Brothers Judd Blog

If two New Hampshire men aren't a match for the Devil, we might as well give the country back to the Indians. -Stephen Vincent Benet (1898-1943)

2025

Identitarianism

REALITY BITES:

What if History Died by Sanctioned Ignorance? (David W. Blight, August 7, 2025, New Republic)

In Richard J. Evans’s trilogy on the Third Reich, he shows indelibly how the Nazis achieved power because of eight key factors: One, the depth of economic depression and the ways it radicalized the electorate; two, widespread hatred for parliamentary democracy that had taken root for at least a decade all over Europe; three, the destruction of dissent and academic freedom in universities; four, the Nazis’ ritualistic “dynamism,” charisma, and propaganda machinery; five, the creation of a cloak of legality around so many of their tactics, stage by stage of the descent into fear, terror, and autocracy; six, the public manipulating and recrafting of history and forging Nazi mythology to fit their present purposes; seven, they knew whom and what they viscerally hated—communists and Jews—and made them the objects of insatiable grievance; eight, and finally, vicious street violence, with brownshirts in cities and student thugs on college campuses, mass arrests, detainment camps, and the Gestapo in nearly every town. All of these methods, mixed with the hideous dream of an Aryan racial utopia and a nationalism rooted in deep resentment of the Versailles Treaty at the end of World War I, provided the Nazis the tools of tyranny.

In 2025, our own autocratic governing party has already employed many, though not all, of these techniques. Thanks to a free press and many courts sustaining the rule of law, Trumpism has not yet mastered every authoritarian method. But it has launched a startlingly rapid and effective beginning to an inchoate American brand of fascism.

Ideology and realty are incompatrible, which is why Left and Right war against history, economics, biology, etc..

It's a RICO case

WHILE HE PROMISED TO LIFT SANCTIONS:

From Russian Interference to Revisionist Innuendo: What the Gabbard Files Actually Say (Renee DiResta, August 6, 2025, Lawfare)

Russia interfered in the 2016 election in three distinct ways: First, the Internet Research Agency (IRA), also known as the “troll factory,” ran a disinformation campaign using fake social media accounts with content that reached more than 100 million people. The propaganda content surrounding the election aimed to depress the Black and liberal vote on the left, while promoting Trump on the right. During the Republican primary, following a brief effort to boost Rand Paul, they pivoted to Trump, denigrating primary opponents such as Sens. Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz. Contrary to the talking point that it was just “$150k in Facebook ads,” the IRA’s broader influence campaign cost around $10 million per year. It ultimately became the subject of a Department of Justice indictment against the IRA, its parent company, and individual operatives.

Second, throughout 2015 and 2016, the Russian military intelligence agency the GRU hacked targets including the Democratic National Committee (DNC), the Clinton campaign, Open Society Foundations, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and other think tanks seen as promoting liberal internationalism. Russian military intelligence then selectively leaked the hacked material, usually with the intent of embarrassing the target at a strategic time. For example, the first tranche of thousands of Clinton campaign manager John Podesta’s documents were dumped by WikiLeaks approximately an hour after the release of the Access Hollywood “Grab ‘Em By the Pussy” tape on Oct. 7, 2016. (Roger Stone was apparently in contact with the hackers’ Guccifer persona about the releases.) The Podesta emails had staying power; they would become the foundation of the Pizzagate conspiracy theory.

Third, Russian cyber actors, likely also the GRU, targeted election infrastructure by attempting to hack machines and databases concerned with voter rolls in states and jurisdictions across the United States (some reports say all 50 states were targeted). No votes were changed and no voter information was altered.

These activities were summarized in the Jan. 6, 2017, Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA), which described the interference as a multifaceted influence campaign ordered by Russian President Vladimir Putin to undermine faith in the democratic process and damage Clinton’s candidacy. The assessment noted that Putin and the Russian government developed a “clear preference for President-elect Trump.” It made these assessments with high confidence. It also assessed that Russia had “aspired to help” Trump’s chances at victory.

Robotics/AI

IT’S IMPOSSIBLE TO OVERSTATE DEFLATIONARY PRESSURES:

AI Is Radically Democratizing Legal Services (Jack Nicastro and Samuel Crombie, 8/05/25, Fusion)


Artificial intelligence (AI) promises to leave no corner of American society unaltered, and the legal system is no exception. Dr. Bateman believes AI will birth an inequitable and disorderly justice system. On the contrary, we believe AI is positioned to be an ultimate equalizer of justice.

AI is cheap and fast intelligence; intelligence facilitates truth-seeking, and it is truth-seeking that is the primary function of our courts. Bateman fears that AI adoption will be an ultimatum for the rule of law, or an epistemic weapon of mass destruction. We believe it is functionally identical to previous technologies adopted by courts to improve the truth-seeking process.

AI is a broad term for a broad set of technologies. U.S. courts are similarly decentralized in structure and diverse in function. Through his piece, Bateman conflates distinct parts of the justice system (impact statements, evidence rules, representation) and distinct AI technologies (chatbots, deepfakes, audio cloning) with one another. In our response, we clarify the different forms of courtroom AI and consider the unique operating procedures and rules of different parts of the legal system.

