The female falcon was equipped with a GPS tracker during its journey from South Africa to Finland, covering about 230km per day.
It flew in a straight line across the African lands until it reached the desert in the north, then headed towards the path of the Nile River over… pic.twitter.com/Fv1f6a10zW
— Dr. M.F. Khan (@Dr_TheHistories) May 2, 2025
Stream Online Monty Python and the Holy Grail Free on Its 50th Anniversary Open Culture (Micael T). News you can use!
Tolkien Against the Grain Dissent (Anthony L)
Avoid one-night stands to prevent drug contamination, athletes told The Times (Micael T)
Global health funding faces worst crisis ‘in memory’, WHO chief says Aljazeera
#COVID-19/Pandemics
Discovery Explains Long COVID Breathing Problems UVA Health
Kennedy Orders Search for New Measles Treatments Instead of Urging Vaccination New York Times
Climate/Environment
Bank of England watchdog tells banks and insurers to fix climate risk ‘gaps’ Financial Times
Study Finds Synergistic Convergence of Global Warming, Pesticide Toxicity, and Antibiotic Resistance Beyond Pesticides
Bees, fish and plants show how climate change’s accelerating pace is disrupting nature in 2 key ways The Conversation
Dying satellites can drive climate change and ozone depletion, study finds Guardian
China?
Trump’s Trade War Is Helping Unite Chinese People Around Xi Bloomberg. As we predicted, but this was a very easy call. More important, this will enable the government to depict poor economic performance solely to the tariffs, when there may well be other contributing factors, like continuing unwind of the housing bubble.
MAJOR BREAKING: Trump
just warned any country that purchases oil from Iran will be prohibited from doing business with U.S.That would literally BAN all business from China, who gets their oil from Iran.
That would bankrupt our country. Is he fucking nuts? pic.twitter.com/sYKr29dNgw
— CALL TO ACTIVISM (@CalltoActivism) May 1, 2025
Trump Tops Tariffs On China With Sanctions Moon of Alabama
BREAKING: China has officially unveiled Poxiao, the world’s fastest hard drive!
This groundbreaking storage device can write 25 billion bits of data per second, making it a staggering 100,000 times faster than existing hard drive technologies.Developed by a team of top… pic.twitter.com/sLBnmyjOT4
— Truth_teller 🇷🇺 (@Truthtellerftm) May 1, 2025
The US has begun sharing rare intelligence on Chinese space weapons with British military chiefs Telegraph
It’s not just Greenland: Inside the fight the U.S. faces to keep a tiny Pacific island out of China’s grasp Independent. Headline gets a “Department of “huh?” notice.
Highway 1 in Big Sur has been closed for 838 days. In that time China has built 3500 miles of high speed rail, and California hasn’t been able to fix a quarter mile of highway. pic.twitter.com/F01lXteBEh
— Arye Lipman (@aryelipman) May 2, 2025
India-Pakistan Row
India-Pakistan tensions show signs of easing Indian Punchline
India Makes Diplomatic Push for Military Action Against Pakistan Foreign Policy
India
India is Paying $288 Million Per Fighter For New Rafales: They Are Already a Generation Behind Military Watch
Africa
European Disunion
How the EU wants to channel its savings into armaments Anti-Spiegel via machine translation (Micael T)
Drought fears for grains growing season mount in Central Europe EurActiv
European Union prepares new sanctions on Russia over Ukraine war France24
Macron attempts to interfere with papal conclave – media RT (Kevin W)
Larvae in wounds – management makes millions of cuts Aftonbladet via machine translation (Micael T)
Old Blighty
The Reform revolution has begun Telegraph
Reform has put the two traditional parties on notice – and we don’t know where this ends. Sky
Terminal Decline Sam Freedman
UK exports in worst slump since Covid: Bank of England tipped to cut rates to 3.25% this year This Is Money
Britain Is Toast, Period Ian Welsh (Micael T)
Israel v. the Resistance
“Deprivation by Design:” Israel Intensifies Mass Killing Campaign in Gaza with Starvation and Daily Strikes Drop Site (Robin K)
Egyptian official: US bet that Israel can force more concessions from Hamas ‘a mistake’ Times of Israel
The Vach brothers: Israel’s first family of genocide The Electronic Intifada (guurst)
Israel Bombs Humanitarian Aid Flotilla on Way to Gaza Antiwar.com. We reported on this incident but it’s important not to miss. Kevin W: “Bunch of fuckwits. Don’t they realize that by doing so, it has given other actors the license to do the same to Israeli ships?”
I was a nuclear weapons inspector – Iran could have a bomb in six months iPaper
More Israeli strikes on Syria reported after Damascus warns of escalation Aljazeera
New Not-So-Cold War
War in Ukraine not ending ‘any time soon’, Vance says BBC
Radio Liberty Let The Cat Out Of The Bag Regarding The EU’s Game Plan For Ukraine Andrew Korybko (Micael T)
EU to tap frozen Russian funds – Reuters RT (Kevin W)
🇫🇮🇷🇺‼️The Finns realized with horror that they needed open borders more than the Russians‼️
In Helsinki, they believed for a long time that the neighbor on the other side of the border would “give in” at some point. That Russia, despite the insults and political twists and… pic.twitter.com/sW9XIIDvTL
— Djole 🇷🇸 (@onlydjole) April 30, 2025
US and Ukraine sign minerals deal that solidifies investment in Kyiv’s defense against Russia Guardian. Indicating that Ukraine allies anticipate the minerals pact will work out in the manner that we warned…that it would re-anchor the US to Ukraine, even if we aren’t in practice able to do all that much.
