Links 7/23/2025 | naked capitalism

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Study of GLP-1 guidelines for children suggests potential drugmaker influence STAT (Dr. Kevin)

A break from your smartphone can reboot your mood. Here’s how long you need NPR (Paul R). Some of us don’t go there to begin with.

Conspiracy theorists don’t realize they’re on the fringe ars technica

Bonhoeffer’s “theory of stupidity”: We have more to fear from stupid people than evil ones Big Think

#COVID-19/Pandemics

People’s brains aged faster during the COVID pandemic — even the uninfected NBC. Underlying study: Accelerated brain ageing during the COVID-19 pandemic Nature. This is infuriating. The study claims that even those who did not get Covid also suffered accelerated brain aging. That could be true but this study does NOT establish that. It was structured around finding a population with pre-Covid-era brain scans. It was NOT sufficiently rigorous in determining how many actually had contracted Covid. This is the flawed method, per the study: “COVID-19 cases were identified using diagnostic tests, primary care records, hospital records, or antibody tests.” Even during wild-type, it was widely stated that about 1/2 the cases were asymptomatic, which I presume was what weekly PCR tests of health care workers found. We also know from the large-scale UK React studies that Covid antibody levels fell markedly 6 to 8 months after infection (assuming tests were made for the purpose of this study). Even though many (including yours truly) believe they have not contracted Covid, the only population where that is certain is people who were tested weekly….and even then with PCR tests (the at-home tests have a false negative rate of about 20%). My impression is that frequency and stringency of testing took place only among health care workers and then only during wild type and Delta in the US and I assume the UK was similar. Why are such bogusly-constructed studies treated as bona fide, particularly by a prestigious venue like Nature?

The underlying problem is that no one in the officialdom and too few in the medical/public health community wants to admit that we don’t have a good idea of how many times people got Covid, if at all, due to the frequency of asymptomatic cases and the lack of regular, high-quality enough testing.

Climate/Environment

Inter-American Court of Human Rights Delivers Landmark Opinion on Climate Emergency Just Security

Droughts are causing record devastation worldwide, UN-backed report reveals United Nations

Climate Change Is Making Fire Weather Worse for World’s Forests New York Times

Central flooding: record rains hit Russian regions Izvestia via machine translation

Desertification threatening livelihood of over 40m Nigerians, says FG Business Day

One of the biggest microplastic pollution sources isn’t straws or grocery bags. It’s your tires The Conversation

China?

Will more US missiles in Philippines deter or provoke South China Sea conflict? South China Morning Post

Exit bans in China: What are they and why are they causing friction with US? CNN

European Disunion

Merz and Macron’s bromance loses momentum Euractiv

Old Blighty

Britain’s Leeds Reforms – jumping the shark comes to mind Bill Mitchell

Labour’s tax raids on wealthy ‘already backfiring’ as Reeves prepares to come back for more: CGT revenue drops as Goldman Sachs boss warns London’s status as global financial hub is at risk Daily Mail

Israel v. The Resistance

Anti-genocide protesters block hundreds of Israeli tourists from disembarking in Greek port The Cradle (Kevin W)

BREAKTHROUGH: Belgian Authorities Arrest and Interrogate Israeli War Crimes Suspects Following Complaint by Hind Rajab Foundation and GLAN THE HIND RAJAB FOUNDATION (resilc)

* * *

When the bodies of starving children in Gaza reach a ‘point of no return’ Mondoweiss

Middle East: Israeli army storms WHO warehouses in Gaza DW. “Storming” a food warehouse? Seriously? Bags of flour will fight back?

No, Israel Is Not Committing Genocide in Gaza New York Times (resilc). Another reason to drop your subscription, if you haven’t already.

Iran ready for war with Israel, will not halt nuclear programme: Pezeshkian Aljazeera (resilc)

Persia: The Graveyard of Empires The Frontier Man, Sonar21

New Not-So-Cold War

What is the New U.S., German and Swiss Plan to Get Patriot Air Defences to Ukraine ’As Quickly As Possible’? Military Watch

Ukraine moves against independent anti-corruption bodies Financial Times

Echoes of Maidan Mark Zelensky’s Sudden Fall from Grace Simplicius

From Politico’s European morning newsletter:

DRIVING THE DAY: EU WARNS ZELENSKYY OVER RULE OF LAW

HUNDREDS OF UKRAINIANS TOOK TO THE STREETS IN PROTEST…

It’s the first time since Russia’s full-scale invasion that protests have been held in the streets of Kyiv, in defiance of the fact Ukraine remains under martial law….

What the law does: It gives Ukraine’s prosecutor general, who is appointed by the president, power over the previously independent National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and the Special Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO). Zelenskyy defended the reform in the early hours of this morning, insisting in a Telegram post that “The anti-corruption infrastructure will work … NABU and SAPO will work.”

What’s behind it: On Monday, Ukraine announced its state security service had raided NABU and arrested two top officials as part of a massive hunt for alleged Russian moles. But critics argue the evidence against the agents is murky and the arrests were a pretext for undermining the independent agencies.

