…ugh…I’d really rather crawl back into bed, to be honest…but…places to be, people to see…things to do…maybe not “vonegut busy“…but…a bit like that time obama said his favorite character on the wire was omar…it’s weird to imagine you might have something in common with the man in charge of the biggest game in town

Begin your day by saying thyself, “Today I shall meet with busybody, the ungrateful, deceitful, unsocial and envious people…”

…some roman bloke way back when…& really…what have the romans ever done for us?

…of course…they were immigrants…hordes of the buggers…which tracks…much the way marcus’s sentiments on the people I have to deal with today seem freakishly accurate for guy who’s been dead so long…after all…it’s not like the UK is even trying to seem like it has any kind of sane grasp of how any of that works…or, really, is working

The move, which the government estimates will help reduce net migration by 300,000 a year, marks an attempt by Cleverly and the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, to rescue the Conservative party’s flagging reputation for controlling immigration.

But experts warn it also risks causing further chaos in the already stretched health sector and damaging the UK’s long-term growth prospects.

Cleverly told MPs on Monday that “migration is far too high and needs to come down … enough is enough”.

He added: “Today I can announce that we will go even further than those provisions already in place, with a five-point plan to further curb immigration abuses that will deliver the biggest ever reduction in net migration.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/dec/04/five-point-plan-to-cut-uk-immigration-raises-fears-of-more-nhs-staff-shortages

…uh, huh

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/new-immigration-system-what-you-need-to-know

…see…you’d think with all the noise (& nonsense) about their rwanda policy of deterrent that’s supposed to magically dissolve the drivers that produce the much publicized trade in “small boats”

James Cleverly is travelling to Kigali to sign a new treaty with Rwanda, as Rishi Sunak responds to the UK supreme court’s ruling against the policy to send people there.

Domestic legislation is also planned so parliament could assert Rwanda is a safe destination for asylum seekers who arrive in Britain.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/dec/04/british-lawyers-sent-rwanda-asylum-seeker-plan

…so…by way of a swipe at a wildly oversimplified bit of context…because the whole thing is steeped in orders of magnitude more functional narrative nuance than the raw figures

https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/migrants-in-the-uk-an-overview/

…the numbers they’d get to send to rwanda…once they pass a law to stipulate that it’s a safe destination in defiance of their own supreme court…would be a drop in the bucket of the numbers they cram in those misbegotten boats…considerably less, if you want the brutal truth of the thing…which you probably don’t…than the ones who die along the way…which you’d think would be a pretty hard to top deterrent all on its own…if I remember the way the pro-death-penalty logic runs…but I digress…the whole small boats section of the net total of migrants to the UK…would itself be dwarfed by the numbers arriving perfectly legally…to tell the truth even the increase alone in those numbers since they waved their magic brexit wand to take back control would suffice to eclipse that portion of the figures by orders of magnitude…for the very reason that they can’t hire from the domestic pool for the wages they offer for all manner of jobs that didn’t get to stay home when the pandemic locked shit down…just…don’t ask these exponents of austerity whether they support the obvious implications of their rhetoric…like…if you can’t hire homegrown care workers & object to importing cheap ones that local authorities can afford to staff the woefully under-funded & resourced services you spent the last decade or so kicking the shit out of after spending a few before that beating it to the ground in the first place…well, then presumably you would be all for those people being paid a living wage that would be attractive enough to get the locals interested…not to mention “skilled up”…& that would cost a lot more…which the local government would be on the hook for…so…central government would be there to balance those books, then…right? …I mean, you don’t actually want to privatize healthcare in an american model, do you? …c’mon sunshine…this should be a no brainer…sorry…unfortunate choice of words, there…no offense intended…if a fair bit implied

Time has lost its meaning. No longer linear. The Newtonian laws of physics discarded. Rather, time now bends and twists, reaching back on itself. Forget the circular, we are now moving forwards into the past. The present becoming ever more fragmented into an 11-dimensional world. Each with its own reality and space-time continuum. Things are now out of date before they’ve even happened.

