I never thought I’d listen to John Bolton of all people, but in this video he makes a number of good points. — UPDATE: As a commenter pointed out, and as the video description on YouTube explains (once you click it fully open), this is NOT John Bolton but an AI avatar reading a script of unknown provenance.
This video illustrates how Ukraine has developed modern warfare skills and knowledge beyond those of other nations. It’s also worth noting that Ukraine has followed a strategy of attacking military targets and the sources of the money Russia needs to support their war effort: oil drilling platforms, oil refineries, oil storage facilities, shadow-fleet tankers, railroads, and weapons-manufacturing sites and ammo dumps. Russia, in contrast, attacks schools, hospitals, apartment buildings, grocery stores, and cultural centers. That’s why Russia is losing the war.
Most of the ingredients for Baby Broccoli, Barley, and Bean Soup
Here’s another of my improvised recipes, and the improvisation continued after I took the photo of the ingredients: things added post-photo are marked with an *. I used my 6-quart pot.
Baby Broccoli, Barley, and Bean Soup
Because barley takes a fair amount of time to cook, cook the purple barley (and you can use hulled barley, probably easier to find) before starting the soup. I cooked it the day before and refrigerated it, which has the added benefit of making the starch resistant (more like dietary fiber than a quickly-digested carb).
1/2 cup purple (or hulled) barley
1 1/2 cups water
Put that into a small saucepan, cover, and simmer until the water’s all been absorbed, around 40 minutes. Set aside (or refrigerate overnight) until ready to make the soup.
1 Tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
1 Tbsp perilla oil
2 large shallots, chopped small
9 medium cloves of garlic, chopped and rested
2 stalks of celery, sliced thin
10 small purple potatoes, quartered
1 bunch baby broccoli, chopped
1 small bunch purple broccoli, chopped
10 shiitake mushroom caps, quartered
bowl of kumquats, halved
the cooked barley
fresh rosemary, stripped from stem and chopped finely
The potatoes are purple all the way through, as shown in this photo of the quartered potatoes. Purple is somewhat a theme of the soup: barley, potatoes, and broccoli, all purple. Purple is a good color for a food, since it indicates the presence of anthocyanins and their health benefits. (I generally buy red (purple) cabbage rather than green.)
I added the ingredients to the pot as I prepped, then turned the burner to medium-high and cooked, stirring frequently, for 10 minutes. I then added:
* 2 Tbsp tomato paste
I cooked for another 3-4 minutes, stirring often. Then I added:
* 1 can of diced tomatoes (shown in photo)
1 can of beans (Romano beans today)
1 bunch curly green kale, chopped
1 qt of no-salt-added veggie broth
I brought that to a boil, reduced heat setting to 225ºF, covered the pot, and simmered for 25 minutes, stirring from time to time.
2 lemons, peeled and processed in mini food-processor
I stirred in the lemon pulp, then simmered the soup for another 5-10 minutes.
I halved the kumquats rather than quartering them so I would be able to taste them more distinctly. The larger size also looks good in the finished soup, as shown in the photo.
I dished up a bowl and let it sit to cool off, then tucked in. It’s very tasty. I think 1 lemon would have been enough, but the bright taste is welcome on a rainy day. The kumquats are delicious — it’s too bad we get these only in winter.
The potatoes are cooked, but not mushy. The variety of textures is pleasant. It has a little spice kick, but moderate. A good soup, overall, and quite welcome.
I believe that if I had some sherry on hand, I would have stirred in 1/4 cup at the very end, after I turned off the burner.
The US government is taking the position that the lives of the public are unimportant. The US seems willing to put up with a lot from its government. Maxine Joselow reports in the NY Times:
For decades, the Environmental Protection Agency has calculated the health benefits of reducing air pollution, using the cost estimates of avoided asthma attacks and premature deaths to justify clean-air rules.
Not anymore.
Under President Trump, the E.P.A. plans to stop tallying gains from the health benefits caused by curbing two of the most widespread deadly air pollutants, fine particulate matter and ozone, when regulating industry, according to internal agency emails and documents reviewed by The New York Times.
It’s a seismic shift that runs counter to the E.P.A.’s mission statement, which says the agency’s core responsibility is to protect human health and the environment, environmental law experts said.
The change could make it easier to repeal limits on these pollutants from coal-burning power plants, oil refineries, steel mills and other industrial facilities across the country, the emails and documents show. That would most likely lower costs for companies while resulting in dirtier air.
Fine particulate matter, or PM2.5, refers to particles less than 2.5 micrometers in diameter, small enough to penetrate deep into the lungs and enter the bloodstream. Ozone is a smog-causing gas that forms when nitrogen dioxide and volatile organic compounds are emitted from power plants, factories and vehicles and mix in the air on hot, sunny days.
