collapse of the old society

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/42846182

Yes, that Exxon

Not the standard "AI will kill us" garbage, but actual evidence of them undermining the web.

There is no single source accounting for race in Alzheimer’s research, but clinical trials and research studies are known to skew toward wealthy and white participants. In just one clue about the level of disparity, of more than 12,000 brain-imaging studies on Alzheimer’s, only about 700 report race at all. Studies that do report race have more than 87% white participants. As of 2020, census data found about 58% of the US population was white.

As the Trump administration attempts to remake science according to its own priorities – canceling, freezing or otherwise disrupting more than 5,700 medical research grants at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) – work such as Dubowitz’s has been alternately labeled “DEI” (diversity, equity and inclusion) or unscientific.

Researchers were given 90 days to shut down the study, more than five months earlier than expected and a year earlier than hoped. It’s far too little time to conduct cognitive “adjudications,” where a neuropsychologist and geriatric psychiatrist were expected to interpret the results of all 600 participants – experts that the researchers now can’t pay.

Climate breakdown probably weakened the glacier that collapsed causing catastrophic floods and killing hundreds of people in Nepal and Tibet last month, the first scientific study of the disaster has found.

Researchers identified unusually warm conditions before the glacier’s collapse, which sent an avalanche of 110m cubic metres (3,885 cu ft) of snow and ice into the valley below. This triggered flash floods on an almost unprecedented scale, hitting communities downstream without warning.

I'm assuming most sane people presumed this but interesting confirmation

A video about Boomers, Zoomers, and Doomers.

Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor launch their new book, End Times Fascism: And the Fight for the Living World on Democracy Now! It examines how wealthy elites are preparing for “the end of the world,” even as they contribute to growing inequality, political instability and the climate crisis. The rise of modern-day fascism is “not simply a rerun,” explains Klein. “We don't believe that history repeats on a loop. We believe that we're in something more like a sequel, where the logics of fascism, which are the logics of dehumanization, of othering, of racial supremacy and hierarchy, are now being applied in a time of global existential crisis.” In response, says Taylor, the growing movement seeking to resist this fatalistic vision “fundamentally needs to be grounded in a desire to stay here on Earth, to commit to this place.”

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/42708756

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/70811552

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/70759119

Looking into it all, the Houthi takeover of the Bab el-Mandeb area signals a fundamental restructuring of Red Sea security, transforming the chokepoint from a contested transit corridor into a frontline in the wider Iran-Israel confrontation. By extending its reach from Yemen’s western coast into the strait itself, Tehran has gained greater leverage over one of the world’s most critical maritime routes while drawing the Horn of Africa deeper into the strategic fallout of the Middle East conflict.

That shift also changes the challenge facing those seeking to secure the waterway. Conventional freedom-of-navigation patrols and intermittent retaliatory strikes will struggle to contain a threat built around dispersed coastal positions, low-cost drones, missiles, and flexible logistics networks. The more likely outcome is a prolonged period of elevated maritime risk, higher freight and insurance costs, and increasingly fragmented security arrangements.

also see https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/sep/11/iran-houthi-allies-capture-strategic-island-bab-al-mandab-strait

While falling just short of an absolute majority, the AfD surged into first place in the Saxony-Anhalt state election on Sunday, exit polls ⁠showed, putting the far right within reach ​of power at ‌the state level for ‌the first time since the second world war.

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2026/09/07/esuu-s07.html

The Nazis achieved a better result in a state election on only two occasions before Hitler’s coming to power in January 1933—in May 1932 in Oldenburg, with 48.4 percent, and June 1932 in Mecklenburg-Schwerin, with 49 percent. In Anhalt (part of what is now Saxony-Anhalt), the Nazis secured 40.7 percent in April 1932 and formed one of the first Nazi-led state governments. In the Reichstag election in November 1932, the last before Hitler’s appointment as chancellor, the Nazis received 33.1 percent. Since the end of the Third Reich, no far-right party has ever again achieved a comparably high election result.

This result does not mean that every AfD voter is a Nazi. The AfD is not a fascist mass party. It is a product of the shift to the right across the entire bourgeois political spectrum and owes its rise to the degeneration of the trade unions and the parties that once claimed to represent the interests of the workers. They have betrayed the workers so often and so thoroughly that the AfD has been able to capitalise on the outrage and frustration this has caused.

Private equity investors also bought thousands of healthcare facilities in the US in recent years, including non-profit hospice care, rural hospitals and small-town dentists’ offices.

But this wave of buyouts is running smack into a wall of persistently high interest rates, rising buyout prices and pressure over moribund returns.

Private equity funds are sitting on a “record number of unsold companies, many of which they’ve been unable to sell … or at least unable to sell at the prices that they’re looking for”, said Jim Baker, the executive director of the Private Equity Stakeholder Project, an industry watchdog.

The current catastrophic bullshitting tool of choice for the Finance industry is Private Equity.

Also see https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/sep/04/private-equity-boom-hospital-job-layoff

It’s unclear whether we have a total crisis on our hands, in part due to shady reporting standards at pension funds, but it is clear that we have a real problem in private credit regardless. The issue is downstream of the problem in private equity where holding periods are up, and by extension, the net asset value (NAV) of funds held over seven years (sometimes referred to as “zombie funds”) has doubled since 2021. They can’t sell the asset, so they build continuation vehicles to recapitalize and hide the struggle that’s going on. But the real risk of this slowdown weighs on retirees, current and future.

“We’ve failed to act on the options that were available 15 or 20 years ago to reduce emissions rapidly,” said report co-author Joeri Rogelj, a climate scientist at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Austria and a professor at Imperial College London. “The reality is that we have failed in that endeavor, and it needs to be acknowledged.”

The new report does just that, and it is alarming because the climate impacts projected for warming above 1.5 degrees Celsius are “unacceptable or unbearable for at least the poorest and the most vulnerable communities around the world,” he said. This summer, with heatwaves that killed thousands in Europe and burned parts of towns in North America, showed that developed countries in the Global North are not immune, he added.

It’s been one disaster after another. And it may pale compared to what’s coming.