Francesco Bagnaia admits last season's struggles could impact his 2027 options, agrees with Jorge Lorenzo's view of MotoGP contracts.

It's been a while since I published my OUT TODAY column. In fact, I barely had the chance to dig through all the new music released in January, as I was busy publishing my Best of 2025 selections, rolling slowly through the month. January is still on the list. Plenty of unread emails in my Inbox (300+). Meanwhile, here is a list of releases from late last year that you will surely enjoy. By now…

Source

Nilza Costa

Cantigas

The Salvador de Bahia-born singer creates songs that refuse all explanation

CANTIGAS by Brutture Moderne Label

Do you need a sensitivity to divine forces to be drawn into Nilza Costa's new album? Not necessarily. But it does require a willingness to listen to music that resists explanation. Nilza Costa is a Brazilian singer and songwriter from Salvador de Bahia, now based in Italy. Her new album revolves around cantigas - sacred songs from the African diaspora - sung in Yoruba, Kimbundu and Brazilian Portuguese. These songs function as direct invocations of the orishas: spiritual entities that, in traditions such as Candomblé and Santería, connect human life with nature, history, and the divine. Rather than presenting this tradition from the outside, the...

The post Nilza Costa - Cantigas appeared first on The Quietus.

Late afternoon: witching hour of the soul.
Old men at the bar, their voices gravel.
They speak the names the lake has swallowed whole,
The wives who walked, the threads they couldn't unravel.

The waitresses arrive. The evening shift.
One stops where windows face the frozen deep.
She watches the world turn white, dissolve, and drift,
Then turns to serve the ones not yet asleep.

The lake holds still—a cold that won't expire.
The white has eaten distance, depth, and shore.
Still diners come and whisper their desire:
"A window seat." They can't say what it's for.

What do they think they'll see beyond the pane?
A mirror, or a door they hope to find?
Perhaps they come for what they can't explain—
What has no name, long buried in the mind.

Now voices fill the room like something warm,
With wine poured out, the ritual of plates.
A thin domestic hedge against the storm—
The way we talk while something silent waits.

The waitresses glide swift from chair to chair,
Their hands like birds, their motions deft and sure.
Thought is a luxury they cannot spare.
The body knows its work, its only cure.

They never look. The orders keep arriving.
The bread runs low. The glasses must be filled.
And yet they serve through all their quick surviving,
A silence underneath that won't be stilled.

For when they pour the water, clear and cold,
Into each glass beside each waiting face,
Unknowing priests, they serve the unconsoled—
They serve the lake, and give the drowned their place.

The lake asks nothing. It does not require
Our witness, or our grief, or our way back.
It holds the cold, the depth, the dark entire,
And waits beneath, immense, unbroken, black.

The check arrives. We've eaten what we owe.
We leave our tips like debts paid to the drowned.
The lake is in our blood, its undertow—
Cold current calling us to hallowed ground.

The waitress waves. The door swings shut. We go.
The lake is where it was. The lake remains.
We start our cars. We leave the drowned below.
Or think we do. The drowned course through our veins.

You can fix all sorts of things with a paperclip, but not gullibility

Who, Me? You can fool some of the people some of the time, but The Register tries to entertain all of its readers most of the time and especially early on Monday mornings, when we present a new installment of "Who, Me?" - the reader-contributed column that shares your stories of workplace mayhem and mischief.…

https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/environment/a70202293/human-population-miscalculated-study/

A news recently appeared suggesting that the world population may have been underestimated.

First, underestimation carries the risk of failing to accurately capture the true extent of the population explosion, leading to delays in preparation.

In the case of overestimation, even though the population is large, it may be less crowded than expected, and the harmful effects of overpopulation may be less noticeable, creating the illusion that even a large population is acceptable.

There is no evidence yet that the world's population is overestimated, but it exists locally and is well-founded.

(https://www.reddit.com/r/overpopulation/comments/1qvmt6v/what\_countries\_official\_population\_figure\_is/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=mweb3x&utm\_name=mweb3xcss&utm\_term=1&utm\_content=share\_button)

Therefore, both are harmful.

That's why we need to be wary of blindly trusting statistics and examine them with a critical eye.

submitted by /u/madrid987
[link] [comments]

Luca Marini warns MotoGP testing can be misleading.

Upgraders and home lab builders flaunt their memory

The rising price of memory has produced an interesting phenomenon: technologists wondering if the memory they have installed in home labs, or bottom drawers, might make them rich.…

Forty-odd residents of Clydach Terrace in Ynysybwl, south Wales, relieved by council buyout after years in fear of fast flooding

When Storm Dennis hit the UK in 2020, a wall of dirty, frigid water from a tributary of the Taff threw Paul Thomas against the front of his house in the south Wales village of Ynysybwl. He managed to swim back into his home before the storm surge changed direction, almost carrying him out of the smashed-in front door.

"I was holding on to downpipes to stop myself being dragged out again. It was unbelievably strong, the water," he said.

Continue reading...

Toprak Razgatlioglu suffered a frightening front-end moment during the Sepang MotoGP test, at the same corner where Fabio Quartararo was injured.

Palantir hired four ex-Ministry of Defence officials last year, with its latest recruit joining months before the US spyware giant won its biggest ever contract with the department.

OpenDemocracy has revealed that on 31 August 2025, Barnaby Kistruck left his role as the Ministry of Defence's director of industrial strategy, prosperity and exports - marking the end of a career in the civil service spanning almost two decades, in which he'd worked primarily on national security and defence. Nine days later, he took up his new position as senior counsellor at Palantir, a US tech firm with close ties to the Trump administration that specialises in providing AI-powered military and surveillance systems and data analytics.

It is understood Kistruck played a key role in writing the UK's Strategic Defence Review and accompanying Defence Industrial Strategy, which were published last summer, in which he recommended AI play an increased role in defence policy. In December 2025, three months after Kistruck's appointment, Palantir won a three-year Ministry of Defence contract worth £240mn to 'modernise defence' by providing "data analytics capabilities supporting critical strategic, tactical and live operational decision-making across classifications" in the armed forces.

The contract, which is more than three times larger than any Palantir has previously won with the MoD, was awarded without tender.

There is no suggestion of any wrongdoing on Kistruck's part. But his appointment highlights Palantir's preference for 'revolving door' recruitment, in which private firms appoint outgoing ministers, senior civil servants and special advisers to lobbying or advisory posts.

A revolving door gathers pace

Kistruck was Palantir's fourth hire from the public defence sector last year, alongside two high-level civil servants, Laurence Lee and Damian Parmenter, and former Conservative armed forces minister Leo Docherty, who lost his seat at the July 2024 election. At the same time, the company forged close ties with the UK government, holding official meetings with Keir Starmer, the then US ambassador Peter Mandelson, six cabinet ministers and senior officials from the Cabinet Office, the Treasury and the Home Office in 2025.

In February 2025, Starmer and Mandelson enjoyed what the Cabinet Office has called an "informal visit" to the firm's HQ in Washington DC, involving a tour of its facilities, a Q&A with staff and a meeting with Palantir CEO Alex Karp.

Four months later, Palantir's UK CEO, Louis Mosley, joined the Ministry of Defence's Industrial Joint Council, which the government describes as its "main strategic mechanism for defence sector engagement". Then, during US President Donald Trump's UK state visit in September, the Ministry of Defence announced it had agreed a 'strategic partnership' with the company.

Concerns over accountability and dependency

Iain Overton of the campaign group Action on Armed Violence says the "steady stream of senior defence officials moving into Palantir should concern anyone interested in how the military-industrial complex works".

"We risk becoming subservient to a single, American-based proprietary technology," he warns. "And when the Ministry of Defence treats one foreign firm as indispensable to how it fights, plans and thinks, the danger is not only dependency, but an erosion of accountability.

"Modernising defence does not require hard-wiring it to one toxic company's will, especially at a time when the US is being far from the reliable ally we have all too often thought of it as."

These findings come as Palantir's public contracts come under increased scrutiny. Earlier this week, Green Party leader Zack Polanski delivered a letter to Palantir's London office warning that he is seeking to terminate the company's £330m contract to run the NHS's Federated Data Platform, which manages large amounts of sensitive NHS data.

"We are putting Palantir on notice," said Polanski in a video filmed outside Palantir's office. "This is a military surveillance company tied to authoritarian surveillance and the devastation in Gaza - and it has no role in our NHS."

