Harvard says the administration’s move is unlawful.

And most likely, it is.

However, for a foreign student to enter the US currently to study (presumably for several years) does kind of feel like jumping onto a hovercraft crewed by eels.

It is.

Who’s gonna stop them?

The first line (diplomacy):

Several factions in the Libyan government have warm relations with Turkey. Turkey has so far antagonized with Israel over the matter of Gaza. It’s not hard to predict that factions in the Libyan government, upon Trump’s likely blackmail (he can do little else) to accept the deportation of million ethnically cleansed Palestinians, would receive a phone call from their Turkish, Quatari, Algerian and Pakistani backers, telling them to “stop discussing that nonsense” and asking them to reject Trump. So, most likely the Libyan government will fail to reach a consensus.

The second line (politics):

The Libyan parliament will not support it. Parliament may remove the government if it’s doing something unpalatable

The third line (war):

Libyan people will not support it. Various factions may rebel again and restart the civil war if they see the government acting seriously against their wishes.

Since their sovereign wealth fund is emptying, they will implode anyway. War is an incredibly expensive thing.

The key requirements for Russia’s implosion:

• no change in military situation
• China not keeping Russia afloat
• EU keeping Ukraine afloat
• the US doing a bit more than comical relief

Pharmaceutical companies will demand higher prices from countries with socialized healthcare. Those higher costs will be passed on to the citizens of those countries.

I’ve tried to analyze whether this can happen.

Maybe. Countries with socialized health care typically have disproportionately great bargaining power relative to their size. A pharamaceutical company may not be inclined to demand higher prices from a customer who buys great quantities.

Countries may also enter international alliances to obtain cheaper access to some product, like the EU did in case of COVID vaccines. Currently, companies have contracts they cannot back out from. Countries with single payer systems also have laws which regulate the purchase of pharamaceuticals, and those won’t be changing soon.

Basically, it seems that the only thing Trump can do to immediately alter prices, is to start a trade war. Which would raise prices for US consumers and lead to unreliable access to certain drugs, putting people’s lives in direct danger.

Finally, even if we suppose that one category of customers agree to pay higher prices (likely not for long, foreign competitors would quickly step in and offer alternatives) - there’s no guarantee that savings obtained in such a way will be passed down to another category of customers (who have lower bargaining power) without legislation to ensure that. But legislation comes from the Congress…

Diagnosis:

The US system for financing medicine has middlemen who increase prices. The consumer / patient has poor representation and low bargaining power. In European countries, there typically exists a central health insurance authority that’s not interested in making a profit, but is interested in everyone’s health and access to medicines (at low cost if possible).

Subsequently, a president arrives who doesn’t understand a thing. He’s been told that his ratings are dropping and he should “do something the people like”. He tries to solve drug prices with customs tariffs instead of implementing single payer health care in the US.

Prognosis:

The result will be a free market clusterf*ck and some people will die as a result.

Yes. These guys have a vested interest in their client selling F-35 parts, so they will try to paint white as black.

The interesting part will be whether the court accepts their reasoning.

Considering that he hurt the US economy considerably in the process of getting tootled by China, I don’t think he has credit to spare for repeating the same process with the EU.

Depends.

If an overwhelming crowd can come together fast - arrest can be blocked and persons de-arrested. But it has to be overwhelming, so that no cop would think of aiming a gun.

Throughout the history of resisting repression - this arrangement is hard to spontaneously produce.

As a minimum, people would have to organize with the clear goal of interrupting ICE raids. They’d likely establish a means of communcation (most likely a phone app backed up by mesh networking) and dedicate resources to offering each other legal assistance later. Possibly, everyone who goes to jail for the hypothetical anti-ICE movement should be celebrated like a rock star (with their permission) and their families should be helped through hardship, to encourage people to undertake risky actions.

The other option - working underground - would be exhausting either ICE or a local police force by persistent sabotage against them. Neutralizing the ICE would have the aim of them organizing less raids, neutralizing police might have the aim of them not backing ICE raids. While more straightforward to accomplish, this approach would bring about high risk (e.g. accusations of terrorism) to people carrying out sabotage. To avoid this, sabotage would have to be carefully considered and low-key. Perhaps, for example, it would aim to upset the agency’s ability to process data - to know whom it actually wants to deport.

Of course, with local police, one should consider the potential outcomes of successfully neutralizing police: both their negative and positive functions would be neutralized, and people might start complaining about crime.

A curious tactical perspective becomes evident when thinking about this: police resources could be diverted in peaceful ways, with false reports.

When I think of how one might decrease police responsiveness to an ICE backup request, I can’t avoid thinking of nice movie scenarios: e.g. while some people are busy obstructing an ICE raid, some other reliably anonymous people divert police resources by calling 911 and reporting various violent situations elsewhere. Others create a traffic jam, effectively isolating the street involved from motor vehicle traffic. Backup will have to arrive on foot, after they’re done chasing the hostage-taking bank robbers who did not exist. :)

Despite the suspicion-causing “Trump says” expression in the title, the news has been confirmed.

It’s a relief that they stopped. This could have turned really ugly.

The doctrine of the EU so far, is to consider China a multi-faced player: a partner for cooperation, an economic competitor and a systemic rival (e.g. it’s possible to cooperate with China on climate, but not on human rights).

So far, China has also been a multi-faced player. Xi has patted Putin on the back and declared “unlimited partnership”, but no Chinese weapons have been seen in Ukraine. Chinese soldiers have been observed there, but they seem to be really few for a country of that size - either mercenaries or people obtaining first hand experience under mercenary cover. Too few to matter as soldiers.

