leicsmac

Tbf he did do his best to bully Zelenskyy into giving Putin everything he wants. Clearly that didn't work.

.... apparently.

https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/documents-show-us-epa-wants-erase-greenhouse-gas-limits-power-plants-nyt-reports-2025-05-24/ WASHINGTON, May 24 (Reuters) - The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) confirmed on Saturday that it was drafting a plan to eliminate all limits on greenhouse gases from coal and gas-fired power plants in the United States and would be published after interagency review. "Many have voiced concerns that the last administration's replacement for that rule is similarly overreaching and an attempt to shut down affordable and reliable electricity generation in the United States, raising prices for American families, and increasing the country's reliance on foreign forms of energy," a spokesperson for the agency said. "As part of this reconsideration, EPA is developing a proposed rule." The draft plan was first reported by the New York Times, which said the EPA argued in its proposed regulation that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from power plants that burn fossil fuels "do not contribute significantly to dangerous pollution" or to climate change because they are a small and declining share of global emissions. The EPA also said that eliminating those emissions would have no meaningful effect on public health and welfare, the report added. According to the United Nations, fossil fuels are by far the largest contributors to global warming, accounting for more than 75% of global greenhouse gas emissions and nearly 90% of carbon dioxide emissions. Blood, really meet hands.

And all of this plays into the argument that our tech development in general is proceeding far, far faster than our ethical understanding of how it can be utilised. Which does have the possibility to have some very, very scary outcomes.

It is odd - why do this at all when there appears to be no downside whatsoever to including those bricks?

And that's just the tip of the iceberg. (Not that we'll have any icebergs in the near future due to the blatant ignorance of scientific policy by people like Trump.)

I know what you mean, but my own experience of the social climate over there makes me think this is mostly genuinely a rather quirky way of ensuring electoral fairness.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/clyggex25v6o In other news, a bit of oddity from the other side of the world leading up to the election there.

Farage and other blokes like Douglas Murray are the "officer class", as it were. Doesn't stop their ideas for the future being any less toxic to that same future, though. I wonder if the British security services are doing anything to forment discord alongside in such parties along class lines, ala that one episode of Spooks.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c7804k13x52o Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said Sir Keir Starmer and other leaders have "effectively said they want Hamas to remain in power". He also accused British, French and Canadian leaders of siding with "mass murderers, rapists, baby killers and kidnappers". In a video posted on X addressing Thursday's attack on Israeli embassy staff in Washington DC, Netanyahu said Sir Keir, Emmanuel Macron and Mark Carney wanted Israel to "stand down and accept that Hamas's army of mass murderers will survive". Clearly any criticism of Israeli military conduct whatsoever means that you're in league with Hamas, then. Apparently, such convoluted matters of historical enmity are as black and white as matters of physics and thermodynamics. Apparently.

Should easily make 14k for a comfortable second place in the all time stats.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cp855prygj1o The coming Atlantic hurricane season is expected to be busier than usual, US science agency NOAA has warned, just as cuts to American research are raising fears about the ability to track and prepare for these often deadly storms. Between six and 10 hurricanes are forecast for the Atlantic between June and November, compared with the typical seven. Warmer sea temperatures – made more likely by climate change - and generally favourable atmospheric conditions, are behind the forecast. Several scientists have told the BBC that widespread firings by President Donald Trump's administration of government researchers could endanger efforts to monitor hurricanes and predict where they might hit. Blood, meet hands.

Yeah, fair points. That being said, sometimes I find the Boy Who Cried Wolf paradigm a bit problematic because firstly it can be used as a convenient excuse for lack of action from those with the power to act, and secondly (and related) that same inaction can, does and will cause a great deal of damage with respect to various issues that involve everyone. When the village starved because the wolf came, the villagers suffered for the sole reason that they didn't listen once.

Slippery slope being just one of their armoury of logical fallacies.

Who was it who said that "truth is the first casualty of war"? Neither side in such matters has much reason, nor inclination, to be honest.

Really want Brook to come in and set some kind of batting record in these conditions.

Never knew the Chagos Islands could get the old Empire enthusiasts so worked up.

Fair to say. Just wanted to be crystal clear.

Pardon me, but I'm offering no excuse or justification, I'm saying - no more and no less - that both incidences of death are equally tragic and, ultimately, likely pointless. It's the same with the other examples given here, decent people dying for the sake of puerile nationalist tribal ideology. Which I don't think is a controversial position to hold.

The death of that young Israeli couple in Washington DC is tragic. Equally tragic is the great many young couples now buried in the rubble of Gaza due to Israeli weaponry. It never seems to be the ones that start wars that end up having to pay for them in blood. Just the people who never wanted the fight in the first place.

Trying to remember what the Korean is for "you have failed me for the last time".

That's never stopped this administration in their search for ideological control before.

Yeah, the only real safeguard is the institutions and the people within the US itself. And it may be that the cost of negating what the current administration is doing will be very, very high.

Clearly trying to bullrush him in the same way they did with Zelenskyy. Ramaphosa is a career politician so he's more shrewd though, and it showed.

There is an extremely high chance that will be a secession event, civil war or total neofascist takeover (not just the diet version like at present), or combination of all of them, in the US in the next decade. And its effects will be felt everywhere. I just hope that I can come back to this in around that time and say that I was wrong, though.