Private equity backers slam ‘runaway’ legal costs from top law firms FT

Glasgow Man Crashes Car Into Mural Resembling Tunnel Entrance NDTV

Poppy Watch Parenting In A Climate Crisis

Climate/Environment

Record-breaking glacier mass loss in Central Asia in 2025 IOP Science

Predictions of the mother of all super El Ninos keep getting worse

This monster has the potential to tear global weather patterns apart and bring worldwide mayhem

But are governments making plans to try and cope – uhhm, No pic.twitter.com/PHndmYBBxF

— Bill McGuire (@ProfBillMcGuire) May 14, 2026

Hantavirus

CDC not requiring hantavirus cruise passengers to isolate at home The Hill

French hantavirus patient is critically ill and on an artificial lung as outbreak grows to 11 AP

Inside the Race to Develop a Test for the Rare Andes Hantavirus Wired

A second woman jet-setted around the globe after leaving the hantavirus-plagued vessel, without anyone noticing Disaster Girl

Hantavirus outbreak should reset WHO’s default approach to airborne risk The BMJ

Pandemics

Tissue-specific autoantibody signatures reveal immune alterations undetected by routine serology in long COVID

🚨83% of long COVID patients have rogue autoantibodies attacking their own heart, lungs & blood vessels, and every standard blood test misses it completely. VERY… pic.twitter.com/EVyJIOkbcN

— Harry Spoelstra (@HarrySpoelstra) May 13, 2026

Japan

Bessent brings reassurance but Tokyo is watching Beijing Observing Japan

Japan’s new spy agency receives FBI backing with eyes on China and Russia South China Morning Post

China?

Xi Jinping says China and US should be partners, not rivals, as summit gets underway Channel News Asia

US-China summit: Trump sees ‘better’ ties, Xi warns over Taiwan, as talks conclude Business Times

China Sent a Tough Message to Trump… Did He Understand It? Larry Johnson

The future of China-US relations is bright: Global Times editorial Global Times

This Is Not an Inspiring China Story Pekingnology

Syraqistan

⭕️ The Day After NYT’s Kristof Documented Systematic Israeli Rape of Detained Palestinians, CNN, AP, BBC, and NYT Gave Largely Uncritical Coverage to an Unverifiable Israeli Report

One day after New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof published a meticulously sourced… pic.twitter.com/yJk1mWcTjq

— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) May 13, 2026

Israel in English: Accusing us of r*pe is a blood libel😿

Israel in Hebrew: We MUST r*pe Palestinians & make it official “regulated policy of the state”😼

Translation is Israel’s Achilles’ heel & kryptonite. The worst curse on their Hasbara machine. One click & it crumbles! pic.twitter.com/TMZlmb4S4x

— Muhammad Shehada (@muhammadshehad2) May 13, 2026

Report: Coalition Prepares Knesset Dissolution Bill as Haredi Revolt Deepens MediaLine

*

Pakistani war chief says deal to bring Turkiye, Qatar into Saudi defense pact ‘being finalized’ The Cradle

Classified CIA Analysis Finds Trump Can’t Count on Gulf Allies for Wider Iran War Capital & Empire

Saudi Warplanes Struck Militias in Iraq During War, Sources Say Reuters

Another Blow to Pentagon Hype: 90% of Iran’s Missile Sites Remain According to NYT Findings Simplicius

Special operations “mothership” surfaces at Diego Garcia The After-Action Report

European Disunion

In a bind over rare earths, Europe watches US-China tussle from the sidelines South China Morning Post

Hungary ran out of strategic reserves, many fuel stations close: diesel shortage looming? Daily News Hungary

Commission Refutes Hungarian “Russiagate” despite Its Intergral Part in Tisza’s Election Disinformation Campaign Hungary Today. March seems so long ago:

The certainty that Russia has access to confidential EU information thanks to Orban spreads across capitals: “It would be naive to think otherwise” El Mundo. March 24.