The government's close relationship with Palantir is also raising questions as Europe grapples with Trump's erratic foreign policy, including his threats to invade Greenland and punish European leaders who stand in his way with tariffs.

Palantir was founded by billionaire Peter Thiel, a close ally of Trump who donated to his 2016 presidential campaign, using money from the CIA. Senior figures at the firm have continually stressed its unwavering commitment to US "domination".

'Loving life at Palantir'

The last time Palantir hired several former UK civil servants in quick succession was in late 2022, around the time that it signed its first 'Enterprise Agreement' with the Ministry of Defence, a deal that was at the time worth £75m.

In April 2023, five months after Polly Scully was appointed Palantir's 'senior counsellor: UK government', she personally invited then-armed forces minister James Heappey to a reception the firm was hosting in London to celebrate the signing of the agreement.

"I just wanted to say a big thank you for joining us on Wednesday night," she wrote in an email to Heappey days after the event. It was great to have such significant support for the Enterprise Agreement; I hope you had a good time.

"We are still figuring out what partnership between MoD and industry means in practice, but I'm sure some of it is about building trusted relationships, and hopefully we did some of that on Wednesday night."

Scully was well-placed to help the firm develop trusted relationships with the MoD; she'd recently left a position as its strategic director and had worked in a variety of senior roles across the department over the previous eight years - a fact she acknowledged in her email to Heappey.

"As I mentioned I am loving life at Palantir but MoD still has a big place in my heart," she wrote.

Scully wasn't the first former crown servant to be tasked with building the firm's ties with government, as openDemocracy reported in 2023. It seems likely she won't be the last.

When Palantir was approached to ask about its recent hires from the Ministry of Defence, it responded via a spokesperson who worked at the Ministry of Defence in 2015/16. The spokesperson, who has also held roles as a special adviser in No 10 and the Conservative Party's co-director of communications, said: "Palantir requires all staff to adhere to any non-compete clauses or business appointment rules advice - as has been the case in both of these instances."

An MOD spokesperson said: "We conduct comprehensive due diligence on any business appointments that may lead to concern. We work diligently to enforce any conditions placed on individuals, fully investigating instances raised of breached policy and, if found valid, take appropriate action."

'Pull the plug on everything'

Concerns have been growing among some European nations about the use of Palantir software in state defence and intelligence since Trump's re-election.

Danish intelligence services are seeking a new data processing platform to replace Palantir in light of Trump's escalating demands to take control of Greenland, a semi-autonomous Danish territory, according to Intelligence Online, a specialist intelligence industry news outlet. Denmark reportedly fears that sensitive data processed by Palantir may be accessible to the US government and the CIA, which invested in Palantir through its venture capital fund, In-Q-Tel.

Last month, a joint investigation by Swiss research outlet WAV and Republik magazine revealed that Switzerland rejected a deal with Palantir after an internal report commissioned by the Swiss army found a risk that US intelligence would be able to access data that its government shared with Palantir, despite the company's official assurances to the contrary.

At the time, a Palantir spokesperson told The Guardian: "There is no basis to the claim in the report by the Swiss army about potential access to sensitive data and no truth to it whatsoever. We run a business that is predicated on the trust of our customers, which means we also do everything possible - from contractual, procedural, to technical controls - to ensure that our customers are in full control of their data, their operations and their decisions when using Palantir software."

Palantir's reach extends far beyond the MoD

The MoD is not the only part of the public sector where Palantir has made major inroads in the last few years. It currently has live contracts worth over £500m, and a commitment from the MoD which could be worth a further £500m in the coming years.

MPs, human rights groups and the British Medical Association have raised concerns about the company's involvement with the NHS, after the company won a £330m NHS England contract to build the NHS Federated Data Platform in November 2023.

Liberal Democrat MP Martin Wrigley, whose career in telecoms afforded him technical expertise in collecting, storing and managing data, said he was left with "profound concerns" about Palantir's NHS contracts and wider relationship with the government after questioning Mosley, the firm's UK CEO, in a science committee hearing last year.

"Palantir systems appear to be designed to result in massive technical lock-in. From a supplier's point of view, that is exactly what you would want, but from a government perspective, it is deeply problematic," Wrigley said. "That undermines transparency, weakens democratic oversight, and makes us dependent on a single commercial actor for functions that go to the heart of public trust."

Wrigley continued: "What we need is UK tech firms to have the opportunity to bid for and provide sovereign solutions to sovereign problems. What might happen when Trump has another tantrum and demands that Mr Thiel and his friends have to pull the plug? Pull the plug on what you might ask, well… everything."

In light of Trump's demands over Greenland, Wrigley raised further concerns in Parliament last month about the UK's dependence on Palantir, among other US firms.

"We are heavily dependent on several American IT systems, including Palantir, controlled by Peter Thiel, who is well inside the coterie of Donald Trump's Administration," he said. "Will the government look into ensuring that Palantir is not a single point of failure in our critical systems - in the health service, defence, the Cabinet Office and now the police?"

Responding in the Commons, home secretary Yvette Cooper acknowledged that the government should "consider key areas in which critical national infrastructure needs to be strengthened".

This article by openDemocracy is republished under a Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC 4.0). Read the original here.

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More from East Anglia Bylines Foreign Policy The US rupture - fire at Heartbreak Hotel byLiz Crosbie 19 January 2026 Democracy When 'The land of the free' stops being free byGuy Anthony Ayres 6 February 2026 Blog Is Nigel Farage Britain's Trump? byLuke Tryl 2 February 2026 Brexit Who broke Britain? byStephen McNair 1 February 2026 Bylines Network Gazette is back!

With a thematic issue on a vital topic - the rise child poverty, ending on a hopeful note. You will find sharp analyses on the effect of poverty on children's lives, with a spotlight on the communities that are on the front line of deprivation, with personal stories and shared solutions. Click on the image to gain access to it, or find us on Substack.

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The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) is financing — and profiting from — U.S. President Donald Trump's fossil fuel and AI development agenda, DeSmog has learned.

The CPPIB has invested billions in fossil fuel expansion in the U.S. since Trump's return to office. It has partnered with private equity firms to acquire American oil and gas producers, and financed AI companies like Elon Musk's xAI.

The CCPIB is an independent investment management organization responsible for managing the Canada Pension Plan (CPP), Canada's largest public pension. It was created by an Act of Parliament in 1997, and is accountable to Canada's Parliament. The CPPIB's primary responsibility is to ensure the CPP maximizes its long term revenues with minimal risk.
 
 The CPPIB has a policy on sustainable investing, updated in May 2025, that recognizes climate change as a serious risk, and which encourages adapting its investment strategy to evolving decarbonization pathways and investing "for a whole economy transition required by climate change." However, the same policy indicates the CPPIB's belief "that accelerating the global energy transition requires a sophisticated, long-term approach rather than blanket divestment."
 
 In response to Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney's pledges to fast-track major infrastructure projects, CPPIB CEO John Graham stated in September 2025 that the CPPIB was keen to invest in major projects, particularly in the energy sector. As reported by the Financial Post, Graham singled out fossil fuel pipelines, saying "Here in Canada, we like pipelines. We like oil and gas pipelines."

 Its recent investments in the U.S. fossil fuel and AI sectors are a growing concern to pension fund watchdogs, which argue that at  a time when the US is actively waging a trade war against Canada and destabilizing the climate, the CPPIB is providing capital to allow it to happen.

"As the U.S. government wages economic warfare against Canadian industry, upends the international rules-based order, and threatens to annex Canada, CPPIB appears content to continue gambling the Canada Pension Plan on risky U.S.-based companies," said Patrick DeRochie, Senior Manager with Shift Action, a charitable organization dedicated to protecting pensions and the environment from investments in the fossil fuel sector, in a statement to DeSmog.

"With so many Canadians boycotting U.S. products and companies while coping with the economic shocks triggered by our volatile neighbor to the south, I think many Canadians would be shocked to learn where CPPIB has invested some of their hard-earned retirement savings during this time of turbulence and uncertainty," said DeRochie.  

CPPIB didn't respond to a request for comment.

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The CPPIB operates at an arm's length from the Canadian government and is accountable to it, but operates under the guidance of an independent Board of Directors. It manages assets totaling C$777.5 billion, from 22 million contributors to the CPP. The CPPIB has recently invested in or entered into joint ventures with firms involved in sectors as diverse as  American outpatient medical facilities, the Japanese hospitality sector, and the AI sector.

