[POST] Sunday Cutdown LXXIII (11 May 2025)
Clearing my inbox of stories I want to document
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0) Is the Pope American?
The rhetorical riposte of my youth — or an early version of D’uhhh!
Is the Pope Catholic?
Runner-up?
Does a bear shit in the woods?
Then the mash-up:
Does the Pope shit in the woods?
I consider myself a bit dumbfounded by the selection, having stated here earlier that I thought a second-in-a-row pope selection from the Americas (home to half the world’s Catholics, mind you) was unlikely. But, clearly, I welcome the choice: very much a continuation of Francis (who brought Leo to the Vatican) and somebody with knowledge across the height of the Americas, which we can hope will offer some constraint on Trump’s behavior throughout our hemisphere.
Only downside I see is that I assume he’s a Chicago Bears fan, given his birthplace.
And we all know that God is a Packers fan.
1) Bill Gates just earned his Nobel Peace Prize
NYT: The $200 Billion Gamble: Bill Gates’s Plan to Wind Down His Foundation
Dude is stepping up when the world needs him most. Now the biggest donor to the World Health Organization — thanks to the Trump cuts, Gates commits his foundation to picking up more of the slack for the foreseeable future.
It is a bold and admirable move that caps a mini-lifetime of good work:
Established in 2000 — when Melinda French Gates was just 35 and Bill Gates was 44 and the world’s richest man — the foundation quickly became one of the most consequential philanthropies the world has ever seen, utterly reshaping the landscape of global public health, pouring more than $100 billion into causes starved for resources and helping save tens of millions of lives.
That has been the effort so far; this now is the new threat:
The news comes at a time that will seem to many as a perilous one, given the Trump administration’s recent assault on foreign aid and indeed on the idea of global generosity itself. A study in The Lancet recently calculated that cuts to American spending on PEPFAR, the program to deliver H.I.V. and AIDS relief abroad, could cost the lives of 500,000 children by 2030. The journal Nature suggested that an overall cessation of U.S. aid funding could result in roughly 25 million additional deaths over 15 years.
It’s officially now a race between how many poor kids Elon Musk can kill and how many Bill Gates can save.
Dear Lord: Please let the better man win this time.
2) Trump to solve crisis entirely of his own making
NYT: A Flashing Economic Warning and a Sharp Political Jolt
VISUAL CAPITALIST: America’s GDP Decline in Q1 2025
The White House announced its “trade deal” with the UK on Thursday that mostly amounted to both sides backing down from tariffs and a few new gives on London’s part.
In exchange for US tariff relief, the UK agreed to reduce or eliminate its 2% digital services tax on major American technology firms such as Amazon, Google, and Meta. Oh my goodness!
The UK will also lower its 10% tariff on US car imports and some duties on US agricultural products. Some bold stuff here!
Especially when you realize that America already has a trade surplus with the UK in goods.
While both governments tout the new agreement as "full and comprehensive," it’s nothing more than a targeted rollback of the new trade barriers imposed by Trump in recent weeks, meaning we’ve pretty much just reset the clock back to what it was before all the showmanship by Trump. The agreement is not a full free trade agreement (FTA) but it beats an MOU (Memorandum of Understanding). Like most Trump deals, it’s a piece of paper detailing promises that may or may not come true — just like the deal Trump cut with China during his first term (plenty of promises front loaded but little actual achievement down the road).
We will see several more just sleight-of-hand deals with Japan, South Korea, India, etc., but I’m not betting China will give us anything more than it did last time — i.e., unenforceable promises.
In the end, historians will credit Trump with “fixing” his own “crisis,” but at what cost? That we are soon to discover. Liberation Day threw a big wrench in the machinery of global trade. That kink will take sometime to work itself out, just like it did with COVID.
And there will be no possibility of trying to pin this on Biden. So, unless manufacturing suddenly blossoms across the US (virtually impossible in the timeframe sold to the public), Trump may just have defined his entire presidency and pretty much doomed the GOP candidate in 2028 — all to test his theory of trade.
Who said this guy has no vision?