Old Blighty

PALESTINE ACTION BARRISTER WINS APPEAL IN CONTEMPT CASE Declassified UK. On procedural grounds. Judge can still refer the contempt allegations to the Attorney General or another High Court judge sitting in the Crown Court.

NOW – King Charles: “My ministers will also proceed with the introduction of Digital ID.” pic.twitter.com/hH328WC9g3

— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) May 13, 2026

New Not-So-Cold War

RUSSIA’S LARGEST DRONE ASSAULT OF THE WAR

Russia launched what multiple outlets are describing as one of the largest single-day drone attacks since the full-scale invasion began, striking Ukraine across 14 regions on May 13. Ukrainian President Zelensky confirmed that at least… pic.twitter.com/5HYLw2zjqo— Zlatti71 (@Zlatti_71) May 14, 2026

Germany, Ukraine to Jointly Produce Long-Range Drones in Expanded Defense Partnership Kyiv Post

How Europe Stopped Fearing Russian Deterrence Kautilya the Contemplator

Yermak consulted fortune-teller on key Ukraine government personnel appointments Intellinews

Duma authorizes use of armed forces to protect Russians arrested abroad TASS

Imperial Collapse Watch

Late Capitalism at War Dmitry Pozhidaev, Savage Minds

The Empire Is Not Being Saved. It Is Being Liquidated. William Murphy

South of the Border

Bolivian Miners Join Protests Against Rodrigo Paz Amid Fuel Shortages TeleSur

The Caucasus

Turkey opens bilateral trade with Armenia after decades of closure OC Media

Spook Country

Trump 2.0

Trump’s ICE Pick Is A Longtime Private Prison Veteran Huff Post.Venturella was also the guy who made a call to ICE in Florida to pick up Amanda Ungaro, the Brazilian model who Epstein brought to the US when she was 16, a former partner of Trump “confidant” Paolo Zampolli, and whose veiled threats likely contributed to Melania’s bizarre WH public statement.

Vance announces suspension of $1.3 billion in Medicaid payments to California NBC News

Trump officials, billionaires and the quiet reshaping of America’s public lands Floodlight

Democrats Suck

Tonight, after a year of screaming about holding ICE accountable, 144 House Democrats joined 203 Republicans to pass CORCA, a bill that grants DHS and ICE sweeping new power to collect American citizens’ personal information under the guise of combating retail theft.

— Max Burns (@themaxburns) May 13, 2026

Senate Iran War Powers Resolution Falls Short by One Vote—Thanks to John Fetterman Common Dreams

Here’s How Democrats Should Talk About Climate Change The New Republic

Police State Watch

ICE Plans to Deploy 1,570 Additional Iris Scanners Nationwide Under No-Bid Contract Project Salt Box

Violence as Performance, or Performance as Infrastructure? Roman Khimich

Big Brother Is Watching You Watch

Wall Street Is Pairing Up With the Army to Build Data Centers Truthout

ICE Agents Have List of 20 Million People on Their iPhones Thanks to Palantir 404 Media

The Accelerationists

Andreessen Horowitz Is Spending on Politics Like No Other New York Times

AI

ChatGPT allegedly shares your chat query topics, user IDs, and email addresses with Google and Meta, according to a new class action lawsuit filed today. pic.twitter.com/w5txL6HBCk

— Rob Freund (@RobertFreundLaw) May 14, 2026

Our Famously Free Press

Prolific finance journalists facing questions over identities Press Gazette

NEW: The NYT sent an email to freelancers today forbidding contributors from submitting “any material for publication that contains content generated, modified or enhanced” by generative AI.

The “reminder” follows a string of AI incidents at the paper:https://t.co/eQPpUhJrkS

— Maggie Harrison Dupré (@mags_h11) May 12, 2026

Economy

California has 6 weeks of gas supply. After that, it gets expensive Cal Matters

🌾Due to poor crop health and a record-low planted area, the United States will produce the smallest wheat volume since 1972.

