“Why, it might be argued, should anyone think it is anything but inevitable that the preeminent schools of a capitalist society produce professionals to serve the societies preeminent capitalists?” –Calvin Trillin
“For every complicated problem there is a solution that is simple, direct, understandable, and wrong” — H. L. Mencken
“The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living.” –Karl Marx
—–
According to the experts normal blood pressure is under 120/80. If it is higher than 130/80 you’ll need to take some expensive pharma drugs or else…
The concept that high blood pressure causes increased mortality was adopted after the Framingham Heart study, which is the most widely cited study used.
When professional mathematicians looked at this large 18 year long study they concluded:
“In fact, these data actually statistically rejected”
“the paradigm MUST be false”
“a universal cut point at a fixed pressure, in particular at 140 mmHg, has no justification”
“no benefit in reducing pressure from 160 mmHg”
Furthermore they noted that:
“no randomized trial has ever demonstrated any reduction of the risk of either overall or cardiovascular death by reducing systolic blood pressure” (when it was 160mmHg or lower)
A year long study from China looked at blood pressure and all cause mortality in patients with atrial fibrillation.
Mortality rates were 1.9 and 1.6 times higher in those with blood pressure under 110/70mmHg
As figure 2 shows those with low blood pressure had the highest death rates. The highest blood pressure group had the lowest mortality rates. https://mednexus.org/doi/10.1097/CM9.0000000000002627
—–
Table 2 shows blood pressure drugs were associated with an increased risk of:
hospitlization/death from falls 2.19 and 1.23
hypotension 2.43 and 1.32
kidney injury 2.92 and 1.44
syncope 2 and 1.2
Fracture 1.45 and .99
electrolyte abnormalities 2.64 and 1.45
gout 1.99 and 1.35
First number is the unadjusted rate and second number is the rate using the authors adjustments.
“Patients in a pragmatic trial were surveyed at baseline to identify and characterize 6 potential BP medication side effect symptoms”
Table 2 shows the percentage of people having big or very big problems with each side effect.
18% for tiredness
7.5% for dizziness
10% for leg swelling
7% for cough
12% for frequent urination
9% sexual dysfunction
“Your worst sin is that you have destroyed and betrayed yourself for nothing.” ― Fyodor Dostoevsky
“Hegel remarks somewhere that all great, world-historical facts and personages occur, as it were, twice. He has forgotten to add: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.” -Karl Marx
Oakchair is back with more AI-generated slop. That Chinese study doesn’t say what he claims (or rather, what Chat GPT claims) it says:
The highest blood pressure group had the lowest mortality rates.
What the study actually says:
In Figure 2, Kaplan-Meier curves compared by the log-rank test illustrate the all-cause mortality based on the baseline SBP [Figure 2A] and DBP [Figure 2B] groups. The SBP group with an SBP between 110 mmHg and 120 mmHg had the lowest risk of all-cause death. In contrast, an SBP ≤110 mmHg or >160 mmHg was associated with an elevated risk of all-cause death (P= 0.014). On the other hand, the groups with a baseline DBP of 70 to 80 mmHg or 80 to 90 mmHg were associated with a lower risk of all-cause death, while the group with DBP <70 mmHg was associated with the highest risk of all-cause death (P = 0.002).
So this study confirms what many other studies have shown: blood pressure that is too low or too high carries an increased risk of death. Contrary to what Oakchair (or rather, Chat GPT) claimed, the mid-range blood pressure values had the lowest risk of death, as the study itself said:
The baseline SBP and DBP values associated with the lowest risk of all-cause mortality were 120 mmHg and 80 mmHg, respectively.
So the moral of the story here is, don’t go to Chat GPT for medical advice or analysis.
Probably don’t want to get your blood pressure boiling over whatever stressors may be pushing your pulse over the top.
A year ago I mate a rare visit to see a primary care physician, and the first thing they do is measure your blood pressure and mine was over the top.
I explained that being in their milieu which is normal for them is totally not for me, hence the elevated readings.
They sent me home with a chart to fill out and a mandate to monitor daily blood pressure, which I duly did every morning for 30 days. It was all within normal range.
Didn’t follow through with an appointment. And a year later the chart collects dust. Never going back again and I don’t care. Not that it matters. Just saying. Best not to get worked up over nothing.
Tulsi Gabbard has brought about the release of a number of documents confirming what many of us suspected from the beginning: Russiagate was fabricated for political advantage, using compliant intelligence agencies as tools and compliant media as fools and useful idiots.
The reaction among political media to being handed documentary confirmation of their lack of integrity has been to cry, “but, Epstein!”
The irresponsibility demonstrated seems to be boundless.
I have listened to Matt Taibbi and Walter Kirn try to fathom the depths of depravity involved, but the shocking reality is how petty and shallow the motivations and goals of all involved were. Taibbi for a while sounded a bit like Rachel Maddow touting the possibility of prosecutions to come. There won’t be any further prosecutions, imo. This is just how everyone in Washington acts all the time. It is like someone revealed that Vince McMahon is NOT letting a title fight be decided in the ring, as opposed to the writer’s room. [sarc] You mean Pro Wrestling is fake!? [end sarc] “Control of the Narrative” took over decades ago in American politics as not only Job #1, but the only job for professional journalists, pundits and politicians. So many players coordinated their misbehavior and malpractice that none dare call it conspiracy. It really wasn’t a conspiracy. It was just handing out scripts and talking points to the right people and letting those right people do what they do so well. You can’t really blame Seth Meyer for feeding his kids on Trump jokes, can you?
The mentality is that it simply doesn’t matter whether any of it is factually accurate. It doesn’t matter to what will be said or reported, what will be done as a matter of policy, what will be remembered or argued “as if” a matter of principle was involved.
Lots and lots of people participated and they won’t remember that they lied and deceived themselves and others. Not many remember anything.