3) SECARMY gets the memo on Military Singularity
YAHOO: Army secretary says US can't keep pumping money into expensive weapons that can be taken out by an $800 Russian drone
And the winner is … the many, the cheap, the disposable, and the unmanned.
SECARMY said the quiet part out loud:
"We keep creating and purchasing these exquisite machines that very cheap drones can take out.”
Over time, those “exquisite machines” will include troops.
The real impact of the war in Ukraine:
The US military has been watching the war in Ukraine, where cheap drones packed with explosives are damaging or destroying expensive combat equipment like tanks, other armored vehicles, air defenses, and even warships, highlighting the vulnerability of larger and more prized weapons that are insufficiently defended.
To say the least, betting on, and funding, Ukraine has been a bargain — if only for this lesson learned.
4) Hey, you, get off that (private) jet!
YALE E360: World’s Richest 10 Percent Responsible for Two-Thirds of Warming
CARBON MARKET WATCH: Taylor Swift and the top polluters department
The tell: A single private jet can emit as much carbon dioxide in an hour as a car does in a year.
Not only is Swift topping the charts but also comes first in the list of celebrities with the highest Co2 emissions from flying, according to an initiative tracking celebrities flying privately. Her private jet usage amounted to an estimated 8,300 tonnes of carbon emissions in 2022 – that’s about 1,800 times the average human’s annual emissions, or 576 times that of the average American and about 1,000 times that of the average European.
Okay, she’s an easy and visible target, but it indicates the concentration of plausible blame here: just like there’s 20 companies that produce most of the CO2, the richest 10% of the world’s population claim a lion’s share all its own.
This is the environmental variant of conspicuous consumption.
First we name, then we blame, then we shame.
5) Good or bad use of polling?
TIMES OF ISRAEL: Almost half of Gaza Palestinians willing to ask Israel to help them leave — poll
Israel makes the bed and then dares Gazans to sleep on it.
It’s working.
Per my Thursday post, and very much in line with Trump’s push for self-deportation of migrants in the US, Israel is pushing a sort of ethnic self-cleansing — and succeeding in that effort.
There is no question that it’s bad, but likewise that there’s nothing better in the offing.
Thus, this strikes me as one of those radical acceptance moments.
Tragic alright, but move it along please.
6) How many of these breakthroughs will we lose under Trump’s R&D cuts?
YAHOO: A 20-cent 'wonder drug' is being studied as a colon cancer-stopping supplement, and it looks promising
NIH: Why Is Colorectal Cancer Rising Rapidly among Young Adults?
As we get better and better at beating cancer, there is this shocking rise in colon cancer among younger people (under 50 years old, or the point when cancer is no longer out of the blue, statistically speaking).
Now, we see promise in a diabetic drug for counter-acting that trend, the origins of which remain cloudy for now.
A cheap, widely prescribed diabetes drug that some doctors have called a "wonder drug" may hold promise as a colon-cancer-fighting supplement.
Scientists who presented at the American Association for Cancer Research conference in Chicago last week are studying how metformin — the most popular diabetes medication worldwide — interacts with tough-to-treat colon cancer cells. Their research is still early and ongoing.
How much you want to beat that we see a long-term rise in cancer deaths that corresponds to Trump 2.0’s gutting of federal-funded research?
The irony: the deep Trump cuts to medical R&D are particularly stark as the biotech and AI-driven “singularity” approaches — or when exponential advances in artificial intelligence and biotechnology could radically extend human lifespan and transform medicine.
But who the hell wants to be in that game when we could be bringing back shoe manufacturing in America?
7) Meanwhile, back at the ranch house
YAHOO: Experts issue warning on major upheaval that will impact millions of homeowners: 'The system is being reshaped from the inside out'
FAST COMPANY: Could climate change trigger the next subprime mortgage crisis?
The answer is obvious, climate has come to town!
The need for insurance policy reform comes from very stark fluctuations in our environment. Data from between 1900 and 2019 shows a tenfold increase in natural disasters globally. This uptick can be largely attributed to rising planetary temperatures, exacerbated by carbon pollution and deforestation.
Will I go there? Yes I will: we’re looking at a perfect storm!