China has warm trade relations with Russia and has helped Russia source technology and endure sanctions. However, they haven’t made a special and dedicated effort to insulate Russia from secondary sanctions, and several Chinese companies have applied sanctions on Russia as a result.

On other occasions, Chinese representatives have said nice words about Ukraine’s territorial integrity. But deeds haven’t followed.

In UN votes about Ukraine, China often abstains.

Officially, China doesn’t sell drones to Russia or Ukraine. In reality, both Ukrainian and Russian drones are full of Chinese parts. Ukrainian government is asking every bigger player to have a plan B that works without China, but few really have one. What Russian government asks of their drone makers, I don’t know.

I think the video refers to this event: back in 2022, a journalist was shot by Israeli troops while covering a raid in a refugee camp.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Shireen_Abu_Akleh

The most recent news article about it is from Al Jazeera, 1 day ago:

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/5/8/new-documentary-identifies-soldier-who-shot-shireen-abu-akleh

As for Biden’s role, Al Jazeera describes it thusly:

The administration of former US President Joe Biden had “concluded early on that an Israeli soldier had intentionally targeted her, but that conclusion was overruled internally”, he said.

“We found some concerning evidence that both Israel and the Biden administration had covered up Shireen’s killing and allowed the soldier to get away without any accountability,” he added.

So, they were able to do the math, but subsequently “fell on their tongue” instead of speaking up. Later on, the issue was dragged out into public attention anyway, but Israel failed to investigate properly and prosecute the killing (they apologized, though). As of yesterday, the primary suspect’s name is also known. But that doesn’t guarantee much.

Myself, I actively avoid YouTube as a source of news, since YouTube has a recommendation algorithm that feeds people content that it thinks they want. To get news about the Middle East, I’ll recommend Al Jazeera almost without hesitation.

They should stop escalating this folly.

It would be a major victory for a dozen terrorists, if they managed to provoke two large countries into an actual war, and currently this seems to be happening.

A dozen guys with rifles, murdering 26 civilians, have caused two countries to wreck billions worth of equipment and one of them to play games with a large river too.

This is not supposed to be possible. If this is possible, it’s proof that terrorism works. :(

I would not use to the word “good” in any sentence describing such events - nothing like that is good.

However, risk of their state not lasting because they alienated most allies and made countless enemies, should make people (even politicians) think twice.

If Gaza will be entirely destroyed, there is a considerable risk that Israel will meet the same fate later.

If a country spans only 22 000 square kilometers and is inhabited by 10 million people, it’s not very smart to make enemies among every group who can relate to Palestinians - for example Muslims (about 1.9 billion people) or perhaps Arabs (around 400 million people).

Put simply - Israel has withstood various pressures because of US backing.

The US currently runs a high risk of getting somewhat indisposed due to a president they elected acting very foolishly. If the US should break down, Israel will find itself very isolated.

If Israel makes a record amount of determined enemies now, it may have a record amount of people seeking its downfall later. Even if the Israeli government doesn’t care the slightest amount about Palestinians, it should consider its own future before acting in the described way.

There seems to be confirmation from various sources.

It’s stupid. Because of what a dozen terrorists did, a country of 1.4 billion and 250 million people risk getting into a war.

I think Elon was having the opposite kind of problems, with Grok not validating its users nearly enough, despite Elon instructing employees to make it so. :)

From the article (emphasis mine):

Having read his chat logs, she only found that the AI was “talking to him as if he is the next messiah.” The replies to her story were full of similar anecdotes about loved ones suddenly falling down rabbit holes of spiritual mania, supernatural delusion, and arcane prophecy — all of it fueled by AI. Some came to believe they had been chosen for a sacred mission of revelation, others that they had conjured true sentience from the software.

/…/

“It would tell him everything he said was beautiful, cosmic, groundbreaking,” she says.

From elsewhere:

Sycophancy in GPT-4o: What happened and what we’re doing about it

We have rolled back last week’s GPT‑4o update in ChatGPT so people are now using an earlier version with more balanced behavior. The update we removed was overly flattering or agreeable—often described as sycophantic.

I don’t know what large language model these people used, but evidence of some language models exhibiting response patterns that people interpret as sycophantic (praising or encouraging the user needlessly) is not new. Neither is hallucinatory behaviour.

Apparently, people who are susceptible and close to falling over the edge, may end up pushing themselves over the edge with AI assistance.

What I suspect: someone has trained their LLM on somethig like religious literature, fiction about religious experiences, or descriptions of religious experiences. If the AI is suitably prompted, it can re-enact such scenarios in text, while adapting the experience to the user at least somewhat. To a person susceptible to religious illusions (and let’s not deny it, people are suscpecptible to finding deep meaning and purpose with shallow evidence), apparently an LLM can play the role of an indoctrinating co-believer, indoctrinating prophet or supportive follower.

As a someone who studied biology: at an early age, you don’t want more neuroplasticity. You already have enough. More may do you harm, and cannabis gives more, so cannabis may do you harm.

When you’re 70 and your neural networks are set in stone, do consider what could safely increase neuroplasticity. But whatever you consume, don’t consume it by inhaling smoke. :)

He might have been old and frail, but apparently stayed up to date with world affairs.

While hopelessly symbolic, this is an excellent move to draw attention to the hunger and disease occurring in Gaza due to Israel’s blockade on humanitarian aid.