The CPPIB received its worst grade to date in Shift Action's latest climate report card, dropping to a D grade overall and coming in second to last in the non-profit group's annual ranking of Canadian pension funds' climate policies. The CPPIB's performance fell in four out of six categories, earning failing grades when it came to meeting Paris Agreement aligned targets, intermediate targets, and for not excluding fossil fuels.

Part of the rationale for that low grade is that the CPPIB has major investments in American fossil fuel companies, AI companies, and fossil fuel companies seeking to power America's AI expansion.

The CPPIB invested US$300 million last year in xAI, specifically to construct a gas-powered AI data centre in a low-income Black neighborhood in Memphis, Tennessee. The xAI facilities in Memphis have been cited as examples of environmental racism by advocacy groups and have been recorded emitting massive quantities of pollution. Most recently, xAI was in the news because its AI chatbot product Grok was flooding the Internet with pornographic and sexualized images of women and children. In response to the Toronto Star's questions about why the CPPIB was investing in xAI, a spokesperson said the CPPIB wasn't endorsing how Grok was being used.

The CPPIB recently spent $1.2 billion to acquire a roughly 25 percent stake in Tallgrass Energy, a pipeline company invited to the White House to participate in discussions about the exploitation of Venezuela's oil industry.

Tallgrass Energy has 16,000 kilometre's worth of pipelines and terminals across 14 states. A managing director of the CPPIB's 'sustainable energies' group sits on Tallgrass' board.

Tallgrass is also focused on developing fossil fuel infrastructure to capitalize on the AI boom. The company has proposed a new pipeline from the Permian Basin to support new data centres and gas plants across the United States. The company has also partnered with the AI infrastructure company Crusoe to build an AI-focused data centre that would be powered primarily by natural gas and "future renewable resources."

"It appears that CPPIB is betting that the expansion of AI infrastructure will drive an increase in demand for fossil gas, and is planning to finance and profit from gas-fired data centres," said DeRochie. 

During a November 2024 meeting, CPPIB CEO John Graham described how "the demand for energy globally is not declining" and AI is "further driving the demand for energy." Graham further stated that the CPPIB needs to "continue to support the oil and gas industry" because the "industry has a long track record of delivering energy into the economy in a very safe and economical way."

The CPPIB has committed hundreds of millions to VoltaGrid, a Houston-based company that specializes in modular natural gas systems for data centres and fossil fuel operations. The company regularly misidentifies natural gas as a "low-emission" solution for the AI and data centre sectors, yet is part of CPPIB's "Sustainable Energies" portfolio. Moreover, a CPPIB managing director sits on VoltaGrid's board. 

The company's CEO, Nathan Ough,is a Republican donor who has eagerly embraced Donald Trump's "drill, baby, drill" agenda. VoltaGrid isn't merely supportive of Trump's focus on gas-powered data centre expansion, but also collaborates with companies owned by major Trump donors, including Oracle and Energy Transfer. The company is also involved in a controversial project to build a gas plant to power a data centre in Saint John, New Brunswick. Responding to this criticism, Ough responded that VoltaGrid is 51 percent Canadian-owned and that its finances are "banked in large part out of Canada."

Shift Action further notes that the CPPIB in general is overweighted with American investments: approximately 47 percent of its portfolio is invested in the U.S., a percentage that far exceeds their share of the global economy.

Several fossil fuel companies owned by the CPPIB sit on the U.S. Department of Energy's National Petroleum Council (NPC). These include The Williams Companies, AlphaGen, and California Resources Corp. Though not backed by the CPPIB, two other Canadian fossil fuel companies — Enbridge and TC Energy — also sit on the NPC. These companies are involved in oil and gas production, transporting fracked gas, and operate fossil fuel power plants in six states.

According to Shift Action, the CPPIB reported that it invested US$807 million in fossil fuel expansion in the U.S. in the final quarter of 2024. This includes a US$300 million investment in Salamanca Infrastructure LLC, which owns midstream energy assets in the United States, more than US$200 million to fund pipeline assets that transport fossil gas in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia, and three co-investments with Quantum Capital Group, a Houston-based private equity firm focused on the energy sector. 

These investments included stakes ranging from 10 to 29 percent in three different firms involved in fossil fuel exploration. The CPPIB's commitment to Quantum Capital Group / Quantum Energy Partners has been steadily growing since its first investment of US$200 million in 2008, followed by another US$300 million in 2014. In 2024, it committed US$500 million to Quantum despite the fact that the company stated the investment would be used to support the US' conventional energy industry.

"For a national pension manager meant to ensure the long-term retirement security of 22 million Canadians, CPPIB sure has a strange way of investing in our best interests and avoiding undue risks of loss," said DeRochie. "You would think that the risks of American aggression, catastrophic climate change, and Trump-aligned tech oligarchs would give the CPPIB pause before making these investment decisions." 

The post Canada Pension Plan is Bankrolling Trump's Fossil Fuel and AI Agenda appeared first on DeSmog.

BRUSSELS - Groups aligned with Donald Trump's administration rallied against "online censorship" and "extreme environmentalism" as they took to the stage at an event held in the heart of the European Parliament earlier this week.

The meeting in Brussels comes amid reports that the U.S. State Department is poised to fund MAGA-aligned think tanks and charities across Europe to further Trump's agenda overseas.
 
At the one-day conference run by the Political Network for Values (PNfV) on 4 February, speakers from the Heritage Foundation, the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), Family Watch International, and other U.S. conservative Christian groups defended what they described as "basic truths […] such as love of God, country and family." 

The event was co-organised by the far-right Patriots for Europe (PfE) and right-wing European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), which have used their growing influence in the EU Parliament to undermine climate policies.

Trump-aligned groups spoke in defence of the absolute right to free speech, and against EU regulations designed to regulate hate speech online.

They were referring to the Digital Services Act (DSA), the flagship legislative package designed to hold big tech platforms to account for the harms they produce, including online hate and climate change disinformation.

The event has prompted concerns from Members of European Parliament (MEPs) that the Trump administration is realising its aim to cultivate "resistance to Europe's current trajectory within European nations" as set out in a White House National Security Strategy document published last year.

"Fostering far-right movements to destabilise the continent is no longer just a line in a White House strategy document. It is a political reality," said Daniel Freund, a German MEP for The Greens.

"This week, the enemies of Europe, the adversaries of freedom, gathered in the European Parliament. These individuals call themselves patriots, yet they are nothing more than Trump's foot soldiers. The event made one thing clear: Trump's MAGA movement has established a political foothold in Europe. The answer must be a stronger, more independent Europe."

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On Thursday, the Financial Times revealed that the Trump administration plans to fund MAGA-aligned think tanks and charities across Europe in an effort to spread "American values". 

The Heritage Foundation, one of the most prominent MAGA think tanks, is credited with producing the authoritarian playbook known as Project 2025, the intellectual blueprint for Trump's second term. That effort has helped to set the U.S. government on a path to "energy dominance", which in practice means abandoning climate targets in favour of massively expanded fossil fuel extraction.

The MAGA groups at the PNfV event have a long record of attacking and attempting to undo progressive social gains on issues including gender, religion, and LGBTQ+ rights. Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) in particular was instrumental in the 2022 overturning of the constitutional right to an abortion that was guaranteed under Roe v. Wade.

An early version of the event's programme showed both ADF and Heritage as sponsors of the event, along with the Foundation for a Civic Hungary, the official party think tank of Fidesz, the ultraconservative party of Viktor Orbán's Hungary. This version was quietly removed from the PNfV's website to show no sponsors, although speakers from these organisations remained on the updated programme.

The groups at the event identified removing regulation on X and other digital platforms sympathetic to right-wing views as a top priority.

One speaker from the European branch of the ADF, Adina Portaru, labelled the EU's DSA "one of the most dangerous threats to freedom of expression online in the Western world today". 

The criticism of Europe's attempt to regulate hate speech online echoes comments made by JD Vance in his address to the Munich Security Conference in February 2025. He argued Europe's biggest threat was the "threat from within", partly caused by "digital censorship". This, he argued, posed a bigger threat than Russia, at a time when Europe faces the escalating threat of Russian hybrid warfare on its eastern flank.