2026 winter wheat output (67% of total output) by class is seen at the lowest levels since:

All winter: 1965

Hard red winter: 1957

Soft red winter: 2020 pic.twitter.com/OcIP3DA0VS— Karen Braun (@kannbwx) May 12, 2026

Guillotine Watch

Self-report fraud and walk free, New York prosecutors tell Wall Street FT

Mr. Market

Since beginning of Iran war, traders have ramped up bets on rising food prices Follow the Money. Naturally.

Class Warfare

Will Hersheypark open this summer? Strike threatens to delay season PhillyBurbs

Marxism is childish Kaimataara

Antidote du jour (via):

See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.

“CDC not requiring hantavirus cruise passengers to isolate at home”

‘The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said on Wednesday that the hantavirus remains a low public health risk and while the agency is “encouraging” American passengers of the infected cruise ship to isolate at home, the absence of a formal quarantine order means these individuals can go out in public if they choose.’

If ever a Zombie virus came to America, the CDC will ensure that most American will be moaning within a year. It is no longer a serious organization.

That doesn’t sound like a “conservative approach” to me—it seems pretty liberal (in the sense of “not strict or exact, loose”).

The liberal and conservative have long ago lost any specific meaning. They now indicate any general prejudice one desires.

The center for disease communication IS doing its job, ensuring that as many people as possible die without upsetting current power dynamics.

I mean, holy st. This isn’t even true. This strain is airborne, which is what matters here, and substantially easier to contract. It is not “prolonged” contact.

If we’re doing this again, it will be with an extra helping hand from public health.

This timeline is smoked.

We know you can test positive without symptoms now as well. I’m not clear on whether it is transmissible prior to testing positive. With all the lies from public health on this, it is hard to be entirely clear on any of it. Stuck relying on a Twitter feed and people that have been right about COVID for 7 years.

fml

A virologist I follow on X, a few days ago: The pooch is fully screwed, we are now counting on luck. And others since: bad public health measures, combined with long incubation periods and periods of asymptomatic contagion, plus a mortality rate estimated at 30%..about the worst case scenario that gives us nightmares.

I once played a computer simulation where you designed viruses with the goal of killing 99% globally. Had to try it a few times until I found a “winning” formula: long incubation and asymptomatic contagion.

Consensus today seems to be that risk of mass fatalities is probably low but we will know better in a couple of months depending on the appearance (or not) of secondary or tertiary contagion. And public health better embrace aerosol contagion and the precautionary principle pronto.

Bring me a shrubbery!

“Glasgow Man Crashes Car Into Mural Resembling Tunnel Entrance”

Fortunately videos have emerged that recorded the whole incident-

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=heZFx8WRKac (46 secs)

Umm, looks like you found footage of Trump’s negotiating team with the Iranians…

Some progression info on Hantavirus:

“A15 year old girl died in an ICU in Esquel from contact with a confirmed hantavirus case weeks before the cruise ship made international headlines. Her death was part of an active outbreak that health authorities in Patagonia were already responding to. The fact that this timeline existed before the Hondius story broke and is only now being connected publicly is the most important piece of context that the no cause for concern messaging left out entirely.” @Iam_InioluwaJ on X(engineering student)

I find engineers (I’m not one BTW) often do a better job of understanding low probability high impact situations (they don’t focus all their attention on the low risk of the event happening) and they’re outside the public health dogma.

What this pre-existing outbreak may suggest is that the MV Hondius patient zero may not be patient zero. It would mean that there was no initial rodent-to-human exposure for the 70 year old who boarded the MV Hondius on April 1 but rather a human-to-human exposure in Patagonia making the 70-year-old a second generation cluster. Possibly.

