Obsidian Wings archive

by liberal japonicus from https://everything.typepad.com/blog/2025/08/typepad-is-shutting-down.html Typepad is shutting downAugust 27, 2025 We have made the difficult decision to discontinue Typepad, effective September 30, 2025. What Does This Mean for You? After September 30, 2025, access to Typepad – including account management, blogs, and all associated content – will no longer be available. Your account and … Read more

by liberal japonicus A large amount of my reading and listening has been concerned with bubbles, specifically the one linked to so called "AI". Some fun etymology before I get into the actual topic. Bubble seems to be from Dutch or German, but I guess is onomatopoeic. About bubbles, the Japan bubble got me here, … Read more

by liberal japonicus FBI searching John Bolton's office.  I would have thought that Powell would have been before Bolton. Thoughts?

by liberal japonicus This post is not, despite the title, NOT about David Brooks. And in the last third, I'll alight on Brooks, so an apology to Russell in advance for for dwelling on it. Anyway, to start, I was reading this article in the Graniuad, and came across this:  That helps explain why a … Read more

by wj    Here's your chance to predict the results (if you get in early), or comment on them (after the fact), of Trump's meeting with Putin today.    Recently, Trump has characterized this as a "listening exercise."  Which is probably, perhaps by accident, accurate. If not quite in the way he meant it.   … Read more

by wj  I've been looking at the pictures of the redecorated Oval Office (and other White House "improvements").  It occurs to me to wonder, is it just an artifact of what got preserved, or did the ultra wealthy of the first Gilded Age (not to mention the aristocracies of the 1700s) actually have good taste?  … Read more

by liberal japonicus Knock yerselves out.

by liberal japonicus An open thread-y post to talk about this NYT daily An explosive whistleblower report claims that the Justice Department is asking government lawyers to lie to the courts and that that has forced career officials to choose between upholding the Constitution or pledging loyalty to the president. Today, I speak to that … Read more

by liberal japonicus A topic that everyone might have thoughts on https://www.theguardian.com/education/2025/jul/06/1960s-schools-experiment-created-new-alphabet-thousands-children-unable-to-spell The Initial Teaching Alphabet was a radical, little-known educational experiment trialled in British schools (and in other English-speaking countries) during the 1960s and 70s. Billed as a way to help children learn to read faster by making spelling more phonetically intuitive, it radically … Read more

by liberal japonicus As I mentioned, I'm having trouble determining the amount of Schadenfreude to take when things happen lately. This one is a conundrum https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jul/15/trump-epstein-files-maga An open thread for all your Schadenfreude needs.

by liberal japonicus I often see videos with titles like 'Why young people can't communicate', which I usually find to be someone from my generation making pronouncements about younger people and explaining why everything has gone to shit. I normally don't click on the titles but when this Ezra Klein interview titled How The Attention … Read more

by liberal japonicus This has been reported in several places. In a new discovery about this mysterious yet often familiar species, researchers have found ancient evidence of a Neanderthal "fat factory" in what is now Germany. Operational around 125,000 years ago, the factory would've been a place where Neanderthals broke and crushed the bones of … Read more

by liberal japonicus The comments on the previous post are closed (because we are obviously a Communist collective that can't tolerate a diversity of opinion) so here is an open thread. Have at it.

by liberal japonicus Re: BigBadBird McK had been banned basically for being deeply rude, has apparently tried coming back under a different handle, so this new version is likewise banned.  There is some other evidence, but given his last comment, it seems pretty clear that BigBadBird is a sockpuppet. さよなら。

by liberal japonicus I like this substack newsletter, ChinaTalk by Jordan Schneider and I thought this piece was quite fascinating.There are a lot of competing points and it would be impossible to summarize them, but the introduction gives an idea I recently hosted a 2-session reading club for Abundance, bringing together paid subscribers of my … Read more

by liberal japonicus In New Yorkhttps://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/06/24/nyregion/nyc-democratic-primary-election-mayor   Anyone following closely and can discuss the role of Lander, WTF Clinton was doing endorsing Cuomo, and anything about the ranked choice system, feel free!

