Iran’s having a drought

The New Neo Posted on by

And it’s a serious one; there’s been talk of possibly having to evacuate Tehran. So cloud-seeding was begun – and then came floods:

Rainfall caused floods in parts of western Iran on Monday, after months of drought led to the worst water crisis in decades and pushed authorities to begin cloud seeding over the weekend.

I’d heard of cloud seeding before, but it sounded to me like science fiction and I knew next to nothing about it. This doesn’t tell me much more, either:

Cloud-seeding is a process in which chemicals are implanted into clouds to increase rainfall in an environment where water scarcity is a concern.

However, the technique can only be applied when environmental conditions improve and can only be used as a stopgap solution.

“In addition to cloud seeding’s heavy cost, the amount of rainfall it produces is nowhere near what is needed to solve our water crisis,” Sahar Tajbakhsh, head of Iran’s Meteorological Organisation, told state TV on Sunday.

Not only that, but conditions in Tehran itself aren’t right for it to be used right now.

More:

Most cloud seeding operations … use a compound called silver iodide (AgI) to aid in the formation of ice crystals. Silver iodide exists naturally in the environment at low concentrations, and is not known to be harmful to humans or wildlife.

When storm systems move through one of our cloud seeding project areas, a solution containing a small amount of silver iodide is burned from ground-based generators or released from aircraft. Upon reaching the cloud, the silver iodide acts as an ice forming nuclei to aid in the production of snowflakes. …

… cloud seeding requires the presence of moisture-filled clouds.

How effective is cloud seeding? Nobody really knows.

On talking politics

The New Neo Posted on by

From Robert Graboyes:

If you and I have lunch together, I would be DELIGHTED to discuss history, science, art, music, architecture, economics, aviation, archaeology, travel, pets, cinema, television, numismatics, literature, sports, ethics, food, genetics, fashion, gardening, weather, family, transportation, agriculture, dreams, computing, language, exercise, dance, or philosophy. The likelihood is vanishingly small, however, that I want to spoil a good plate of sushi, falafel, or vindaloo by hearing your thoughts on Donald Trump, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Zohran Mamdani, Nancy Pelosi, J.D. Vance, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Bernie Sanders, etc., etc. etc. …

When I discuss politics, it is usually done in writing (email or blog comments) …

In contrast, verbal, real-time conversations on politics in 2025 largely consist of angry, puerile TikTok-worthy hot takes, statements of the obvious, well-trodden complaints, mindless partisanship, and ad hominem attacks on all who disagree with the spittle-laced observer. The same is true of micro-form writing, such as text messages or social media posts. It is a story of friendships shattered over hasty, hyper-emotional, pointless political haranguing.

I haven’t had too much of that. But I’m not on social media, and I almost never talk politics in person – much like Graboyes. The people who would shun me have mostly done that already, and as for the rest they’re not inclined to push it.

More:

My least favorite lunchtime political statements, by the way, are the brief, hazy, passive-aggressive, in-and-out, plausibly deniable political eructations. “My kids are doing great, though I worry about their futures, given … what … is … going … on … in … the …country.” Such constructions halt the flow of meaningful conversation, forcing me to stop thinking about your kids and start thinking about your political obsession. But if I say that, you can deny that you said anything political—even though we both know you did. I’d prefer that you just say, “Trump is a fascist,” or “Mamdani is a Jihadist Communist.” Then I can say, “I really don’t want to talk about politics. Have you seen the landscape exhibit from the National Gallery’s Corcoran Collection?”

On that point, I differ.

I suppose for some people that would indeed be a passive-aggressive way to start a political discussion while remaining able to deny that they started one. But I think it often is actually something quite different. It can be a way for a person to say something unifying rather than politically partisan, especially if the person knows that the listener is on the other side politically. The idea behind the statement could be, and sometimes is, that each side feels the country is facing a crisis or several crises, and maybe the sides just differ on how to solve it and whether the current administration is tackling it correctly or not. On occasion I’ve said to friends of mine on the left something like: “One thing we probably agree on is that these are difficult times and a lot of people are worried and upset” – or something of that nature – in order to convey both a reluctance to discuss politics itself and a way to say “we share the fact of being worried.”

Is it effective when I say this? Sometimes – especially when I say it to friends who already know my politics and they know I don’t like to discuss politics in person. I sometimes say it to people I barely know but am talking with in a social situation, when I want to deflect a political conversation by issuing a statement I think is non-controversial and general rather than specific.

Your mileage may differ.

Roundup

The New Neo Posted on by

(1) Michelle Obama says black people don’t swim because white people demand that black people not wear natural hairdos. Or something like that – you can figure it out, if you care to. Seems to me her statement manages to be simultaneously racist towards both black people and white people. Oh, and she’ll not be running for president because America just isn’t ready for a woman to be elected, as was proven by their failure to elect the fabulous Kamala Harris.

(2) The House has voted on releasing the rest of the Epstein files, whatever those are. The vote was 427-1. My goodness. Now on to the Senate.