And we have possible onward transmission posted as of five hours ago by St Helena government for a medical staff member on Ascension Island who had “high risk contact” with a confirmed case and is now symptomatic. Initial PCR negative however investigation ongoing. The individual had had contact with other a family member on St Helena after the exposure and that person is being asked to quarantine as a result. https://www.sainthelena.gov.sh/hantavirus-response-update/

The PCR for the ANDV strain is ROU (research only use) and is not validated for patient management. That isn’t to say it’s not utterly solid but it does seem that some countries are just going with no symptoms as the identifier for release from quarantine (bad idea).

https://www.newsweek.com/three-people-high-risk-exposure-hantavirus-monitored-kansas-11944500

No outbreak of this strain to date has ended absent old fashioned tracing and quarantine.

stepdads former nurse showed up for eggs. so i asked her about this. she says that so far nothing for us to worry about out here, but it bears close attention.

she was a go-to source of insider info regarding covid…almost as good as NC.

(one thing esp: she was the second person, after me, out here to get crazy with masking when around humans)

Last point is important and does not seem to have registered with the CDC.

I must admit to, to my shame perhaps, certain atavistic monarchist tendencies, mostly arising from aesthetic preference but tastefully seasoned with crystallized ideological conviction besides –

Which is why that Charles clip ‘pon the bird corpse app is so unnerving. He is radioactive with contempt, not a trace of noblesse oblige in the august body that is allegedly the British state as man. Suddenly I find common cause with Robespierre…or, more nationally appropriate, Guy “Guido” Fawkes. In fact, are there any Anonymous alumni with a spare mask I could borrow?

I say Charles don’t you ever crave

To appear on the front of the Daily Mail

Expanding the power to surveil~

Kings named Charles and British history, just saying. (I was honestly a bit surprised that he went with Charles as the regnal name.)

Re Self-report fraud and walk free is probably not limited to the Southern District. The practice is codified in Medicare financial regulation and is frequently used to minimize the consequences of discovered fraud by doctors, hospitals and other providers. A scenario is a hospital allows a doctor to use it to commit fraud. The hospital which should have been aware of it and shared in the proceeds, learns that the fraud has been discovered and then self-reports to get leniency. A related practice is the use of consent agreements to allow offending doctors who commit fraud to escape prosecution through consent agreements. “How doctors buy their way out of trouble” https://www.reuters.com/investigate/special-report/usa-healthcare-settlements/

This report notes that a benefit is not just avoiding prosecution but also immunity from a medical board licensing investigation and discipline, although fraud is grounds for investigation in most states. Medical boards are reactive and seldom investigate if a complaint has not been lodged. Absent a conviction even stealing millions will not result in discipline. In my own state I have never seen a malpractice judgement even in cases of blatant incompetence, with severe patient harm and even wrongful death result in medical board discipline. This is despite the requirement that malpractice awards are required to be reported to a state’s medical board as well as to the National Practitioner Data Bank.

ive had a quote simmering at the edge of consciousness…couldnt remember where it came from until a few minutes ago…seems rather uncomfortably germane:

“What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could understand it, it could not be released because of national security. And their sense of identification with Hitler, their trust in him, made it easier to widen this gap and reassured those who would otherwise have worried about it.”

― Milton Sanford Mayer, They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933–45

the whole relevant conversation:https://press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/511928.htm

Thank you.

Hungary ran out of strategic reserves, many fuel stations close: diesel shortage looming? Daily News Hungary

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Gonna be in Budapest in a fortnight, guess i’ll just have to Magyar do.

It’ll be interesting being on the front lines of an oil crisis, if I had my druthers with Hantavirus lurking on the continent et al, i’d rather stay home and secluded-as is my norm, but life goes on.

You’re a braver man than I, Wuk. I’m flying to Connecticut in a month, and I’m worried about ending up stranded there due to jet fuel unobtanium. Not worried enough yet to cancel the flight or use the eCredit during better times.

“China Sent a Tough Message to Trump… Did He Understand It?”

Pretty sure that Trump understood them. Here are China’s red lines-

The Taiwan issue,

Democracy and human rights in China,

The political system,

Beijing’s rights to development.