Yeah. Days of guns and roses.
Don’t remember anything except selectively.
What’s that in the road? A head?
We’re living in Monty Python world.
Fabrications and delusions
Mental fog
And we can’t find our way home
Moving into the dog days of August
Love what you can and who you can best as you are able.
Fear of Falling
The Inner Life of the Middle Class
by Barbara Ehrenreich
“A brilliant and insightful work that examines the insecurities of the middle class in an attempt to explain its turn to the right during the past two decades, Fear of Falling traces the myths about the middle class to their roots in the ambitions and anxieties that torment the group and that have led to its retreat from a responsible leadership role.”
Re: “Don’t go to chat GPT for medical advice or analysis….
——-
Right, because chat GPT doesn’t think, use logic, delve through various biases, or consider where and how “facts and data” are accrued. It doesn’t even have the curiosity to wonder about those things. It simply regurgitates what it’s told to.
That’s how the media operates regarding most topics especially anything related to wars or any scientific topic. That’s how doctors operate.
Chat GPT is going to save society because it will show everyone the horrendous pitfalls of outsourcing their thinking. People will rise up and stop following orders and think for themselves. We’ll have real discussions instead of intellectual cesspools like NR’s posts. Wait, never mind that’s not going to happen.
Just like you regurgitated what it gave you in response to whatever prompt you typed into it to create your comment above. The problem is that Chat GPT isn’t very good at actually analyzing things and drawing accurate conclusions. And you were apparently either unwilling or unable to read and comprehend the sources it cited. If you had been, you would have realized that the study Chat GPT gave you had a different conclusion than it claimed.
It does take a lot of gall to complain about “intellectual cesspools” while posting AI-generated slop that contains information that’s flat-out wrong, though, I’ll give you that. “Intellectual cesspools” indeed! Take a look in the mirror.
@mago – your experience with having your blood pressure checked is called “White Coat Syndrome”, and it is quite common. They’re supposed to know about it.
When the President is inaugurated, he gets a number of speeches. One of them is: “You can pick any idiot for Secretary of State, Defense, HUD, etc. Here is a list of acceptable candidates for Treasury and The Federal Reserve- you will choose from the list. You don’t get to screw about with The Money.” He is trying to screw about with The Money, for very bad reasons, and this is the red line.
Of course Trump is fooling around with The Money. Important parts of his coalition very much wants him to fool around with The Money in one way or several. Quite apart from anything he himself has done deliberately The Money, aka the U.S. Dollar, a fiat currency embedded in a vast system of global finance and trade of many parts, is in deep trouble and the U.S. economy is in that trouble with it.
I doubt Trump has much useful insight or understanding of the nature of that trouble, nor am I confident that anyone around him does. Bessent? Please. But, Trump and other high officials like the Treasury Secretary and the Chair of the Federal Reserve and other prominent players like Jamie Dimon at JPMorganChase are aware. As are a vast array of people really, including quite a few of dim understanding vying to be “players” in some way or another. Crypto kings. MMT followers. A few — very few really — economists on the periphery of the crumbling economics establishment have some understanding usually based in some special interest. Michael Pettis, who has specialized in East Asia and China finance and trade, comes to my mind, but there are many others. Steve Keen, the venerable gadfly critic of economics, may be among those pushing a resurrection of Keynes’ Bancor proposal at Bretton Woods, where the present system of Dollar-financed global trade was initially set in motion.
A much larger part of the politically noisy across the West and across the world are basically unaware that there is a problem. For them, Trump’s chaotic tariff show is a distressing form of low-brow political theatre, a farce with dud laugh lines about penguins and de minimus. They don’t see the dead-eyed panic in the principal players.
I actually think Trump’s chaotic approach to “negotiation” may be skillful political tactics, even if I cannot credit him or his Administration with a strategy. Indeed, I think quite a few political players around the Trump Administration are simply greedy opportunists looking for their main chance to climb the ladder of chaos to the second-story bedroom where the jewels are kept in a box, any box, any jewels.
The political problem for which Trump’s tactics are a solution is that the emerging Crisis of the Dollar, which is very much Now, is not widely recognized or appreciated for the simple reason that the overwhelming incumbent political power and economic wealth of so many establishment institutions and industries — in the U.S. and abroad — is founded in the now increasingly tenuous and illusory financial “reality” created by the Dollar System of international finance. I presume that Trump recognizes that the U.S. “twin” deficits — the trade deficit and the fiscal deficit, which are different aspects of the same things — are beginning to accelerate beyond any possibility of control or survival. That’s a big presumption, because I do not think Trump all that smart. But, I recognize that chaos is an effective tactical approach when your counter parties are deeply invested in continuing the status quo, kicking the can down the road, et cetera. He has to take any possibility of things going on as they have been, off the table. I think the U.S. loses ever more catastrophically in the end the longer things go on as they have been with regard to ballooning debt. And, a lot of powerful interested parties would strongly prefer to keep the party going as it has been, keep the band playing and the champagne flowing, and just hope that some deus ex machina shows up before the curtain closes.
I see two big problems with my own narrative analysis. One is that Trump is not terribly smart and certainly not terribly wise. I have cast him for a part in this play as a hero-protagonist that isn’t entirely consistent with what we know of his public persona as a hypomaniac grifter and demagogue. The reality may be that he is operating on base cunning. The thing is, I know the problem of the Dollar is huge and real and momentus, even if The Donald isn’t.
Problem number two with my narrative analysis is that I do not see and cannot outline for you “the Solution”. This isn’t like that staple product of the all-seeing journalist, the magazine article titled, “Blah, blah . . . and how we solve it.” I am inclined, honestly, to see collapse, even if not desirable or inevitable, as embodying certain highly desirable elements of a good resolution to the problems posed by the contradictions of the Dollar System in its end-stages.
