A 3°C world ...

PM Images/Getty Images

Yours truly has waxed "poetic" about climate change as you, my loyal readers know. Now that 1.5 C has been surpassed vis a vis the Paris Agreements, the march toward 3C begins in earnest, particularly with Agent Orange bent on boosting fossil fuel production to the max no matter what the cost may be. Now, banks are sweating the program because profits are at risk in a changing world promising disruption in ways never experienced by man.

The recent reports — from Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase and the Institute of International Finance — show that Wall Street has determined the temperature goal is effectively dead and describe how top financial institutions plan to continue operating profitably as temperatures and damages soar.

"We now expect a 3°C world," Morgan Stanley analysts wrote earlier this month, citing "recent setbacks to global decarbonization efforts."

The stunning conclusion indicates that the bank believes the planet is hurtling toward a future in which severe droughts and harvest failures become widespread, sea-level rise is measured in feet rather than inches and tropical regions experience episodes of extreme heat and humidity for weeks at a time that would bring deadly risks to people who work outdoors.

The global Paris Agreement, from which the U.S. is withdrawing under Trump, aims to limit average temperature increases to well below 2 degrees Celsius. Scientists have warned that permanently exceeding 1.5 degrees — a threshold the world breached for the first time last year — could lead to increasingly severe climate impacts, such as the demise of coral reef ecosystems that hundreds of millions of people rely on for food and storm surge protection.

3°C & Counting ...

But you gotta make money ...

"Financial institutions need to recalibrate targets to reflect that 1.5°C are no longer suitable as strategic goals," the briefing said. "Reputational concerns may arise in the absence of an aligned view amongst stakeholders on how such processes should be handled, and what criteria may need to be applied."

The banking industry can support the transition from fossil fuels to clean energy but capital will only move "at scale when the economics make sense," Mary Kate Binecki, a spokesperson for the Institute of International Finance, said in an email. The institute represents about 400 members from more than 60 countries, including JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley.

Gotta love the language. Complexification to the max applies.

Messing with people's lives ...

Photograph Getty Images

Just another outrage perpetrated by DOGE, this time the VA with wannabe coders with no experience dealing with systems as complex at this, is just another day of unqualified people messing with people's lives. As a vet who served, the anger I feel regarding this insult knows no bounds.

Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has been clear about its plans to fire tens of thousands of employees at the Department of Veterans Affairs. New WIRED reporting sheds light on the specific DOGE operatives at the VA and the ways they’re trying to infiltrate and drastically change the agency.

On March 25, tech staffers and contractors at the VA noticed an unfamiliar name trying to push changes that could impact VA.gov code. It was Sahil Lavingia, a newcomer to the agency listed in the VA’s internal directory as an adviser to the chief of staff, Christopher Syrek.

Lavingia's presence in the VA's GitHub instance—a publicly viewable platform that houses projects and code for VA.gov—set off immediate alarm bells. It bore all the hallmarks of DOGE’s incursion into the federal government: Lavingia, a startup CEO and engineer with no government experience, all of a sudden had power—and was in their systems.

“DOGE's actions at the VA are putting veterans' lives at risk,” representative Gerald Connolly, ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, tells WIRED. Veterans, he adds, risk being “stripped of the care they need and deserve because [President Donald] Trump and Elon have turned the VA over to lackeys who do not know the first thing about what it means to serve your country."

Seal of the Department of Veterans Affairs

The brain worm ...

Dr. Peter Marks Photo: Stephen Voss for WSJ

The brain worm, aka Robert Kennedy Jr., who runs HHS, is leading his agency into the dark ages with his push against vaccines and science promising to kill people in the months and years ahead, is beginning to happen with the ongoing measles outbreak in Texas. To this writer, it's going to get worse as HHS was the leading light in medical research and the watch dog for the world in terms of whether drugs produced by big pharma were safe for the public to take, something fading away under the auspices of a an individual totally unqualified to run anything as complex and sophisticated as HHS in any way, shape or fashion.

The top vaccine regulator ousted by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said the health secretary’s team has sought nonexistent data to justify antivaccine narratives and pushed to water down regulation of unproven stem-cell treatments.

“I can never give allegiance to anyone else other than to follow the science as we see it,” said Dr. Peter Marks, the Food and Drug Administration official. “That does not mean that I can just roll over and take conspiracy theories and justify them.” 