In turn, according to Insurance Business Magazine, "The average cost per natural disaster in Canada has surged by 1,250% since the 1970s, escalating from approximately $8 million to over $110 million per event."
Moreover, construction costs have surged, thus further increasing underinsurance.
We are recreating the 2008 housing crisis “bubble” that triggered the Great Recession — just this time with uninsurability replacing subprime mortgages.
Fast Company’s judgment:
Climate change is quietly corroding the foundations of the U.S. housing market. From Florida’s hurricane-battered coasts to California’s fire-razed suburbs, a crisis is brewing that could make the subprime mortgage collapse look like a warm-up act.
But rest assured: as soon as the Trump Administration kills all climate research and eliminates all related terms throughout the entirety of the federal branch, then — and only then — will we be safe from this make-believe scourge!
Will no one rid me of this turbulent meteorologist!
8) When the trigger pullers pick up that remote …
BREAKING DEFENSE: US special ops eye unmanned vessels with missiles after purported Ukrainian strike
And the learning continues:
Just days after Ukraine claimed to have shot down two Russian Su-30 jets with air-to-air missiles launched from an uncrewed surface vessel (USV) in the Black Sea, a US Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) official said they’ve seen interest in such a “marsupial” capability.
I await the training video showing a Navy SEAL candidate still operating his remote while submerged up to his neck in ice water.
9) One boy, boy for sale, he’s going cheap, only seven guineas!
NYT: Trump Administration Plans to Send Migrants to Libya on a Military Flight
Our problem: all those bodies that need to be put somewhere fast … I mean, just get them off the street!
The solution: entice impoverished and/or authoritarian government to take these bodies off your hands for a modest price.
What happens to them then?
That’s not my problem.
The decision to send deportees to Libya was striking. The country is racked with conflict, and human rights groups have called conditions in its network of migrant detention centers “horrific” and “deplorable.”
Another Trump scare tactic? Certainly, but the intent here is truly evil.
Libya, BTW, operates those horrific migrant detention centers at the request — and per the financial support from — our friends in Europe.
It’s shameful what the EU is doing in North Africa (up to and including paying local governments to dump migrants deep in the Saharan Desert), and it’s disgusting (JD Vance’s favorite term) for the US to be taking advantage.
Think ahead to climate change sending … I dunno, ten times as many migrants from South to North as the flow today.
Then imagine the depths to which rich countries may descend to get rid of this “trash.”
Or just keep your eyes on the Trump Administration — same difference.
10) I did not see that coming!
POLITICO: Vance says Russia ‘asking for too much’ to end war with Ukraine
Vance said in his speech Wednesday that Trump was prepared to walk away from the talks but stopped short of threatening sanctions.
Bold talk. That’s going to move Putin alright.
The education of JD continues …
11) That ain’t a deal. THIS is a deal!
REUTERS: Britain and India clinch major trade deal in 'new era' of Trump tariffs
The real deal, brought to you by Trump 2.0:
Britain and India clinched a long-coveted free trade pact on Tuesday after tariff turmoil sparked by U.S. President Donald Trump forced the two sides to hasten efforts to increase their trade in whisky, cars and food.
The deal, between the world's fifth and sixth largest economies, has been concluded after three years of stop-start negotiations and aims to increase bilateral trade by a further 25.5 billion pounds ($34 billion) by 2040.
Expect more of this. Trump won’t destroy globalization — just America’s economic standing within globalization.
12) Reducing the surplus population while getting the fittest to breed
Exhibit A:
Exhibit B:
GUARDIAN: MAGA’s era of ‘soft eugenics’: let the weak get sick, help the clever breed
Nobody on the Right is crying for more non-White babies to be born in America — anything but as Trump 2.0 seeks to kill birthright citizenship.
Instead, we get the “soft eugenics” of (a) let the “poor and weak” (i.e., colored people) die (also known as RFK Jr’s natural selection approach to medicine and health)) while (b) the state encourages the “right people” to breed (e.g., the Legend of Elon).
P.D. James’ Children of Men gets us Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale.
Given the nature of the dynamics involved, it is fitting that the two great future dystopian sci-fi novels of our age were both written by women.
Read ‘em and weep!
