Kansas biologists find ‘super rare’ threatened species in the mouth of a hungry toad KSNT (RK).
11 Extraordinary Sharks That Live in Deep Sea Waters ZME Science
How private equity tangled banks in a web of debt FT. Commentary: Private Equity Puts Debt Everywhere Matt Levine, Bloomberg.
Private Equity Gets Creative to Buy Time for More Gains. Clients Say Pay Me Now Bloomberg
Climate
High Wet Bulb Globe Temperature Danger Arctic News
What It Feels Like When You Have Heatstroke Outside
Trees reveal climate surprise: Microbes living in bark remove methane from the atmosphere Phys.org
Syndemics
2024 Paris Olympics hit by early COVID cases, but organizers don’t seem worried by risk of major outbreak CBS. Commentary:
Aaaaaarrrrrrggggghhhhhh!
Four and a half years into this pandemic and the only preventive measure recommended at the already COVID-ridden Olympics is HAND SANITISER.
Hand sanitiser will not stop an airborne virus. https://t.co/8TWKi6bHkG— Trisha Greenhalgh (@trishgreenhalgh) July 24, 2024
More commentary:
Officials Ponder Combining Olympics And Paralympics Simply By Infecting All The Athletes Repeatedly With Covid. pic.twitter.com/oyBuu7MkXy
— The Vertlartnic (@TheVertlartnic) July 24, 2024
Aussie swimming team suffer NIGHTMARE start to Olympic Games as Emma McKeon and Shayna Jack are crammed onto buses into Paris in ‘chaotic’ scenes Daily Mail. “No aircon or windows down.”
China?
China aims to step up Russian energy cooperation despite US sanctions calls South China Morning Post
Sold A False Dream: Inside China’s Derelict Housing Developments China Spotlight
Why Is Bangladesh On The Boil? Free Press Journal
Commentary: Bangladeshi students revolt, but wider movement against the government looks unlikely Channel News Asia
Myanmar
Myanmar Is Running Out of Gas. What Happens Next? The Diplomat
Mourning James C. Scott, a Sterling anarchist and friend of Myanmar Frontier Myanmar
Espionage and Sabotage: The Truth About the Ninja Nippon.com
The Great Game
U.S. military representative will serve as an advisor in Armenia’s Ministry of Defense JAM News
Syraqistan
Highlights: Netanyahu addresses Congress (video) Politico. Commentary:
🧵 Thread – Standing ovation Tracker for Bibi Netanyahu’s address to Congress:
One
— Andy Powlas (@andypowlas) July 24, 2024
Total: 58.
Netanyahu urges unity, but stirs a firestorm inside and outside Capitol The Hill. Commentary:
Benjamin Netanyahu’s presentation in the House Chamber today was by far the worst presentation of any foreign dignitary invited and honored with the privilege of addressing the Congress of the United States.
Many of us who love Israel spent time today listening to Israeli…
— Nancy Pelosi (@SpeakerPelosi) July 24, 2024
More Commentary:
Just so we’re clear, Netanyahu has lost so many people that he is addressing just a fraction of Congress.
When this happens, they fill the seats with non-members, like what they do at award ceremonies, in order to project the appearance of full attendance and support. https://t.co/CIboKUrkBq
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) July 24, 2024
Watergate Hotel sanitized after maggots released to protest Netanyahu stay The Hill. Commentary:\
🇮🇱🇺🇸 Did you know that Benjamin Netanyahu actually brings suitcases full of dirty laundry for government staff to clean?
That’s one way to assert your dominance I guess… pic.twitter.com/6IU5dTZnNg
— Censored Men (@CensoredMen) July 23, 2024
* * * How Israel is shrinking Gaza’s ‘safe zones’ Al Jazeera
‘Soldiers! Soldiers! Soldiers!’ The Floutist
Gaza as a Blurred, Empty World in an Israeli Reservist’s Paintings Haaretz
* * * An Untold History of Joe Biden’s Support for Israel Branko Marcetic, In These Times
New Not-So-Cold War
Ukraine War Map Shows Two Battalions at Risk of Encirclement: ‘Alarming’ Newsweek
SITREP 7/24/24: General Syrsky Shocks With News of Russian Armor and Troop Surges Simplicius the Thinker
* * * Fitch downgrades Ukraine’s rating to ‘C’ Anadolu Agency
EU discusses indefinite freezing of Russian assets to secure G7 loan for Ukraine Ukrainska Pravda
Ukrainians strip out Tesla batteries to keep the lights on FT
* * * War in Ukraine: Can China use its clout to play peacemaker? Deutsche Welle
Winds of Change: Ukrainian Politics Reacts to the US Electoral Drama The Wilson Center
What one Moscow square says about Russia’s worsening relations with West BBC
* * * Rheinmetall officially receives order from Ukraine to build ammunition factory Ukrainska Pravda
* * * NATO Grapples With a New Long Game Against Putin Foreign Policy
The NATO Declaration and the Deadly Strategy of Neoconservatism Jeffrey Sachs, Common Dreams
Biden Administration
FAA Launches Audit of Southwest Airlines After Close Calls WSJ
2024
Joe Biden says he is ‘passing the torch’ to save US democracy FT
Biden sidesteps hard truths in first speech since quitting race BBC
The Wreckage Biden Leaves Patrick Lawrence, Consortium News
Our Famously Free Press
When mainstream media swallows consultancy garbage Terry’s Substack
Digital Watch
CrowdStrike fiasco highlights growing Sino-Russian tech independence The Register
* * * AI models collapse when trained on recursively generated data Nature. From the Abstract: “We find that indiscriminate use of model-generated content in training causes irreversible defects in the resulting models, in which tails of the original content distribution disappear. We refer to this effect as ‘model collapse’ and show that it can occur in LLMs as well as in variational autoencoders (VAEs) and Gaussian mixture models (GMMs). We build theoretical intuition behind the phenomenon and portray its ubiquity among all learned generative models. We demonstrate that it must be taken seriously if we are to sustain the benefits of training from large-scale data scraped from the web.” Autocoprophagy, as I have said since the beginning of the AI bubble.
OpenAI training and inference costs could reach $7bn for 2024, AI startup set to lose $5bn – report Data Center Dynamics
VCs are still pouring billions into generative AI startups Tech Crunch
Boeing
Boeing Gets Flurry of Orders at International Airshow WSJ
Boeing not yet facing clear skies in China even as deliveries resume, executive visits South China Morning Post
US files details of Boeing’s plea deal related to plane crashes. It’s in the hands of a judge now AP
The Final Frontier
Mercury has a layer of diamond 10 miles thick, NASA spacecraft finds Space.com
Supply Chain
Two Swiss lawyers take aim at flags of convenience in new book Splash 247
Groves of Academe
What’s a University Worth? (excerpt) Doomberg
Imperial Collapse Watch
Loss of empire, loss of lucidity Pearls and Irritations
Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fashion
Amazon’s foray into ultra-fast fashion will be a seismic shift in e-commerce Fashion United
Class Warfare
Americans are falling behind on their car payments FOX
39% of Americans worry they can’t pay the bills CNN
The era of privatisation is nearly over. But cleaning up the mess left behind will take years Guardian
At The Money: Behavior Beats Intelligence (transcript) The Big Picture
US markets suffer worst day since 2022 as Tesla and AI stocks fall FT
Antidote du jour (Biscutella):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