Marks, who is leaving his FDA post on Saturday after he was offered the choice to resign or be fired, described Kennedy’s tenure to date as “very scary” in an interview with The Wall Street Journal on Friday. 

“They broke something without real plans to fix it, because the people who were doing the breaking didn’t have any idea,” he said. “They took the place apart without having an instruction manual of how to put it back together.”

Marks oversaw the FDA department that evaluated whether immunizations—as well as biotech drugs for cancer and other diseases—worked safely and should go into use. In the first Trump administration, he was central to setting up the Operation Warp Speed effort to speed development of Covid-19 vaccines. A “Star Trek fan,” he helped name the effort.

His expertise and steady hand was prized by the pharmaceutical industry, which has been concerned about Kennedy’s antivaccine rhetoric and had urged the White House to keep Marks.

Kennedy has also hired a researcher beloved by antivaccine activists to study a possible link between vaccines and autism—a link that other studies have concluded doesn’t exist. 

The outgoing FDA official said he had been speaking out and encouraging parents to vaccinate their children against measles as cases mount in Texas, where a child is shown getting an MMR vaccine. 

Photo Jan Sonnenmair/Getty Images

Just another brick in the wall ...

President Donald Trump displays a signed executive order imposing tariffs on imported goods at the White House on April 2, 2025. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Vox nails it. Congress flatbacks by abdicating it's control of the purse to let Agent Orange wreak havoc on the economy in his push to become dictator. In real time, the status and very existence of this once great nation is going away as science, tech, medical and world leadership dissolves as the pols we have are gutless and clueless on how governance works at any level. 

To whit ... 

The Trump administration’s tariffs are, by every reasonable account, an economic catastrophe in the making. So why are they happening?

One explanation is that this is simply democracy at work. President Donald Trump campaigned on doing more or less exactly what he’s just done, and the voting public elected him. So here we are.

That’s at best a partial story. In fact, it’s probably more accurate to see Trump’s tariffs as a symptom of democratic decay — of America transitioning into a kind of strange hybrid system that combines both authoritarian and democratic features.

Were America’s democracy functioning properly, Trump wouldn’t have the power to impose such broad tariffs unilaterally. Congress, not the presidency, has the constitutional authority to raise taxes — and tariffs are, of course, a tax on imports.

Yet the basic design of the American system has broken down, allowing the president to usurp far more authority than is healthy. In many policy areas, the presidency functions less like a democratic chief executive who operates under constraint and more like an elected dictatorship.

And historically, dictatorships — elected or otherwise — suffer from a fatal flaw: they have no ability to stop the people at the top from acting on their policy whims and, in the process, producing national disasters. This tendency is why democracy tends to produce superior policy outcomes over the long run; why America, and not Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union, won the 20th century.

The tariffs, in short, show the true stakes of democratic decline. It’s not just a matter of abstract principle, but the difference between stability and disaster.

The unitary presidency lives, thanks to the supremes and to the pols whose only real purpose is to get reelected no matter what the costs may be. 

Another Brick in the Wall

 

A renaissance begins with good education. 

1500 & Counting

1500 & Counting as Agent Orange's "wonderful" tariffs take hold, roiling makes to the max. Question, how long will the gutless pols tolerate this train wreck of an administration incapable of doing anything right regarding the art of governance as it's time to get rid of Trump and company once and for all while a 

Constitutional crisis for the ages looms.

NEW YORK (AP) — Financial markets around the world are reeling Thursday following President Donald Trump’s latest and most severe volley of tariffs, and the U.S. stock market may be taking the worst of it.

The S&P 500 was down 4% in morning trading, worse than the drops for other major stock markets. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 1,520 points, or 3.6%, as of 10:10 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 4.0% lower.

Little was spared as fear flared globally about the potentially toxic mix of higher inflation and weakening economic growth that tariffs can create.

Everything from crude oil to Big Tech stocks to the value of the U.S. dollar against other currencies fell. Even gold, which has hit records recently as investors sought something safer to own, pulled lower. Some of the worst hits walloped smaller U.S. companies, and the Russell 2000 index of smaller stocks dropped more than 5% into what’s called a “bear market” after losing more than 20% from its record.

Any questions?

Energy Hog ...

Illustration: Molimit46/Getty Images

AI, love it or hate it, it's here and isn't going away unless our antiquated power grid surrenders given just how truly inefficient digital is when it comes to processing analog output of neural nets as AI must use analog in order to react to the real world in real time as analog uses differential equations to map the differences in textural, visual and audio data prior to delivering said content to digital systems to process and show a user the best way to check out the 

Grand Canyon.

