Confabulation, dementia, and Trump

Those of us in the reality-based world face a challenge in the current US political climate. Trump and his cult followers can say anything they like without feeling the need to provide a shred of evidence in support. On the other hand, we feel that we need to provide at least some evidence for any claim.

The most recent example of this is Trump’s claim that the Bureau of Labor Statistics has rigged the latest appalling jobs numbers report to make him and Republicans look bad. Not only that, he said that the head of the bureau had faked the numbers even last year to make the economy under Joe Biden look good.

Contrast this with the increasing suspicion that Trump is suffering from severe cognitive deterioration, that he might already be in the throes of dementia. Most people will hesitate to openly say this because dementia is a medical condition that needs to be diagnosed by a professional.

But a conservative Republican attorney by the name of Chris Truax says that the evidence of Trump’s dementia has become so obvious that pretty much anyone, and definitely those who have had loved ones suffer from it, should be able to recognize it easily, especially the confabulation. He says that the kind of confabulation that Trump is demonstrating goes well beyond the more common problems of misremembering past events or conflating distinct events into one.
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Time to fire the Bureau of Labor statisticians?

The title of this blog post was the first thing that popped into my mind when I saw the latest terrible jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The US economy added 73,000 jobs in July, far lower than expected, amid ongoing concerns with Donald Trump’s escalating trade war.

Forecasters surveyed by Bloomberg had predicted the July jobs report would show a drop in added jobs to around 109,000. The unemployment rate rose to 4.2% from 4.1% in June.

The Bureau of Labor also slashed the number of jobs added in recent months. May’s jobs figure was revised down by 125,000, from 144,000 to 19,000, and June was revised down by 133,000, from 147,000 to 14,000 – a combined 258,000 fewer jobs than previously reported.

Guardian graphicSource: Bureau of Labor Statistics. Note: Seasonally adjusted nonfarm jobs.

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How Brazil came so close to a coup

Brazil is a good example of how Trump thinks that he can use the power of the US government to pursue his personal vendettas. In this case, he is imposing tariffs on that country because it is prosecuting the former president Jair Bolsonaro for fomenting a coup in that country following his defeat in the 2022 presidential election to Luis Ignacio Lula da Silva. Bolsonaro and his family have been assiduously cultivating close ties with Trump and hope that it will pay off with him using the US to get him released.

Allies of Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, have accused Donald Trump of launching “a direct attack on Brazilian democracy” after the US treasury slapped sanctions on Alexandre de Moraes, the supreme court judge widely credited with helping save Brazilian democracy from a 2022 rightwing coup.

The highly controversial US move was announced on Wednesday by the secretary of the treasury, Scott Bessent, shortly before Trump followed through on a threat to hit Brazilian imports with 50% tariffs by signing an executive order “to deal with the recent policies, practices, and actions by the government of Brazil”.

Trump has partly attributed those tariffs to his outrage at the supposed political “witch-hunt” against his far-right ally the former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, who is on trial for allegedly seeking to seize power after losing the 2022 presidential election to Lula.

Moraes is presiding over the trial, which is widely expected to result in Bolsonaro being convicted and sentenced to up to 43 years in jail, as well as several other criminal investigations into Bolsonaro and his family.

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“What’d he say? Blessed are the cheesemakers?”

The Scots know how to amusingly mock Trump during his impromptu press conference in Scotland.

“The enshittification of American power”

There is no question that the last century, and particularly since the end of the Cold War, the world has been characterized by US hegemony exercised through its military and economic power, and control over financial institutions. But in a long article in Wired with the above title, Henry Farrell and Abraham L. Newman argue that under the Trump regime, the US is starting to follow the pattern of big tech entities like Google and Facebook and that this is eventually going to lead to a decline in US power and influence in the world.