Not so long ago, a government published its legislation programme at the beginning of each parliament. MPs on all sides more or less knew where they stood. No more. Rishi Sunak has created a quantum government. One that’s racing ever faster to oblivion. It began with the first reset. A month or so after he took office. That reset crashed and burned. Of course it did. He’s hopeless. The politician who is rubbish at politics.
[…]
As each reset inevitably fails, so we have been presented with more and more. The arc of failure is ever faster. Reset piled upon reset. First once a month. Then once a fortnight. Once a week has come and gone. As has once a day. Now a reset policy is dead in the water before it’s even happened. Politics reduced to a barnyard performative farce.
[…]
So shortly after 4.30 on Monday afternoon, Jimmy Dimly swaggered into the Commons to give a statement on legal migration. To basically say that the prime minister’s immigration plan up till yesterday was no longer the current plan. Moreover, the former plan had never actually been anything to do with Sunak. It had belonged to a previous government that had nothing to do with the present one. Keeping up with Dimly’s stupidity is surprisingly hard work.

It was like this. Immigration was far too high. Jimmy D knew this because all the far right of the Tory party were complaining about it. Not that there are any sensible centrist Tories left. Being mad is now part of the brand. Anyway, back to immigration. He had no idea quite how it had got so high. It had sort of crept up while no one was looking. And as usual there would be hell to pay when he found out who was responsible.

…seems only fair to mention that when questioned about how to determine the numbers of a few sorts of potential immigrants for the purposes of a net calculation…it was admitted in as many words that they don’t actually keep track…they might have left…they might not…not the sort of thing we have a mechanism for, guv…why…did something give you the impression we considered that sort of thing a priority?

There we had it. Dimly sat down with a huge smirk. Revelling in his own smugness. His intellectual inferiority. Because what he had just done was effectively torch the economy. There would be no one left to fill the vacancies in the NHS and social care sector. Public services that were already on a knife-edge would now implode. Hospitality and agriculture would be dead.

…par for the course, no doubt…like laying claim to the biggest tax cuts in ages without acknowledging that in light of inflation & that whole cost-of-living business if you don’t adjust the points on the scale where the tax rates kick in that doesn’t actually work out as a lower tax burden on a net basis…only really works if your net worth means you don’t hear from your bank manager…you have a wealth management crew to speak to those for you…to be polite about it

But what the hell? Who cared about the economy so long as halfwits like Lee Anderson were happy. Far better to do that than actually to explain to people that there were serious consequences to delivering the half-arsed ideas they had promised. Crediting voters with intelligence was no way to go. Even better, it wasn’t even as if this lunacy would win them an election. What he was really doing was creating an impossible mess for Labour to inherit. Win, win!
[…]
You’d have thought the Tories would have been out in force for this one. Turkeys voting for Christmas. But only a hardcore of about 30 had appeared for the statement. All but one – George Eustice, who got disapproving looks from his colleagues – had come to hail their Caesar. It was only right that the NHS and social care be dismantled. And they would all be delighted if their mums and dads were the first to die as a result. It would be an honour for them to die knowing that they had paid the ultimate sacrifice for an England for Little Englanders.

Dimly bathed in the glory. Next stop, Africa. To sign a treaty declaring that Rwanda would be really nice and wouldn’t shoot refugees as it had in the past. That should do it. What could possibly go wrong?

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/dec/04/sunak-and-his-useful-idiots-pile-reset-upon-reset-in-race-to-oblivion

…britannia, ladies & gents…unsinkable sort of a bitch…you’d hope

The huge iceberg, known as A23a, was once attached to an ice shelf in West Antarctica, south of Chile, but separated in 1986. Since then, the iceberg has been stranded in the Weddell Sea, stuck to the ocean floor.

But last week, the British Antarctic Survey used satellite imagery to confirm the iceberg was no longer stuck and was drifting into an “iceberg alley” en route to the sub-Antarctic island of South Georgia.

…I feel better already

“We’re fortunate that navigating A23a hasn’t had an impact on the tight timings for our science mission, and it is amazing to see this huge berg in person – it stretches as far as the eye can see,” Meijers, who is also the survey’s polar oceans science leader, said.

