Cat Returned to Shelter Twice Hugs Her New Humans To Reassure Herself That She’s Found a Loving Home Laughing Squid
Crime scene university: Neo-feudal power structures in science Overton via machine translation (Micael T)
SGLT2 Diabetes Drugs Show Surprising Arthritis Benefit Naveen Sankar
How America Got Hooked on Ultraprocessed Food New York Times (resilc)
#COVID-19/Pandemics
Long Covid Is Real — And It’s Changing an Entire Generation Rolling Stone
Discovery of molecular signature of long-term psychiatric sequelae in COVID-19 through proteome profiling of dried blood spots Nature. Paul R: “Long Covid biomarker”
Climate/Environment
U.S. regulators toss out rules requiring banks to prepare for climate change CNBC (Kevin W)
Australian tropical rainforest trees switch in world first from carbon sink to emissions source Guardian (Kevin W)
Nevada had the *lowest* increase in electricity prices in the entire nation (falling in real terms!), *despite rising demand* — thanks largely to the massive amount of solar it’s built.
Reversing that course is the dumbest thing we could possibly do. https://t.co/KIxM0rOL0Y pic.twitter.com/qIlh0Ncg36
— Jesse Peltan (@JessePeltan) October 13, 2025
Study Warns of “Ultimate Extinction” as Dolphin Lifespans Plummet SciTech Daily (Chuck L)
China?
China breaks record for Canadian oil imports, shuns US crude The Cradle (Kevin W)
Oil Tanker Rates Soar as U.S. and China Escalate Port Trade War OilPrice
Ambassador Xie Feng: U.S. Actions was a Breach of Trust After Madrid Trade Agreement
Chinese Ambassador Xie Feng felt the U.S. demonstrated a profound lack of sincerity in executing the understanding reached at the Madrid trade negotiations because Washington immediately… pic.twitter.com/vzCoJMIQG1
— Ignis Rex (@Ignis_Rex) October 16, 2025
India
Yours truly said Bessent was an idiot:
Boom! This means that Bessent’s coalition against China is already dead, before being born.
He wanted to form it, specifically with India, at that very meeting. And India’s finance minister says she won’t attend over “unresolved differences over trade and India’s purchases of… https://t.co/YYZOj6LKKc
— Arnaud Bertrand (@RnaudBertrand) October 16, 2025
Africa
>Madagascar coup leader signals openness to dialogue with African Union after suspension Anadolu Agency
South of the Border
Military Commander Overseeing Escalating Attacks Off Venezuela Coast Is Stepping Down, Officials Say New York Times. resilc: “Trump wants a white general for the invasion.”
Trump confirms he authorized CIA action in Venezuela NBC (Kevin W)
European Disunion
The most dependent companies in Europe for components from frozen and sanctioned Nexperia are VW, BMW, Stellantis, Bosch, ASML, Siemens, and Airbus. Germany wasn’t deindustrialising fast enough to please the Trump administration? Substitution of alternatives will take 12-18… https://t.co/Klft0HER1M pic.twitter.com/NGnpxg1mJW
— Kathleen Tyson (@Kathleen_Tyson_) October 15, 2025
EU Leaders Determined To Win “Most Supine Slave Award”: Nexperia Edition Ian Welsh (Micael T)
EU, Spain reject Trump’s US tariff threats over NATO spending Aljazeera
How the car crisis affects local communities Tagesschau via machine translation (guurst)
EU nation to allow 13-hour workday RT (Kevin W)
Old Blighty
First container ship arrives in UK via Arctic Route, a faster and cheaper China-Europe alternative YouTube (resilc)
Israel v. The Resistance
Pro-Hamas hackers hijack airport loudspeakers across North America, spew anti-Trump, -Netanyahu slurs – and causing delays New York Post. resilc says he has an alibi.
Amira Hass. Why the West Bank did not rise up OrientXXI (guurst)
Returning to Shujaiya: Palestinians Are Going Back to Gaza City Despite Proximity of Israeli Troops Drop Site
Prominent Palestinian prisoner Marwan Barghouti attacked by guards, family says BBC (resilc)
Israel Tortured And Sexually Humiliated Greta Thunberg Caitlin Johnstone (Kevin W)
Old Blighty
Sir Keir Starmer leads outrage after Maccabi Tel Aviv fans banned from Aston Villa match Telegraph (Kevin W). BWAHAHA. Where I am, the government has considered banning ALL Israeli tourists. Despite their tiny numbers, they represent more than half the violent crimes instigated by tourists
New Not-So-Cold War
It is still not known how Putin intends to get to Budapest for a potential summit, considering that Hungary is a landlocked county and all of the countries surrounding it would probably refuse to allow an aircraft operated by the Russian Government, especially one carrying Putin,… https://t.co/BL3kSk4cnA pic.twitter.com/5MzJ06VKlQ
— OSINTdefender (@sentdefender) October 16, 2025
I interviewed the former Russian Ambassador to Germany today. And its so sad. I always like interviewing Ambassadors. They’re always the nicest people. But its just so sad. He told me how back in the 90s he would meet up for coffee with his counterpart, German or British or… pic.twitter.com/b4qMyOlOkw
— Johnny miller (@johnnyjmils) October 16, 2025
Syraqistan
Why Pakistan and the Taliban are at war with each other Middle East Eye (resilc)
How MI6 Built Syria’s Extremist Police Kit Klarenberg
Big Brother is Watching You Watch
Viral ‘Cheater Buster’ Sites Use Facial Recognition to Let Anyone Reveal Peoples’ Tinder Profiles3 404 Media
Imperial Collapse Watch
Baker & Taylor Prepares Plan to Shut Down Publishers Weekly. Robin K: “This is a cataclysm. This is from last week, but the disaster is just hitting libraries and book stores (of which there are fewer and fewer!)”