Big Brother is Watching You Watch
Irish Privacy Watchdog Fines TikTok $600 Million For China Data Transfers Associated Press
Imperial Collapse Watch
The helicopter, symbol of American hubris Engelsberg Ideas. On the fall of Saigon.
Dangerous Chimera – Colin Kidd London Review of Books (Anthony L). Important.
How Russia’s navy became bigger than Britain’s Ian Proud
China muscling in on US Egyptian ally Asia Times (Kevin W)
The bill to ban congressional stock trading is entitled the PELOSI Act, or “Preventing Elected Leaders from Owning Securities and Investments.”
I usually don’t like cute names for pieces of legislation, but this one hit the nail on the head. Bravo.
Pass it!! pic.twitter.com/pN8nicKJRx
— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) April 29, 2025
Trump 2.0
US army plans for a potential parade of 6,600 soldiers on Trump’s birthday Guardian (Kevin W)
Trump budget proposes $1 trillion for defense, slashes education, foreign aid, environment, health and public assistance CNN (Kevin W)
Trump says short-term recession OK: “This is a transition period” Axios. Lordie. Things are darkest before they go completely black.
Trump’s Policies Are Creating Uncertainty for Fossil Fuel Companies Wired (Robin K)
Vilsack says farms, not farmers, should work harder to grow rural communities Iowa Capital Dispatch
Tariffs
Trump ends duty-free for low-value Chinese imports in trade war escalation Anadolu Agency
Trump hints at tariff reprieve for pharma companies that bring operations back to US Guardian (Kevin W)
Temu To Stop Selling Goods From China Directly To US Customers BBC
DOGE
ELON MUSK ADMITS HE FAILED TO CUT $2 TRILLION IN FEDERAL FAT, BUT SAYS AT LEAST HE ENJOYED HIS TRUMP SLEEPOVERS WITH ICE CREAM Futurism (Micael T)
Immigration
Trump’s immigration ‘shock and awe’ is losing in the court of law Politico
Texas Judge Strikes Down Trump’s Use of Alien Enemies Act to Deport Venezuelans New York Times (Robin K)
He can’t see the forest for the trees. pic.twitter.com/USplKVQHvW
— JessicaUSAF (@JessicaUSAF) May 1, 2025
Our No Longer Free Press
Now it is illegal in California to show the documentary The Encampments. At least it is at UCLA. UCPD sent out cops in riot gear with rifles to campus to shut down a screening of the film. They confiscated the screen and arrested at least three people. pic.twitter.com/bAJgQUCHjI
— doloresquintana (@doloresquintana) May 1, 2025
Mr. Market Is Moody
Fear of gas market price shocks spreading among energy traders Energy Watch
Antitrust
US Asks Judge To Break Up Google’s Ad Tech Business Guardian
AI
AI models routinely lie when honesty conflicts with their goals The Register
First Driverless Semis Have Started Running Regular Longhaul Routes CNN
The Bezzle
Credit Bubble Bulletin : Weekly Commentary: The Typical and Atypical. resilc hoists this section:
May 2 – Bloomberg (Sonali Basak): Private credit fund investors are offloading stakes at significant discounts ahead of more potential pain for the US economy, Oaktree Capital Management Co-Chief Executive Officer Robert O’Leary said. Oaktree sees more chances to buy marked-down assets…, where private asset holders sell stakes in relatively illiquid funds to bring returns to their own investors. That activity has been building in private equity for some time, but credit investors are now putting up bigger trades… Discounts are starting at about 90 cents on the dollar and going as low as the ‘50 cent range,’ he said… Limited partners are taking matters into their own hands given a desire ‘to get out of this before a fall.’ He said the current discounts don’t include a lot of deterioration in credit quality, and as the economic outlook worsens, those discounts will get bigger. ‘To date, we haven’t seen forced selling, there haven’t been really dire liquidity situations that people need to address… I think we’re going to get into more sort of anxious points in time where LPs will want to trade…’ Private credit has grown rapidly in recent years to become a $1.6 trillion industry… High-yield debt markets could see high-single-digit default rates, he said. Other markets are even more vulnerable. ‘If loans are going to see double-digit defaults, I see no reason why ultimately private credit couldn’t end up there,’ he said. ‘It’s poorly underwritten, in the main. I’m not saying everybody is’… Many companies with too much debt are simply limping along… O’Leary said this week that investors have not opened up to idea that we might be facing a recession or are already in one. O’Leary said a downturn could be as serious as the dot-com bubble. ‘That was traumatic, that was pretty V-shaped, so we came out of it pretty quickly… The problem here is you’re starting to put in place barriers that will shape the behavior of our counterparties.’
UK Preparing To Ban Consumers From Buying Crypto With Borrowed Funds Guardian
Mark Zuckerberg just declared war on the entire advertising industry The Verge (Kevin W)
Antidote du jour (via):
A bonus:
Feed me.. 😂 pic.twitter.com/F6YnRMaBzi
— Buitengebieden (@buitengebieden) May 1, 2025
A second bonus:
— contents that ll heal your depression 🌻 (@catshealdeprsn) May 3, 2025
And a third:
There is a horse named Tom who has a dramatic strategy of avoiding work, he plays dead whenever someone wants a ride
— Science girl (@gunsnrosesgirl3) May 2, 2025
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