Laura Taylor, a biogeochemist, was part of the team of scientists who took samples of seawater around the iceberg. The survey hopes these samples will help determine how the iceberg is influencing the carbon levels in the water.
[…]
“We know that these giant icebergs can provide nutrients to the waters they pass through, creating thriving ecosystems in otherwise less productive areas,” Taylor said. “What we don’t know is what difference particular icebergs, their scale and their origins can make to that process.”

Ecosystems science leader of the team, Prof Geraint Tarling, said the calving of icebergs off ice shelves was “part of the natural life cycle of glaciers”.

“Polar ecosystems play a crucial role in regulating the balance of carbon and nutrients in the world’s oceans and are impacted by melting icebergs in numerous ways,” Tarling said.

“The data being collected will improve our understanding of these processes and their sensitivity to climate change.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/05/incredibly-lucky-antarctic-scientists-examine-worlds-largest-iceberg-three-times-the-size-of-nyc

…what could possibly go wrong, indeed

Sellafield nuclear site hacked by groups linked to Russia and China [Guardian]

…wait…what?

Ministers who visit Sellafield for the first time are left with no illusions about the challenge at Europe’s most toxic nuclear site.

One former UK secretary of state described it as a “bottomless pit of hell, money and despair”, which sucked up so much cash that it drowned out many other projects the economy could otherwise benefit from.

Sellafield: ‘bottomless pit of hell, money and despair’ at Europe’s most toxic nuclear site [Guardian]

…seriously, though…can we talk about this for minute?

The investigation also disclosed how Sellafield is in effect in “special measures” because of concerns about cybersecurity and its regulator, the Office for Nuclear Regulation, put the site into “significantly enhanced attention” for cybersecurity.

The hack and its potential effects have been consistently covered up by senior staff at Sellafield, and have emerged in Nuclear Leaks, a year-long Guardian investigation into the vast nuclear waste and decommissioning site.
[…]
The investigation also found that external contractors had been able to plug memory sticks into the system while unsupervised. The problem of insecure servers at Sellafield was nicknamed Voldemort after the Harry Potter villain, according to a government official familiar with the ONR investigation.

The disclosures have triggered concerns in Westminster over the government’s handling of the site, which has the largest store of plutonium on the planet and absorbs about £2.5bn a year of the energy department’s budget.
[…]
Angus MacNeil, an independent MP and chair of the energy security committee, said: “This is concerning news for me, not just as chair of the energy security committee but also as a member of the joint committee on the national security strategy where cyber-attacks have been the subject of our investigations.

“The most concerning part is that Sellafield seems not to have been open with the regulatory authorities about the security breaches, trying to improve matters themselves without perhaps the best of help which also lays them open to charges of ‘cover-up’. From now on that culture has to change at Sellafield.”

A National Cyber Security Centre spokesperson said to the media: “The NCSC has warned of the enduring and significant cyber threat to the UK’s critical national infrastructure for some time, including in our latest annual review.

“We work closely with all areas of the UK’s critical national infrastructure and engage with organisations to highlight the threat landscape and mitigation activities as part of our routine operations.”

…well…shit…I guess one thing that’d be handy as all hell would be…I dunno…the sort of leg up that a coordinated approach to that kind of shit across an EU-wide band of relevant agencies & services might provide by way of a security blanket to clutch in lieu of straws…sort of like the one the blathering classes washed out with their brexit bilgewater…so…it can’t have mattered…on account of they couldn’t care less about it…or something…excuse me while I go douse the flames on the side of my head…& wipe the steam off the screen…where was I?

The spokesperson added Sellafield is “working closely with our regulator” and has an “agreed route to step down from ‘significantly enhanced’ regulation”.

Before publication of news of the hack, Sellafield and the ONR declined to answer a number of specific questions or say if Sellafield networks had been compromised by groups linked to Russia and China. After publication, they said they had no records to suggest Sellafield’s networks had been successfully attacked by state actors in the way the Guardian described.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/dec/05/ministers-pressed-by-labour-over-cyber-attack-at-sellafield-by-foreign-groups

…oh…well…that’s all right, then? …next thing you’ll be telling us it was an isolated incident involving some kind of lone wolf crazy person

A Times visual analysis found that a rocket launched from Gaza on Oct. 7 hit an Israeli military base believed to house nuclear-capable missiles, although it’s likely they were not in danger.