The real Donald Trump, and even less the grifters and reactionaries around his Administration, do not share my idea of the good. They, variously, probably want to preserve grossly inflated corporate profits, housing prices, drug prices and so on, while wiping out Social Security and reaping windfalls from Cryptocurrency Ponzi schemes.
I watch the drama playing out on stage and I cannot imagine a deus ex machina to resolve things in a climax without high explosives.
One thing I do note is the continued absence of any analysis or even much awareness on the political Left. Mamdani is proposing publicly-owned Costco warehouses and free bus fare, while Corbyn, past retirement, is lending his name to a Party that is more an online influencer marketing campaign than a political movement. Curious all that.
Bruce Wilder, anyone with half a functioning brain, who was not a Democratic Party loyalist knew the Russia Stole the Election stuff was fabricated. We didn’t need Gabbard to tell us.
OTOH, the Epstein scandals are for real. What makes them so damaging is the presence of La Maxwell. A rich, high status, attractive socialite woman turned out to be a pimp and abuser. She weren’t no street hustler. Consider how many parents of daughters are asking themselves, would I have been suspicious if La Maxwell had shown an interest in my child? Also note the presence of both Clinton and Trump, known degenerates, on various lists and accusations by victims coming forward. This is clearly a non-partisan scandal, and as such can’t be simply dismissed as ginned up fake news from the Other Side. My hope is that this scandal will be the solvent which finally dissolves middle class Americans’ idiotic belief that being rich equals being A Good Person.
Not going to wade too far into the arguments going on here, I appreciate mago’s take on the unreality of the fake narratives, others say it equally well. I think we (nearly, don’t see L&S with his State Dept. dogma, “here’s a list of OUR ememies”) on this thread mostly understand this well and heave seen this for decades, going back to the Bush Admin’s use of “The Mighty Wurlitzer” to create “our own reality.”
So as a palate-cleanser, I sometimes try to defy my own preconceptions by going to a site I’m mostly opposed to, like ZeroHedge. I found this mostly worthy critique of the Trump vs. Europe trade wars at this link, there are a few bizarre and hateful lies, distractions in it but not more than one would expect from the site, an Extremist Libertarian Worship-of-Mammon enterprise. https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/trumps-tariffs-those-goddamned-freeloading-europeans
I applaud the author’s overall fairness in recognizing Trump’s hyperbole as they are overall a Trump Fanboy site, he (dunno why everything’s by Tyler Durden, a fictional character first in the Fight Club book, then movie) gives grudging respect to actual Euro-Slave morality & Russophobe pathologies while not exaggerating the power imbalance.
There are a few howlers, of course, as one would expect from the kind of site that links to Flat Earth garbage like “the Mises Institute”, up is down, Hell is paradise, etc. 4 paragraphs from the end, he laments that the Germans and others felt guilt for genocide and imperialism, he can’t imagine why. Then he follows with a lament about “at least two cancerous ideological systems in the form of climatism and migrationism” that he believes the Modern West errs in allowing/ acknowledging.
These people are ethno-nationalists and white Supremacists (celebrate Victor Orban’s inviting Netanyahu to Hungary and lauding his genocide as necessary, e.g.) and resent that brown people from Asia and Africa enter their countries in Europe after NATO wars that destroy their home societies and make things unlivable. They rightly lamented the Biden admin’s failed war on Russia via the corrupt shithole of Banderist Ukraine, but otherwise seem okay with the endless US wars (with minor laments about wasted money) while more intelligent and principled Glibertarians like Scott Horton flat-out oppose them . . . Horton is pretty nutty at times, too, years ago he did an outstanding job of demolishing Bloody Bill Kristol in a debate about the NeoCon failures, stayed on message and won the vote of the audience by something like nearly 70%. However, he has also become more deranged in recent years (almost to Scott Adams levels), during the Bidet admin I saw him foaming at the mouth about how Joe & Kop Kamala were “Communists” leading a revolution against the Good People.
Listening to Mearsheimer talking to Glen Diesen while writing this, and even Mearsheimer thinks that post-Trump the US will fully remove itself from the basket case that is the Vassal EUrope, as “the Garden” falls apart and becomes more a Jungle.
Recently I’ve been reading Hopkirk’s classic book on “The Great Game,” he’s not the only one who points out in passing that the Europeans became the World’s Imperialist Curse after centuries of endless war between them for territory and loot led to the development of highly trained professional military cadres, that then spread out worldwide. Plus ca change, the decadence arrives sooner or later. Decades ago I thought Spengler’s Decline of the West was a misfire. He expected it sooner rather than this late, but I now see he was mostly correct.
Trump’s people and Maxwell’s people are probably even now working out just what Maxwell should say to Congress in any such hearing in order to earn that pardon. They will probably try to work it all out fast enough to be able to get the Epstein-Maxwell hearings held before a Trump-sympathetic Magapublican-majority House and Senate. That way, whatever she promises Trump that she will say in order to get that pardon will be what she will say. And the Magapublican-majority Houses of Congress will ratify it and say: ” It has all been revealed. There is nothing more to be learned here. ‘ The time has come to firmly shut and seal this book. ‘ ( Hat-tip to President Ford).
It’s the tail end of a weekend if you measure time that way.
It’s the golden end of summer if you live in that place
It’s the time of living and dying just as it always is wherever one resides
Hello magic, and prostrations to the dawn in a sunset world.
Don’t forget that one of the things Maxwell was charged with was perjury, i.e., lying. No one should believe anything she says in exchange for a pardon, but unfortunately there will probably be lots of people who will.
. . . another whack at the “But Epstein’ piñata . . .
From the BlueskySkeets subreddit, titled: ” Whoa If True ” . . .
About how Russia’s Medvedev has just said, in response to Trump dispatching 2 nuclear-armed submarines to ‘ the appropriate place’ , something to the effect that Mossad may not be the only people who have all kinds of evidence about what bad things Trump did long long ago.