The lone “nay” vote was Clay Higgins of the GOP. He explains:

I have been a principled “NO” on this bill from the beginning. What was wrong with the bill three months ago is still wrong today. It abandons 250 years of criminal justice procedure in America. As written, this bill reveals and injures thousands of innocent people – witnesses, people who provided alibis, family members, etc. If enacted in its current form, this type of broad reveal of criminal investigative files, released to a rabid media, will absolutely result in innocent people being hurt. Not by my vote.

The Oversight Committee is conducting a thorough investigation that has already released well over 60,000 pages of documents from the Epstein case. That effort will continue in a manner that provides all due protections for innocent Americans. If the Senate amends the bill to properly address privacy of victims and other Americans, who are named but not criminally implicated, then I will vote for that bill when it comes back to the House.

I think he’s correct. I’ve made similar points in previous points. The rest are bowing to the mob – but then again, they’re politicians.

(3) Epstein certainly hated Trump. You might almost say he had TDS.

(4) And speaking of Epstein – which we were – Larry Summers apparently got Epstein’s help on how to seduce a woman in whom he was interested. Subsequent to this being revealed, Summers has said:

“I am deeply ashamed of my actions and recognize the pain they have caused,” he told POLITICO. “I take full responsibility for my misguided decision to continue communicating with Mr. Epstein. While continuing to fulfill my teaching obligations, I will be stepping back from public commitments as one part of my broader effort to rebuild trust and repair relationships with the people closest to me.”

(5) The case against Comey may be imperiled. This will have to play out, but any judge appointed by a Democrat will almost certainly be ruling in Comey’s favor.

The UN Security Council unanimously approves Trump’s Gaza/PA plan

The New Neo Posted on by

When was the last time the Security Council voted unanimously on anything in the Middle East involving Israel? In this case, Russia and China abstained – but still, the whole thing makes me suspicious.

Here’s the news:

The resolution implements a mandate for Washington and partners to launch an international stabilization force in Gaza and a Board of Peace, which Trump will chair and which will serve as a transitional government authority.

The resolution also sets parameters for Israeli troops to withdraw from Gaza, leaving some in place to guard against resurgent terror threats. …

“The demilitarization of Hamas is a basic condition of the peace agreement,” stated Danny Danon, the Israeli envoy to the United Nations, after the vote. “There will be no future in Gaza as long as Hamas possesses weapons.”

The resolution also states that “conditions may finally be in place for a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood” after the Palestinian Authority undergoes reforms and Gaza’s reconstruction is “advanced.”

Of course, Hamas has responded with its usual F-you, saying it must have its “weapons of resistance.”

I think the agreement is basically some sort of internationally-accepted fantasy. Then again, the details of what will really happen are as-yet-unknown – perhaps even by the main participants, including Trump (who won’t always be around and whose successor might have very different ideas). In other words: what will Hamas be forced to give up? How will they be forced? How weak are they at this point? What might take their place?

And of tremendous and overarching importance is: what will the “Palestinians” be teaching their children for the next twenty years or so? Who will oversee this? If it’s the same-old same-old, nothing will help.

The tiresome Epstein files

The New Neo Posted on by

Trump has called on the GOP to vote for the release of all the Epstein files, and get down to touting their accomplishments and achieving more for the American people. One can conclude from this that such a release would hurt more Democrats than Republicans, something I’ve long believed anyway.

I’ve written before at some length on Epstein and the files, for example here as well as here. So I’m not going to go into the details of my position again, but I will add that the Epstein story gives people who are into wild conspiracy theories (about Israel or anything else) much fodder for their spinnings – not that any release of any files would shut them up. It wouldn’t.

But this related story is really quite something. It concerns Stacey Plaskett, a (non-voting) House member from the Virgin Islands who was receiving advisory texts during a House hearing in 2019 from none other than Jeffrey Epstein, a donor of hers (and yes, he was already a convicted sex offender). Epstein was doing the modern-day Cyrano thing via text, suggesting points for Plaskett to make as she questioned witness Michael Cohen before the House. The goal? To hurt Trump, against whom Epstein apparently had significant ire. Plaskett is a Democrat.

More:

At 2:34 p.m. (during the hearing), Epstein told [texted] Plaskett “Good work” — a minute after she finished her questioning.

The texts were released as part of roughly 20,000 pages of documents from Epstein’s estate made public Wednesday by the House Oversight Committee.

The documents redacted Plaskett’s name, but the newspaper analyzed the messages and compared them to hearing footage to report Plaskett was indeed texting Epstein.

You can’t make this up. At least, I can’t.

A few things about Thomas Crooks, Trump’s would-be assassin

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s been widely remarked that we know next to nothing about Thomas Crooks, the young man who shot Trump in the ear in Butler, Pennsylvania. Crooks himself was shot dead that day. The FBI – headed by Wray at the time – seemed to be saying that Crooks had not much online presence to speak of, which certainly might have been true but seemed rather unusual for someone his age.

Also, when Charlie Kirk was assassinated, and many facts about the alleged culprit Tyler Robinson came out, it seemed that Crooks might have been of similar ilk although we didn’t know.

