Dreams May Treat Words Like Things
( Attack Surface )
The Worst Performer in Billionaires’ Portfolios? Trophy Art. Sales of $10 million-plus paintings have collapsed as high interest rates flushed speculators out of the market. - WSJ
“Lacan’s contemporary criticism of the French student revolution, and his accusation that they were in search of a master, whom, moreover, they would no doubt find, is a prima facie indication that all revolt acts within and confirms the law whose chains it thinks it is breaking. The point is - is it not? - that revolt is structural.” - Russell Grigg, Absolute Freedom and Radical Change, Lacan, Language, and Philosophy
Analysis by Recorded Future, a US cybersecurity company, singled out nine incidents in the Baltic Sea and off the coast of Taiwan in 2024 and 2025 as a harbinger for further disruptive activity. The report said that while genuine accidents remained likely to cause most undersea cable disruption, the Baltic and Taiwanese incidents pointed to increased malicious activity from Russia and China. - Guardian
Israel has bombed the government it recently installed in Syria, a government that has declared its support for Israel, a government that has not once attacked Israel. None of that matters because Israel has the right to bomb whoever it wants, even its allies. - Council Estate
‘Terrorism’: the word acquired the magical power of stopping all discussion, indeed all thought, instantaneously. In the public imagination, terrorism was close to barbarism – a marriage sanctified by implicitly racist Islamophobia (the term is inadequate, since it focuses on fear to the exclusion of contempt and rage). The obsession with exterminating terrorists had calamitous consequences for US foreign policy. Diplomacy was out of the question when you were dealing with murderous savages – which is what terrorists were by definition – and any political interpretation of terrorist acts beyond ‘they hate our freedom’ betrayed the interpreter’s complicity…‘To be outside a situation so violent as this is to find it inconceivable; to be inside it is to be unable to conceive its end.’ Those of us who seek to conceive an end to endless war must somehow learn to challenge embedded American fixations and fantasies, as well as habits of mind and heart. Success is a long shot, but the stakes are too high not to risk it. - London Reciew of Books
The State Department Guts Its Office Combating Human Trafficking. The cuts come as Trump reels from MAGA anger over sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. - Mother Jones
PRIVATIZING MONEY ITSELF: Bank for International Settlements, the umbrella body for central banks, last month warned that the unchecked rise of stablecoins could threaten the public’s trust in money, imperil monetary sovereignty, and potentially pose risks to financial stability. Policymakers are also wary that these tokens can act as conduits for crime…Bank for International Settlements, the umbrella body for central banks, last month warned that the unchecked rise of stablecoins could threaten the public’s trust in money, imperil monetary sovereignty, and potentially pose risks to financial stability. Policymakers are also wary that these tokens can act as conduits for crime. - FT
Only 16% of Italians would fight for their country, survey shows
The Canadian team’s report suggests that the UBI participants saw improvements in mental health, housing stability and social relationships, along with less frequent visits to hospitals and doctors that lowered the impact on general health services. One of the frequent arguments against basic income proposals is they engender unemployment and would decrease motivation to enter the workforce. The data gathered in the new report doesn’t back up those concerns, with only 17 percent of those in the pilot leaving employment once the basic income payments commenced. And, most significantly, nearly half of those subjects who stopped working during the pilot returned to school or university to up-skill for future employment. - Ecency
Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang on Wednesday lauded China-made electric vehicles (EVs), calling them "incredible", and said he would love to buy a Xiaomi car. - GT
The first schools in England to install what the government described as "Great British Energy solar panels" bought them from Chinese firms, the BBC has learned. The first 11 schools involved in the GB Energy scheme bought solar panels from Aiko and Longi, two Chinese firms. The government said the scheme was "the first major project for Great British Energy - a company owned by the British people, for the British people". - BBC