…how comforting

While the missiles themselves weren’t hit, the rocket’s impact, at the Sdot Micha base in central Israel, sparked a fire that approached missile storage facilities and other sensitive weaponry.

Israel has never acknowledged the existence of its nuclear arsenal, though Israeli whistle-blowers, U.S. officials and satellite imagery analysts all agree that the country possesses at least a small number of nuclear weapons.

Hans Kristensen, director of the Federation of American Scientists’ Nuclear Information Project, told The Times that he estimates there are most likely 25 to 50 nuclear-capable Jericho missile launchers at the base. According to experts and declassified U.S. government documents, Israel’s Jericho missiles are equipped to carry nuclear warheads.

…jericho, you say…like…jericho wall, jericho? …have the people that name these things all got walls crumbling down on the brain, or something…because I swear until recently that name almost never came up for me in conversation & now I seem to see it everywhere all of a sudden…&…I don’t much care for it, to be honest with you

The previously unreported strike on Sdot Micha is the first known instance of Palestinian militants hitting a site suspected of containing Israeli nuclear weaponry. It’s unclear if they knew the specifics of what they were targeting, beyond the base simply being a military facility. Hamas, the group that fired the majority of the rockets on Oct. 7, did not respond to requests for comment.

But the targeting of one of the most sensitive military locations in Israel shows that the scope of the Oct. 7 attacks may have been even greater than previously known — and that rockets can penetrate the airspace around Israel’s closely guarded strategic weapons.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/04/world/middleeast/militant-rocket-israel-oct-7.html

…so…I get it

Hamas release of Russian hostages highlights Putin’s new Mideast stance [WaPo]

Why the Islamic State is surging in Africa [WaPo]

…lot of plates spinning & balls in the air

Unknown traders appear to have anticipated October 7 Hamas attack, research finds [CNN]

Netanyahu corruption trial resumes, as war rages on [CNN]

…or to the wall, depending on taste

A Prison at War: The Convicts Sustaining Putin’s Invasion [NYT]

As its counteroffensive fizzles, Ukraine battles itself, Russia and a shift in the world’s attention [NBC]

…but

Companies made big climate pledges. Now they are balking on delivering. [WaPo]

…taking our eye off them doesn’t look a whole hell of a lot like an answer to me?

Misinformation expert says she was fired by Harvard under Meta pressure [Guardian]

…& false economies abound

US ‘out of money’ to help Ukraine: six key things to know about aid budget standoff [Guardian]

…but…it’s not like we can’t be pretty canny critters when we hit our stride

IBM unveils new quantum computing chip to ‘explore new frontiers of science’ [Guardian]

…even if the goalposts aren’t always quite where we thought we left them a moment ago

‘Wobbly spacetime’ may help resolve contradictory physics theories [Guardian]

…just

John Kirby, the story goes, once used the military discipline that helped propel him to admiral rank in the US navy to launch a rhetorical war on behalf of the English language.

As the navy’s chief information officer, Kirby bluntly advised underlings in his department to kick their supposed addiction to technical jargon and “learn a second language: English”, according to a 2014 profile in Politico.
[…]
The urge to lecture on appropriate language resurfaced last week as the 60-year-old Kirby – now the public face of White House foreign policy in his role of communications coordinator for the National Security Council – tackled an infinitely more emotive word: genocide.

The term, defined in an international treaty that was adopted by the United Nations in 1948, has been used by critics to describe Israel’s military offensive in Gaza, launched in response to Hamas’s attack on 7 October, which killed than 1,200 Israelis.

The Israeli bombardment and ground invasion has so far killed approximately 15,000 Palestinians and displaced more than 1.7 million people, forcing them into increasingly precarious conditions.
[…]
Challenged at a White House briefing to confront the term “Genocide Joe” by some protesters to described Biden, Kirby, who had previously ruled out “drawing red lines” for Israel’s actions in Gaza, embarked on an animated exposition.