The big risk for Kyiv: This reform could undermine international support for Ukraine’s war effort at a highly sensitive moment and dismay its staunchest European allies, who’ve been backing its bid to join the EU….

BRUSSELS SEES RED: In a series of statements on Tuesday the European Commission voiced its alarm at the turn of events…

For Ukraine’s EU allies, it’s a nightmare. The irony is that Hungary’s leader Viktor Orbán, Europe’s most infamous bad boy on “rule of law” infringements, has been the one holding up progress on Ukraine’s accession negotiations. Now he can, should he wish, point to rule of law concerns on the other side to justify his continuing obstruction.

Terrible timing: Momentum seemed to be building in the U.S. for tougher sanctions on Russia, with Donald Trump setting Putin a new deadline for a peace plan and allowing more American weapons to be supplied to Ukraine.

In contrast to the Politico/EU leadership hand-wringing: More Promises Of Western Aid Emboldened Ukraine To Neutralize Anti-Corruption Institutions Andrew Korybko

Fading Hopes for Negotiation Oliver Boyd-Barrett (Chuck L). We called this LONG ago. I hate to sound harsh, but those who hoped for negotiation were victims of Trump blather. There was never never never any overlap between the bargaining positions of the two sides. Russia was certain it would win after it easily defeated the Ukraine counteroffensive of summer 2023, if not sooner, when Ukraine didn’t even get to Russia’s first fortified line (well some isolated vehicles might have for a photo op but no real forces got there). The only options were for Trump to abandon the project as quickly and gracefully as he could or for Russia to win on the battlefied.

Big Brother is Watching You Watch

Humans Can Be Tracked With Unique ‘Fingerprint’ Based On How Their Bodies Block Wi-Fi Signals The Register. This should not be hard to evade. A Faraday patch on the torso would seem to do.

Amazon Buys Bee AI Wearable That Listens To Everything You Say The Verge

At Least 750 US Hospitals Faced Disruptions During Last Year’s CrowdStrike Outage, Study Finds Wired

Microsoft hack risk spreads as cybercriminals and nation-states pile in Axios

Imperial Collapse Watch

Golden Dome set to get another $13B as project leader takes helm The Hill (resilc)

Pentagon Tightens Rules on Getting Medical Waivers to Join the Military Military.com

Trump 2.0

Stephen Miller’s legal group asks DoJ to look into ‘illegal DEI practices’ at Johns Hopkins Guardian (resilc)

The 2026 World Cup Could Be the Most Corrupt Ever New Republic

Tariffs

Trump Says Japan Deal Reached With Tariff Rate Set at 15% Bloomberg

Philippines goods to face 19% tariff, Trump says BBC

South Korea sets ‘red line’ on beef and rice in US tariff talks: Reports Anadolu Agency

G.M. Profit Shrinks on Billion-Dollar Tariff Hit New York Times (resilc)

How Trump’s trade war with Brazil serves Big Tech’s interests openDemocracy

Markets in everything, bet on tariff repeal edition Marginal REVOLUTION (resilc)

Immigration

US Signals Intention To Rethink Job H-1B Lottery The Register

L’affaire Jeffrey Epstein

Mike Johnson shuts US House early to avoid Epstein vote Financial Times

Exclusive: Newly discovered photos and video shed fresh light on Trump’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein CNN

>House panel moves to subpoena Ghislaine Maxwell The Hill

Russiagate

Debating Russiagate With Michael Isikoff Matt Taibbi

The Media Ignores Declassified Documents on the Russian Conspiracy Jonathan Turley

Democrat Death Wish

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez defends decision to support military aid for Israel Middle East Eye (resilc). Pathetic.

LEAKED: Cuomo Admits Jews OVERWHEMLINGLY Pro-Zohran Breaking Points, YouTube

Our No Longer Free Press

Lebanon’s Military Intelligence Detains And Interrogates Laith Marouf Dimitri Lascaris, YouTube. ZOMG.

AI

XAI asked workers to record their facial expressions to train Grok — and they weren’t happy Business Insider

SoftBank and Open AI’s $500 Billion AI Project Struggles To Get Off Ground Wall Street Journal

Why Are We Pretending AI Is Going to Take All the Jobs? Matt Stoller

Google Users Are Less Likely To Click on Links When an AI Summary Appears in the Results Pew. Confirmation that AI is parasitic.

Study finds news releases written by humans more credible than AI content University of Kansas

The Bezzle

Will Corporate Treasuries Have Any Interest In Using Stablecoins? Adam Levitin

Class Warfare

After Pledging to Keep Prices Low, Amazon Hiked Them on Hundreds of Essentials Wall Street Journal

The majority of Fortune 100 companies are now fully in-person, not hybrid Fortune (resilc)

Antidote du jour. Sylvia R. via Bob H:

I brought in a milkweed leaf with a monarch egg on the underside. Much to my surprise, this one actually hatched out; I don’t usually have that kind of luck with the tiny eggs.

Anyway, this one, which is hardly visible to the naked eye, is having its first meal: the soft shell it emerged from, still on the underside of the milkweed leaf.

I’m proud of my not-fancy little Nikon.

Cool, no?

And a bonus:

A second bonus:

And a third:

See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.

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