by liberal japonicus Seems appropriate

liberal japonicus1914by Wilfred OwenWar broke: and now the Winter of the worldWith perishing great darkness closes in.The foul tornado, centred at Berlin,Is over all the width of Europe whirled,Rending the sails of progress. Rent or furledAre all Art's ensigns. Verse wails. Now beginFamines of thought and feeling. Love's wine's thin.The grain of human Autumn rots, … Read more

Press conference in Minnesota. No Kings demonstrations around the country and around the world today, counterpoint to North Korea lite in DC. Open thread.

by liberal japonicus This Graniaud piece caught my eye. A group of men removed from the US to Djibouti, in east Africa, are stranded in a converted shipping container together with the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) officers sent to supervise them after a deportation flight to South Sudan was stopped by an American … Read more

There is a column over on Digby’s Hullabaloo this morning on Trump’s increasing dementia.  It will probably have to get a lot worse before the members of his Cabinet and Republicans in Congress will be willing to act to remove him.  But it is at least possible that they will do so before the end … Read more

by liberal japonicus A thread to discuss the topic du jour, Biden's cancer diagnosis. To plant my stake, this is Hillary's emails redux, reporters jumping up and down on a topic that they can put themselves at the center of, while the rest of the world burns. Have at it.

by liberal japonicus It's possible that this wouldn't piss me off at other times, but as Russell noted earlier, tis the season of rants. Still, seeing this interview with Cornelis Piet 'Pete' Hoekstra, the new US ambassador to Canada, makes me realize 1) how truly rotten this administration is and 2) how much this shit … Read more

by liberal japonicus Give me your tired, your poor,Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,I lift my lamp beside the golden door!" it's been a bit since there was a post and the most recent comments, centered around Starmer's volte-face about migrants, seems … Read more

by liberal japonicus (Title from here, which includes the incredibly racist bit at the end) Well, Oz has spoken. I've enjoyed watching lots of reportage, here is a summary. I'll leave it to all of you for your thoughts, but some notes After the defeat of the Voice amendment, I wasn't super confident, so thank … Read more

by liberal japonicus Just wondering what all those people who tsk-tsked about Biden's pre-emptive pardons have any thoughts. An open thread (if it wasn't obvious)

by wj  "Rare earths" (lanthanide elements) are not particularly rare.  What they are is quite difficult to separate and refine, because they are so similar.  But there are differences, and those differences are critical is determining which one will work well (or at all) in any particular technical application.  Once upon a time, perhaps half … Read more

by liberal japonicus If you haven't noticed, this is not the place for breaking news. But this does seem to be something we might want to talk about. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWpqJ8pD2Ng AMNA NAWAZ: Since President Trump reentered the Oval Office, billionaire Elon Musk and his DOGE team have been sweeping through federal agencies, accessing sensitive data as … Read more

by liberal japonicus Can you show me the shine in your JapanThe sparkle of your China, can you show meBodhisattva,  This Klein interview with Thomas Friedman is quite interesting. (the link to the transcript is here, put a gift link in the comments and I'll change it) I've never been a fan of the Moustache … Read more

by liberal japonicus I finally listened to Carole Cadwalladr's 2nd TED talk. I started it I think when GftNC recommended it, but had to turn it off and, having returned to it and finished it, I thought about why that was the case. It is instructive to compare the talk to Cadwalladr's first TED talk, … Read more

by liberal japonicus This one is outsourced to Shakezula at Lawyers, Guns and Money ===== If Nemo Klus gets cyberbullied for nearly two hours does anyone care? Elon Musk rage quit a livestream of the video game Path of Exile 2 on Saturday night after repeatedly dying while also being ruthlessly cyberbullied in the chat. … Read more

by liberal japonicus This interview with Thomas Sipp is worth your time. It has special resonance for me because he has a Japanese mother and American father, which informed his decision to resign to Skadden because of Trump's demands. If someone has a gift link to the transcript, which is here, I'd appreciate it if … Read more

by liberal japonicus I assume that people here read like me, so the stuff that I'm reading, y'all are also probably going to see it, if not in the same story, possibly in a different write-up. However, I wonder if any of you read this Guardian piece titled ‘I was a British tourist trying to … Read more

by liberal japonicus Trump: China's mining too many oresMusk: What are you going to do?Trump: Order more tariffs to make them mine less.Musk: Mine fewer.Trump: Thanks, but I'm talking about ores. After that, I've got nothing. Have at it.