What a lovely Little Lady! Kent animal sanctuary announces birth of sweet snow leopard cub Daily Mail (Li)
Size Matters: Study Reveals Snow Leopards Hunt Like No Other Big Cat Snow Leopard Trust. They are the only big cats that prefer prey two to three times their size.
Why Shop? In Maine, the Library of Things Has It All (Almost) New York Tims (resilc). Brunswick! Nearest town to my ancestral home of Bailey Island! One of my brothers is vacationing there now.
How Europe’s oldest language ended up on US trees BBC (Kevin W)
The end of the cult of the wunderkind Engelsberg Ideas (Micael T)
Gustave Doré’s Haunting Illustrations of Dante’s Divine Comedy Open Culture (Micael T)
Barry Eisler on Political Thrillers, AOC, and how “The System” Justifies War Current Affairs (Anthony L)
Scientists are building cyborg jellyfish to explore ocean depths ars technica
American at the grocery store shows that every single thing she picks up now says “Contains bioengineered ingredients”
“I’m here at Aldi, and almost everything they have contains bioengineered food ingredients.” This is all fake food, Americans are treated as lab rats pic.twitter.com/hk44M4jb18
— Wall Street Apes (@WallStreetApes) August 22, 2025
The illusion of ‘safe’ marijuana Unherd
COVID-19/Pandemics
“Before the pandemic, mortality trends for 25-44 year-olds mirrored other adult age groups. Since COVID-19, the mortality is unique. 25-44 year-olds now have a 70% higher chance of dying than in 2010.” https://t.co/MpPlhCtbeD
— Nate Bear (@NateB_Panic) August 22, 2025
Climate/Environment
Continents are drying out worldwide Tasseschau via machine translation (guurst). Underlying study is from July, and seems to have been underpublicized: Unprecedented continental drying, shrinking freshwater availability, and increasing land contributions to sea level rise Science. Australia is less affected than I expected.
When water becomes war: The moral failure of global governance in the Middle East Middle East Monitor
Drought wilts Israeli agriculture, farmers face significant water cuts YNet
Brutal Monsoon Season Kills at Least 1,860 in India and Pakistan Bloomberg
Niger floods drive thousands from their homes with at least 47 dead TRT Global
A Debilitating Virus Surges Globally as Mosquitoes Move With Warming Climate New York Times
Energy Return and Systemic Exchange Value Warwick Powell
China?
China is a Rich Society. No Western Country Is. Ian Welsh
China’s lithium mining faces strict new regulatory era Asia Times (Kevin W)
Sri Lanka’s former president Ranil Wickremesinghe arrested BBC
South of the Border
🇲🇽🇺🇸 NORTHCOM openly preparing unilateral military strikes inside Mexico
The Trump administration has issued a Top Secret order directing the U.S. military to prepare lethal strikes on Mexican cartels, investigative journalist Ken Klippenstein reports. The planning order tasks… https://t.co/cq7zJjE6xg
— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) August 22, 2025
Time is running out for the coup plotters Socialism and Democracy (Micael T). Brazil.
European Disunion
US Treasury Secretary boasts: This is how brazenly the US will plunder its “allies” Nachdenkseiten (Micael T)
The new alliance strategy German Foreign Policy. Micael T: “Uuuuuhh scary! Two resource-free vassals join forces. What mat they come up with?”
Denmark To Abolish VAT On Books To Get More People Reading Guardian
See the church move in Kiruna in 45 seconds SVT via machine translation (Micael T)
The cost of binge drinking in Finland? Maybe your job NZZ (Micael T)
Old Blighty
An IPSOS poll this week showed that a third (33%) of 16 to 34 year olds would consider voting for the new left wing party.
Its not hard to see why. pic.twitter.com/Btklswi2pO
— Saul Staniforth (@SaulStaniforth) August 22, 2025
Britain’s Mass Fatality Preparation: What Is the Government Preparing For? Jim Ferguson (Chuck L). The author is an alarmist on governments curbing rights. However, that does not make this find untrue. However, the tender amount is bupkis. So is this grifting even when the Government budget is under strain? Or Russia paranoia?
Why are food prices still rising by so much? BBC
Israel v. The Resistance
The UN-backed IPC is set to declare famine in Gaza City for the first time in its history.
Since 2004, it’s only used that classification 4 times, all in besieged, war-torn regions.
Gaza is already at Phase 4 (“emergency”), meaning mass starvation, acute malnutrition, and… pic.twitter.com/GKegl2zwsP
— Thomas Keith (@iwasnevrhere_) August 22, 2025
A sign of the times that this has to be spelled out:
A normal person would shudder at the thought of one hungry child who has nothing to eat for days.
If you are normal, this thought is unbearable to you.
Israel as a country, Zionism as a movement, Jews as a national group, and the West as a civilization, are intentionally…
— Alon Mizrahi (@alon_mizrahi) August 22, 2025
Israeli Denials of Gaza’s Starvation Echo Holocaust Denial Tactics Zaid Jilani
Israel Expanding Tank and APC Production to Rebuild After Major Losses in Gaza and Against Hezbollah Military Watch
The Loomering of Injured Gazan Children American Conservative
“Greater Israel,” a farce redolent of Nazism and with Netanyahu as the prophet of hate Rebelion via machine translation (Micael T)
Tensions Rise In The Middle East Mark Wauck
New Not-So-Cold War
Russia’s SHOCKING Breakthrough North of Pokrovsk History Legends, YouTube
Brief Frontline Report – August 22nd, 2025 Marat Khairullin
Trump ‘very angry’ at Ukraine hitting Russian pipeline feeding Orbán Politico (Kevin W)
US begins icebreaker race with Russia Vzglyad via machine translation (Micael T)
New images show a front-line NATO ally’s plan to blunt a Russian invasion at the border Business Insider. Lithuania.