Now we’re learning this, according to Miranda Devine [my emphasis]:

Thanks to an enterprising source who uncovered Crooks’ hidden digital footprint, we can see that [Wray’s deputy] Abbate misled Congress by omission, because he left out an entire section of Crooks’ online interactions from January to August 2020 when he did an ideological backflip and went from rabidly pro-Trump to rabidly anti-Trump and then went dark, never seeming to post again.

Among the 17 accounts uncovered by our source were ones on YouTube, Snapchat, Venmo, Zelle, GroupMe, Discord, Google Play, Quizlet, Chess.com and Quora.

The online interactions from when Crooks was ages 15 to 17 give us a better understanding of his evolution into an assassin, and invite more questions about what — or who — reversed his ideology.

“The danger Crooks posed was visible for years in public online spaces,” says the source. “His radicalization, violent rhetoric and obsession with political violence were all documented under his real name. The threat wasn’t hidden.” …

He left a digital trail of violent threats, extremist ideology and admiration for mass violence. He spoke openly of political assassination, posted under his real name and was even flagged by other users who mentioned law enforcement in their replies. Despite this, his account remained active for more than five years — and was only removed the day after the shooting.

“None of this online activity was referenced in the final congressional report released in December 2024, making this even more troubling,” the source said.

The idea is that either the FBI is utterly and totally incompetent – always very possible – or is covering up the fact that they investigated this guy and weren’t alarmed (definitely possible), or perhaps both. The official word from the FBI is that Crooks was not on their radar screen until July 13, 2024, the day of the shooting.

Oh, and Crooks also had an online interest – much like Tyler Robinson – in furries and gender-bending stuff.

Parsing the comments

The New Neo Posted on by

For many years I’ve made it a practice to read a lot of comments all over the blogosphere and in the MSM. I’ve noticed in recent years a growth in comments from – for want of a better word – trolls. Maybe some are bots. Maybe some are by actual people who are paid to do this. My sense, for what it’s worth, is that the majority are written by real people who are not being paid, and who devote a large portion of their free time to the task and have multiple accounts, concentrating on large circulation papers and blogs. They seem especially common on large traffic blogs that use a service such as Disqus to farm out their comments rather than doing their own policing. Hostile trolls can become very numerous on and even overwhelm such systems. So perhaps they seem more numerous than they actually are – but they seem plenty numerous indeed.

I usually notice even more of them on an election night that’s disappointing for Republicans, such as November 4. They come to crow, they come to taunt, they come to mock and tease. Tons of trolls.

The reason I’m writing this, though, is that as I skim such comments these days, it occurs to me that I often can’t tell if they were from leftists or from people on the Fuentes/Carlson right. The reason is that the two groups say such similar things on an occasion like that: you MAGA Republicans are losers, Trump is a loser, Jews and Israel are evil, Republicans lose because they support Israel – that sort of thing. The only identifier for the Fuentes/Carlson group as opposed to the leftist group are these words you see now and then: AMERICA FIRST!

It’s easy to forget, looking at the cesspools that some comment sections have become, that most people have better things to do than crank out bile or to even follow any of this closely. But of course, that sort of inattention can be exploited easily by propagandists.

Politics really is downstream from culture, and the internet has not helped our culture or our politics.

What do you think of this Coca-Cola ad?

The New Neo Posted on by

Confession: I saw it. I idly thought it was rather charming. Cute little animals! Seals (or are they otters?), bunnies, puppies! Snow! It had a sort of childlike appeal – and I don’t even like Coca-Cola.

But apparently it’s a very controversial ad which has received lots of criticism, especially because it’s AI. For example:

One AI-generated Christmas ad could have be brushed off as a novelty experiment. With two in a two in a row, Coca-Cola is making AI slop a new festive tradition.

Despite the backlash last year (or because of it?), the soft drinks giant has again decided to start the season with an AI-generated mess that sabotages its brand. Somehow it still doesn’t see the contradiction of its ‘real magic’ tagline. …

The polar bears of old are now joined by an incongruous mix of gawping AI critters, from rabbits to seals, before the piece end with a jump scare: an AI-animated Santa Claus inspired by Haddon Sundblom’s 1930s illustrations.

Apparently there are flaws in the ad, too. Apparently people don’t like AI – really really don’t like it. You be the judge:

Two days ago was the tenth anniversary of the Bataclan Massacre

The New Neo Posted on by

See this – a reminder of that terrible day. If you read the tweets there, you’ll see what we already know – that jihadis are not just killers, they are barbaric sadists who delight in torturing their victims, the better to terrorize.

It is a major failing of the west that so many people have become apologists for and appeasers of such groups.

Currently in France, they’ve got their work cut out for them:

French authorities say the terror threat has evolved significantly since 2015, with anti-terror police and prosecutors now increasingly focusing on young homegrown extremists, including children, who are radicalizing online, often in isolation.

Authorities say they have foiled six alleged Islamic extremist attack plots so far in 2025, involving suspects aged 17 to 22. Three suspected Islamic extremist attacks this year killed two people and injured several others.