In explaining how AI could be used and in what contexts, we challenge his assertions that it will weaken the foundations of our justice system. Bateman envisages a world where legal criterion and judicial precedent evaporates, while agents of the court cease to operate rationally. Through the examples he offers, Bateman fundamentally misinterprets the court’s present frustrations, e.g., a victim impact statement made with prejudice, an unlicensed attorney practicing law, the introduction of falsified evidence, &c., as essential to AI. They are not. 

We confront his conclusion that AI is outpacing prudence and reach the conclusion that it is luddism that is imprudent. AI is nothing more than a tool. An auditable, increasingly interpretable, unprecedentedly powerful tool for ascertaining and evaluating the truth. Judges, juries, public defenders, court clerks, self-representing defendants, expert witnesses, and mediators all stand to benefit from AI.
Technology

SO, NOT JUST SHOWER CURTAIN RINGS?:

3D printing set to slash nuclear plant build times & costs (David Szondy, August 04, 2025, New Atlas)

As part of the Generation IV Hermes Low-Power Demonstration Reactor project being built at the Oak Ridge campus in Tennessee in partnership with Kairos Power, MDF is testing the use of 3D-printed polymer forms to build the thick concrete bioshield used to contain the reactor vessel and isolate it from the outside environment. These forms are assembled around networks of steel rebar and concrete then poured into the mold.

According to Oak Ridge, the new polymer forms are fast to produce and can be reused as required. In addition, they are more precise than conventional steel or wooden molds, can be configured into complex shapes, and allow for more precise formations. This allows complex structures to be assembled onsite in a matter of days rather than weeks. In addition, reusable polymer molds can reduce the amount of timber needed for plant construction by 75%.

Always fun when the Luddites tell you AI or renewable energy has been transformative…yet.

Identitarianism Republican Liberty

IT JUST CODIFIED THE COMMON LAW:

US Appeals Court Indicates It Might Declare Trump’s Birthright Citizenship Order Unconstitutional (Reuters The Guardian, 8/03/25)


The San Francisco-based ninth US circuit court of appeals last week became the first federal appeals court to hold Trump’s order as unconstitutional. Its ultimate fate will probably be determined by the supreme court.

Eric McArthur, a justice department attorney, said on Friday that the citizenship clause of the US constitution’s 14th amendment, which was ratified in 1868 after the US civil war, rightly extended citizenship to the children of newly freed enslaved Black people.

“It did not extend birthright citizenship as a matter of constitutional right” to the children of people in the US without documentation, he said.

But the judges questioned how that argument was consistent with the supreme court’s 1898 ruling interpreting the clause in United States v Wong Kim Ark, long understood as guaranteeing American citizenship to children born in the US to non-citizen parents.

Birthright citizenship is Originalism.

One Economy to Rule Them All

PROFANITY FOR THE WIN:

Melville’s Bartleby: The Great-Great-Grandfather of the Quiet Quitters of Today’s Gen Z: Herman Melville’s “Bartleby the Scrivener” had It right: Why forcing workers back to the office misses the point. (Stephan Richter, 8/02/25, The Globalist)


Corporations across the globe are currently doubling down on “return to office” mandates. They are keen on summoning their employees back into their cubicles and open-plan watercooler chatter.

And yet, one wonders: What exactly are they being called back to? The promise of collaboration? The lure of higher productivity? Or is it something more profane — a claim of presence meant to boost executives and assure them that corporate control has not slipped?

Republican Liberty

THUS, REPUBLICAN LIBERTY:

Why rabbits?: Towards a better, floofier world. (Noah Smith, Jun 18, 2023, Noahpinion)

A number of my blog readers have been asking me to lay out my broad moral framework. Usually I resist this impulse. As David Hume wrote, humans decide on right and wrong based on a confusing and often mutually contradictory jumble of moral instincts, and attempts to fit those instincts into a rigid, internally consistent moral code are generally an exercise in futility. But if I do have one consistent, bedrock principle about the way the world ought to work, it’s this — the strong should protect and uplift the weak.

Nature endows some people with strength — sharp claws, size and musculature, resistance to disease. Human society endows us with other forms of strength that are often far more potent — guns, money, social status, police forces and armies at our backs. Everywhere there is the temptation for those with power to crush those without it, to enslave them, to extract labor and fealty and fawning flattery. “The strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must,” wrote Thucydides; this is as concise a statement as you’ll ever find of the law of the jungle, both the real jungle and the artificial jungles humans create for ourselves. A hierarchy of power and brutality is a high-entropy state, an easy equilibrium toward which social interactions naturally flow.