The ADF has itself made inroads into Europe, and has been quietly working with Nigel Farage's Reform UK. Farage had rarely, if ever, mentioned abortion in his 31-year political career until May last year, when he called the UK's 24-week abortion limit "absolutely ridiculous". 

"The timing is shocking. While the rest of Europe is re-considering its links with the U.S. after the Greenland affair, here we have quite a few European far-right parties rubbing shoulders with the core of Trump's hinterland," said Kenneth Haar, researcher and campaigner at Corporate Europe Observatory, an advocacy group pushing for greater accountability in European institutions.

"The Heritage Foundation is not just a think tank. It is part of the backbone of the Trump regime."

'Revolution of Common Sense'

The PNfV event was the seventh "Transatlantic Summit" organised by the groups, a coalition of Christian conservative groups that brings together senior government officials, legislators, and well-connected civil society groups to fight progressive social gains. The group has active members in Europe, North and Latin America, and Africa.

In a programme handed out at the summit, the group's president, Stephen Bartulica, a Croatian MEP, said the group "must promote what some have called a revolution of common sense."

The PNfV counts the President-elect of Chile, Jose Antonio Kast, among its list of former presidents. The Republican chair of the Iowa State Senate, Amy Sinclair, and members of Polish and Hungarian parliaments sit on its board. 

Kast, who delivered the single keynote speech of the day, spoke about defending "fundamental beliefs", from "isms" such as "extreme environmentalism," which allegedly "prioritises the environment over people". He was introduced as having nine children - the second speaker to be introduced in this way.

Alongside calls to "defend the values of God, country and family," speakers at the summit railed against a "far-reaching online censorship regime". This, they claimed, was established by efforts to regulate hate speech online, which they said infringes on the "innate natural right of all human beings to free speech," a "natural right that comes before the state". Censorship was mentioned on average once every six and half minutes during the nine-hour conference, according to DeSmog's analysis. 

Jay Richards, vice president of social and domestic policy at the Heritage Foundation, denounced the "white martyrdom" imposed on U.S. Americans who are, he claimed, "having his or her free speech violated". Richards also cited the removal of Donald Trump's former Twitter account for spreading the lie that the 2020 election was "stolen" by 46th U.S. President Joe Biden as an example of "white martyrdom". 

The second Trump administration has banned the use of terms like "diversity, equity and inclusion", "climate change", "vaccines", and "disability" from departmental websites across the U.S. government, while arresting and detaining people for actions including writing op-eds for a student newspaper.

"This conference confirms that there is a campaign underway against any kind of content moderation," Kenneth Haar said.

"It is waged by ultraconservative groups, some of which belong to the MAGA-coalition. We are seeing a camp against European regulation emerge, with religious groups, people from Trump's inner circle, and Big Tech emerge." 

'Totalitarian Act'

Attacks on the DSA were repeated throughout the day.

The DSA is a "totalitarian act" that "must be abolished" said Slovenian MEP Branko Grims, who closed his speech with "God bless Europe, and God bless Western civilization".

Grims also called for the EU to revoke the €120 million fine it levied against Elon Musk's X platform in December for breaching transparency obligations under the DSA.

Despite pleas from speakers that the attacks on LGBTQ+ rights were an attempt to "protect our kids," none of the speakers mentioned the recent scandal enveloping X - that the platform's built-in chatbot, Grok, has been digitally undressing people, including women and children, on command. 

While primarily focussed on free speech and reinstating "Christian values", speakers also used their platform to attack climate targets in Europe, with one arguing that voters "demand realism and affordability in climate policy, but the Green Deal remains untouchable dogma".

Tom Vanderdreissche, MEP from Vlaams Belang, the Belgian party pushing for independence for the Dutch-speaking Flanders, asked in his address: "Is there anyone who believes that the Green Deal will save the world when Europe only produces around 6 percent of global CO2 emissions?" 

This is a typical 'Whataboutism' argument made by those seeking to delay climate action, which tries to redirect responsibility for tackling climate change to other actors.

Nigel Farage and Donald Trump in 2016.

Credit: Associated Press

Other speakers from across the world bemoaned their frustration at being labelled "homophobic," "transphobic," "fascists," and "extreme" for their opposition to LGBTQ+ rights. 

Ugandan MP Lucy Akello received widespread applause following her speech, where she identified as the victim of a hunt against those who seek to "protect family values".

Akello is one of the MPs who called for Uganda's Anti-Homosexuality Act to be reinstated in 2023 after it was overruled by the courts. The act prescribes life imprisonment for homosexual sex and the death penalty for "aggravated homosexuality". 

Akello argued her actions were about "protecting our kids who were being coerced, who were forced into homosexuality activities".

"Looking at the speakers and the organisations in this mix, tells me that when they say free speech, what they really mean is free hate speech," Kenneth Haar added.

Later in the same panel, Guatemalan MP Ronald Portillo added that "people have a right to feel what they feel, even if it's hatred," in his defence of "fundamental rights". 

Many of the speakers also complained of how Christianity had become marginalised in the West. The words "God" and "Christ" were mentioned 76 times throughout the day.

One address from British Catholic Priest, Father Benedict Kiely, included a call to "declare war on dumptyism," a reference to the children's tale of Humpty Dumpty, which he used to make a point about rediscovering the meaning of words. He also warned that "I'll probably be arrested when I go home" for his address.

At the time of publication, he had not been.

The post MAGA Gathers in European Parliament to Attack EU Laws appeared first on DeSmog.

In the wildest dreams of tech billionaires, humans colonize the solar system on giant space stations, dodge mortality by uploading their brains into computers, and solve climate change in a single swoop of god-like AI-generated genius.

It's a hubris that has led Big Tech companies, which until recently were seen as corporate climate leaders with ambitious clean energy goals, to run full-tilt towards oil and gas — powering the rapid expansion of their monstrously energy-hungry AI data centers with natural gas, and holding court with Trump energy officials who deny climate science while championing American fossil fuel "energy dominance."
 
To all of this, Adam Becker, an astrophysicist and science journalist, basically says - Um. No.
 
Becker's book, More Everything Forever: AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley's Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity, exposes how tech billionaires' sci-fi inspired fantasies about ever-more technology making everything, endlessly, better are basically, well — terrible. These billionaires' promises, in Becker's careful accounting, veer from what he says is "wildly implausible" to "profoundly immoral" - and ultimately paves the way for a descent into oligarchy. 
 
They're also, in Becker's view, emerging as the root of a new, Silicon Valley-styled "insidious form of climate denial" - replete with its own set of what he calls greenwashing tactics.

DeSmog reporter Rei Takver spoke with Becker about what he thinks drives this new kind of climate denialism, and its consequences.
 
This interview has been condensed and edited for concision and clarity.

Rei Takver: You've said that writing More Everything Forever started after uncovering that evangelical Christian tech billionaire and Palantir founder Peter Thiel was funding a science magazine, Inference: International Review of Science, that was publishing not only creationism, but full-on climate science contrarianism. Why did Thiel's climate denial take you over the edge?

Adam Becker: People take Silicon Valley's ideas about science and technology very seriously, as though the leaders of the tech industry actually know anything about science or tech. It's an understandable mistake to make, but it's a mistake. When I started thinking about what I already knew about that, I realized that there was this through-line in Silicon Valley of climate denial of a kind, usually not the outright climate denial that you find in that Thiel-funded magazine, but a more insidious form of climate denial that minimizes climate change as a problem and says, "Oh, this is something that we can solve later, once we've built an [artificial intelligence] god, or gone to space."
 
Rei Takver: When I see the phrase "more everything forever," it conjures visions of endless power — more oil, more gas, more nuclear, forever. You've written about how many of these tech billionaires, such as OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, love dreaming about tapping into endless sources of infinite energy — often alongside the Trump administration. Why do you think Altman, and a wide selection of other tech leaders are aligning with the Trump administration's aggressively fossil-fuel dominant AI energy policy?
 
Adam Becker: Let me answer your question with a segue. Nuclear fusion is one of these false promises of the tech industry, right? There's a company, Helion, saying that they're going to get a nuclear fusion power plant online at commercially competitive rates by 2028. I'm a physicist. That's delusional. More realistically, we're talking 40 years, and even that is probably optimistic — 2028 is not going to happen. Guess who's the single largest investor in Helion and chairman of the board? It is Sam Altman. In an interview in January he was asked, what's the best way to combat climate change? And he said, oh, we need to loosen up permitting for nuclear fusion plants, something that doesn't exist and will not exist for probably decades.