Long-term exposure to both pollutants is linked to asthma, heart and lung disease, and premature death. Even moderate exposure to PM2.5 can damage the lungs about as much as smoking.
Under the Biden administration, the E.P.A. tightened the amount of PM2.5 that could be emitted by industrial facilities. It estimated that the rule would prevent up to 4,500 premature deaths and 290,000 lost workdays in 2032 alone. For every $1 spent on reducing PM2.5, the agency said, there could be as much as $77 in health benefits.
But the Trump administration contends that these estimates are doubtful [based on what? – LG] and said the E.P.A. would no longer take health effects into account in the cost-benefit analyses necessary for clean-air regulations, according to the documents. Instead, the agency would estimate only the costs to businesses of complying with the rules.
Robert Chernomas, Professor Of Economics, University of Manitoba, and Ian Hudson, Professor, Department of Economics, University of Manitoba, have a very interesting essay in The Conversation, which begins:
United States President Donald Trump and his MAGA base are often portrayed as a break from past political norms. While that is certainly true, it overlooks the long and predictable path that led to his rise.
The slogan “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) became the movement’s rallying cry, tapping into a nostalgic vision of a past era of economic prosperity and social dominance and appealing to voters who feel left behind by demographic and economic change.
Trump is the predictable result of the deteriorating economic conditions in the U.S. since the 1980s and the political machinations that brought those economic conditions about. In our recent book Why America Didn’t Become Great Again, we explore how the U.S. has set itself on a path toward self-destruction.
To transfer wealth and power from the many to the few, institutions had to be organized, government policies reoriented and economists, journalists and politicians recruited, funded and promoted.
Corporate lobbying skyrocketed. In 1971, only 175 firms had registered lobbyists in Washington, D.C.,; by 1982, 2,445 did. The number of corporate political action committees (PACs) rose from fewer than 300 in 1976 to more than 1,200 by the mid-1980s.
Business lobbying organizations advocated for policies like corporate tax cuts, deregulation, free trade, anti-worker legislation and more permissive rules on corporate political donations. Between 1998 and 2022, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce spent US$1.8 billion on lobbying activities, making it the single largest spender in the nation.
The role of wealthy individuals
Individual business owners also chipped in. Figures like Charles and David Koch funded organizations that aligned with their desire to create a U.S. free from government regulation, taxation, redistribution or public services. During the 2016 election cycle, Koch-backed PACs spent just under US$900 million.
Many of these organizations, like the Tea Party, also helped put into the mainstream an evangelical creationism that distrusted science and expert opinion, supported a patriarchal animosity to women’s rights, opposed policies to further racial equality and expressed xenophobic opinions. . .
Jennifer Saul, Chair in Social and Political Philosophy of Language, University of Waterloo, and Tim Kenyon, Professor, Faculty of Humanities, Brock University, write in The Conversation:
y now, many of us have probably seen the video of a Minneapolis woman whose last words were a calm “It’s fine, dude; I’m not mad at you,” before she was shot three times in the head as she turned her car to drive away from an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent.
Vice-President JD Vance declared “the reason this woman is dead is because she tried to ram somebody with her car… You have a woman who aimed her car at a law enforcement officer and pressed on the accelerator. Nobody debates that.”
These statements, and others that doubled down on them, were made even as videos showing they were clearly false were in wide circulation.
It’s puzzling. Why lie in a situation like this? Who can you hope to deceive, when evidence falsifying your statements is freely available?
Seeing is not believing?
Our work on authoritarian public discourse stresses that there are multiple answers to this question, partly because there are many different audiences of mass communication. We need to come to grips with the multiple functions of obvious falsehoods like these to understand why they are made so often and so prominently, and how they serve authoritarian leaders.
First, something that seems obvious to you can be credible to others. How? Because in an era of algorithmic news feeds, we are not all getting the same news. Those with a newsfeed of nothing but MAGA influencers are in a different epistemic bubble from other people.
And they may well be in an echo chamber, in which opposing voices are so discredited that when an alternative narrative reaches them, it’s immediately dismissed.
Millions of people may not have seen the videos of the incident at all, or may have seen versions with instructions on how to interpret the visuals: she’s not turning around, she’s backing up in preparation to ram into the shooter; she’s not calmly indicating that she isn’t a threat, she’s refusing to comply with orders.
Videos of police using force often have this dual nature: they can document and prove wrongdoing; but they can also be used to train citizens to see threats where there are none.
Authoritarian tactics
Some people will find the lies too obvious to be plausible attempts at deception. Yet bald-faced lies are important in strongman politics.
Authoritarians can display their power by asserting obvious falsehoods, showing that they cannot be held to account. They also play to their base by showing contempt for a shared enemy, while demanding displays of loyalty and compliance from underlings.