But what I think will happen is that Trump and his cohort will take those red lines and interpret them to be China’s weak points. So Trump will then press Xi on those exact four lines thinking that they are giving him leverage against China to make them do what he wants. But he will find Xi to be in no mood to tolerate this sort of bs and leaving Trump nothing to take back home with him. But Trump being Trump, he will claim to have reached the greatest agreement with China ever seen and say that China has agreed to abandon Iran while shipping the US all the refined rare earths that they could ever need.

Tragically, I believe you are correct. Trump had zero negotiation skills and no interest in outcome. He wants good TV and viral moments. Complicated by his being a dullard with dementia. Having hack instincts to play to a crowd is literally his only skill.

Late Capitalism at War Dmitry Pozhidaev, Savage Minds

The Empire Is Not Being Saved. It Is Being Liquidated. William Murphy

Marxism is childish Kaimataara

There is a substrate of reified Capital that misses how easily great inequality has manifested with so little class conflict, and even the collusion of the middle classes.

From Why Class Formation Occurs in Humans but Not among Other Primates:

>> How Can the Top Rankers Improve Their Payoff?

>> The second option for the top ranker is the manipulation of the [tradability or exploitability, Ŧ ]… the top rankers can achieve high skew by making the fitness-improving resources more exploitable, for instance by making the resource “more expensive.”

>> By definition, the currency decided by a group will have Ŧ = 1.

The more the middle classes can be convinced to covet currency, the greater the flow rate of wealth from bottom to top. It shifts the ‘means of happiness’ away from concrete material benefits like the means of production. The sell for the worker on a 401k over a house is that they’ll be able to act with extractive freedoms:

Hume viewed the sale of government debt to private citizens in the form of bonds as a profound threat to this social structure, because the passive income it generated them offered a means of opting out of social responsibility… There was nothing to prevent a British stockholder from deciding his money would be better invested in the French government, say, even if the two countries were at war.

This suggests that capitalism itself is an advanced class structure, and that financialization is a late stage of capitalism adjacent to Ŧ = 1. A remedy is in the statement, You’re money’s no good here. I cannot exchange my love for Janet for anything of equal value.

(The linked articles do have reference to making resources more expensive, ie forced artificial scarcity. As Murphy notes, “Late capitalism commodifies crisis itself.” Induced bottlenecks spiked prices in the early 2020’s, and the Strait is a paradigmatic case. What I’m lensing in on here is the lack of class struggle, and how that’s happened.)

“Classified CIA Analysis Finds Trump Can’t Count on Gulf Allies for Wider Iran War”

Not hard to work out why. If Iran is hit, they will hit back. The US itself is several thousand miles away but those Gulf States are all within missile range so those Gulf states know that they are right on the firing line. The US assets in the region are harder to hit. Most of the US bases are a cold pile of ashes while the US Navy hangs back well out of missile/drone range – mostly. It’s akin to someone shouting ‘Let’s him and you fight’ while standing way clear of the fighting itself.

Uh oh…. dis don’t look good…. no matter what Scott Bessent is saying. (all caps in original)

FOR RELEASE AT 8:30 AM EDT, THURSDAY, MAY 14, 2026

ADVANCE MONTHLY SALES FOR RETAIL AND FOOD SERVICES, APRIL 2026

https://www.census.gov/retail/marts/www/marts_current.pdf

And, from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the latest

Producer Price Index

https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/ppi.pdf

Its awful. Inflation is baked into the cake. The Fed needs to react, and if they don’t it tells you all you want to know about their inflation targets.

Something to put on the calender when thinking about global Central Bankers’ responses to the current situation:

Jackson Hole Economic Policy Symposium, August 27–29, 2026

This year’s theme is “Financial Innovation: Implications for Payments and Policy.”