“People can say what they want on the sidewalk and we respect that. That’s what the first amendment’s about,” he said. “But this word genocide’s getting thrown around in a pretty inappropriate way by lots of different folks. What Hamas wants, make no mistake about it, is genocide. They want to wipe Israel off the map.
[…]
“Yes, there are too many civilian casualties in Gaza … And yes, we continue to urge the Israelis to be as careful and cautious as possible. But Israel is not trying to wipe the Palestinian people off the map. Israel’s not trying to wipe Gaza off the map. Israel is trying to defend itself against a genocidal terrorist threat. If we’re going to start using that word – fine. Let’s use it appropriately.”
[…]
While the response to Kirby’s past linguistic homilies were unrecorded, his latest foray provoked a significant backlash.

…uh huh…”appropriately”…uhhhh

Top Israeli Official Reveals Catastrophic Plan for Rest of Gaza [Daily Beast]

…could we

As Israel pursues Hamas, the horrifying cost to civilians demands our attention. The ramifications don’t end there [Guardian]

…I dunno…just for a hot minute

Global carbon emissions from fossil fuels to hit record high [Guardian]

…quit putting fucking arseholes in charge of important shit?

The billionaire myth takes a beating [WaPo]

…I mean

Ego, Fear and Money: How the A.I. Fuse Was Lit [NYT]

…have we even tried that?

Writing on X, the MSNBC commentator Mehdi Hasan pointed out that among those Kirby was accusing of using the word inappropriately were renowned Jewish Holocaust scholars.

“ … multiple Jewish and Israeli scholars of the Holocaust have raised the issue of genocide,” Hasan tweeted. “Not sure Kirby is more of an expert than Omer Bartov or Raz Segal.”

Bartov and Segal, both Israeli citizens, each have argued cases that flatly contradict Kirby’s understanding.

Segal, an associate professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Stockton University in New Jersey, has accused Israel of a “quite explicit, open and unashamed” genocidal assault on Gaza. Writing in Jewish Currents days after Israel launched its military retaliation against the Hamas attack, Segal said the country was already committing three of the five acts stipulated in the UN genocide convention.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/dec/04/john-kirby-white-house-genocide

The U.S. House of Representatives is expected to vote this week—possibly as soon as Monday evening—on a resolution declaring that “anti-Zionism is antisemitism,” a measure that Jewish peace campaigners called “deeply antisemitic.”

House Resolution 894—introduced by a pair of Jewish Republicans, Reps. David Kustoff (Tenn.) and Max Miller (Ohio)—embraces the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) controversial working definition of antisemitism, which, while not explicitly mentioning anti-Zionism, includes “denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination” and “claiming that the existence of a state of Israel is a racist endeavor.”

https://www.commondreams.org/news/is-anti-zionism-anti-semitic

…sorry

https://www.adl.org/resources/blog/anti-zionism-antisemitism-how-anti-zionist-language-left-and-right-vilifies-jews

https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/is-anti-zionism-anti-semitism

https://www.ajc.org/news/anti-zionism-and-antisemitism

…been a helluva day

The Cop28 president told a shocking lie about fossil fuels – and he’s wrong about climate economics too [Guardian]

…& it only just started

Members of Texas Republican party free to associate with Nazi sympathizers [Guardian]

If complete and utter chaos was lightning, then he’d be the sort to stand on a hilltop in a thunderstorm wearing wet copper armour and shouting ‘All gods are bastards’

…the late great terry pratchett…technically sir terry…but since I forget which book technically might be overstating things?

…what could possibly go wrong?

The World Depends on 60-Year-Old Code No One Knows Anymore [PC Magazine]

…don’t worry…the people who came up with that quantum chip reckon their AI can bail us out on the COBOL thing…because there’s a twain just dying to meet

‘The Gospel’: how Israel uses AI to select bombing targets in Gaza [Guardian]

…see what I mean about wishing you could just go back to bed?

…still…ummm…mustn’t grumble?

…err…whistle while you work?

…I don’t bloody know

…I’m just trying to make it to dinner without losing my mind…how are y’all doing?