I think we’ll be getting a President transplant pretty soon. Trump out, Vance in. And those who think they will be relieved when that happens because things couldn’t get any more worse than under Trump will live to find out just how even mucher more worserer things will get under President Vance.
This is a little late to the game but better late than sorry. It’s worth it. An excellent, highly comprehensive, analysis of the Nortel failure but it touches on so much more than that.
John Roth is your neighbor in Toronto, Ian. Caledon, to be precise but I’m certain he most assuredly has more homes than that, scumbag that he is. He absconded with nearly $200 million from Nortel whilst pensioners were left high and dry. How very American of him even though he is a full-blooded Albertan.
Nortel as much as any was a prime example of the impact of the financialization of the Western economies. Companies increasingly have become Potemkin in nature. It’s all about perceived value to manipulate the stock price and thus executive compensation versus providing any tangible value.
It’s a two part documentary, for those interested. Maybe you can do a post on Nortel, Ian, and this topic.
I used to live in Ottawa. NorTell was HUGE. What happened should never have been allowed, and the government should have stepped in. Massive looting and malfeasance.
HUGE indeed, Ian. It once comprised nearly 40% of the value of the TSE. Talk about all your retirement nest eggs in one basket. It came back to bite so many in the ass. Were lessons learned? Nah, lessons are never learned just as surely as executive stock compensation is never earned and it all gets repeated in one fashion or another until human goes poof in slow motion.
The Magapublican Congress won’t actually have to believe anything Maxwell would tell them. They would just pretend to believe it just long enough to race to the end of the hearings, declare themselves satisfied, and declare that ” It is time to firmly shut and seal this book”. ( Hat tip once again to Gerald R. Ford).
And here is an abbreviated version of President Ford’s ” Nixon Pardon” speech its own self. The “firmly shut and seal this book” line is not in it. Still, it is interesting for what it is. And now, without further ado, let Ford just say ” this” . . . about “that”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C56oqNXYXak
Header: Protestor self-defense against police aggression. ( Tear gas suppression).
Here is an interesting video from the Damnthatsinteresting subreddit. It is titled:
” Chilean protester defuses tear gas canister with baking soda and water ”
While it is not a detailed “how to disable tear gas cannister” educational training video, it surely gives some ideas as to how to try countering a tear gas cannister. Here is the link. https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/1mhdu66/chilean_protester_defuses_tear_gas_canister_with/
By the way, if/when American protests get beyond the ” hit them with tear gas” phase, a next possible crowd-management weapon would be the Raytheon Field-Mobile Microwave Oven-Ray. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Denial_System
People might want to think about how to counter the Oven Heat-Ray guns when they are deployed against the massed citizens.
Here is an interesting little item about current HHS Secretary RFK jr, which if correct, offers an interesting insight into his core-most inner character. It is titled: Empty Spaces Exposed. It is from the MurderedByWords subreddit.
The war between Russia and the west can not end unless the west is occupied by Russia, or the west achieves a change of Regime in Russia, or one or both are destroyed in a nuclear war, and I have doubts if that is possible, or everything is destroyed by climate change and or resource deplition which is inevitable. Only the when is unknown.
I am not sure if it is obvious to the Russian Leadership, but it should be by now, western attempts to destabilize Russia will not ever stop unless one of the criteria above are met.
That means taking control of the 4 regions of Ukriane means nothing. That means taking control of all of Ukraine east of the Dnieper means nothing. That means that taking control of all of Ukraine means nothing.
If Russian or Russian aligned forces reach Lisbon that does count for something. But that may not be a check mate. The current leadership of the west is not reasonable or even rational. They will continue to try to destablize Russia even from across the Atlantic unless they are destroyed. To actually destroy them means that at a minimum millions must die because the current western leadership has millions of followers who are more than willing to keep the greedy dream of conquest alive.
One should not expect sanity to break out on planet earth any time soon.
What rhymes with soon can be expected though.
Spoon feed me dada.
How Fahr to go?
The proper definition of a subhuman (Untermensch) is a person that supports their government or society even when their government or society is wrong.
Is does not matter if this support is due to stupidity or apathy, or a desire for personal gain.
It does matter though if someone supports their government or society out of fear. Fear is not an excuse. But it is a mitigating circumstance. There is a large array of behaivioral options available to a person who does not support their government or society. Fear justifies taking a less risky option. Faith and Hope justify taking a more risky option. But fairth and hope are often in short supply and need to be rationed.
Oops I need to slightly modify what I wrote above. Stupidity can be an excuse for supporting a government or society that is wrong. It depends upon whether a person has an advantaged or disadvantaged background for understanding such things.
Oakchair
“Why, it might be argued, should anyone think it is anything but inevitable that the preeminent schools of a capitalist society produce professionals to serve the societies preeminent capitalists?” –Calvin Trillin
“For every complicated problem there is a solution that is simple, direct, understandable, and wrong” — H. L. Mencken
“The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living.” –Karl Marx
—–
According to the experts normal blood pressure is under 120/80. If it is higher than 130/80 you’ll need to take some expensive pharma drugs or else…
The concept that high blood pressure causes increased mortality was adopted after the Framingham Heart study, which is the most widely cited study used.
When professional mathematicians looked at this large 18 year long study they concluded:
“In fact, these data actually statistically rejected”
“the paradigm MUST be false”
“a universal cut point at a fixed pressure, in particular at 140 mmHg, has no justification”
“no benefit in reducing pressure from 160 mmHg”
Furthermore they noted that:
“no randomized trial has ever demonstrated any reduction of the risk of either overall or cardiovascular death by reducing systolic blood pressure” (when it was 160mmHg or lower)
https://www.math.ucla.edu/~scp/publications/EHJ.pdf
——
A year long study from China looked at blood pressure and all cause mortality in patients with atrial fibrillation.