Rei Takver: I wonder if Altman knows that himself. He's written in his personal blog that "the 22nd century is going to be the century of atomic energy," but also that he's "unsure" how we'll power the 21st century. Well, it does seem like he has some idea, since OpenAI is firing up gas turbines to run data centers already.
 
Adam Becker: I think it's important to take a careful look at the world view here. Altman hired a Trump natural gas dude [to lead OpenAI's global energy strategy] because he wants to build out as much AI infrastructure as possible, and he wants to get people to give him as much money as they can — before either the AI bubble pops or they succeed in building an AI god, which is not going to happen. 
 
Rei Takver: Hasn't Altman even said he believes AGI, artificial general intelligence, a supercomputer that in theory would match or exceed the intelligence of a human being, is going to solve climate change when it's invented?

Adam Becker: Yeah, he said back in 2023 that climate change isn't going to be that big a deal for a super intelligent AGI, because we can just ask it for three wishes to solve global warming. That's not a viable plan. That's not even a concept of a plan. The thing about these insane, futuristic visions that Altman and other tech billionaires are trying to sell the rest of us on is that it allows them to justify any action that they possibly want to take. As in, sure, we can just burn as many fossil fuels as we want right now, because the AGI is going to solve it for us.

Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google, billionaire venture capitalist, and CEO of a space company [Relativity Space], said a little over a year ago now that"we're not going to hit the climate goals anyway because we're not organized to do it," so we need to just burn as much energy as possible, get into AGI now, so the AI will solve climate change for us. That's a better climate plan.

Solar and renewables are cheaper than they've ever been, and more reliable than they've ever been, but sure, buddy, we're not going to meet our climate goals, even if we try. Whatever. I'm sure that the solution is to have people invest in the companies in your venture capitalist portfolio, which, by the way, includes another one of these boondoggle fusion companies. 
 
Rei Takver: Microsoft and its founder Bill Gates have also been backtracking on climate issues recently. Last year, Microsoft announced publicly that its own climate targets had been a "moonshot," and Bill Gates recently argued that AI will do more to solve climate change than worsen it.

Adam Becker: The idea that tech will save us, and is the only thing that will save us, and will solve every single problem, is something that you see over and over again in the tech industry. It is the idea that, his time, we found the thing that's going to save the world, the World Wide Web! Oh, no. no, no. What's going to save people is social media — look at the Arab Spring! Oh, no, no. What's going to save the world is AI! No. What's going to save the world is AI data centers in space!
 
Rei Takver: Speaking of data centers in space, Jeff Bezos is a huge fan, and also a huge fan of expansive space colonization that would see trillions of humans across the solar system. What is going on with this?
 
Adam Becker: Bezos said recently that he "doesn't see how anybody can be discouraged who is alive right now" because "in the next couple of decades, there will be millions of people living in space." No, that's definitely not happening. You are wrong. The only reason you could actually say that with a straight face was you just don't believe anything that anyone with expertise tells you about the world, or don't bother to seek it out in the first place before you make statements.
 
Rei Takver: And part of the reason that Bezos says we need these space colonies is because he thinks there's just not enough energy on Earth.
 
Adam Becker: Bezos is right about the fact that if our energy usage growth continues at the current rate, in a few hundred years we will not be able to keep growing our energy usage, because we'll be using all the energy that the sun delivers to Earth in the form of sunlight. He's right about that, too. The problem is, first of all, we're not even going to get close to that. There's all sorts of reasons why our energy usage is going to have to stop growing way before that point.  Even if it doesn't stop before that point, the waste heat from thermodynamic limits would boil the oceans.
 
The other way Bezos goes wrong is that after he says "Earth is the best planet," he then says, so therefore, since we have to go into space to keep growth going, we need to build giant artificial space stations, and then we can have Earth as a kind of like planetary preserve.
 
Rei Takver: Which doesn't have any congruence with the fact that his company just sponsored a summit where a bunch of fossil fuel companies came together with Trump energy officials to fantasize about building out more carbon belching, everything in the name of building out AI infrastructure.
 
Adam Becker: Yup. We get more, everything, forever.

Rei Takver: Elon Musk is also really into space colonies — in his case, on Mars. Musk says humans need to be multi-planetary because we need a backup, and weirdly, he seems to talk more about asteroids hitting the Earth than climate change. Why do you think that is?

Adam Becker: I'm going to quote [astronomer] Lucianne Walcowicz on this. They speculate, and I think they're probably right, that an asteroid hitting Earth is something that a billionaire can't be culpable for, right? Billionaires are not complicit in the fact that planet-killing asteroids exist, right? That's just a fact about the solar system. Of course, it's also true that if one of those asteroids hit here, it would still be nicer to be on Earth than it would be on Mars. And it's also true that Mars gets hit with more asteroids than the Earth does.
 
Musk talks about terraforming Mars … if we have the technology to terraform Mars, why not just use that technology to solve climate change here on Earth? If such technology existed, it would absolutely be easier to use it here to fix climate change, because stopping climate change and getting the climate back into a good state that is compatible with advanced human civilization is so much easier than terraforming Mars. And yet, we have not shown ourselves capable of getting climate change under control. Mars is just a terrible idea as a backup for humanity for so many reasons. Even the idea of a backup for humanity is inherently problematic. 
 
Rei Takver: Totally. In going after a "backup" planet, Musk is not just abdicating responsibility about climate change in a hypothetical future, he's abdicating responsibility for the climate, and humanity, here and now.  
 
Adam Becker: Oh yeah, I mean, look at the un-permitted natural gas plants that Musk is using to power an xAI data center in Tennessee. These tech billionaires are using these futuristic visions of their technologies to justify continuing extractive practices and continuing to accumulate power and wealth that's always going to be at the expense of lots of other people. And I don't think that they're acting in their own enlightened self interest, right? What good is your money if civilization collapses due to a climate crisis?

Rei Takver: How much would you say we should be thinking of these tech bro fantasies and these tech bros as explicitly anti-climate?

Adam Becker: That's exactly what they are. They do not care about the climate because they don't see it as a problem, which is a form of climate denial, right? They think, we'll fix it in post, basically, right? That's essentially Sam Altman's answer about climate change is:  "Oh, yeah, we'll get to AI and then we can fix everything else with that." That's not going to happen. And they just don't think that anything else is as important as these futuristic fantasies that they have about AI in space and, you know, having more everything forever. Even the nuclear fusion stuff, where they say, "Oh yeah, this is green energy." It's not going to happen. And so what it is, is essentially a form of greenwashing, by using false promises of a futuristic green energy technology that is not going to arrive in time, if ever, as an excuse to temporarily use fossil fuels as transition to this technology that will never come, instead of just using the abundant, cheap green energy technology that we have now.
 
 Adam Becker's More Everything Forever can be purchased in the U.S., UK, and Canada.
 
 

The post Q&A: Tech Billionaires' AI Space Empire Fantasies Are 'An Insidious Form of Climate Denial' appeared first on DeSmog.

If an election were held in the UK tomorrow, hardcore climate denier Nigel Farage's Reform UK would likely win as the party is surging in the polls. This outcome - almost unimaginable just a few years ago - can trace its roots back to another once-fringe movement based in Alberta.

 Preston Manning, founder of the Reform Party of Canada, was hailed as a hero and an "inspiration" to Reform UK by Farage at their annual convention in September 2025, the Globe and Mail reported. It turns out bitumen is not the only hazardous export from Alberta. 

Farage fawningly introduced Manning and described the party he founded as "transformational"  and that it had "put Canada back on the right track." Manning in turn received a standing ovation for his speech supporting Farage's political party known for rage-baiting on immigration, opposing climate change action, and leading the pro-Brexit campaign to leave the European Union projected to cost the UK economy over £300 billion by 2035.

In a prerecorded interview, Manning gave his blessing to the Reform UK project. "Nigel, I carried the torch for Reform in Canada, I now hand that torch over to you and wish you and your people every success."

Reform UK has so far absorbed eight elected members from the floundering Conservative Party, most recently the controversial former Home Secretary Suella Braverman who Farage previously described as "useless" and "absolutely pathetic".

