Links 7/30/2026

Discovery of a multicomponent alloy forged by the Hiroshima atomic blast Science Advances An island has been waging war on rats. They think they’ve finally won New Scientist Climate/Environment Southern Europe burns as 3 firefighters die and France battles blaze 4 times the size of Paris AP The EU might weaken its landmark climate law — the ‘most impactful’ in the world Grist It’s official: Data centers are slowing America’s shift away from coal Grist NOAA ditches weather-predicting supercomputers for Google Cloud The Register Hot nights are costing you up to 56 hours of sleep per year, study finds NPR Pandemics Why Anthony Fauci might not be safe after pleading the Fifth CNN A new mouse study gives us a hard close-up of something long COVID data keeps hinting at. SARS2 gets into the brain, clears out within a month – and the damage it leaves behind doesn’t just persist, it keeps growing. The virus clears out and leaves scorched earth behind it🧵— Zdenek Vrozina (@ZdenekVrozina) July 28, 2026 Japan LDP pushes for warrantless spy powers, citing national security Asahi Shimbun China? US sanctions Chinese, Hong Kong shipping firms over Iranian oil deliveries South China Morning Post China’s ‘dying’ companies China Talk Beijing Draws Its Line on “Overcapacity” Inside China Chartbook 462: China shocked – beyond 1.0 and 2.0 to the “Big One”. Adam Tooze Syraqistan Nearly 60,000 children orphaned in Gaza as Israel’s genocide destroys families and care systems New Arab Netanyahu challenger thinks Israel isn’t attacking enough neighbours The Canary EXCLUSIVE: CIA Assessment Details Israel’s Race to Make the U.S.-Israel Alliance Irreversible Capital & Empire *** US resumes aggression on Iran after five-day pause Al Mayadeen Saudi Arabia to announce Red Sea coalition to counter Houthi threats Al Monitor Saudi defense minister holds urgent meeting with Trump after Iraq strikes Axios China in touch with Yemen’s Houthis to allow ships to sail through Red Sea, sources say Arab News Drone hits US-owned gas tanker at Egypt port in potential widening of Iran war India Today Africa Boeings identified in Reuters report carried weapons for Sudanese paramilitary: UN experts Reuters Old Blighty UK government reviews why police ceding criminal cases to US military The Guardian European Disunion The Story of The Diplomat Who Hated Diplomacy—Kaja Kallas Shane Fitzgerald Watch out Brussels and Kyiv, Poland’s conservatives are veering right Politico New Not-So-Cold War Zelensky’s Lackluster DC Tour Upstaged by Another Mass Russian Air Attack on Ukraine Simplicius Total war, universal corruption Events in Ukraine Wildberries Eyes Kazakhstan Warehouses After Ukrainian Drone Strikes Hit Russian Logistics Network Kyiv Post Kazakhstan Resumes CPC Oil Exports After Output More Than Halves Times of Central Asia Why’d Ukraine Defy The US’ Reported Warning Not To Attack Non-Russian Vessels In The Black Sea? Andrew Korybko Finland to stop maintaining poles carrying communication lines with Russia, Kommersant reports Meduza South of the Border American Oil Majors Trying to Get Into Venezuela Have Hit a Wall WSJ Imperial Collapse Watch So It Goes … Aurelien US weapons stockpiles continue to dwindle with permanent end to Iran war nowhere in sight CNN US stealth fighter surge risks a readiness nosedive Asia Times What is Sovereignty to an Imperialist? Un-Diplomatic Trump 2.0 Revealed: Trump administration forced treatment on hunger striker in ICE detention The Guardian ICE’s New Detention Center Contracts Declare State Laws ‘Shall Not Apply’ Wired Trump overrode his own agencies to deny 4 Democratic disaster requests Politico Senate committee postpones vote on Todd Blanche’s nomination over disagreements with GOP senators NBC News Democrats Suck Schumer urges Fetterman not to leave Senate Democratic caucus The Hill Healthcare? A For-Profit Hospital Slashed Costs. Then a Patient Froze to Death on Its Roof. Mother Jones Obamacare enrollment declines in 49 states Minnesota Reformer Obama Legacy AI 🦔AI companies are bulk-buying rare books, scanning them through high-speed machines that cut the spines off, and shredding the originals. A service called ISBNdb facilitates orders of up to a million books and keeps buyers anonymous. Pre-2022 books are premium because they’re… pic.twitter.com/0YPd8N2oi5 — Hedgie (@HedgieMarkets) July 27, 2026 AI’s top startups are barely publishing their research Science Elon Musk’s AI company sues Minnesota Attorney General Ellison over nudification ban Minnesota Reformer Meta Stock Tanks In Jittery Market On Massive AI Investment, Mixed Q2 Deadline Mr. Market Fed meeting recap: Warsh says Fed won’t hesitate to stop inflation, but bond market has doubts CNBC Inflation gauge reboot to ease pressure on Federal Reserve to raise interest rates FT “MAHA” Untested supplements popular with special operators move a step closer to legal sale The After-Action Report More than 18,200 cyclosporiasis cases now suspected in US: Where it’s getting worse The Hill Disease Researchers Blame DOGE Cuts for Spiraling Cyclospora Outbreak Truthout You Cannot Break