Mortality rates were 1.9 and 1.6 times higher in those with blood pressure under 110/70mmHg
As figure 2 shows those with low blood pressure had the highest death rates. The highest blood pressure group had the lowest mortality rates.
https://mednexus.org/doi/10.1097/CM9.0000000000002627
—–
Table 2 shows blood pressure drugs were associated with an increased risk of:
hospitlization/death from falls 2.19 and 1.23
hypotension 2.43 and 1.32
kidney injury 2.92 and 1.44
syncope 2 and 1.2
Fracture 1.45 and .99
electrolyte abnormalities 2.64 and 1.45
gout 1.99 and 1.35
First number is the unadjusted rate and second number is the rate using the authors adjustments.
https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1004223
—-
“Patients in a pragmatic trial were surveyed at baseline to identify and characterize 6 potential BP medication side effect symptoms”
Table 2 shows the percentage of people having big or very big problems with each side effect.
18% for tiredness
7.5% for dizziness
10% for leg swelling
7% for cough
12% for frequent urination
9% sexual dysfunction
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40578923/
——
“Your worst sin is that you have destroyed and betrayed yourself for nothing.” ― Fyodor Dostoevsky
“Hegel remarks somewhere that all great, world-historical facts and personages occur, as it were, twice. He has forgotten to add: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.” -Karl Marx
NR
Oakchair is back with more AI-generated slop. That Chinese study doesn’t say what he claims (or rather, what Chat GPT claims) it says:
What the study actually says:
So this study confirms what many other studies have shown: blood pressure that is too low or too high carries an increased risk of death. Contrary to what Oakchair (or rather, Chat GPT) claimed, the mid-range blood pressure values had the lowest risk of death, as the study itself said:
So the moral of the story here is, don’t go to Chat GPT for medical advice or analysis.
mago
Probably don’t want to get your blood pressure boiling over whatever stressors may be pushing your pulse over the top.
A year ago I mate a rare visit to see a primary care physician, and the first thing they do is measure your blood pressure and mine was over the top.
I explained that being in their milieu which is normal for them is totally not for me, hence the elevated readings.
They sent me home with a chart to fill out and a mandate to monitor daily blood pressure, which I duly did every morning for 30 days. It was all within normal range.
Didn’t follow through with an appointment. And a year later the chart collects dust. Never going back again and I don’t care. Not that it matters. Just saying. Best not to get worked up over nothing.
bruce wilder
Tulsi Gabbard has brought about the release of a number of documents confirming what many of us suspected from the beginning: Russiagate was fabricated for political advantage, using compliant intelligence agencies as tools and compliant media as fools and useful idiots.
The reaction among political media to being handed documentary confirmation of their lack of integrity has been to cry, “but, Epstein!”
The irresponsibility demonstrated seems to be boundless.
I have listened to Matt Taibbi and Walter Kirn try to fathom the depths of depravity involved, but the shocking reality is how petty and shallow the motivations and goals of all involved were. Taibbi for a while sounded a bit like Rachel Maddow touting the possibility of prosecutions to come. There won’t be any further prosecutions, imo. This is just how everyone in Washington acts all the time. It is like someone revealed that Vince McMahon is NOT letting a title fight be decided in the ring, as opposed to the writer’s room. [sarc] You mean Pro Wrestling is fake!? [end sarc] “Control of the Narrative” took over decades ago in American politics as not only Job #1, but the only job for professional journalists, pundits and politicians. So many players coordinated their misbehavior and malpractice that none dare call it conspiracy. It really wasn’t a conspiracy. It was just handing out scripts and talking points to the right people and letting those right people do what they do so well. You can’t really blame Seth Meyer for feeding his kids on Trump jokes, can you?
The mentality is that it simply doesn’t matter whether any of it is factually accurate. It doesn’t matter to what will be said or reported, what will be done as a matter of policy, what will be remembered or argued “as if” a matter of principle was involved.
Lots and lots of people participated and they won’t remember that they lied and deceived themselves and others. Not many remember anything.
mago
Yeah. Days of guns and roses.
Don’t remember anything except selectively.
What’s that in the road? A head?
We’re living in Monty Python world.
Fabrications and delusions
Mental fog
And we can’t find our way home
Moving into the dog days of August
Love what you can and who you can best as you are able.
canopy
book of the week
Fear of Falling
The Inner Life of the Middle Class
by Barbara Ehrenreich
“A brilliant and insightful work that examines the insecurities of the middle class in an attempt to explain its turn to the right during the past two decades, Fear of Falling traces the myths about the middle class to their roots in the ambitions and anxieties that torment the group and that have led to its retreat from a responsible leadership role.”
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24457.Fear_of_Falling?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=PNRISlFCsb&rank=1
shagggz
Ian: “don’t go to Chat GPT for medical advice or analysis.” – Or anything relying on factuality, really.
Oakchair
Re: “Don’t go to chat GPT for medical advice or analysis….
——-
Right, because chat GPT doesn’t think, use logic, delve through various biases, or consider where and how “facts and data” are accrued. It doesn’t even have the curiosity to wonder about those things. It simply regurgitates what it’s told to.
That’s how the media operates regarding most topics especially anything related to wars or any scientific topic. That’s how doctors operate.
Chat GPT is going to save society because it will show everyone the horrendous pitfalls of outsourcing their thinking. People will rise up and stop following orders and think for themselves. We’ll have real discussions instead of intellectual cesspools like NR’s posts. Wait, never mind that’s not going to happen.
NR
Just like you regurgitated what it gave you in response to whatever prompt you typed into it to create your comment above. The problem is that Chat GPT isn’t very good at actually analyzing things and drawing accurate conclusions. And you were apparently either unwilling or unable to read and comprehend the sources it cited. If you had been, you would have realized that the study Chat GPT gave you had a different conclusion than it claimed.