Officials are forced to engage in the humiliating ritual of repeating what we call compliance lies. Think here of White House press secretary Sean Spicer at the start of Trump’s first term, forced to defend absurd lies about Trump’s and Obama’s inauguration crowds. . .
Today in Victoria, it’s overcast and rainy, a good day to stay indoors with the lights on. Today’s mail brought a tiny woven mat — a teksaĵeto (a small woven thing) — that brightened the day. It’s the work of an Esperanto correspondent who enjoys making them.
On Facebook, I came across an interesting essay on Emily Wilson’s translation of Homer’s Odyssey. I was unable to track it to its source, but it seems to have originated on Facebook, written by The Two Pennies, since that account has similar essays on other figures. Some of the essay’s insights, along with more backstory, are included in Wyatt Mason’s NY Times interview of Emily Wilson.
Here’s the essay from The Two Pennies, for those without a Facebook account:
My second-grade teacher, Ms. Edson, told us: If something feels too hard to do, it just means that the first step isn’t small enough. So often when we’re struggling, we tell ourselves that it’s a sign that we’re broken or that something is our fault, and then we freeze. But when something is too hard in the moment, tell yourself Ms. Edson’s advice.
Becky Kennedy Clinical psychologist, parenting expert and founder of Good Inside
The definition applies to the current US government. Heather Cox Richardson writes:
Beginning in 1943, the War Department published a series of pamphlets for U.S. Army personnel in the European theater of World War II. Titled Army Talks, the series was designed “to help [the personnel] become better-informed men and women and therefore better soldiers.”
On March 24, 1945, the topic for the week was “FASCISM!”
“You are away from home, separated from your families, no longer at a civilian job or at school and many of you are risking your very lives,” the pamphlet explained, “because of a thing called fascism.” But, the publication asked, what is fascism? “Fascism is not the easiest thing to identify and analyze,” it said, “nor, once in power, is it easy to destroy. It is important for our future and that of the world that as many of us as possible understand the causes and practices of fascism, in order to combat it.”
Fascism, the U.S. government document explained, “is government by the few and for the few. The objective is seizure and control of the economic, political, social, and cultural life of the state.” “The people run democratic governments, but fascist governments run the people.”
“The basic principles of democracy stand in the way of their desires; hence—democracy must go! Anyone who is not a member of their inner gang has to do what he’s told. They permit no civil liberties, no equality before the law.” “Fascism treats women as mere breeders. ‘Children, kitchen, and the church,’ was the Nazi slogan for women,” the pamphlet said.
Fascists “make their own rules and change them when they choose…. They maintain themselves in power by use of force combined with propaganda based on primitive ideas of ‘blood’ and ‘race,’ by skillful manipulation of fear and hate, and by false promise of security. The propaganda glorifies war and insists it is smart and ‘realistic’ to be pitiless and violent.”
Fascists understood that “the fundamental principle of democracy—faith in the common sense of the common people—was the direct opposite of the fascist principle of rule by the elite few,” it explained, “[s]o they fought democracy…. They played political, religious, social, and economic groups against each other and seized power while these groups struggled.”
Americans should not be fooled into thinking that fascism could not come to America, the pamphlet warned; after all, “[w]e once laughed Hitler off as a harmless little clown with a funny mustache.” And indeed, the U.S. had experienced “sorry instances of mob sadism, lynchings, vigilantism, terror, and suppression of civil liberties. We have had our hooded gangs, Black Legions, Silver Shirts, and racial and religious bigots. All of them, in the name of Americanism, have used undemocratic methods and doctrines which…can be properly identified as ‘fascist.’”
The War Department thought it was important for Americans to understand the tactics fascists would use to take power in the United States. They would try to gain power “under the guise of ‘super-patriotism’ and ‘super-Americanism.’” And they would use three techniques:
This is my variant of a Washington Post recipe. I used my 6-qt pot, because I expected it to be big. The ingredients I added or altered are marked with an asterisk. The original recipe, without a paywall, is at the link.
First, the prep. Add the following to a large bowl as you prep them:
1 bunch celery (2 pounds), chopped, plus leaves reserved for serving
* 2 medium Honeycrisp apples (12 ounces total), chopped
1 medium yellow onion (7 ounces), chopped (mine was 10 oz)
* 8 large shiitake mushroom caps, chopped
* 6 small purple potatoes, chopped
* 4 garlic cloves, chopped (I use 8 cloves of Russian red garlic)
* 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper, plus more as needed
I don’t bother coring and seeding the apple (it’s going to be blended after all), and I certainly don’t peel it, given the nutrients found in the skin.
I added mushrooms as much for the ergothioneine as for the flavor, and I thought the purple potatoes would add substance and valuable nutrients.