Remember, digital counts, analog measures.

RIGHT NOW, GENERATIVE artificial intelligence is impossible to ignore online. An AI-generated summary may randomly appear at the top of the results whenever you do a Google search. Or you might be prompted to try Meta’s AI tool while browsing Facebook. And that ever-present sparkle emoji continues to haunt my dreams.

This rush to add AI to as many online interactions as possible can be traced back to OpenAI’s boundary-pushing release of ChatGPT late in 2022. Silicon Valley soon became obsessed with generative AI, and nearly two years later, AI tools powered by large language models permeate the online user experience.

One unfortunate side effect of this proliferation is that the computing processes required to run generative AI systems are much more resource intensive. This has led to the arrival of the internet’s hyper-consumption era, a period defined by the spread of a new kind of computing that demands excessive amounts of electricity and water to build as well as operate.

There is no free lunch 

“In the back end, these algorithms that need to be running for any generative AI model are fundamentally very, very different from the traditional kind of Google Search or email,” says Sajjad Moazeni, a computer engineering researcher at the University of Washington. “For basic services, those were very light in terms of the amount of data that needed to go back and forth between the processors.” In comparison, Moazeni estimates generative AI applications are around 100 to 1,000 times more computationally intensive.

Going beyond environmental concerns, these data centers have the potential to overwhelm local power grids with their energy needs. “In Washington, there's a Microsoft data center building in Quincy,” says Moazeni. “I know there's a lot of concern that the power they are burning is basically sucking up all of the energy in that area.” Around the world, the server farms that train and operate AI models may compete with local residents and businesses for power—possibly leading to blackouts during peak times.

Speaking the truth ... for a change

Direct, vulgar but truthful, the Orange Menace AI speaks the truth.

In a strange way, George Carlin would approve. Jabari Jones rules. 

The enduring Meme of VP J.D. continues ever onward. Last adventure, Greenland. 

Improper ideology ...

People gather for a ribbon cutting ceremony at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery to announce the installation of a life-size painting of President Abraham Lincoln by artist W.F.K. Travers, Feb. 10, 2023, in Washington. 

(AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File)

Echos of 1984 keep cropping up relating to the administration from hell. This time, the push to eliminate liberal thinking espoused by the Smithsonian, a beloved institution for the ages.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Thursday revealed his intention to force changes at the Smithsonian Institution with an executive order that targets funding for programs that advance “divisive narratives” and “improper ideology,” the latest step in a broadside against culture he deems too liberal.

Trump claimed there has been a “concerted and widespread” effort over the past decade to rewrite American history by replacing “objective facts” with a “distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth,” adding that it casts the “founding principles” of the United States in a “negative light.”

The order he signed behind closed doors puts Vice President JD Vance, who serves on the Smithsonian Institution’s Board of Regents, in charge of overseeing efforts to “remove improper ideology” from all areas of the institution, including its museums, education and research centers, and the National Zoo.

So saith Agent Orange, an ignorant man without humor, culture or curiosity, 

aspiring to be Big Brother without question.

The Smithsonian Institution Building in Washington, D.C., also known as "the Castle"

Don't worry, we have a sleazy used car salesman who will protect us from god forbid, liberal thinking.

Combat pilots weigh in ...

A F/A-18 Super Hornet launching from the aircraft carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower in the Red Sea last year for operations against Houthi targets in Yemen.Credit...Kenny Holston/The New York Times

Pilots flying combat missions are making their feelings known about the arrogance
and incompetence of Captain America regarding ops and how they should be handled.

The intelligence breach was bad enough, current and former fighter pilots said. But Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s refusal to acknowledge that he should not have disclosed sensitive information about when American fighter pilots would attack sites in Yemen, they said, was even worse.

On air bases, in aircraft carrier “ready rooms” and in communities near military bases this week, there was consternation. The news that senior officials in the Trump administration discussed plans on Signal, a commercial messaging app, for an impending attack angered and bewildered men and women who have taken to the air on behalf of the United States.

The mistaken inclusion of the editor in chief of The Atlantic in the chat and Mr. Hegseth’s insistence that he did nothing wrong by disclosing the secret plans upend decades of military doctrine about operational security, a dozen Air Force and Navy fighter pilots said.