It does take a lot of gall to complain about “intellectual cesspools” while posting AI-generated slop that contains information that’s flat-out wrong, though, I’ll give you that. “Intellectual cesspools” indeed! Take a look in the mirror.
Jorge
@mago – your experience with having your blood pressure checked is called “White Coat Syndrome”, and it is quite common. They’re supposed to know about it.
Jorge
I’m calling the beginning of the end for Trump, in re: firing the boss of BLS.
https://www.axios.com/2025/08/01/trump-jobs-labor-statistics
When the President is inaugurated, he gets a number of speeches. One of them is: “You can pick any idiot for Secretary of State, Defense, HUD, etc. Here is a list of acceptable candidates for Treasury and The Federal Reserve- you will choose from the list. You don’t get to screw about with The Money.” He is trying to screw about with The Money, for very bad reasons, and this is the red line.
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This guy is a hoot. Give a hoot, don’t pollute. Remember that? I do.
Ken possesses an enviable sardonic wit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDw8aD7juHA
Oakchair
https://imgflip.com/tag/don%27t+feed+the+trolls
When the boy who cried wolf was being eaten think he realized no one was listening? Think the troll realizes his posts get scrolled through?
bruce wilder
Of course Trump is fooling around with The Money. Important parts of his coalition very much wants him to fool around with The Money in one way or several. Quite apart from anything he himself has done deliberately The Money, aka the U.S. Dollar, a fiat currency embedded in a vast system of global finance and trade of many parts, is in deep trouble and the U.S. economy is in that trouble with it.
I doubt Trump has much useful insight or understanding of the nature of that trouble, nor am I confident that anyone around him does. Bessent? Please. But, Trump and other high officials like the Treasury Secretary and the Chair of the Federal Reserve and other prominent players like Jamie Dimon at JPMorganChase are aware. As are a vast array of people really, including quite a few of dim understanding vying to be “players” in some way or another. Crypto kings. MMT followers. A few — very few really — economists on the periphery of the crumbling economics establishment have some understanding usually based in some special interest. Michael Pettis, who has specialized in East Asia and China finance and trade, comes to my mind, but there are many others. Steve Keen, the venerable gadfly critic of economics, may be among those pushing a resurrection of Keynes’ Bancor proposal at Bretton Woods, where the present system of Dollar-financed global trade was initially set in motion.
A much larger part of the politically noisy across the West and across the world are basically unaware that there is a problem. For them, Trump’s chaotic tariff show is a distressing form of low-brow political theatre, a farce with dud laugh lines about penguins and de minimus. They don’t see the dead-eyed panic in the principal players.
I actually think Trump’s chaotic approach to “negotiation” may be skillful political tactics, even if I cannot credit him or his Administration with a strategy. Indeed, I think quite a few political players around the Trump Administration are simply greedy opportunists looking for their main chance to climb the ladder of chaos to the second-story bedroom where the jewels are kept in a box, any box, any jewels.
The political problem for which Trump’s tactics are a solution is that the emerging Crisis of the Dollar, which is very much Now, is not widely recognized or appreciated for the simple reason that the overwhelming incumbent political power and economic wealth of so many establishment institutions and industries — in the U.S. and abroad — is founded in the now increasingly tenuous and illusory financial “reality” created by the Dollar System of international finance. I presume that Trump recognizes that the U.S. “twin” deficits — the trade deficit and the fiscal deficit, which are different aspects of the same things — are beginning to accelerate beyond any possibility of control or survival. That’s a big presumption, because I do not think Trump all that smart. But, I recognize that chaos is an effective tactical approach when your counter parties are deeply invested in continuing the status quo, kicking the can down the road, et cetera. He has to take any possibility of things going on as they have been, off the table. I think the U.S. loses ever more catastrophically in the end the longer things go on as they have been with regard to ballooning debt. And, a lot of powerful interested parties would strongly prefer to keep the party going as it has been, keep the band playing and the champagne flowing, and just hope that some deus ex machina shows up before the curtain closes.
I see two big problems with my own narrative analysis. One is that Trump is not terribly smart and certainly not terribly wise. I have cast him for a part in this play as a hero-protagonist that isn’t entirely consistent with what we know of his public persona as a hypomaniac grifter and demagogue. The reality may be that he is operating on base cunning. The thing is, I know the problem of the Dollar is huge and real and momentus, even if The Donald isn’t.
Problem number two with my narrative analysis is that I do not see and cannot outline for you “the Solution”. This isn’t like that staple product of the all-seeing journalist, the magazine article titled, “Blah, blah . . . and how we solve it.” I am inclined, honestly, to see collapse, even if not desirable or inevitable, as embodying certain highly desirable elements of a good resolution to the problems posed by the contradictions of the Dollar System in its end-stages.
The real Donald Trump, and even less the grifters and reactionaries around his Administration, do not share my idea of the good. They, variously, probably want to preserve grossly inflated corporate profits, housing prices, drug prices and so on, while wiping out Social Security and reaping windfalls from Cryptocurrency Ponzi schemes.
I watch the drama playing out on stage and I cannot imagine a deus ex machina to resolve things in a climax without high explosives.
One thing I do note is the continued absence of any analysis or even much awareness on the political Left. Mamdani is proposing publicly-owned Costco warehouses and free bus fare, while Corbyn, past retirement, is lending his name to a Party that is more an online influencer marketing campaign than a political movement. Curious all that.
Mary Bennet
Bruce Wilder, anyone with half a functioning brain, who was not a Democratic Party loyalist knew the Russia Stole the Election stuff was fabricated. We didn’t need Gabbard to tell us.
