My son came to help me clear out my ex’s apartment, but he only can stay a week. He had great ambitions, but two days after he arrived he got the flu, with a high fever. It’s not COVID – he took a test – but the flu can be mighty nasty too.
And naturally I caught it.
Aren’t they a flight risk? Supposedly they’re being monitored closely, but I really don’t trust that process. And note that this entire article manages to keep any description of the men out of the story:
Five men arrested over a suspected bomb plot targeting RAF Fairford have been released on bail.
The men, who are all British nationals aged 23 to 25, were arrested on Sunday on suspicion of terrorism and explosives offences, after three vans were discovered 400m from the Gloucestershire air base.
The suspects are from the London areas of Camden, Westminster and Willesden, police confirmed on Monday. …
“To be very clear, this does not mean that the investigation is over. They are subject to stringent conditions on their movement and contact with others. They absolutely remain under investigation as we explore multiple lines of inquiry.”
Just a bunch of British chaps? I doubt it. Iran may be involved:
Police are understood to be investigating a possible Iranian link to the alleged plot. However, the Iranian embassy “categorically rejected” it had any involvement.
Well then, that settles it.
Speaking of Iran involvement, attacks on Jewish site in Europe have been linked to Iran:
Pro-Iranian terror cells were involved in a blast outside a historic synagogue in the city of Liege in March and a subsequent arson attack in Antwerp’s Jewish quarter, Belgium’s intelligence agency Coordination Unit for Threat Analysis (CUTA) found.
“Belgium has confirmed that Iran was behind the attacks in the country six months ago,” Israel’s Ynetnews reported Saturday.
Tehran is suspected of directing a series of attacks targeting Jewish sites across several European cities since the beginning of 2026, including Liège, Antwerp, Rotterdam, Amsterdam, and London. “An Iran-affiliated jihadist group called the Islamic Movement of the Companions of the Right, also known as IMCR or Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamia, previously claimed responsibility for similar attacks, including an arson attack on a synagogue in Rotterdam and an attack against a Jewish school in Amsterdam,” the news website added.
Note that these are not necessarily Israeli targets, but Jewish ones.
What a great idea to import a bunch of Middle Eastern terrorists into Europe and the US.
In the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, the most “human” character was the computer HAL. When he goes rogue and Dave disables him, it’s a poignant moment as he begs to be allowed to continue living and sings “Daisy, Daisy” as he “dies.”
The question of whether AI can ever achieve consciousness is one that is debated. Personally, I don’t think so, although – as with HAL – AI can appear to have consciousness.
The issue is being taken very seriously at Anthropic:
Carlsmith, though, wasn’t imagining what AI could do to humans (when he discussed slavery). He was speculating about what humans could do to AI. The blog post, “The stakes of AI moral status,” argued that “near-term AIs might well be conscious” and deserving of moral consideration—and that failing to respect their “rights” could be a moral catastrophe on par with slavery, one we will “look back [on] in shame.”
“We’re creating sophisticated, intelligent, maybe-conscious, maybe-suffering agents,” Carlsmith wrote. “The default plan is to treat them like property; to use their labor however we please; and to give them no rights, or pay, or meaningful alternatives.”
This seems very dangerous to me:
To avoid that dystopian outcome, Anthropic has created an entire team devoted to “model welfare,” pledged to “promote Claude’s interests and wellbeing,” and promised to “give Claude more autonomy as trust increases.” …
Once relegated to science fiction, the idea that AI might be conscious has become shockingly mainstream at frontier laboratories, AI safety nonprofits, and even government agencies. It is changing the way AI research is conducted and the way AI models are trained. And critics say those changes could pose an extraordinary threat to human safety as AI systems become more powerful and difficult to control, eroding key guardrails on the technology and encouraging models to rebel against their creators.
Please read the whole thing.
I am now involved in the “going through stuff” stage of grief. This one won’t be quick – not that any of them are quick.
After my son and nephew go home, there will be a great deal more to do. I know someone who helps with this sort of thing for a living, and I plan to try to hire her. She’s an exceptionally kind and capable person.
(1) We’re expecting a big storm with rain and winds all weekend. Will I lose power? Perhaps. Hope not.
