Open Thread

Hurray an open thread,
Now I can repeat something that I wrote about a couple weeks ago that I think no one saw because it came so late in the open thread season.
I was really really pissed off when the US government blew up the Nordstream pipeline and caused my winter heating costs to go up 400 or 500 %. But more recently I have learned things that make me take that in stride. First of all I learned that house insurance in Germany, at least for now is way way below what it is in the USA. I imagine that there is quite a bit of variation in costs for house insurance in the USA but I pay 300% less than family members in MInnesota. And my property tax rates are way way lower than property tax rates in Minnesota. These two things alone are way more than my winter heating bill.
OK the price of gasoline is double in Germany compared to the US. But European cars are much smaller and Europeans do not have to travel as far to get where they need to go. So Germans probably spend less on transportation. Then sales taxes are much higher in Germany. But despite that prices for food and consumer products are not higher in Germany. Food is now actually cheaper and when I moved go Germany in 1996 food was more expensive except for dairy products.
Health care bills are much lower in Germany, There is no college tuition. Though college is still usually a costly undertaking because people need to pay room and board and defer getting a paid job for several years longer than someone who goes to trade school.
Houses cost more to purchase in Germany. But the house that you buy is really a house not some kind of toothpick structure with cotton stuffed in between the toothpicks, covered in chalk.
Now if we can only break free of our colonial chains I wonder if the Russians will understand that many Germans were never on the side of NATO and those that were, were tricked. It may also be to late to rebuild German bridges to Russia as the Chinese may not allow that to happen. But if it did the Germans could slide in to the collapse of industrial civilization with more Deutsch Marks than any of the other G-7 countries. No doubt about it.

The term security sector keeps popping up along with military intelligence (is that an oxymoron?).
What that means is violent suppression of dissent rather than Linus’ blanket. (For those not born in the Fred Flintstone era, Linus was a character in the Peanuts comic strip who always carried his security blanket around and sucked his thumb).

The so called security sector means the police, the military, intelligence agencies, etc. What a perversion of language. It’s all a 1984 redux these days.

Ok. So I’ve been thinking about the tracking of dissidents and data storage on the same. One might think commenters on a relative obscure blog and the blogger himself might be flying under the radar, but I’m not so sure.

A few years ago I think it was, I relayed the following anecdote here.

Upon my return to the US after a couple of years in Europe the immigration dude who greeted me started asking questions while staring into a computer screen. The one question I remember is Did you ever live on Water Street? And alarms went off while I hemmed and hawed searching for an answer. I was like, well maybe it was in Seattle, I’ve lived in so many places I forget. And I kept trying to get a glimpse at the screen, but impossible of course.

The dude put a marker in my passport and told me to go over to a nearby conveyer belt unit where a lone agent stood in attendance. Then he said, Welcome back to America, Mr Larsen. Didn’t sound sincere or friendly.

At the nearby conveyor unit the agent opened my luggage and tossed each item contained therein one by one onto the belt while nonchalantly asking questions about where I’d been and what I’d been doing and what’s this anyway, holding up a package of nori seaweed. He went through everything and I spun tales, explaining how I was a chef who traveled through Europe doing culinary research, mixing truth with fiction. I had a knife case and other paraphernalia to back up my half truths and lies. (It was 1992 and you could still pack that stuff.)

Finally he let me go, leaving me to repack my luggage.

As I hurried down the concourse to make my connecting flight I kept thinking Water Street, Water Street, where did that come from? Then it hit me. It was the address I used to check into a Marin County motel in the late 80’s when I was looking for real estate for a friend who formerly employed me as a family prívate chef. He was what might be called a person of interest to the Feds.

It was definitely a wtf moment. Also, my knees went weak when I recalled that I was carrying some Amsterdam hash in my pocket. Those were obviously easier days. Point being if they had me nailed like that 33 years ago when surveillance was primitive relative to today . . . Well, what to say?

Better watch out where you go/ watch who you know/watch what you say/watch what you do/Big Brother’s watching you . . . (Lyrics from the band Spirit circa 67).

Gawd, this account makes me sound like I’ve got a criminal mind. But no. On that score I’ll quote Bobby D:
To live outside the law you must be honest.
Cheers!

And most Germans get 30 days of paid vacation a year. And most Germans get a nice Christmas bonus, most of the time. In recession years they wont get one. In Germany unions are supported not attacked.
Despite these temporary advantages once the collapse of industrial civilization starts Germans will starve as fast as Americans. They may even die of heat stroke faster as Americans are much more likely to have air conditioned homes. Though those American air conditioners may be running sporadically once the electrical system goes down. But
Americans are also much more likely to have a back up electrical generator at home, which might get them through one last hot summer with AC.