OTOH, the Epstein scandals are for real. What makes them so damaging is the presence of La Maxwell. A rich, high status, attractive socialite woman turned out to be a pimp and abuser. She weren’t no street hustler. Consider how many parents of daughters are asking themselves, would I have been suspicious if La Maxwell had shown an interest in my child? Also note the presence of both Clinton and Trump, known degenerates, on various lists and accusations by victims coming forward. This is clearly a non-partisan scandal, and as such can’t be simply dismissed as ginned up fake news from the Other Side. My hope is that this scandal will be the solvent which finally dissolves middle class Americans’ idiotic belief that being rich equals being A Good Person.
Mark Level
Not going to wade too far into the arguments going on here, I appreciate mago’s take on the unreality of the fake narratives, others say it equally well. I think we (nearly, don’t see L&S with his State Dept. dogma, “here’s a list of OUR ememies”) on this thread mostly understand this well and heave seen this for decades, going back to the Bush Admin’s use of “The Mighty Wurlitzer” to create “our own reality.”
So as a palate-cleanser, I sometimes try to defy my own preconceptions by going to a site I’m mostly opposed to, like ZeroHedge. I found this mostly worthy critique of the Trump vs. Europe trade wars at this link, there are a few bizarre and hateful lies, distractions in it but not more than one would expect from the site, an Extremist Libertarian Worship-of-Mammon enterprise. https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/trumps-tariffs-those-goddamned-freeloading-europeans
I applaud the author’s overall fairness in recognizing Trump’s hyperbole as they are overall a Trump Fanboy site, he (dunno why everything’s by Tyler Durden, a fictional character first in the Fight Club book, then movie) gives grudging respect to actual Euro-Slave morality & Russophobe pathologies while not exaggerating the power imbalance.
There are a few howlers, of course, as one would expect from the kind of site that links to Flat Earth garbage like “the Mises Institute”, up is down, Hell is paradise, etc. 4 paragraphs from the end, he laments that the Germans and others felt guilt for genocide and imperialism, he can’t imagine why. Then he follows with a lament about “at least two cancerous ideological systems in the form of climatism and migrationism” that he believes the Modern West errs in allowing/ acknowledging.
These people are ethno-nationalists and white Supremacists (celebrate Victor Orban’s inviting Netanyahu to Hungary and lauding his genocide as necessary, e.g.) and resent that brown people from Asia and Africa enter their countries in Europe after NATO wars that destroy their home societies and make things unlivable. They rightly lamented the Biden admin’s failed war on Russia via the corrupt shithole of Banderist Ukraine, but otherwise seem okay with the endless US wars (with minor laments about wasted money) while more intelligent and principled Glibertarians like Scott Horton flat-out oppose them . . . Horton is pretty nutty at times, too, years ago he did an outstanding job of demolishing Bloody Bill Kristol in a debate about the NeoCon failures, stayed on message and won the vote of the audience by something like nearly 70%. However, he has also become more deranged in recent years (almost to Scott Adams levels), during the Bidet admin I saw him foaming at the mouth about how Joe & Kop Kamala were “Communists” leading a revolution against the Good People.
Listening to Mearsheimer talking to Glen Diesen while writing this, and even Mearsheimer thinks that post-Trump the US will fully remove itself from the basket case that is the Vassal EUrope, as “the Garden” falls apart and becomes more a Jungle.
Recently I’ve been reading Hopkirk’s classic book on “The Great Game,” he’s not the only one who points out in passing that the Europeans became the World’s Imperialist Curse after centuries of endless war between them for territory and loot led to the development of highly trained professional military cadres, that then spread out worldwide. Plus ca change, the decadence arrives sooner or later. Decades ago I thought Spengler’s Decline of the West was a misfire. He expected it sooner rather than this late, but I now see he was mostly correct.
different clue
. . . “but, Epstein!” . . .
yeah . . . but Epstein . . .
Here’s another log to throw on the “but, Epstein!” fire.
It is titled: ” Trump Rages About Claim He Killed Epstein ”
Here is the link.
https://www.reddit.com/r/NoShitSherlock/comments/1mg7s63/trump_rages_about_claim_he_killed_epstein/
different clue
ooOOOooo . . . now here’s something inneresting . . .
” Ghislaine Maxwell offers to testify before Congress on Jeffrey Epstein if she is pardoned | Maxwell’s pitch for clemency came in a letter to the House Oversight Committee. ”
https://www.reddit.com/r/law/comments/1mgiklo/ghislaine_maxwell_offers_to_testify_before/
Trump’s people and Maxwell’s people are probably even now working out just what Maxwell should say to Congress in any such hearing in order to earn that pardon. They will probably try to work it all out fast enough to be able to get the Epstein-Maxwell hearings held before a Trump-sympathetic Magapublican-majority House and Senate. That way, whatever she promises Trump that she will say in order to get that pardon will be what she will say. And the Magapublican-majority Houses of Congress will ratify it and say: ” It has all been revealed. There is nothing more to be learned here. ‘ The time has come to firmly shut and seal this book. ‘ ( Hat-tip to President Ford).
mago
It’s the tail end of a weekend if you measure time that way.
It’s the golden end of summer if you live in that place
It’s the time of living and dying just as it always is wherever one resides
Hello magic, and prostrations to the dawn in a sunset world.
NR
Well as Oakchair has shown us, Chat GPT makes being wrong and trolling easier than it’s ever been! Just outsource it to AI like he does!
Just be careful calling them out on it, though. They get really upset when you do that.
NR
@different clue:
Don’t forget that one of the things Maxwell was charged with was perjury, i.e., lying. No one should believe anything she says in exchange for a pardon, but unfortunately there will probably be lots of people who will.
different clue
. . . another whack at the “But Epstein’ piñata . . .
From the BlueskySkeets subreddit, titled: ” Whoa If True ” . . .
About how Russia’s Medvedev has just said, in response to Trump dispatching 2 nuclear-armed submarines to ‘ the appropriate place’ , something to the effect that Mossad may not be the only people who have all kinds of evidence about what bad things Trump did long long ago.