Bread With MAHA Pandemic Accountability Index The Bezzle Study Shows Corporate Subsidies Only Create Jobs for Lobbyists Boondoggle Groves of Academe Arizona State launches influencer degree where students must gain real followers Dexerto Casino Nation Sports Betting Giants Join Unprecedented Corporate Efforts to Buy 2026 Midterms Common Dreams Class Warfare The Rent Is Higher Than You Think The Economic Populist Hidden sleep crisis among workers over 50, study suggests Eurekalert! Antidote du jour (via): See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here. “Arizona State launches influencer degree where students must gain real followers” I’m sure they will. What could possibly go wrong? Unless, that is, that they set up AI agents who will proceed to follow those students to help them pass their course. Maybe AI influencer Mia Zelu will follow some of these students as well- https://www.dexerto.com/entertainment/ai-instagram-model-responds-as-wimbledon-photos-trick-viewers-into-thinking-shes-real-3226330/ An influencer degree? How low can a purported university sink? Sounds like a bachelors degree for completing on the job training. Celebrity endorsement or social media face its all advertising. Wonder what Bernays would think? Reminds me of the The Boys spin-off, GenV. It’s set in a university for superheroes where they are ranked on skill, social media following, and branding. The higher ranked you are the better opportunities you get for municipal superhero contracts Re: A degree in “influencing”. You ask, What could possibly go wrong? Obviously, lots. That “degree” sounds to me a lot like a degree in playing the lottery or poker or sports betting. CBC radio here in Canada a couple of years ago had a poll on the career aspirations of young people. 20%(!) of them wanted to be influencers. It didn’t say but I guess the rest thought they could make their living as “professional” poker players or sports bettors. And, for the less intellectually inclined, there was always posting videos on YouTube or TikTok in the hopes they go viral. All of that is sad in its desperation but an unfortunate and real signpost of our times. Orwell was prescient in his book “Nineteen Eighty-Four”. Under the rule of Big Brother, he wrote, the plebes would only be interested in gin and lotteries. And here we are today. He was right. Antidote 😍😍😍 Whose a good boy? And he seems such a happy-chappy as well. I want to give him a biscuit. There’s a bright future in the diplomatic corp here. Got to the end of Kogburne’s “You Cannot Break Bread with MAHA” and was not surprised to see their content also posted on Bluesky. If there was an mention of actual science in that article, I missed it. Instead, I was subjected to a full-on nonstop hyperpolitical rant that should have included footnotes in lieu of sweeping accusations. Those of us who were flagrantly victimized by the Food Pyramid™ aren’t quite so easy to sell, especially not when the sales pitch is entirely negative and loaded with assertions and allegations. Every nutter in the country could be in MAHA but that would not make MAHA worse than Big Pharma. I wish the author happiness, success and all the bread/grain they can eat. And eat, and eat and yet never feel “full.” Also completely ignores the (more grassroots) MAHA groups’ very effective organizing against pesticide immunity shields at both the National and state level, and growing consumer movements for products (clothing, cosmetics) without endocrine-disrupting chemicals. I disagree with MAHA on vaccines, and of course the movement is full of hucksters because we live in America, but the MAHA moms are super effective organizers and EWG etc could learn a lot from them. Also sad and demoralizing to see women’s health as a galvanizing political force be ceded to the right because the left just doesn’t have its shit together. See Alex Clark’s incredibly popular podcast for example … As foretold by Vernor Vinge in Rainbows End (2006), which is set in 2025. One of the many horrors described in a techno-dystopia that was extrapolated from our own world (early 2000s). Augmented reality being the main other one and the persistent intrusive surveillance that accompanies it. Yes. I was thinking the same thing. Rainbows End is an outstanding piece of science fiction, and Vinge was remarkably prescient. I’m not familiar with the novel; this made me think of how the libraries start to burn (or equivalent) whenever a culture’s decline sets in. This way is characteristically American though: a bunch of rich people and their compliant employees feeding archives to the machines, and all to pretend we’re not in a giant Ponzi scheme. This is an important development on the chess board, and should be understood in the context of all the other moving parts globally: https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2026/07/27/uss-george-washington-operating-in-south-china-sea-as-china-philippines-tension-escalates/ Apologies if this was already covered and I missed it, but this needs to be incorporated into the big geopolitical picture. Ian Welsh on AI book