Turmeric, a powerful anti-inflammatory, is a regular ingredient in my dishes.
I use a salt mix rather than pure salt, given what we now know about salt’s effects.
I had a few leaves of black kale on hand, so I included that as well.
With the veggies and fungus prepped, put the pot on the burner and turn the heat to medium-high. Add:
* 1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
* 1 tablespoon perilla oil (because of flavor and omega-3 content)
Heat oil until shimmering, then add:
1.5 teaspoons celery seed (I used 2 teaspoons)
Veg & fungi after 12 min.
Cook 30 seconds.
Then add the prepped vegetables that have been waiting in the bowl. Simmer 12 minutes or so, until onion and celery have softened. The veggies did cook down a fair amount (see photo).
Then add:
4 cups no-salt-added or low-sodium vegetable broth or stock
One (15-ounce) can of low-sodium white beans, with the liquid
* 3/4 cup rolled oats
* 4 tablespoons unsalted butter (or 2 Tbsp each of EVOO and perilla oil)
Bring to a simmer (which will take a while), then cook for 15 minutes or so, stirring occasionally. Turn off the heat and use an immersion blender to blend the soup until smooth.
I used low-sodium cannellini beans — the advantage of using low-sodium or no-salt-added canned beans is that you don’t need to drain the liquid when making something like soup.
Since the soup includes beans, I wanted some (whole) grain. Rolled oats will cook quickly and also thicken the soup nicely.
The original recipe calls for butter, but as noted, you can substitute EVOO and/or perilla oil.
* A drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil and/or perilla oil.
If you are near an H Mart, you can get perilla oil there. It’s worth keeping on hand for regular use.
The photo shows the final soup with celery leaves and pistachios.
I had a bowl. It was very tasty, but I admit that the celery taste did not survive the additions I made. Still, it is a very good soup, and I like having made it more nutritious.
The thickness was good, though I think I might increase the rolled oats to 1 cup the next time I make it.
Jessica Grose has an interesting essay in the NY Times on a group of those who have survived a near-death experience and the psychological aftermath of the experience. One paragraph caught my eye:
According to Pew’s huge Religious Landscape Study published last year, almost 80 percent of Americans surveyed said they believed “there is something spiritual beyond the natural world, even if we cannot see it.”
I wonder about the preposition: “beyond.” I would have expressed it as “there is something spiritual within the natural world, even if we cannot see it.”
We are familiar with many things in the natural world that we cannot see: for example, the thoughts and moods of another person, or the sources of many (most?) of our impulses or sudden, inspired ideas.
I certainly have experienced spiritual feelings, but I never thought they came from, say, a hidden dimension. One of the wonders of the natural world and of the evolution of life that results is that it includes things like awe-inspiring music (as well as, of course, awful music) and the emergence of things like love, which are real even though we see but the effects (and not all of those).
I think it’s a mistake to move the spiritual away from our daily life, to some sort of (undefined) “beyond.” The spiritual is available here, now, and we merely must be open to it. It’s not something that’s, say, locked within a building we visit once a week, but rather a way of approaching (or viewing) our regular daily life.
Much of the essay concerns life after death, which to me seems obviously true (of course my own death does not end life: life continues, and for a while I also will continue in the memories of those who know me, as the author’s friend lives on in her memory after dying in a plane crash) or false (death specifically means the end of life).
In any event, so far as one’s own consciousness is concerned, I see no evidence that such a thing continues after death. Even in life, consciousness is intermittent, interrupted by (for example) sleep, and highly variable (as when we focus on something to the extent that we are not conscious of other things, including the passage of time — cf. flow)..
A new study shows that a single drinking binge — roughly four drinks for women or five for men within about two hours — can weaken the gut lining, making it less able to perform one of its core jobs: keeping bacteria and toxins from entering the bloodstream, a phenomenon known as “leaky gut.”
Now, investigators at Harvard and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center have identified how binge drinking damages the gut, and why those leaks in the system may set off harmful inflammation long after the last drink is poured.
The findings are published in Alcohol: Clinical and Experimental Research.
Led by first author Scott Minchenberg, a clinical fellow in gastroenterology and hepatology at BIDMC and instructor in medicine at Harvard Medical School, the scientists examined how short bursts of high-dose alcohol affected different parts of the gut. Their findings suggested that even brief episodes of heavy drinking cause injury, calling in cells normally reserved for fighting invading germs to the lining of the gut.
Certain immune cells — neutrophils — can release web-like structures known as NETs that directly damage the upper small intestine and weaken its barrier, helping explain the leaky gut that can let bacterial toxins slip into the bloodstream.
When the researchers blocked the NETs using a simple enzyme to break them down, they observed a . . .
Later On 