Chill Links

Stocks Plunge as the Market Understood What Tariffs Are: A Tax on Corporate Profit Margins.

Starliner’s flight to the space station was far wilder than most of us thought.

Unmarked Vans. Secret Lists. Public Denunciations. Our Police State Has Arrived. We’ve been building to that for a while.

Hot Schrödinger cat states created.

It’s Always the Other Side That’s Been Brainwashed. What talk of brainwashing helps us not to talk about.

A Cowardly Congress Is Letting Trump Crash the Economy.

Trump’s Academic Purge Will Make America Stupid and Provincial Again.

What is up with car door handles these days? Everything everywhere getting worse all at once.

Don’t Come

Chill Evil

Graphic artist Rebecca Burke was on the trip of a lifetime. But as she tried to leave the US she was stopped, interrogated and branded an illegal alien by ICE. Now back home, she tells others thinking of going to Trump’s America: don’t do it.

I’ve advised all my overseas friends and acquaintances to avoid visiting the US. If it’s for tourism, don’t even consider coming. If it’s a required business trip, work hard to convince your company that the risks far outweigh any gains, especially since the US Border Patrol and other related fascist agencies might steal your company’s private data. (The data aspect is most likely to convince employers.)

It’s in no way worth the risk to make the US your destination now. Avoid if at all possible.

Special

Chill Clowns

A lot of people’s terrible behavior is related to them realizing one day as they were growing up that they were not in fact God’s specialest one and never getting over that trauma.

I have a big ego, but never fell prey to this as nearly everyone around me when I was young went out of their way to tell me how horrible and shitty I was. So I definitely never felt that I was God’s specialest anything.

Trils

Chill Political Economy

The market crashed $3Trillion… where did it go?

This is an area where engineers and physicists (and other similar types) have real problems.

The short answer is that the money doesn’t go anywhere as it never existed in the first place. That does not, however, mean it is completely fake and does not mean it had no effect on the real world. A stock’s price is based on the current estimate of future earnings and works to fund company operations both directly and indirectly.

Yes, there are animal spirits, vibes, and short-term fluctuations as well as fraud and shenanigans — but the basic contention in the para above is still true.

Engineer types who are used to conservation of energy and such often simply cannot understand that the money is just gone when the stock market declines. Vanished. And that’s because it never really was anywhere. That is completely counterintuitive to them and their sensibilities.

But that is how it works.

Pawddammit

Chill Movies, Review

I watched The Monkey earlier.

Good grief, what the fuck was that? Did they try to make a French surrealist film in American horror movie form? Consistent tone? Consistent anything? Who needs that? It was like a Twilight Zone episode blended with Evil Dead II combined with Top Secret.

I have no idea what to make of that film. It made me laugh a few times. It made me cringe a few. I have not the first clue what the filmmakers were trying to achieve there. It feels like a story told around a campfire except by someone mildly drunk, but you never see the fire nor the raconteur.

All I can say about it is that I don’t feel like it was a waste of time to watch it, but I also can’t really recommend it to anyone else. Its rating is “what in the hell.”

Chill Links

Wealthy Americans Have Death Rates On Par With Poor Europeans.

Tariffs threaten to upend markets American farmers depend on.

The American Age Is Over. Emergency Triad: The United States commits imperial suicide. Such an odd way for it to all end. And stupid.

First OA-1K Skyraider II Handed Over To Air Force Special Operations Command. Cool plane. Not sure how useful it is anymore.

Donald Trump’s Ego Melts the Global Economy. This is our Brexit.

America’s astonishing act of self-harm.

Bucking Trump tariffs, California will push to maintain global trade independently, Newsom says. Good. There’s a reason we moved here.

Trump’s Threats and Tariffs Are a Global ‘Kill Switch.’

Mega-kablooey

Chill Oof, War

Great goddamn. It’s not often that you see direct fire like that from such close range on an armored vehicle. At least it was an instant death for whoever was in that BTR-82.

That looks like a T-72 the Ukrainians have. Not sure of the variant. Can’t see enough.