burning. https://www.ianwelsh.net/burning-down-great-library-yet-again/ The thought occurred to me that for our tech overlords, destroying such books is a good business decision. If you would like to see a future where the only place that you can view such rare books is by paying a tech company for a license to view it and – temporarily – download it, then this is the way to go. So of course you will seek out all other copies and shred them to keep up your future profit stream. Having those books still around is a liability as people can buy them, lend them to each other or even scan copies for general knowledge. Where is the profit in that? They would shred all copies of the US Constitution & Magna Carta if they could ensure that the only copy left is one whose rights are owned by a tech company. You will own nothing – nor will your culture. Also consider that once digitized — it can be altered to achieve some end for someone to employ an AI to achieve. History can be altered. Modern day book burning. We’ve already seen this in print publishing with classic children’s books having their “problematic” language reworded so as not to offend the sensibilities of woke PMC families. But at least there are plenty of copies of the unredacted book floating around in used bookstores for most of those works. This latest scheme is clearly about creating a monopoly for access to scarce works whose content would otherwise be in the public domain. Once again, our neoliberal economy shows that it’s based on the same logic as cancer. Eat up the seed corn and steal everyone else’s if possible. Deny all, consume all, until the host is killed in some ignored and hopefully distant future. Also, it will allow companies to restrict access to or ban certain books, especially on behalf of governments. In the science fiction television series, Continuum, the world was a corporatocracy and any information older than five years was automatically restricted from the public. As a result, people eventually became entirely unaware as to how or why things got to where they were in Continuum and had largely assumed that the world always was run by megacorporations and that public governments were largely a myth. You had something like this in the 1975 film “Rollerball” where all knowledge had been entered into a computer- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjYvdURv3Zw (5:59 mins) Rollerball is a fascinating movie. It was made about as late as a movie with its politics could have been; the critique of corporations as a force for paternalism, making everyone comfortable, conformist mediocrities, has a very 60s, “Harrison Bergeron” vibe. It is quite different from the world of mass layoffs and corporate advertising that fed back into counterculture hyperindividualism, that would soon be the norm. On the bright side, we probably won’t have a worldwide corporate government that’s shredded all the books. A few might survive, somewhere. (I was tempted to do an “Oh, so now philistinism is a problem” take on this, but I decided instead to comment on a great work of James Caan, who is not Italian.) JON – A – THAN JON – A – THAN JON- A – THAN Jonathan E proved to me as a young boy that the corporations will be smashed. They’re long Entropy. I believe I have been on the record about AI on multiple occasions. I am not at all happy with what it has done to medicine and I cannot see that we as a species to morally handle so much of what it is able to do. That being said, I find this new development with the old books fascinating. Long ago, as in multiple decades ago, I acquired a habit of photocopying every book I read – that way the photocopies could bleed red with pencil marks from my tactile learning brain – and not the actual books. I still own all of these books – they are right there in my library. But all the photocopies are now pdfs. I also have converted every single magazine sent to me into a pdf file. This conversion was 100% the prodding of my wife. Once you get the hang of converting, it is not hard to do. You do indeed destroy the magazine and the papers – but they were going in the recycling anyway. What that has left me is terabytes of pdf files accumulated over decades. Not to mention all the college and high school notes and lectures, and years of patient care documents. Over the years, I realized that it was impossible to properly use this collection – there was no way to index the contents. Any kind of search was like a needle in the haystack and my personal recollections of where some paragraph may be — recollections diminished by the decades. This past year, I have spent many hours building a machine in my home for my own personal use and my family with an AI model. Actually 2. One is called RAGFlow – the other is called OLLAMA. This machine is completely prohibited from entering the internet. It is self contained on my own home network. I do not want anything it does tainted by the internet at large. It turns out that the big speed bump in this whole procedure is the actual ingestion of the files. It takes a very long time. But after 9 months or