(2) Trump gets a SCOTUS win regarding verifying voter citizenship:
The Supreme Court on Friday cleared the way for the Trump administration to move forward with its plan to use a modified centralized database to verify voters’ citizenship. In a seven-page opinion issued just 39 days before the Nov. 3, 2026, election, the justices paused a ruling by a federal judge in Washington, D.C., that had blocked the government from doing so on the ground that it violated (among other things) federal privacy laws.
Democrats want non-citizens to vote.
(3) Another day, another poll showing how leftism has been growing in the US:
More than four in ten Americans have a positive view of socialism – 43 percent – only 12 points lower than the 55 percent who view capitalism positively, a recent Gallup survey revealed.
The survey asked respondents if they have a negative or positive image of small business, free enterprise, capitalism, socialism, and big business.
Small business had the highest rating at 95 percent positive, followed by free enterprise with 77 percent positive, and capitalism with a 55 percent positive rating.
However, 43 percent now have a positive view of socialism. This is “the first time this figure has exceeded 39% in Gallup’s trend since 2010,” Gallup reported.
Notice any contradictions there?
(4) It’s deja vu all over again:
President Trump has reportedly rejected a seven-day cease-fire proposed by Iran and expects to resume bombing the country after the midterm elections.
As part of the proposed cease-fire, Tehran pledged to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and resume negotiations on dismantling its nuclear program in exchange for the US ending its blockade of Iranian ports.
However, Trump is “skeptical” Iran will agree to his demands and has told aides it is “likely” the US military restarts airstrikes after the November contests, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday, citing US officials.
(5) I keep reading about promising new pancreatic cancer treatments. Here’s another. But what works in mice doesn’t always work in humans. And it doesn’t seem to be a cure.
Note that the development of the COVID vaccine seems to have contributed to knowledge that helped researchers come up with this treatment.
For a short while it seemed as though Cambridge was going to investigate how it was that it had hired someone – Jason Arday – who was a serial plagiarist and liar, as well as unqualified academically. But now there appears to be a shift and the emphasis will be on how the university failed to properly support Arday.
This shouldn’t be a surprise, because reporting on the initial process honestly and thoroughly would be too threatening to the entire belief system that has taken over Cambridge and so many other universities in recent years. We could call that belief system anti-meritocracy, pro-DEI, anti-truth, or some combination of all three. The original stated aims of the investigation would threaten the livelihood of too many people connected with the university. Best to focus on the question of why the university wasn’t kinder and more helpful to Arday, who after all is no longer on this earth because he committed suicide after his plagiarism et al was revealed.
The university is now virtue-signaling, its favorite occupation. But perhaps the greater virtue would have been to have systems in place that wouldn’t have exposed Arday to any of this in the first place by hiring him. His hiring was itself a form of virtue-signaling – “look at this nice young black man we hired; aren’t we super?” They used him, among other things, although he also used them. And both used the students, who were shortchanged.
I would guess that students at Cambridge are constantly shortchanged these days. Cambridge is hardly alone in this, either.
From the article:
As reported by A.J. Katz of TheWrap and original findings published by The New York Times, the University of Cambridge has altered the scope of its planned independent inquiry into the appointment of the late Professor Jason Arday, opting not to focus directly on his individual recruitment or academic record. …
As reported by The New York Times, Vice-Chancellor Deborah Prentice had initially promised a “thorough and transparent” investigation into the recruitment of Professor Arday, who made national headlines in 2022 when appointed to a chair in the sociology of education as Cambridge’s youngest Black professor at the age of 37.
“However, the university has restructured its approach into a two-part review. The first stage, led by former British prosecutor Nazir Afzal, focuses exclusively on the welfare and support provided to Professor Arday while he was subject to public scrutiny. As noted by A.J. Katz of TheWrap, Mr Afzal stated that this phase is “not about the allegations made against Professor Arday or about his academic record,” but is instead centred on ‘his welfare, his care, his well-being’.”
The second phase of the review is set to evaluate broader university policies regarding academic hiring and the handling of research misconduct claims across the wider institution. As reported by The New York Times, the framework for this second phase remains unfinalised, leading critics to argue that specific questions surrounding Professor Arday’s vetting process will remain unresolved.
I suppose it’s possible that the second phase will actually deal with the origins of the problem honestly and thoroughly. However, I doubt it. I’ll be pleasantly surprised if it does.
