Image is of Trump's initial set of reciprocal tariffs. Source is CNN and Reuters.
It's difficult to keep up with the news around the tariffs; they get instated, then dropped, then reinstated... for example, on Friday, Trump said that certain electronics like smartphones would be exempt, causing markets to rally a great deal, but now the Commerce Secretary has said that they might not be exempt? The state of play right now, if you haven't been keeping up this week, is that the US recently announced a 90-day global pause on implementing the tariffs he had planned (that is, 25% on certain Canadian and Mexican goods, and at least 10% on every other nation) but nonetheless increased tariffs on China to 145%.
Meanwhile, China has been - quite remarkably - standing their ground, increasing tariffs on the US to 125%, and putting restrictions on rare earths. Xi Jinping has been in Vietnam and has made statements against a tariff war there, saying that it would have no winners. Meanwhile, a Chinese spokesperson has essentially said that China can endure the tariff war due to the increasing demand from its domestic market in combination with its growing economic ties with other countries.
Last week's thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
Please check out the RedAtlas!
The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.
Israel-Palestine Conflict
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA reports on Israel's destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.
English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news.
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.
English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.
Russia-Ukraine Conflict
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Sources:
Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don't want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it's just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists' side.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR's former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR's forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster's telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a 'propaganda tax', if you don't believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine Telegram Channels:
Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
Okay this is actually…. Big fucking news?
Edit: it’s a MAYBE but still cool! I know science news Isn’t exactly the purpose of this thread but it seems possibly big enough to warrant a comment here
nytimes
I can't wait to find out high pressure, hydrean aquatic life is actually dominant in the universe and we are the equivalent of a silicon based rock monster in Star Trek.
basically that mid movie the Abyss
Subneptunes around a red dwarf are the most common planets so far. So this isn’t really that groundbreaking that human life is special in that way.
“No Kill I”
If confirmed, 120 light years is nothing in terms of cosmic distance, the universe is alive in that case and the numerical value of one of the most important variables in the Drake equation skyrockets
also, news like this is an absolute ray of light right now and I hope it can be verified.
Add to that that it is really hard to detect planets, even relatively close planets like this one. That would be huge. This is a red dwarf planet tho, so I do have my doubts about there actually being life in any way.
Still, I don't see that as being a galvanizing moment for humanity to try and do something cooperatively. But it would be insanely cool.
The cool thing about this situation is that 1) even though the star is a red dwarf, K2-18b is within its relative goldilocks zone, which would provide the right conditions for life as we know it. 2) Scientists detected carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere a few years ago, which is cool but not a revolutionary thing. But now they've detected a LOT of molecules only produced by living organisms (that we know of), mainly phytoplankton, which would be the first detection of its kind in that amount and is a revolutionary thing. 3) Their confidence in the data is 99.7%, and they're releasing the data to the community in a few days for people to verify. Like, unless there's some crazy way for these molecules to be created that defies our current understanding of all of biology, there are living organisms on that planet
I absolutely agree that this is great news and we might be SO CLOSE to actually finding life somewhere else for the first time.
The problem with red dwarfs is that the planet has to be close to the star in order to be in the goldilocks zone. That makes it more vulnerable to solar storms and also tidally locks it. That is why finding life here would be an even bigger deal than finding life around a Sun-like main sequence star.
Yeah very good point -- imagine having a light society and a dark society, both with very different evolutions lol it'd be like all the crazy stuff at the bottom of the ocean except just...straight over there
Defying our current understanding of biology would be pretty neat, too.
If CH4 and H2S are components of the atmosphere you could get methylsulfides from lightning strikes.
I'm always cautiously optimistic about news along these lines, but I am choosing to be happy that this appears to be a step father than what we have detected before. If it is determined ths it is likely life, hooray! If it is determined that there are too many other explanations, I'll be a bit let down, but we have at least advanced the science of seeking life on other planets considerably.
This is a new and unique data point, and if it is repeatable and replicable--this is great news.
Personally for me, if verified with a capital V beyond a shadow of a doubt, it would obliterate the doomer tendencies I suffer from, for me it would be a rock solid foundation for general optimism and faith in the long term viability of life
Until then I will file this news under 'scientific curiosity'
Yeah that's light and high beauty territory
News like this always makes me emotional for some reason
Oh thank fuck. I wasn't on the 'life is too rare to exist elsewhere in the vast universe" side of the Fermi Paradox, but it's nice having even a minor indicator that even if we totally glass the planet or catch an asteroid the universe won't wind up empty.
The male urge to have my remains uncovered by an alien species researching how a primitive species sent itself into extinction.
Everyone fantasizes about being discovered like the guy in Pompeii who went out whacking it, right?
Absolutely
This is pure art.
Are these two seperate news articles? Lmao mfs in the news mega are so bad at posting their sources
It's comical that you cut off the name of the site in the first sceenshot except for a small bit, you were right there at least include the outlet name if not posting a link to the article
When I posted that initially it was from my phone and the article had literally just posted so I couldn’t post the archived paywall free link I’ll edit the post with a link to the nytimes article
Sowwy! Breaking the news while I’m at work is tough but fixed
I would love for extraterrestrial life to be confirmed in my lifetime. Still, these stories pop up frequently enough that I don't get my hopes up too high
High levels of dimethyl sulfide (DMS) and dimethyl disulfide (DMDS)! Wow!
Let's fucking go! This is super cool, space is really huge and our little rock can have so many problems, but (almost) knowing that we aren't all that's there gives great comfort.
source?
Idk where they got it but I've queued up an NPR Archive
I for one welcome our new marine algae overlords. May they free us from Capitalism.
Its still huge because its an oxygen lacking planet with DMS - sigma three detection. Even if it isnt then thats still a massive case for chemistry.
Primary source: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/adc1c8
Arxiv format: https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.12267
NYT article: https://archive.ph/CLUEl
University of Cambridge article: https://www.cam.ac.uk/stories/strongest-hints-of-biological-activity
I somehow missed someone already posting the NPR article: https://hexbear.net/comment/6064565
So how do we feel about the great filter hypothesis?
I still think capitalism is the great filter
Humans are early + the solar system is very very very very unique in its structure. And not to forget how Earth has several very rare properties such as a moon.
Humans are incredibly early.
The universe is ~14 billion years old and stars are expected to continue to form for the next 1,000 billion or 100,000 billion years.
To put this in the context of a human lifespan, it's like arriving in the first four days after the universe was born.
A freakishly large moon. Don’t think anywhere else has one as big relative to the planet
We have the best moon don't we folks, that's what everyone says, even the phony scientists admit it
I’m more of a Dark Forest man myself
I lean more towards "we're among the first". It's both hopeful - we could turn out to be the local mighty and powerful The Ancients in the annals of future galactic civilisation - and there's a plausible explanation for us being among the first.
Life as we know it requires a lot of elements heavier than the ones created in the Big Bang. Both for the life itself, and for the planet formation for that life to evolve upon. All we got in the Big Bang was a lot of hydrogen, some helium, and tiny traces of lithium. But we need elements that we now know are only cooked in stars via fusing lighter elements. Either during their lifetimes, or in their death throes. It's plausible that life as we know it was simply impossible in the universe until a few rounds of star formation and star deaths spreading those heavier elements into the universe.
Its also noteworthy that until recently (in galactic evolution pov) our galactic neighbourhood was too unstable for advanced biosignatures. Humans got really lucky and evolved relatively close to the earliest point where intelligent life would be able to thrive.