Manning's Reform Party started as a fringe political protest in 1987 steeped in populism and Alberta grievance. Thirty-nine years and several name changes later, this political movement eventually came to power for ten years under former Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Reform's culture of ill-informed anger also helped spawn dangerously deluded political shards including the so-called "freedom convoy" that occupied the Canadian capital during COVID, openly supported at the time by the current Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre.

Large portions of the governing United Conservative Party in Alberta seem sympathetic to separatist extremists now threatening to take the province into the arms of their MAGA-aligned allies. Even in his eighties, Manning continues to cast a shadow over Canada's conservative movement through the Canada Strong and Free Network, formerly the Manning Centre for Building Democracy.

Reform UK likewise began as a rump protest in 1993 led by then-obscure agitator Farage under the name UK Independence Party. This far-right group stoked anger around immigration and the European Union. The Brexit campaign led by Farage became a case study in weaponizing social media platforms like Facebook to spread disinformation that helped sway the outcome. Recent polls put Farage within striking distance of becoming the next UK prime minister.

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Similar tactics are now unfolding in Canada as emboldened Alberta extremists spread wild online claims on the supposed benefits of separating from Canada. Like Reform UK and Farage, Alberta's angry political ecosystem can trace its roots to early agitation from their founder Preston Manning that continues to this day.

While allegedly retired, Manning still makes time to stoke dangerous grievances even as our country is menaced by the erratic Trump Administration. On the eve of the last federal election Manning wrote an opinion piece in the Globe and Mail warning that a democratic outcome not to his liking would lead to Alberta separation, a position described by one political commentator as "fundamentally disgraceful".

Farage and Reform UK have another tie to Canada: Canadian rightwing influencer Jordan Peterson's Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC). One of Reform UK's new members of parliament, Danny Kruger, is a member of ARC's advisory board. Other members include an executive and a partial owner of the climate denying outlet GB News that features Farage prominently as a presenter.

GB News frequently platforms climate science denial organizations and regularly undermines climate science and policy. At ARC's conference in 2025, Farage dismissed the now scientific certainty that carbon dioxide is a dangerous climate pollutant as "absolutely nuts" despite admitting he knows little about climate science. 

Farage recently delivered a speech at an event hosted by the UK and EU branch of the Heartland Institute, the U.S.-based group at the forefront of denying the scientific evidence for man-made climate change. Investigative work by DeSmog and the Guardian documented efforts by Heartland to use European far-right figures like Farage to thwart EU climate progress.  

 Manning has his own record on climate delay. He founded the Manning Centre for Building Democracy, later renamed the Canada Strong and Free Network (CSFN), that remains a nexus of so-called climate skepticism. Former Conservative Cabinet Minister Joe Oliver is a board member, who recently claimed in an opinion piece published in the Financial Post that "climate science is not settled", comparing the overwhelming consensus among experts to the "Spanish Inquisition".

Other associates of the CSFN include economist Ross McKitrick who has stated, "the phony claim of 97 per cent [climate science] consensus is mere political rhetoric aimed at stifling debate and intimidating people into silence." The CSFN was also a member as recently as 2021 of the U.S.-based Atlas Network, described by SourceWatch as "the Johnny Appleseed of antiregulation groups".

While the populist parties spawned by both Farage and Manning enjoyed a recent upswell of support, the grotesque excesses of the Trump Administration have undermined this momentum. The Canadian Conservative Party seemed on their way to a resounding victory until Trump was elected in November 2024 and began openly musing about America annexing their closest ally.

DeSmog documented the multiple ties between Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre and MAGA-adjacent interests and the multiple Trump cronies that endorsed him. Alberta Premier Danielle Smith's ham-handed outreach to Trump and his allies also did not aid her efforts to elect Poilievre, who lost not only the federal election but his own seat in parliament.

The popularity of Reform UK is also being impacted by Trump's ongoing outrages. The President's demand that Greenland be somehow ceded to the United States was unsurprisingly unwelcome in Europe, even among supporters of UK Reform. Farage's tortured principles seemed to exist in a state of quantum superposition, voicing obedient support for Trump's gambit while calling the President's annexation threats "a very hostile act".

Farage's far-right political base is forgiving of their leader but perceived association with Trump - like Poilievre - could be his undoing. Projecting a public image as champion of the working class, Farage was recently revealed to rack up £151,000 in donor-funded flights to support Trump since entering Parliament.

Manning and Farage appear to relish political disruption. Viewing the ugly unwinding of America provides a preview of where this ideology ultimately leads. Perhaps voters in the UK and Canada will decide that a toxic state of perpetual anger is not where they want to go.

The post The Political Roots of Nigel Farage and Reform UK Stretch Back To Alberta appeared first on DeSmog.

People in Niscemi struggle to comprehend loss of homes and businesses and feel disaster could have been avoided

For days, the 25,000 residents of the Sicilian town of Niscemi have been living on the edge of a 25-metre abyss. On 25 January, after torrential rain brought by Cyclone Harry, a devastating landslide ripped away an entire slope of the town, creating a 4km-long chasm. Roads collapsed, cars were swallowed, and whole sections of the urban fabric plunged into the valley below.

Dozens of houses hang precariously over the edge of the landslide, while vehicles and fragments of roadway continue to give way, hour by hour, under the strain of unstable ground.

Continue reading...

The Los Thuthanaka guitarist celebrates the joy of performance through meteoric playing and unvarnished texture on a new solo album inspired by Aymara ceremony.

The era of population growth is ending—and societies are unprepared, argues Ugo Bardi in a new book published today.

In The End of Population Growth, a report to the Club of Rome, the renowned author and systems scientist Ugo Bardi argues that population decline is likely to begin earlier than widely assumed—potentially within the next few decades - and that societies must adapt now in order to be prepared for the new trend.

"For thousands of years, population growth has been treated as both inevitable and desirable," says Bardi, former professor of chemistry at the University of Florence and member of the Club of Rome. "But the data now tell a very different story. We are facing a population 'U-turn', and the social, economic, and political consequences are far larger than most governments are prepared for."

Drawing on decades of research in systems dynamics, demography, history and environmental science, the book challenges both traditional Malthusian fears of overpopulation and optimistic assumptions that technological progress alone can sustain perpetual growth. With the clarity and wit characteristic of Bardi's popular blog The Seneca Effect, the author presents population change as part of a long-term global cycle shaped by resources, pollution, social stress and economic structures.

Combining demographic data with historical and systems-based analysis, the book shows how fertility rates are falling across nearly all regions of the world. While global population may continue to rise for a short time, the underlying trend points towards stabilisation and decline well before the end of the century. Bardi argues that we are likely to see a decline even in current growth areas such as sub-Saharan Africa.

While a declining population could ease pressure on ecosystems and climate, The End of Population Growth warns that unmanaged depopulation could strain public services, intensify inequality, and destabilise political systems—particularly if governments continue to rely on short-term, growth-dependent solutions. At the same time, the book rejects alarmist narratives, arguing that population decline is neither inherently catastrophic nor something that can be reversed through simple policy fixes.

"Depopulation is not necessarily a catastrophe," Bardi explains. "But failing to adapt to it could be. The real danger lies in denial and in clinging to economic models that no longer match reality."

Drawing on the legacy of The Limits to Growth, the book invites readers to question one of the deepest assumptions of modern society: that growth—whether demographic or economic—can be relied upon indefinitely. In doing so, it explores how societies might adapt through policy, technology and cultural change to a world where fewer people, rather than more, is the defining challenge.

Buy the book

The post The end of population growth appeared first on Club of Rome.

Maverick Vinales is sure his injured shoulder is fully healed after an unintentional 'impact test' at Sepang.

Alex Rins was the fastest Yamaha rider at the Sepang MotoGP test as the V4 returned to action after engine issues.

The Essex-born poster boy for the 2020s zeitgeist celebrates turning 21 with a nervy, high-octane take on his bedroom rap melancholia. His reputation precedes him now and he knows it.

The Providence songwriter covers Jessica Pratt's 2012 debut in its entirety, injecting the stark originals with a jubilant, chaotic energy.

The Bing & Ruth composer's first album under his own name features solo piano music with larger-than-life physicality. His open-ended compositions resemble a mind in conversation with itself.

PLUS: China broadens cryptocurrency crackdown; Australian facial recognition privacy revisited; Singapore debuts electric VTOL; and more!

Asia In Brief The Commissioner of Police in the Indian city of Hyderabad, population 11 million, has called for AI agents to be issued with identity cards - or at least their digital equivalent.…

In one of the best halftime shows since Prince in 2007, the Puerto Rican megastar threw a killer party, broadened the definition of America, and made history in the process.