@mago
this blog is not obscure at all, ian’s post was famous during occupy and digg days, then they took control of digg, people fled to reddit, then they took reddit, killed aaron

Biotechnology how close the human race is to a preliminary version of immortality and how that’s coloring world leaders particularly Trump’s thinking

The effing New York Times took notice of the protests. I guess a NYT society page editor was inconvenienced by a sign carrying malcontent and just couldn’t ignore it all.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/19/us/politics/trump-protests-nyc-florida-la.html?unlocked_article_code=1.BE8.LZVO.J9c_tZEQTjhS&smid=url-share

I know we are all weirdly silo’d with regard to political news and views, but I saw reports of anti-Trump protests from the usual array of legacy news outlets yesterday. Pretty tepid cheerleading for “the resistance” is my subjective impression of these reports, for what little that is worth.

Amidst all the handwringing over the non-existent “norms” of “our democracy”, I find myself coming back to Sheldon Wolin’s thesis to interpret what I see streaming continuously: “inverted totalitarianism”, a “fascism” powered by popular apathy and memory-less inattention thinly disguised by pointless performative exercises like street “protests” supplemented by carefully curated news story “parables” tendentiously providing a titrated dose of moralistic dopamine to prisoners of their cellphones. “Karmelo Anthony” or “Kilmar Abrego Garcia” seem less like continuing news stories than fast-food propaganda nuggets laced with toxic food dyes and sweeteners with no nutritional value.

When I talk to people personally, most seem disinterested, confused and increasingly anxious. “What’s going on?” they ask me, the known news junkie from way back. They want me to sort it out for them, tell them who are “the good guys” and who is “right”.

I say that I do not know. The mainstream media is inane. Integrity is absent; ideologies ritualized but not reflective. Nothing the political media report can be trusted; it is narrative, period. Ditto for what prominent politicians say or do. I explain sometimes that “this” (whatever “this” might be — immigration policy, trade and the dollar, Ukraine, the Mideast) has been a long time coming. The idea that any issue has a history of infinite regress, and politics is a game where the rules are negotiated thru the strategic moves of contending players are surprising notions to people with no political memory or education. Ironic when ignoramuses make so much noise about “norms”.

It does feel a bit like the “calm before the storm”: that moment before the tsunami when the water ebbs away. People I talk to, though they know nothing, sense that much. It is outside my experience really. I expect a reaction to Trump within the U.S., but I do not see where it will come from. Certainly not from Democrats. Maybe from chaotic ruptures within the Republican coalition? Russiagate impeachments and Jan 6 played out so well — why wouldn’t we want Dems to lead a redux? Can history repeat a farce?

Here is a post with a graph from the MurderedByWords subreddit, showing the danger of mistaking correlation for causation, in this case about vaccines and autism.

https://www.reddit.com/r/MurderedByWords/comments/1k3uv2b/correlation_something_something_causation/

@ Bruce Wilder,

If people who know you are asking you for guidance on “good guys” and “bad guys” in these strange times, this is your big opportunity to recommend Ian Welsh’s blog to them. And maybe even Naked Capitalism too, if you feel like it.

You could tell them that Ian Welsh is an information / analysis good guy. And they will get some information and guidance over time there. Maybe at Naked Capitalism too.

There are so many videos uploaded on youtube and on blogs about the geo politics. Yet 99.9% of them analyze geo politics with out taking in to account the most basic observations made by Brian Berletic of the New Atlas Youtube Channel. Even channels and blogs that have Brian Berletic on as a guest on their program often do not take Brian”s keen observations in to consideration when making their comments about what is going on in the inner workings of one government or another.
With sloppy scholarship swamping decent observations by ten fold, is it any wonder that the masses never learn a thing?
That is a rhetorical question.
A similar situation exists with global warming. Very few writers on the subject want to factor in all of those things that enter in to the equation.
Oh yes and when it comes to economics the situation is utterly different. Economic prognosticators are really on top of understanding how a collapsing biosphere and resource depletion are going affect economic outcomes.

@ Curt Kastens,

Regarding air conditioning and its absence in Europe, my understanding is limited to geographical and climactic differences – we all know how much of Germany is further up north than the continental US (which would make the climate hypothetically cooler…?), but I’m also told that the atmosphere in the US is more humid. Feel free to confirm, dispute or add to that.

I’m with someofparts in his/her first paragraph. We can’t put all our eggs in one basket or get caught up into false dichotomies.

Here is a funny video for relief in these unfunny times, titled I’ve Nothing To Say.

the link.
https://www.reddit.com/r/SipsTea/comments/1k76d4z/ive_nothing_to_say/