Back in 2022, Cory Doctorow coined the term “enshittification” to describe a cycle that has played out again and again in the online economy. Entrepreneurs start off making high-minded promises to get new users to try their platforms. But once users, vendors, and advertisers have been locked in—by network effects, insurmountable collective action problems, high switching costs—the tactics change. The platform owners start squeezing their users for everything they can get, even as the platform fills with ever more low-quality slop. Then they start squeezing vendors and advertisers too.

People don’t usually think of military hardware, the US dollar, and satellite constellations as platforms. But that’s what they are. When American allies buy advanced military technologies such as F-35 fighter jets, they’re getting not just a plane but the associated suite of communications technologies, parts supply, and technological support. When businesses engage in global finance and trade, they regularly route their transactions through a platform called the dollar clearing system, administered by just a handful of US-regulated institutions. And when nations need to establish internet connectivity in hard-to-reach places, chances are they’ll rely on a constellation of satellites—Starlink—run by a single company with deep ties to the American state, Elon Musk’s SpaceX. As with Facebook and Amazon, American hegemony is sustained by network logic, which makes all these platforms difficult and expensive to break away from.
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Tom Lehrer (1928-2025)

The mathematician and musical satirist has died at the age of 97. The link gives some of his better known songs but the ones I like best are his parody of My Darling Clementine

and the song about Alma Mahler Gropius Werfel.

This was somewhat unfair to Alma, portraying her merely as someone whose chief talent was to work her way through many famous men. She was, in fact, an accomplished composer and author in her own right.

Just the facts

That seems to be this Scottish newspaper’s motto for headlines.

Here is the background to the story.

For those who are offended by the news headline, the paper asks a good question.

“We can’t look away from what is happening in Gaza”

In her Saturday newsletter sent out to Guardian subscribers that has the above heading, editor-in-chief Katherine Viner lays out a powerful indictment of Israel’s horrifying crimes in Gaza and the complicity of the US and other western countries that have allowed this to continue for so long. I am reproducing it in full, along with accompanying photographs. These were some of the photographs coming out that show small children with skeletal bodies as a result of Israel’s deliberate policy of starving the entire population. The first image is evocative of the Madonna and child of Christian iconography.

Muhammad Zakariya Ayyoub al-Matouq, an 18-month old child in Gaza who faces life-threatening malnutrition. Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images

Mohammed, seven, and Zeina, 10. Their mother says the family has been ‘silencing our hunger with water’. Photograph: Seham Tantesh/The Guardian

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“Died peacefully surrounded by family”

I have read the above line many times in newspaper reports of the deaths of celebrities, most recently that of Ozzy Osbourne.

A statement from the Osbourne family reads: “It is with more sadness than mere words can convey that we have to report that our beloved Ozzy Osbourne has passed away this morning. He was with his family and surrounded by love. We ask everyone to respect our family privacy at this time.” No cause of death was given, though Osbourne had experienced various forms of ill health in recent years.

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Can AI treat loneliness?

Although I mostly live alone, I fortunately do not suffer from feelings of loneliness. That might be because I am an introvert, comfortable with solitude and being in my own thoughts and engaging in fundamentally solitary pursuits like reading and writing. It takes very little interaction with other people to satisfy my need for human companionship. But for those who thrive when engaging with others, solitude can be a real problem, leading to feelings of loneliness. Loneliness can also strike people when they are in the presence of others if they do not feel a sense of connection with them.

There has been some attention paid recently to the question of loneliness, with suggestions that its adverse effects go beyond just mental health.

A 2023 report issued by Vivek Murthy, then the U.S. Surgeon General, presented evidence that loneliness increases your risk for cardiovascular disease, dementia, stroke, and premature death. Persistent loneliness is worse for your health than being sedentary or obese; it’s like smoking more than half a pack of cigarettes a day.

Estimates suggest roughly half the US population over sixty say they feel lonely. The causes of loneliness among older people are not surprising. Friends and family die, and as their physical capabilities decline, people go out less less, engage in fewer activities, such that their social circle starts shrinking and they find new friends harder to make.
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