so now – it has enough ( not nearly the whole thing by a long shot) to make it exceedingly useful for me and the kids doing research for homework, etc. They can ask questions like – Find articles about books written by Vernor Vinge. Find articles about Srinivasa Ramanujan. Find articles or stories about Sherlock Holmes using advertisements to solve a case. Etc Etc Etc. And the AI goes through the ingested documents and shows it all. And it is wickedly on point the majority of the time. It does no thinking. They and I have to go look at the original source material and process write and read from there. And again, all of this is for our own personal use……there is no sharing. It is magical. It is like my old high school librarians vertical file system – except on steroids. And it has led my kids and I on many intellectual hunts. But the point is I am ingesting and destroying things that would have been destroyed anyway – magazines, photocopies, index cards etc. The thought of tearing up old books is horrifying to me – it is why I used photocopies. There is absolutely scanning equipment available that would not require destruction – I do not understand these people. This also explains why used books have suddenly become so much more expensive. For years now – you could not have given them away. My use of AI as above has also made me realize how deplorable things like google have become. It is hard to know which is worse – the google algorithms – or the fact that we live in a copyrighted society and the only things readily available online are the dregs that are not copyrighted or paywalled. There are obviously magical things that well-implemented AI can do. But when have we ever used any new technology in a moral way? Certainly not in my lifetime. The AI roaming the tech world now is crafted by psychopaths. The contradictions are disconcerting. Cmon, Yves, look at IM DOC here making his own personal AI off his expert notes!!!! An AI based off of your expert political economic analysis and NC Commentariat would CRUSH the Epstein class bullshit LLMs and liberate the American Working Class! VIVA LA NC! “ AI companies are bulk-buying rare books… and shredding the originals.” Isn’t that what they used to refer to as “barbarians at the gates”? Disease Researchers Blame DOGE Cuts for Spiraling Cyclospora Outbreak What is DOGE really? You figure everything important and useful that the Federal Government does, and you de-fund it and fire or drive out everyone competent from those functions. Then people figure it out and bitch, and realize they haven’t saved any money, so Phase Two begins. Phase Two is farming it out to private contractors, magic of the free market blah-blah, so that it costs twice as much, sucks, but there is a steady stream of lobbyist money recycled back to Congress over contracts. Second, you hire back all the competent people, but you pay them less, they have shit benefits, and none of the statutory protections afforded civil servants, and its easier to abuse power without any accountability. TINA. “Israel declares ‘no more withdrawal’ from Lebanon, will demand ‘freedom of action’ in upcoming talks: Report” So nothing is changing for the Israelis,. They have no intention of ever leaving Lebanon and will continue to shoot anything that moves. It is their nature. “Israel declares…”is beginning to sound like “Florida man…” It just now occurred to me that Trump has his permanent home in Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach. So could you say that technically, that the United States is being run by Florida man? The results would indicate so. Everywhere he goes, Taco is stepping on his own toes. https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/5998237-senate-defies-trump-budget/ Taco’s stubbornness and failure to learn how to negotiate based on his history of getting what he wants by bullying is really catching up with him. GOP infighting less than 99 days before the midterms is not going to be helpful to their cause. Trump should just listen to Thune, drop the SAVE Act nonsense, and take half a loaf. And get out of the Iran war by telling Nutteryahoo to go pound sand. But his ego won’t let him do that. Our best chance of salvation from magats is their gross incompetence. It’s funny that Thune is hiding behind the Senate Parliamentarian, just like Schumer did. See, it’s not just the Democrats who suck. “Obama offers his summer reading suggestions” But are those books really the ones that he has been reading? That there would not be others? Such as- “How to Succeed in Politics Without Really Trying. “The Grapes of Wrath: but written from the viewpoint of the orchard owners and the sheriffs.” “I Got Mine, Buddy!” and “Meso-American Sacrificial Towers: An Architectural Inspiration” You forgot “Achieving Sainthood, the autobiography of Barack Hussein Obama”. Don’t forget: “Petri Dish Politician: The Creation of Barack Obama” “The Story of The Diplomat Who Hated Diplomacy—Kaja Kallas” I was thinking what to write when I came across a comment at the bottom of this post which said it all- ‘She has come to personify, more vividly than anyone else, the EU’s toxic blend of incompetence, irrelevance, and outright stupidity.’ She has managed to antagonize Russia, China, the US, Israel, the EU leadership and a host of other countries. That is a remarkable achievement for a diplomat. So you’re saying she’s no Talleyrand. From the sports desk, European soccer federations are up in arms over FIFA’s plan to sell the World Cup rights to a private company involving Kushners. Asians are joining too while Africans and South Americans are firmly on board. Without Europeans there is no World Cup, I’ll be interested to see how this plays out. I can imagine that Infantino and Trumps cabal thought they were clever by locking in the majority of votes by promising immediate $20 million payout to every national organization. Most of the small African and Asian countries don’t ever see that kind of money, so of course they are on board. They just forgot that UEFA and European national federations have been doing the grift for decades, so removing their ability to take bribes to “arrange” TV rights, sponsorships, etc. was not going to go down well. And with FIFA being just a random organization everybody agreed to let organize the World Cup means they can just walk away and setup another organization, FIFA (or EUFA as well) doesn’t have some inherent advantage or infrastructure, it all rests with the national bodies. Grifters think they can outgrift other grifters :) >sell the World Cup rights to a private company involving Kushners More specifically, Thrive Capital, run by Jared’s brother Joshua. I first became aware of it while researching Dan Caine when he was appointed JCoS (Caine became an advisor at Thrive very shortly before his JCoS appointment). Weird company that was hard to get info on. My 2c: this ends with UEFA breaking fully with FIFA. Or this is all a charade and UEFA sells out? In re the house NDAA: Israel is not and never has been a ally. It is a client state that were the US to withdraw its support would be hard pressed to survive. Embed itself systemically in the US defense establishment so those pesky annual subsidies disappear is a sound tactic for Israel. It represents a surrender of sovereignty by the US to Israel. Voting for it is not exactly levying war against the United States or giving aid and comfort to its enemies but the distinction is difficult to discern. Silly me, I thought members of the US Congress were supposed to represent the interests of the United States. How does embedding Israel in the defense establishment promote the general welfare of the United States, the people of the United States. To vote as a majority in the House did is a vote for the genocide in Gaza. Its a vote for aggressive war by Israel against Lebanon and the deliberate wholesale destruction of the built landscape of those parts of Lebanon to which Israel has access. it is a vote for the continued assault upon the non-Jewish inhabitants of the West Bank with the avowed intent of driving those inhabitants off the land by whatever means come to hand. It is a vote to sanction continued encroachment by Israel into Syria. It gives a nod to a projected assault of some sort on Turkiye and possibly Egypt as well. I conclude that Congress has voted to give their backing to Israel’s policy of attacking all those countries which border it. It is support for Israel’s desire to destroy Iran for the “crime” of being in a theoretical position to thwart Israel’s ambition to become the regional hegemon. Nowhere in this list do I detect the national interest of the United States. I have heard the US Congress referred to as the Knesset 2.0. Is it? Do you Congress critters own that label? “I have heard the US Congress referred to as the Knesset 2.0. Do you Congress critters own that label?” Yes, I think all but a very small handful do. But at least on the issue of the House NDAA, my congress critter voted no, like almost all Democrats. The thing is, they worked out a deal so that exactly the number of Democrats needed to get the bill across the line defected, and in that way the NDAA passed. Now on to the Senate where such a traitorous act like handing a good chunk of US sovereignty over to Israel should be easier to defeat. However, what else but a commodity could sovereignty possibly be in these good ol’ United States? Hang on to your hat, folks. re: Finland to stop maintaining poles carrying communication lines with Russia, Kommersant reports Meduza So Meduza above the header has its ad slogan: “Want to piss Putin off? Help Meduza and donate today.” Seriously? The GOAT investigative outlet? The citadel of freedom of speech? (ok, citadel may be an unfortunate choice.) The warriors of democracy? Apparently “pissing off” the really really most evil guy of all time is the new cool. And I am sure Putin is incredibly incredibly angry and pissed off about this, too. I guess Fetterman leaving the Democratic party/caucus is structured on Mitch actually being dead. Have to let the Republicans maintain their edge. If Fauci has a pardon from Biden, how can he be allowed to plead the fifth?