Those of you in the social sciences will immediately recognize this. For those who don't know - there is a famous study called The Marshmallow Test.

I will you one marshmallow now. You can eat it, or you can wait and I will give you two more. You don't know how long you must wait - but you will. If you want to double up.

That is what this article talks about, philosophically. Instant gratification is warping our minds and sending us down a very dark path. When the leaders of the world have no concept or appreciation for this idea of delayed gratification - things get bad.

I'm not pro-China by a mile, but recently a Chinese investor was interviewed and he said, in no uncertain terms, that the west is run by narcissistic sycophants that have no understanding of science and no loyalty to their fellow countrymen.

I could spend hours criticizing the CCP but that would be an useless distraction. The dude was right. This is no longer a nation of engineers, physicists, chemists, doctors... it is a nation of law and business degrees.

Why do you think our infrastructure is crumbling before our very eyes? We are punishing smart people for stupid political reasons and we are, more or less, shooting ourselves in the foot. This is insane.

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This video is a little over a year old, and while it bears relation to NZ (it was running in an exhibition about climate change), the majority of the statistics and figures relate to our global society. If you want something of a baseline for how bad things were at the end of 2024, this is for you, and then you can compare this with how bad things are right now! Woooo!

Why is this collapse related? Well it collects around 60+ topics that feed into collapse, presents a novel way of visualising these within a metacrisis umbrella, and then attempts to provide a crash course illustrating how so many of the problems we face interlink and affect each other. It provides a lot of facts and exciting data, all in a colourful and eyecatching video so as to appease our dopamine hungry gods. Wooo again!

I think it's a good way of introducing people to the complex reality we are facing. Again, if you ignore the NZ aspect, you'll still get a lot out of it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yEIm8gfExJ8

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Nick León, Nancy Sinatra, and more also lauded the Puerto Rican superstar

Not sure if this belongs here but I believe this could open up some meaningful discussion and perspective, an open new perspectives for me as well.

So what is life? The pain that circulates every being? Or the moments of release we experience through our downtime. Life is beautiful, yet unrelenting. Everything is an existential crisis, yet every crisis we experience has beauty. It all loops back, the same thing for every person to experience sentience on this planet. Preform an activity that creates the ability to live, wear out the resource that gave us that ability, and repeat. The constant is the downtime we experience between the activity of which sustains us. The view of a blue sky, the sound of waves crashing against the rock on the shore, the connection of those close to us, these are the things that breathe meaning into our lives. The rest is buffer to let us experience these surreal phenomenon another day.

Creativity is the sentience of the world breathing. A mere painting can bring you to a place of stress free existence and bliss, yet the moment after you dropped back into an unrelenting world of pain, suffering, and grind. These escapes we experience through art are the very glue that keeps hope alive, the hope of a better future, the hope of release from the prison of materialistic belongings and a light onto a more fulfilling form of media such as the arts. A way to express ourselves without needing to worry about the next meal we put on the table. Yet we come back to that reality.

Every day we grind and disregard our personal state of being for the primal instinct of staying alive for another day. Every day we feel the weight of being that modern day has created for us. Gone are the days of scavenging for our sustancence through wildlife and scenery. Now we fight for our existence through a wage, through hours spent behind spreadsheets, or grills, in a building that blocks and connection to nature, that blocks any connection to the raw, beautiful, and uncertain wilderness

Stress used to be a tool of survival, it was a tool that would awaken our senses to immenent danger, possible threats in the vicinity. Now it triggers for deadlines. This world that we built ourselves from is gone. We have built a new world based on fear, desperation, and scarcity. Housing is more and more unaffordable to the average person, good healthy food is a luxury only for those who are wealthy, or willing to sacrifice quality of life in other fronts, and physical and mental well-being are put behind a pay wall to access services such as a gym, or a therapist.

Our world built on capitalism is not built for the sustainability of the human species. Instead, the goal is to milk profit for people who already have enough wealth to provide for a whole nation, as their greed knows no bounds. Is this what we evolved for? To work for the predatory man who's only goal is to raise the pillar that already oversees the rest of us, already drowning in a world of which is a battle to continue existing for the common person?

So we fight through media, we fight through voice, and we fight through art, to bring back a world which was once equal ground for everyone. We fight in hopes for a better future of which may not ever reveal itself, while we drive ourselves into a global crisis with all the resources to sustain a healthy life just out of reach, all because a few hundred people out of countless billions decide that life itself should be monetized.

So we push, we strive another day to create the stress free future of which may never arise. We obey and continue feeding into the same system that brought us into both an existence that provides just enough to keep us alive, but not enough to let us live. An existence that feeds off of our instinct to survive, exploited to create profit, all for the pursuit of happiness. This cycle is life, but those moments of beauty are living.

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The Puerto Rican reggaeton star was the most-streamed artist on Spotify last year

But first, kernel 6.19 is upon us, with many goodies

Penguin emperor Linus Torvalds has announced the next version of the Linux kernel will be version 7.0, a matter of some small interest, because it continues his convention of not using version numbers he can't count on his fingers and toes, and perhaps cements a numbering convention that sees kernel series end with version 19.…

Adventure and beautiful worlds await in the newest TV spot for Illumination's 'The Super Mario Galaxy Movie.'

Brandi Carlile and Coco Jones also performed ahead of the big game

After a vibes-heavy first look last year, fans might have expected the new 'Star Wars' movie to show up to the Super Bowl with something to tell. Alas!

They omitted their usual anti-MAGA lyrics from "Holiday" and "American Idiot"

Click here to book

 

Founded by John James Frost in 1790, Frost Brothers Ltd of 340/342 Commercial Rd was managed by his grandson - also John James Frost - in 1905, when these photographs were taken. In 1926, the company was amalgamated to become part of British Ropes and now only this modest publication on the shelf in the Bishopsgate Institute bears testimony to the long-lost industry of rope making and yarn spinning in the East End, from which Cable St takes its name.

First Prize London Cart Parade - Manila Hemp as we receive it from the Philippines

Hand Dressing

The Old-Fashioned Method of Hand Spinning

The First Process in Spinning Manila - The women are shown feeding Hemp up to the spreading machines, taken from the bales as they come from the Philippines. These three machines are capable of manipulating one hundred and twenty bales a day.

Manila-Finishing Drawing Machines

Russian & Italian Hemp Preparing Room

Manila Spinning

Binder Twine & Trawl Twine Spinning - This floor contains one hundred and fifty six spindles

Russian & Italian Hemp Spinning

Carding Room

Tow Drawing Room

Tow Spinning & Spun Yarn Twisting Room

Tarred Yarn Store - This contains one hundred and fifty tons of Yarn

Tarred Yarn Winding Room

Upper End of Main Rope Ground - There are six ground four hundred yards long, capable of making eighteen tons of rope per ten and a half hour day

Rope-Making Machines - This pair of large machines are capable of making rope up to forty-eight centimetres in circumference

House Machines - This view shows part of the Upper Rope Ground and a couple of small Rope-Making Machines

Number 4 House Machine Room

The middle section of a machine capable of making rope from  three inches up to seven inches in circumference, any length without a splice. It is thirty-two feet in height and driven by an electric motor.

Number 4 Rope Store

 

 

Boiler House

120 BHP. Sisson Engine Direct Coupled to Clarke-Chapman Dynamo

One of our Motors by Crompton 40 BHP - These Manila Ropes have been running eight years and are still in first class condition.

Engineers' Shop with Smiths' Shop adjoining

Carpenters' Store & Store for Spare Gear

Exhibit at Earl's Court Naval & Shipping Exhibition, 1905

View of the Factory before the Fire in 1860

View of the Factory as it is now in 1905 - extending from Commercial St

Images courtesy Bishopsgate Institute

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At the Caslon Letter Foundry

Emily Blunt and Josh O'Connor star in the latest alien film from iconic director Steven Spielberg, out June 12.

TL;DR: SwifDoo PDF Pro is $34.99 right now (reg. $129), and it's a solid all-in-one solution for editing, converting, OCR, and signing PDFs on Windows.

If you want a Windows PDF editor that can do the boring stuff fast, so you can get back to literally anything else, SwifDoo PDF Pro at $34.99 (reg. — Read the rest

The post If PDFs keep eating your day, SwifDoo PDF Pro for $34.99 is the best way to fight back appeared first on Boing Boing.

