Appellate Division of the Supreme Court: New York City. Truthful Fictions Michelangelo gave Rome’s Adam and God life’s gift of an invisible sacrament: The spark of the divine- -the memorably memorable: The collaboratively greet- -is a greatness while in the residence of eyes not mine- -Mine eyes were not theirs: More than hundreds, yet Oscar Niemeyer, Philip Johnson, Frank Gehry, Richard Rogers, Paulo Mendes, Hans Hollein, Zaha Hadid too whispered while hands held: Moments constructed remembered profoundly: The unexpected delight (not on par within the “Chapel”) felt within abstract precisionism: My mind forever planted in furtive…

[ad_1] Do you remember Rupert Sheldrake? He’s the English scientist who made a big splash in the anima mundi back in the 1980s with his theory of “morphic resonance,” the simple hypothesis Mother Nature may have a memory. His “heretical” book A New Science of Life was condemned in Science magazine as “the best candidate for burning there has been for many years,” this being long before J.K. Rowling ever got her name in print.  Physical phenomena were mere ingrained habits within Nature’s memory-banks, suggested the rogue biologist. Sheldrake noted that, when chemists labored to create new forms of artificial…

[ad_1] A US military strike on May 4 killed two mariners in an alleged “narco boat” campaign which now has a cumulative death toll of at least 188. The pace of extrajudicial executions is ramping up, according to The Guardian. But why? The serial murders could be, as the Trump administration claims, a genuine counter-narcotics operation. Or Mr. Trump and company may be conducting a demonstration exercise of executive power. Alternatively, the “kinetic strikes” may reflect more domestic concerns or perhaps foreign policy issues. Another possibility is that the administration is intentionally cultivating an image of unpredictability associated with “madman…

[ad_1] Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum is facing domestic backlash after it was revealed that two CIA agents died in a car crash in northern Mexico during an anti-narcotics operation last month. The agents, who posed as employees of a U.S. embassy, were working with Mexican officials in the state of Chihuahua to crack down on drug production in the region. Sheinbaum has consistently cooperated with President Donald Trump on immigration, crime, and drug policy, but she has refused to allow American troops or government agencies to carry out operations on Mexican soil, a measure she argues would compromise Mexican sovereignty.…

[ad_1] Here’s a lesson President Donald Trump should have learned a long time ago: Israel and its American lobby cannot be satisfied. No matter how much you give them, they always want more. Right now, they want Trump to restart the war with Iran, Israel’s chief adversary in the Middle East. Will Trump give them what they want? I fear he will. In early February, weeks before Trump launched the war, I argued in The American Conservative that Iran was his “Israeli influence test.” War with Iran would advance Israeli interests, not American ones, so it seemed a good test…