Jeffrey Sachs & John Mearsheimer: Spheres of Security to Prevent World War III Glenn Diesen, YouTube
Exorbitant Privilege Gained and Lost: Fiscal Implications University of Chicago Press (Paul R)
US depleted its missiles in Ukraine, Israel. Now it wants more fast. Responsible Statescraft (Kevin W)
Foreign Ownership In The West … Andrei Martyanov (Micael T). Yours truly has been revealed as lacking in imagination and cynicism. I thought it was utterly nuts for US companies to set up operations in China in the early 2000s due to expropriation risk. That has happened via the acquisition of know-how. But it is the West that has resorted to the cruder sort I had seen as a risk.
Trump 2.0
Chuck L says this has been confirmed by Rep. Anna Luna of FLorida:
🚨🇺🇸🇷🇺 BREAKING: Russia to hand over a “350-page document” to the US exposing who assassinated JFK. pic.twitter.com/9kbBInDAI6
— Jackson Hinkle 🇺🇸 (@jacksonhinklle) October 14, 2025
FIFA World Cup 2026: Organisers dismiss Trump venue move threat Aljzeera (resilc). Pathetic that a president resorts to this level of trying to throw his weight around.
John Bolton indicted; ex-national security advisor is latest Trump foe to face criminal charges CNBC. Li: “Notice transmission.”
Biotech leaders say uncertainty at FDA threatens drug development STAT
Where do babies come from? Robert F Kennedy Jr doesn’t seem to know Guardian (resilc)
Immigration
We Found That More Than 170 U.S. Citizens Have Been Held by Immigration Agents. They’ve Been Kicked, Dragged and Detained for Days ProPublica
Roaming Charges: Aspirations to Omnipotence CounterPunch (resilc)
GOP Clown Car
Mike Johnson Said He and His Son Monitor Each Other’s Porn Usage, and Yeah, It’s Exactly as Weird as It Sounds Vanity Fair (resilc)
Mamdani
Mamdani vs Cuomo. Their debate in 3 minutes. From Zeteo. https://t.co/SyJd2TiF6V pic.twitter.com/2qocXbPzVe
— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) October 17, 2025
Mr. Market is Moody
RealTime Bubble Checklist Barry Ritholtz
Zions shares plunge 7% after $50M loan loss, US regional banks face credit pressure Trading View
Economy
75% of Americans report soaring prices as Trump claims inflation ‘over’ Guardian. resilc: “Was $3.99 in April”:
Another New England sighting from resilc:
US Housing Market Falling Into ‘Deflationary Vortex,’ Analyst Warns Newsweek
Boeing
Boeing Is Now Absurdly Late In Getting Planes To Airlines And The Government Shutdown Isn’t Helping Jalopnik (resilc)
AI
MGB is turning to AI to ease shortage of primary care doctors. Some of them don’t like it. Boston Globe. Tom V: “Some?? This is an admission of abject failure in the presumably the best medical institution on the planet.”
Ken Griffin Says GenAI Fails to Help Hedge Funds Produce Alpha Bloomberg (Micael T). Why is this a surprise? Hedge funds have been running black box and later strategies by “algos” (as in more of the same) for two decades. GenAI is primarily text, video, and audio. As if that is all that helpful? And with purely financial data 1. per the discussion earlier, that has been very VERY well mined and 2. May not amount to large enough training sets.
AI’s double bubble trouble Financial Times
OpenAI Has a Business Plan Matt Levine, Bloomberg (Micael T)
Don’t trust AI job forecasts: ‘No one knows anything:’ Wharton guru CNBC (resilc)
OpenAI’s New Energy Chief Is a Trump Administration Natural Gas Evangelist DeSmog Blog
The Bezzle
Windows 11 Is a Lost Cause. Truly Destined for the Garbage. Don’t Upgrade from 10 YouTube (Micael T)
Antidote du jour (retaj):
And a bonus (Chuck L):
this deserves an Oscar
pic.twitter.com/lgotTM0qor— Science girl (@gunsnrosesgirl3) October 14, 2025
A second bonus:
Border Collie teaches newly rescued kitten to drink water from dispenser..🐕🐾🐈😍 pic.twitter.com/mrsDhpEnrR
— 𝕐o̴g̴ (@Yoda4ever) October 16, 2025
And a third:
The precision of a hawkpic.twitter.com/N7DaWv46HU
— Interesting things (@awkwardgoogle) October 15, 2025
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