If we strip away the top 1% (billionaires and multi-millionaires) to see the "real" America in 2026, the traditional "Middle Class" has essentially split into distinct survival tiers.

Using Median Account Balances and Debt-to-Income ratios, here is how the classes actually look for the remaining 99%:

The "Invisible" Class (Bottom 15%)

• Median Bank Account: $0 - $100
• The Vibe: Deeply impoverished, often working "under the table" or relying entirely on government assistance (TANF/SNAP).
• Debt Status: "Defaulted." They are often Judgment Proof—meaning creditors don't even bother garnishing them because there's nothing to take.

• The Reality: They exist outside the traditional banking system.

  The "Fragile" Class (Bottom 40%)

• Median Bank Account: $600 - $1,200

• Debt Status: "Underwater." Credit card debt often exceeds total liquid savings.

• The Reality: This group is one flat tire or one 25% garnishment away from homelessness. They are the 56% of Americans who cannot cover a $1,000 emergency.

• Primary Stress: Housing and food inflation.

The "Working Fragile" (The 51%-85%)

• Median Bank Account: $500 - $4,000
• The Vibe: The backbone of the service and labor economy.
• Debt Status: Revolving credit card debt and high-interest car loans.
• The Reality: This is the group where the 56% of Americans who can't find $1,000 live. They are currently being crushed by 2026 housing costs.

• Garnishment Impact: Lethal. This is the group most likely to be garnished for medical or credit card debt.

  The "Treading Water" Class (Next 40%)

• Median Bank Account: $5,000 - $9,000

• Debt Status: High "Lifestyle Debt" (Mortgages, Student Loans, Car Payments).

• The Reality: They look "Middle Class" on paper but have zero "real" wealth. Their account balance is a temporary pass-through for bills. If they lose their job, their "median" $8,000 in savings lasts exactly 5 to 7 weeks.

• Primary Stress: Job security and the cost of childcare or eldercare.

  The "Comfortable 19%" (Top of the 99%)

• Median Bank Account: $45,000 - $150,000

• Debt Status: Manageable or "Positive Net Worth."

• The Reality: These are the high-earning professionals (Doctors, Tech Leads, Dual-Income managers). They are the only group with a "Safety Net." They can survive a garnishment, though it would hurt their retirement plans.

• Primary Stress: Tax brackets and maintaining their Standard of Living.

• The "Safety Net" Class (Top 2%-10%)

Median Bank Account: $150,000 - $400,000 (Liquid)

• The Vibe: These are the "Rich, but not Wealthy." High-end specialists, corporate VPs, and successful small business owners.
• Debt Status: They have debt (luxury mortgages), but they have the assets to wipe it out if they had to.
• Garnishment Impact: Rare. They usually have the legal retainers to block it before it starts.

The "Math" of the Split

When you remove the billionaires, the "Average" U.S. wealth drops by trillions. You're left with a Dual Economy:

1. The Capital Owners (The 1%): They own the debt.
2. The Debt Payers (The 99%): They spend their high salaries paying interest to the 1%.

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This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is Stephen T. Stone with a comment about ICE and CBP stealing money from citizens at the Minneapolis airport:

Dear Democrats in leadership positions:

There is no reforming or retraining this level of institutional rot. Your centrist asses need to start demanding the abolishment of ICE (and DHS), and you need to start doing it now.

Sincerely, a concerned US citizen

In second place, it's Strawb with an answer to the question of why the CIA deleted its famous World Factbook resource:

Well, the easy answer is "Because a corrupt government's worst enemy is a well-informed population".

For editor's choice on the insightful side, we start out with Bloof offering another even broader answer to that question:

If something is useful and a product of government, that's all the reason republicans need to destroy it.

Next, it's dfbomb bringing more updates from Minneapolis:

They leave cars running from their victims in the road. We have to find tows and clear it.

They deploy tear gas taking people from parks. We have to clean up and help those hurt.

They harass and stalk schools, taking kids with impunity. They approach our school patrols pretending to be locals to get info.

They kill and are protected.

They do not care if the people they take are actually what they're told to look for, they just take brown people and those that piss them off.

They took Native-Americans and have not returned them.

This is ethnic cleansing and it is done at the behest of a white supremacist administration hunting brown people.

This has not stopped. There is no draw down.

Please stop arguing over the KIND of fascism this is and start rattling cages in DC to abolish this bullshit.

This is not a fucking drill.

Over on the funny side, our first place winner is terribly tired with a comment about a line in one of the federal rulings calling out the administration's immigration bullshit:

Holy old fuck, she pounds X is a wild-ass sentence to be reading in the real god damn world.

Couldn't have made it sound more like an addictive substance if I tried.

In second place, it's dfbomb again, this time with a comment on our post about news websites bringing back comment sections:

Is there irony in the urge for me to shitpost in the comments on this one?

Things are still pretty slow on the funny side (for reasons that continue to be obvious), so we'll stick to just one editor's choice — a very simple answer to the question of why the CIA shut down the Factbook, this time from an anonymous commenter:

Oh, that's easy. They shut it down because it has facts in it.

That's all for this week, folks!

The longtime punk musician also played with Debbie Harry in an early iteration of Blondie

Keir Starmer's appalling chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, has quit. According to 'mainstream' media, Starmer hopes this will ease the pressure that he has been under from the ongoing Mandelson scandal. If he really thinks this, he's more hopeless than we thought - and that's a tough bar to cross.

McSweeney: a horror

McSweeney is a horror. Undeclared donations from the Israel lobby, spying on journalists, covert campaigns to destroy media that highlight his boss's crimes, deep connections with genocidal Israel and a coordinated sabotage campaign to prevent Labour winning the 2019 general election. His fingerprints are on all of it.

McSweeney's success in the 2019 general election saw hundreds of thousands die under Boris Johnson's 'pile the bodies high' decision to let covid run rampant. His success in the 2020 Labour leadership election led to UK collaboration in Israel's Gaza genocide. Not only that, but a war on Britain's children, its poor and the rights of its people.

But in none of that was Starmer innocent. If he's weak enough to be led by the nose by such a horror - and who would be surprised? - he's unfit for office. If he were proactively involved in those decisions, he's unfit for office. Either way, he's unfit for office. Either way, he belongs in the dock and then in prison.

Either way, he's hated by the public and in the end the buck stops with him. Advisers advise, (prime) ministers decide.

The most hated PM ever?

McSweeney's departure only moves Starmer a big step closer to the exit door and a place in history as the most hated PM ever. Even more than Thatcher, and that's saying something - because he's hated on the left and right alike. Starmer is a dead man walking - but who is there in his party to replace him who's any better? None, at least none with any intention of standing - the party is too stuffed with brylcreem-a-likes and mini-hims for a change at the top to help it.

Starmer will be lucky to last until the Gorton and Denton by-election later this month. If he clings on, the almost certain third place - at best - his NHS-privatiser candidate will manage will see him gone.

As the saying goes, "For God's sake man, just go!" And take your rotted corpse of a party with you.

Featured image via the Canary

By Skwawkbox

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Super. Bowles a strike. Against ChatGPT.

This is brilliant.

Here's a bonus post from the reliably contrary Gary Marcus.

Amazon MGM just released the final trailer for its upcoming film starring Ryan Gosling, Project Hail Mary, and it provides our first good look at his five-legged alien co-star, Rocky. The movie adapts a 2021 Andy Weir (The Martian) novel of the same name, and follows Dr. Ryland Grace, a scientist who wakes up on a spacecraft far from Earth with no recollection of how he got there or why, only to discover he's on a seemingly impossible mission to stop an extinction event. 

If you've read the book, you already know we're in for an emotional rollercoaster with this one, and the latest trailer aptly tugs at our heartstrings with a glimpse of the friendship that grows between Grace and an alien he meets after waking up — and the incredibly high stakes they're facing. The movie will be released nationwide on March 20, but Amazon announced alongside this trailer that it'll be offering tickets for early screenings in premium formats including IMAX, Dolby Cinema, 4DX and 70MM to Prime members. Those screenings will begin on March 16, and tickets go on sale February 20 through Fandango. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/tv-movies/the-final-trailer-for-project-hail-mary-is-here-and-its-an-emotional-ride-213444765.html?src=rss