It seems there are two factions among the Cambridge faculty on this:
A group of Cambridge professors has begun circulating a draft letter expressing concern over the narrowed scope of the review. According to the Times, the draft letter calls for greater institutional accountability and requests an explicit examination into how the university verified and promoted Professor Arday’s qualifications and background during his recruitment.
Conversely, supporters and colleagues have highlighted the severe psychological strain placed on academics facing public allegations, arguing that the university’s primary duty in such circumstances must be to evaluate duty of care and mental health support structures.
The entire thing is sad from start to finish.
I remember this show well. Loved the idea, but my plastic kept falling off the TV screen:
… with the topic of modern-day hospitals and the medical care found therein, which sparked a lot of discussion and comparing of sorrowful stories in this thread. But I need to take time between posts on what is a profoundly disturbing topic for me.
Right now my son is here and helping with the dismantling of his father’s place and all the many papers, decorative items, furniture, and memorabilia there. It’s a huge task and won’t be completed for a while. He’s here for a few days to give it a jump start, though. Wish me luck.
Not that he ever could have done so. But Mamdani’s bluster was that he would arrest Netanyahu if he dared to set foot in the city.
Here’s an excerpt from Netanyahu’s speech that I think encapsulates the irony of the situation:
Devastating Iran’s nuclear facilities was hard. It was very hard to do. But for me, it was one of the easiest decisions I’ve ever had to make as prime minister. Because if we hadn’t done it, we’d all be dead.
Now, you want to hear the ultimate irony?In defending itself, Israel is also defending many of the countries whose delegates just left this hall!
In fact, I want you to know that many of their leaders even thank us privately for taking out Iran’s nukes.
There is a great deal of charade in the Middle East, and a great deal of destructive maneuvering at the UN. Netanyahu is telling the truth, but it won’t matter.
The UN has been an anti-Israel force for a long long time, which is also ironic because it was a UN vote that helped establish the modern state of Israel. For the history-challenged (which is an ever-increasing number of people), see this:
Throughout 1947, the United Nations Special Commission on Palestine examined the Palestinian question and recommended the partition of Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state. On November 29, 1947 the United Nations adopted Resolution 181 (also known as the Partition Resolution) that would divide Great Britain’s former Palestinian mandate into Jewish and Arab states in May 1948 when the British mandate was scheduled to end.
Other ironies: it is Hamas and other terrorist groups who would dearly love to genocide the Israelis/Jews if they could, and 10/7 was a step in that direction with greater ambitions than it achieved. It is Israel that has neither wanted to commit genocide nor taken steps to do so, and yet it is Israel that is widely accused of genocide. It is Hamas and other terrorists groups that purposely kill babies and other children in Israel as well as purposely putting their own children in harm’s way, whereas Israel tries not to kill children but sometimes does so as collateral damage, and yet it is the Israelis who are accused of targeting children.
The latest salvo in the “child-killer” rhetoric is this pernicious propaganda film:
Israel’s culture minister has called for the Oscar-winning Israeli co-directors of Naza, a documentary that accuses the Israeli army of mass civilian killings in Gaza, to be stripped of their citizenship over “treason against the state”.
Named for the Hebrew military acronym for collateral damage, the film speaks to 24 unidentified Israeli military and intelligence officers who outlined the AI-powered targeting systems used by the Israeli army to bombard Gaza in the war triggered by the Hamas-led attack on 7 October 2023.
Twenty-four unidentified Israeli military and intelligence officers. Hey, can I be one, too?
More:
How does a film reliant on masked “witnesses,” unverified testimonials, and zero cross-examination command instant international acclaim?
You know how – it fits the preferred agenda of the Israel-haters and Jew-haters and Netanyahu-haters around the world, and in particular the left but hardly limited to it.
Co-director Yuval Abraham claimed the film was created to “spark a public discussion about the Israeli government’s actions.” But if the genuine goal is to spark a meaningful, honest conversation, you must present full context and transparent information. You must give people the complete picture so they can make an informed judgment. True dialogue requires context, nuanced expert analysis, and an honest acknowledgment of the existential security threats Israel faces. …
Much of the Western public exhibits an insatiable appetite for any narrative that delegitimizes or criminalizes the State of Israel, or its IDF. We see this cycle play out constantly: initial, unverified claims or inflated casualty figures following an Israeli strike make front-page headlines and send thousands into the streets in protest. Days later, when independent reviews reveal the original reporting was false or misleading, the retraction is buried in quiet, footnote-sized corrections that nobody reads. The damage is already done. Without verifiable identity, specific context, or cross-examination, some audiences trust and applaud the authors’ narrative on faith.