Here is the link.
https://www.reddit.com/r/BlueskySkeets/comments/1mgy9ru/whoa_if_true/
I think we’ll be getting a President transplant pretty soon. Trump out, Vance in. And those who think they will be relieved when that happens because things couldn’t get any more worse than under Trump will live to find out just how even mucher more worserer things will get under President Vance.
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This is a little late to the game but better late than sorry. It’s worth it. An excellent, highly comprehensive, analysis of the Nortel failure but it touches on so much more than that.
John Roth is your neighbor in Toronto, Ian. Caledon, to be precise but I’m certain he most assuredly has more homes than that, scumbag that he is. He absconded with nearly $200 million from Nortel whilst pensioners were left high and dry. How very American of him even though he is a full-blooded Albertan.
Nortel as much as any was a prime example of the impact of the financialization of the Western economies. Companies increasingly have become Potemkin in nature. It’s all about perceived value to manipulate the stock price and thus executive compensation versus providing any tangible value.
It’s a two part documentary, for those interested. Maybe you can do a post on Nortel, Ian, and this topic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6xwMIUPHss
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDdC3-LT7pM
Ian Welsh
I used to live in Ottawa. NorTell was HUGE. What happened should never have been allowed, and the government should have stepped in. Massive looting and malfeasance.
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HUGE indeed, Ian. It once comprised nearly 40% of the value of the TSE. Talk about all your retirement nest eggs in one basket. It came back to bite so many in the ass. Were lessons learned? Nah, lessons are never learned just as surely as executive stock compensation is never earned and it all gets repeated in one fashion or another until human goes poof in slow motion.
different clue
@NR,
The Magapublican Congress won’t actually have to believe anything Maxwell would tell them. They would just pretend to believe it just long enough to race to the end of the hearings, declare themselves satisfied, and declare that ” It is time to firmly shut and seal this book”. ( Hat tip once again to Gerald R. Ford).
” ‘ Shut and seal this book?’ ” What is he talking about?
https://banderasnews.com/0612/edat-fordpardon.htm
And here is an abbreviated version of President Ford’s ” Nixon Pardon” speech its own self. The “firmly shut and seal this book” line is not in it. Still, it is interesting for what it is. And now, without further ado, let Ford just say ” this” . . . about “that”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C56oqNXYXak
different clue
Header: Protestor self-defense against police aggression. ( Tear gas suppression).
Here is an interesting video from the Damnthatsinteresting subreddit. It is titled:
” Chilean protester defuses tear gas canister with baking soda and water ”
While it is not a detailed “how to disable tear gas cannister” educational training video, it surely gives some ideas as to how to try countering a tear gas cannister. Here is the link.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/1mhdu66/chilean_protester_defuses_tear_gas_canister_with/
By the way, if/when American protests get beyond the ” hit them with tear gas” phase, a next possible crowd-management weapon would be the Raytheon Field-Mobile Microwave Oven-Ray. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Denial_System
People might want to think about how to counter the Oven Heat-Ray guns when they are deployed against the massed citizens.
different clue
Here is an interesting little item about current HHS Secretary RFK jr, which if correct, offers an interesting insight into his core-most inner character. It is titled: Empty Spaces Exposed. It is from the MurderedByWords subreddit.
Here is the link.
https://www.reddit.com/r/MurderedByWords/comments/1mhhdfc/empty_spaces_exposed/
different clue
Here’s something from the mildlyinfuriating subreddit. Titled ” Aunt who raised me posted this on her instagram”.
Here is the link.
https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinfuriating/comments/1mhwxp1/aunt_who_raised_me_posted_this_on_her_instagram/
Curt Kastens
The war between Russia and the west can not end unless the west is occupied by Russia, or the west achieves a change of Regime in Russia, or one or both are destroyed in a nuclear war, and I have doubts if that is possible, or everything is destroyed by climate change and or resource deplition which is inevitable. Only the when is unknown.
I am not sure if it is obvious to the Russian Leadership, but it should be by now, western attempts to destabilize Russia will not ever stop unless one of the criteria above are met.
That means taking control of the 4 regions of Ukriane means nothing. That means taking control of all of Ukraine east of the Dnieper means nothing. That means that taking control of all of Ukraine means nothing.
If Russian or Russian aligned forces reach Lisbon that does count for something. But that may not be a check mate. The current leadership of the west is not reasonable or even rational. They will continue to try to destablize Russia even from across the Atlantic unless they are destroyed. To actually destroy them means that at a minimum millions must die because the current western leadership has millions of followers who are more than willing to keep the greedy dream of conquest alive.
One should not expect sanity to break out on planet earth any time soon.
What rhymes with soon can be expected though.
Spoon feed me dada.
How Fahr to go?
Curt Kastens
I saw this youtube video today that tempts me to pick at the Corona -COVID narrative scab. Underneath the crust there is an itch.
sarcozona
I haven’t seen this in the news yet, but it looks like the administration is editing the version of the constitution on Congress’s website.
https://slrpnk.net/post/25696399
Curt Kastens
A Link about Hopium.
https://reeswilliame.substack.com/p/twenty-four-reasons-why-we-are-hooped?triedRedirect=true
Hurrah für Hooped Hopium.
Curt Kastens
The proper definition of a subhuman (Untermensch) is a person that supports their government or society even when their government or society is wrong.
Is does not matter if this support is due to stupidity or apathy, or a desire for personal gain.
It does matter though if someone supports their government or society out of fear. Fear is not an excuse. But it is a mitigating circumstance. There is a large array of behaivioral options available to a person who does not support their government or society. Fear justifies taking a less risky option. Faith and Hope justify taking a more risky option. But fairth and hope are often in short supply and need to be rationed.
Curt Kastens
Oops I need to slightly modify what I wrote above. Stupidity can be an excuse for supporting a government or society that is wrong. It depends upon whether a person has an advantaged or disadvantaged background for understanding such things.