Worse, they said, is that going forward, they can no longer be certain that the Pentagon is focused on their safety when they strap into cockpits.

“We intentionally don’t share plans with people who don’t need to know,” said one Navy F/A-18 pilot, who has flown frequently in missions in the Middle East. “You don’t share what time we’re supposed to show up over a target. You don’t want to telegraph that we’re about to show up on someone’s doorstep; that’s putting your crew at risk.” He and several other current and former pilots spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid reprisals from the Pentagon and from allies of President Trump.

But then came Mr. Hegseth’s initial response to the disclosures. He attacked Mr. Goldberg as a “so-called journalist,” and sought refuge in a semantic argument, saying that he had never disclosed “war plans.”

So on Wednesday, The Atlantic published the actual text of what he had written, at 11:44 a.m. the day of the attack, in the group chat: “1215et: F-18s LAUNCH (1st strike package),” Mr. Hegseth texted, some 30 minutes before it happened. “1345: ‘Trigger Based’ F-18 1st Strike window Starts (Target Terrorist is @his Known Location so SHOULD BE ON TIME).”

Time for Captain America and significant others to be fired, now. 

Ready, Fire, Aim/Rev 3

Photo: Yuri Gripas/Abaca/Bloomberg via Getty Images

This pix shows it all. Agent Orange, drifting off toward the land of dementia or Alzheimer's and Captain America, looking patently ridiculous in trying to show the world's he's in total control, indirectly points out the fact this administration's not only evil but also blindingly incompetent to the max, this time in using Signal to tell senior officials top secret details of an op done against the Houthis, a group proving to be truly innovative in waging asymmetrical war against the west and US in the Red Sea in supporting the Palestinians in the ongoing genocide being perpetrated against them by the Israelis in Gaza.   

Houthi supporters in Sanaa protesting against Israel's blockade of aid deliveries to Gaza

It's not just the Situation Room or Signal — senior Trump administration officials bypassed a range of secure government systems when they decided to discuss plans for an upcoming attack in Yemen on a commercially available app.

Axios spoke to one current senior U.S. official and five former senior U.S. officials — all of whom have taken part in communications around similarly sensitive overseas operations — about the secure channels through which these conversations are supposed to happen, why turning to Signal could seem appealingly expedient, and why doing so is potentially dangerous.

What they're saying: "It's shocking. It's shocking negligence," a former senior defense official said. "We've got the best secure communication systems in the world — of any country — so why are we using a rickety, commercially available system?"

The former official said Signal is "not even in the same universe" as the Pentagon's JWICS intranet, through which some of the country's most delicate intelligence is shared.

Why incompetence & lying rule in the land of Trump.

• White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt called the app
  "the most secure and efficient way to communicate."
• But security experts consider communicating via Signal, particularly from a personal device, far less secure than using a classified government channel.
• The White House and National Security Council did not respond to requests for comment.

Those conversations didn't need to happen on Signal, or on personal mobile devices. The current official noted that many of the officials on the Signal chat have SCIF's in their homes, making moving to a classified setting relatively straightforward.

Note. Signal's a great app, this is not the issue, security is.

A darker reason for using Signal may be the time frame for messages to be retained. 

To whit. 

Signal allows users to set messages to disappear after a period of time, ranging from seconds to four weeks, while secure military communication systems have data retention policies that vary based on the sensitivity of the information and legal requirements, potentially retaining data for much longer periods. 

Here's a more detailed breakdown:

Signal:

Disappearing Messages Feature:

Signal offers a "disappearing messages" feature, allowing users to set a timer for messages to be automatically deleted from all participants' devices. 

Timeframe Options:

Users can choose a timeframe for messages to disappear, ranging from a few seconds to up to four weeks. 

User Control:

The user has control over when and for how long messages are retained. 

Potential Concerns:

This feature raises concerns about compliance with federal record-keeping laws and the potential loss of critical intelligence. 

Secure Military Communication Systems:

Data Retention Policies:

Military communication systems have data retention policies that are designed to ensure the preservation of critical information and compliance with legal requirements.

Longer Retention Periods:

These systems may retain data for much longer periods than Signal's disappearing messages feature, potentially years or even decades, depending on the nature of the information.

Security and Compliance:

These systems are designed to ensure the secure storage and retrieval of sensitive information.

Customizable Policies:

Data retention policies can be customized based on the specific needs of the military or government agency. 

Any questions?