European military stocks fall on Ukraine peace talks progress RT
Ukrainian Arrested in Italy for Nord Stream Pipeline Explosions OilPrice
Anchorage/Washington, D.C.: Can Trump force Europeans to make peace? Peter Haenseler. Generally good, but I beg to differ an why Witkoff was dispatched ot Moscow. Trump had been pressed hard by Lindsey Graham to implement those “bone crushing” secondary sanctions. He’d tried it with India and say they backfired. But Graham and the nutters were not backing down. So talking to Putin at a minimum to buy Trump maneuvering space and maybe even get something useful done.
Caucasus
Pashinyan-Pezeshkian meeting: what does Iran expect from opening transport routes in the Caucasus? JAM News
Whose oil is it that is burning in Odessa and Kremenchug? Top War (Micael T). Some YouTubers have mentioned this disciplining of Azerbaijan but there’s not been much in print.
Armenian Jeffrey Epstein: How Speaker of the Armenian Parliament Alen Simonyan built a pedo-empire for high-ranking officials VT Foreign Policy (Dandre M)
Big Brother is Watching You Watch
DNS Becomes a Tool of Digital Rebellion: From Internet Infrastructure to Privacy Weapon Reclaim the Net (Micael T)
Imperial Collapse Watch
Ministry of Violence Buttondown (resilc). On evangelical child abuse.
Denmark ending letter deliveries is a sign of the digital times BBC (Kevin W). Bullshit. It’s a sign of neoliberalism, as in privatization of once public services that when they were implemented were seen as advances in civilization. Admittedly, in the US, the Internet did kill severely dent a key source of revenues for the Post Office, catalogue delivery.
Trump 2.0
FBI raids former National Security Adviser John Bolton’s home: Reports Axios. Note as many pointed out during the document raid on Trump that this is not how things historically were done. Former officials regularly wind up with confidential docs in their possession. If a communication asking for them back is not honored, a subpoena follows. Sadly, even though this action is clearly abusive, so was the Mar a Lago raid (when Trump’s lawyers were in communication with DoJ and hence were cooperating).
US to take 10% stake in troubled chipmaker Intel Financial Times
How Many Federal Health Workers Have RFK Jr. and the Trump Administration Cut? ProPublica (Robin K)
🚨 NOW: The FBI is STILL conducting their raid at John Bolton’s DC area home and office, over FIVE HOURS after the operation began
These agents are tearing through absolutely EVERYTHING 😆
Bolton’s days of freedom are numbered. pic.twitter.com/hLYFY3LZOn
— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) August 22, 2025
Tariffs
Treasury Secretary Bessent is “gaslighting” the American people on tariff revenue as government debt runs wild, analyst says Investors Observer
Trump says furniture tariffs are coming later this year CNBC (Kevin W). I wrote about this years ago, keying off a Wall Street Journal story on the loss of North Carolina’s furniture industry. As I recall, the Journal stressed the skill loss, not just at the factory floor but also the managerial level
Immigration
What the data says about immigrants in the U.S. Pew. “After more than 50 years of rapid growth, the nation’s immigrant population is now in decline.”
Trump administration is reviewing all 55 million foreigners with US visas for any violations Associated Press (Kevin W)
Judge rules ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ can stay open for now, but no further detainees or construction are allowed NBC
L’affaire Epstein
Ghislaine Maxwell never saw Trump in ‘any inappropriate setting’, transcript shows Guardian (Kevin W). Such a tortured formulation is suspect. So she saw him with sex trafficked women in bed? That would be an “appropriate setting.” A “massage setting” is a massage table, FFS. Prosecutors please pipe up. How conceivable is it that someone very compliant with the DoJ did a dry run and told Maxwell’s attorneys if and how her statements could be reformulated.
Democrats en déshabillé
The ‘woke’ words Democrats should cut from their vocabulary Politico
Fedwatch
The only place the Fed is “independent” is in the Economics classroom … the Fed has always been responsive to political pressure … https://t.co/i4ABGJMD2Y
— Richard Field (@tyillc) August 22, 2025
Economy
Class 8 Truck Orders Drop 35% from Year Ago, Medium Duty Down 40% Michael Shedlock
AI
OpenAI chairman says AI is destroying his sense of who he is Futurism
ChatGPT, you are so terribly stupid! Overton via machine translation (Micael T)
AWS CEO says using AI to replace junior staff is ‘Dumbest thing I’ve ever heard’ The Register
Hunger Games: AI’s Demand for Resources Poses Promise and Peril to Rural America Real Clear Investigations
Guillotine Watch
How SpaceX avoids paying taxes Musk Watch
Class Warfare
Why free movement of people is harmful Markskop via machine translation (Micael T)
Sentencing For Sale Speak Up! Silent No more (Robin K)
Cashing in without performance Multipolar via machine translation (Micael T)
“How can this happen?” Fight over sewage sludge on farms intensifies The New Lede
Antidote du jour (via):
And a bonus (guurst):
Привет Этночка pic.twitter.com/U0nVAnieXI
— Sveta L (@SvetaRus3) August 21, 2025
A second bonus:
After losing his final saxophone in the car crash . We hunted all over eBay to find the exact same of his favorite toy…. Today it arrived pic.twitter.com/VqDSEQx5Di
— Unregistered HyperEm 2 (@warmaliens) August 22, 2025
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