(Well, that’s the theme thus far…)

Kevin Warsh has been confirmed by the full Senate, just in time to stroll into the Marriner Eccles building and spend the next two weeks figuring out where the bathroom is. He can also get up to speed by practicing saying phrases like “transitory”, “short-lived”, and “’tis but a flesh wound!”

But, but, the Dow is over 50,000! Happy days are here again!

BidenTrump told us so!Drop Site:

“One day after New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof published a meticulously sourced investigation—drawing on 14 survivors, the UN, and several international rights groups—documenting systematic rape and sexual torture of Palestinian prisoners, the Times, along with other major media outlets, published largely uncritical coverage of a new report by the Civil Commission, an Israeli NGO claiming Hamas committed systematic sexual violence on October 7.”

Not a “new report,” but simply recycling the old debunked claims by the same discredited sources, as the Drop Site story makes clear. Those sources include the “Civil Commission” propagandist Cochav Elkayam-Levy, and the 2023 UN report by Pramila Patten that simply regurgitated information provided by Israeli officials from completely unreliable sources and who allowed no opportunities for any independent investigation. CNN, AP, BBC, and the NY Times itself just echo-chambered this crap again with no independent verification.

I disagree with the line taken by Kautilya the Contemplator about Russian red lines.

It isn’t so much that Russia hasn’t responded to red lines being crossed. It is that NATO has dismissed any such response as being the result of them gleefully ignoring them while taunting Russia.

The most visible reaction to that behavior is the war in Ukraine. NATO is still in denial that that was a red line response and is still claiming it is unprovoked.

Stopping Ukrainian grain exports, NATO claims that is not a retaliation. Going after the port in Odessa, NATO claims that is not a retaliation.

Same thing with the initial attack on the energy network of Ukraine early in the war. Or the one at the end of 2025 which Russia only stopped after they brought the total network to the brink of collapse, seems Russia wasn’t yet ready to turn that into a humanitarian catastrophe.

Or every single time Russia blew up ‘advisors’ and/or planning units that stepped past a red line, if they were stupid enough to be/stay in Ukraine.

The launch of the first Oreshnik, similarly dismissed as not a reaction.

The piece also ignores the legalistic mindset of first setting up a warning, then presenting evidence, then reacting. As now seems to be happening with the Baltic States allowing their airspace be used for attacks on Russia.

The piece does point out the problem. It is that not a single, visible, retaliation has been done directly into NATO territory. And as long as that doesn’t happen it seems NATO is quite willing to pretend that anything Russia does as a reaction to a red line being crossed as not happening due to that red line being crossed. Worse if such a red line retaliation happens then it will still be denied as such and declared to be aggression by Russia and Russia being the country that started WW3 since NATO has to defend themselves.

“California has 6 weeks of gas supply. After that, it gets expensive” Cal Matters

The state that has Newsome as governor, a Democrat rumored to be seeking the Presidency.

Get ready for a giant spitball…here it comes…brace yourselves…

The current members of the executive branch would have no problem with enough economic disruption that could push Cali back to the kind of swing state that gave the world Reagan and Nixon.

Glasgow Man Crashes Car Into Mural Resembling Tunnel Entrance

Am I the only person who thinks this is not funny? People often don’t have chance to think things, even seemingly obvious things, through, and anything that can cause undye confusion on roads is not a good thing.

I checked and saw no reported death. Then chuckled…

“How Europe Stopped Fearing Russian Deterrence ”

Putin is mostly to blame for this mess. He let the west trample Russia during Maidan (he even recognized that post coup govt!), then got hoodwinked by Minsk 1, 2, Isantbul, and so on.

He really is a paper tiger in many senses. He is a small time lawyer bureaucrat for whom the only reality is the word salad of the files.

His reluctance to “escalate” has caused unimaginable number of deaths – now estimated around 2.5 million, and eventually Russia will be forced into a first strike on Berlin. After that hundreds of millions will perish.

All this because he couldn’t put his foot down and wanted to “negotiate”.