I believe that it is incumbent upon us as thinking, feeling beings — it is our moral purpose and our mission in this world — to resist this natural flow, to stand against it, to reverse it where possible. In addition to our natural endowments of power, we must gather to ourselves what additional power we can, and use it to protect and uplift those who have less of it. To some, that means helping the poor; to others, fighting for democracy or civil rights; to others, it simply means taking good care of their kids, or of a pet rabbit. But always, it means rolling the stone uphill, opposing the natural hierarchies of the world, fighting to reify an imaginary world where the strong exercise no dominion over the weak.

We will never fully realize that world, of course. And my morality is easier to declare than to put into practice; on the way we will make many missteps. We will make mistakes about who is strong and who is weak, punching down when we self-righteously tell ourselves we’re punching up. Like the communists of the 20th century, we will sometimes invert one unjust hierarchy only to put another in its place. And we will be corrupted by the power we gather, mouthing high principle while exploiting some of those we claim to protect; we will tell ourselves that we’re knights while acting like barbarians (just as actually existing knights often did).

All these things will happen, and yet it is incumbent upon us to do the best we can, to keep fighting the good fight for a gentler, more equal world.

Health

TO PARAPHRASE YOGI: 90% OF HEALTH IS HALF MENTAL

The Mere Sight of Someone Sick Triggers an Immune Response, Study Suggests: Researchers equipped study participants with virtual reality headsets and observed how their brains and immune systems reacted to avatars with signs of illness (Sara Hashemi, July 31, 2025, Smithsonian)

The study is “unique in demonstrating that people’s immune system can be primed just by the visual recognition that someone looks sick,” Irwin adds to Simon Makin at Science News. “That’s really remarkable.”

Or un.

Health Identitarianism

WHAT’S A SINOPHOBE TO DO?:

How conspiracy theories about COVID’s origins are hampering our ability to prevent the next pandemic (Robert Garry, Edward C Holmes, Andrew Rambaut, Kristian G. Andersen, 7/29/25, The Conversation)


In the five years since our Nature Medicine paper, a substantial body of new evidence has emerged that has deepened our understanding of how SARS-CoV-2 most likely emerged through a natural spillover.

In early 2020, the case for a zoonotic origin was already compelling. Much-discussed features of the virus are found in related coronaviruses and carry signatures of natural evolution. The genome of SARS-CoV-2 showed no signs of laboratory manipulation.

The multi-billion-dollar wildlife trade and fur farming industry in China regularly moves high-risk animals, frequently infected with viruses, into dense urban centres.

It’s believed that SARS-CoV-1, the virus responsible for the SARS outbreak, emerged this way in 2002 in China’s Guangdong province.

Similarly, detailed analyses of epidemiological data show the earliest known COVID cases clustered around the Huanan live-animal market in Wuhan, in the Hubei province, in December 2019.

Multiple independent data sources, including early hospitalisations, excess pneumonia deaths, antibody studies and infections among health-care workers indicate COVID first spread in the district where the market is located.

In a 2022 study we and other experts showed that environmental samples positive for SARS-CoV-2 clustered in the section of the market where wildlife was sold.

In a 2024 follow-up study we demonstrated those same samples contained genetic material from susceptible animals – including raccoon dogs and civets – on cages, carts, and other surfaces used to hold and transport them.

This doesn’t prove infected animals were the source. But it’s precisely what we would expect if the market was where the virus first spilled over. And it’s contrary to what would be expected from a lab leak.

These and all other independent lines of evidence point to the Huanan market as the early epicentre of the COVID pandemic.

Brothers Judd

TWO SAD WORDS:

Dogless Walkers (DOMINIC WIGHTMAN, 7/29/25, Country Squire)

Last week, retriever man passed without his dog. He stopped. The dog was dead, he said, taken by cancer. He still walked the same route, he explained, because the habit was stronger than the absence. He could almost feel her padding beside him, could almost hear the soft pant of her breath. The movement was good for his mind, his body. His wife had died a few months before, the same disease. He spoke plainly, without self-pity, as though stating the weather. I invited him for tea. He gratefully accepted. Then he walked on.

Later, I saw the woman with the boxer. She was alone too—the dog with her ex-husband while she ‘cared for their children over the summer’. We talked for a change. She laughed about the chaos of holidays, the way time stretches and snaps without warning. There was no mention of why the dog lived elsewhere now, or what had fractured between them. Some things go unsaid.

It struck me then how many walk alone, and for how many reasons. Grief, habit, the need to outpace silence—all of them invisible beneath the surface of a nod, a brief exchange.

There is value in stopping, in removing the headphones. You never know what silence you might interrupt, or what quiet sorrow you might briefly share. The fields do not care, but the people do. Even if they don’t say it.

Our dog not only has a crew of folks who stop to chat and pet her–including three who carry treats–but if I walk without her (due to heat or snow) cars pull up to ask if she’s okay.

« Previous Page — Next Page »

You Missed

Anglospherics

WE ARE ENGLISH:

Identitarianism

IDENTITY POLITICS AT ITS UGLIEST:

Cheeto Jesus

DONALD WHO?:

Religion

ALL SCIENCE LEADS BACK TO FAITH:

Copyright © All rights reserved | Blogus by Themeansar.