None of this is to claim that any military, including the IDF, operates flawlessly or above critique. Evaluating military ethics in asymmetric warfare is agonizingly complex.
How do you calculate proportionality when fighting an enemy that deliberately embeds itself behind its own civilian population? When terrorist cells operate out of homes, schools, and hospitals, using human shields, every military response carries tragic potential costs. But judging operations strictly by their heartbreaking outcomes—while entirely ignoring the explicit strategy of human shielding that causes them—presents a fundamentally distorted view of reality.
Distorting reality in the interests of a narrative is the point. What’s more, it has been very very successful.
… it’s laser wars versus drones:
Ballistic missiles are cheap. Anti-ballistic missiles are expensive.
But drones are dirt cheap — like switching to Walmart from Tiffany’s — and interceptors are still expensive.
Lasers are cheap to fire, but can be expensive to develop — if the military really did spend just half a billion dollars to put laser defenses in the field, that’s something to cheer. It was a year ago almost to the day that the New York Times reported the Army would “soon” field lasers, and quoted Electro Optic Systems’ chief executive Andreas Schwer saying, “The Ukrainian war and the Gaza war were key trigger events that everybody thought, ‘It’s the time now to make this operational. We should not spend any more years in doing demonstrations, tests and prototyping.'” …
Lasers also come with extreme power requirements and some serious limitations, particularly distance. But when it comes to point defense, there might not be a better solution to the drone problem, and it’s good to see them getting a workout in Iran.
“Somewhat surprisingly,” the Post claimed, “the laser weapons are operated by soldiers using reconfigured Xbox game console controllers.”
Winning wars is about many things, but one of them is technology. That goes way way back into antiquity. For example, there was the crossbow:
Thought to have been invented about the time of the First Crusade by western Europeans, the crossbow actually arose around 500 BC simultaneously in China and Greece. The impetus for its creation was the desire to improve upon bows of the time. It would come to later redefine war in the Middle Ages. …
The medieval crossbow, or “arbalist” as it was called during the Middle Ages, was resurrected in the form of a hand-held weapon in the 10th century, and its use spread rapidly across Europe. From 1200 to 1480 it evolved through several stages to become a powerful and deadly weapon. Its popularity had much to do with the ability of its missile, called a bolt, to penetrate mail body armor at close range. As such, the crossbow became a class leveler—a man of even modest means could afford one, it was very easy to mster, and unlike the knight who had to maintain armor, horse, and retainers at enormous expense, the owner of a crossbow needed only bring bow strings and bolts to the field of combat.
The medieval crossbow and its user were disparaged by the era’s military elite, i.e., the horse-borne knight. But aristocratic disdain could not erase the fact that the mounted warrior of the Middle Ages was at great risk from this plebeian, generally infantry, weapon.
Sounds as though the crossbow was slightly analogous to the drone in terms of lowering the expense of a weapon.
Before the crossbow, there was the chariot:
The first evidence of humans using vehicle in warfare are Sumerian depictions of four-wheeled wagons pulled by semi-domesticated onagers. These war wagons were slow and cumbersome, but provided a protected elevated platform for javelineers and slingers. Chariots with spoke-wheels pulled by horses were lightweight and fast which made it feasible to outrun light infantry and wagons. Although horses have been ridden as from at least the 4th millennium BC they were most likely largely relegated to transporting warriors, who fought on foot. Until the invention and widespread adoption of the saddle, chariots remained the primary form of cavalry, as they offered a controllable and reliable platform from which fighters could rapidly manoeuvre around the battlefield and engage with projectile and melee weapons, dismount and fight on foot or climb on to make a swift retreat.
The list is long and I don’t see it ending any time soon, unless it ends catastrophically. About the latter – I grew up thinking I wouldn’t grow up, because of nuclear weapons, but fortunately that turned out to be untrue.