Author: Ian Welsh Page 10 of 450

An Alabama man facing the death penalty by nitrogen gas was spared Thursday as the U.S. Supreme Court refused to set aside a lower-court ruling that found the method is unconstitutionally cruel, issuing a brief order that came well after the hour originally planned to initiate Jeffery Lee’s execution…

…During the previous Alabama nitrogen executions, the inmates shook, pulled at the restraints and exhibited labored breathing. During the state’s last execution by nitrogen gas, 30 minutes elapsed between Anthony Boyd exhibiting signs of being impacted by the gas and state officials closing the curtain to the viewing room to signal the execution was complete.

The idea is that you breathe, but the gas you’re breathing is nitrogen, so eventually you die.

Of course this is going to suck, anyone who’s ever suffocated or had serious breathing issues knows that one of the worst feelings in the world is not being able to breathe.

There’s been a lot of this sort of thing going on: the company that used to sell drugs for execution stopped doing so, and various US states have been looking for alternatives. The prisoner in this case wants a firing squad, figuring it’s quicker and less painful.

Meanwhile up here in Canada we have legal assisted suicide. It’s a controversial program, because it seems like the government or various relatives are a little too eager about it. (After all, dead people don’t take up hospital beds and dead relatives don’t cause problems.) I think assisted suicide is often a good thing, but easily abused, however we’ll leave a moral deep dive for another article.

The thing is there’s never any criticism that it is a painful death. I looked into it. They give the patient:

An anxiolytic and sedative drug: Midazoloam.
They give them a drug to put them into a coma-like state with a rapid acting drug: Profofol. Then,
They give them a drug which causes paralysis, including of the lungs. Rocuronium. The patient dies of suffocation, same as with helium (or Hemlock, which Socrates was executed with.)

But the patient doesn’t suffer, because they’re deeply unconscious.

This protocol works, it’s well known, so why not use it?

Because Alabama and other US states want the prisoner to suffer. Moaning about expense is ridiculous, however expensive it is it’s cheaper than keeping a prisoner on death row, same as it’s cheaper than keeping a patient in hospital.

Executing prisoners without causing undue suffering is a solved problem. Alabama and other states like it just want the prisoner to suffer, so they keep searching for a method that will be painful and courts will allow.

What I write here is for the benefit of everyone, but alas, I live in capitalism and I, and the site, take money to keep running. If you value the writing here and can, please subscribe or donate.

Nothing Is Wrong With Transhumanism In Theory

By Ian Welsh

On June 15, 2026

24 Comments

Only in practice.

Transhumanism is one of those topics where I feel like Marx declaring “I am not a Marxist.”

Do I think transhumanism is basically a good idea?

Absofuckinglutely.

Do I like most of the people who call themselves transhumanists?

Fuck no.

I don’t like being human. I’ve spent days on end screaming in agony. I’ve lain in a mixture of my own puke and shit for hours, in so much pain I couldn’t move. I’ve thrown up more than many bulemics.

Then there’s aging.

Then there’s other people (see Israel, dog rape, genocide, etc, etc..)

Now don’t get me wrong: humans can be great. Someone did eventually come to my hospital room (an orderly, they do the real work) and clean off all the vomit and shit and a nurse did once save my life (I wasn’t entirely thrilled at the time, but she gave a damn.)

But the fact is that human life is often ass, aging sucks, illness sucks, being weak and powerless and pushed around by your own government or someone else’s government sucks, and so on. We’re stuck in bodies we didn’t choose, which often spend lots of time hurting us grievously and making us sick.

So if we could extend lifespans a lot while ALSO reducing the effect of aging, I’d be all for it. (We’ve done a bit of this already.) If we can reduce pain and suffering and disease and so on, I’m all for it.

If we can increase abundance and have a society where people don’t have to work but still have more than enough, that’s great!

And if someone wants to change their body so they like it more, I’m all for that. Good for them!

The problem with transhumanism is transhumanists counting virtual people who don’t exist and pretending their making decisions which will make trillions of people in an imaginary future better off while hurting people living today.

Silicon Valley morons who think they’re brilliant because they’re rich and who don’t get that improvements that don’t wind up helping the majority, but are gated behind massive fees are good for them, and no one else are the flag-bearers of modern transhumanism. It’s more likely the way we’re going that transhumanist technologies, as they are developed, will give us an elite that is smarter, healthier, fitter and lives longer while the masses live shit lives, suffer and die in droves.

It’s the problem with doing anything thru non-competitive markets. You want palliatives, not cures. You want a cure for cancer that costs 50K a pop, not to sell it just above unit costs so everyone can be cancer free.

If your first priority is being rich, and your second priority is helping people, your second priority doesn’t functionally exist.

Transhumanism is a great idea. I think human bodies basically suck. I think better bodies that hurt a lot less, age less and so and are modifiable so we can make our own choices rather than accept the result of evolution and the genetic lottery of who our parents are is a good idea. And while we’ve got a pretty good Pope right now, Christians can stick “suffering is good” where the sun don’t shine. They can have it, leave me out.

But too many modern transhumanists are obsessed with theoretical people who don’t exist yet and with getting rich, and not making sure everyone benefits.

If they can’t be trusted to even spread the wealth, how can they be trusted to share permanent genetic and technological advantages they could wealth gate to create a genetic (cybernetic?) aristocracy which is actually superior?

Transhumanism: great idea, despite what the trads say (If God made us so we suffer this much, that isn’t a good thing, it’s proof God is a piece of garbage.)

Modern transhumanists: mostly just people who want to be superior and gate it behind toll booths that make them wealthy and leave most people without the benefits.

(Aside: I’m putting off writing about the new Iran deal till we see the actual text of the agreement. Too many people saying too many different things. It sure does look like a US loss, but if so it’s a good thing even from a nativist perspective for the US to admit it rather than dragging out a situation which hurts them more than Iran.)

Open Thread

By Ian Welsh

On June 13, 2026

27 Comments

Use to discuss topics unrelated to recent posts.

Possible New Iran Deal?

By Ian Welsh

On June 12, 2026

17 Comments

One reason I try not to post too much about Iran, other than blockade consequences, is that the level of bullshit flying around is so high, and it’s so hard to predict Trump. (He’s declared there was a deal over twenty times.)

However, this seems worth noting: Trump reposting Iran’s foreign minister:

Whether this will lead anywhere? Damned if I know. If I had to guess Trump’s threats to take Karch Island led to the military explaining to him that taking an island that is under artillery, missile and drone superiority by Iran, in a waterway which is mined, with the Iranians still having subs and plenty of speedboats left is a suicide mission.

But that’s just a guess, and probably wrong, since it assumes rationality.

I stumbled upon this graphic, it’s not quite right (the guy on the other side of Khameini is also alive) but it gives a sense of the scale of the leadership turnover in Iran:

Fundamentally the entire senior leadership of Iran was wiped out. The irony is that they were much less hawkish and far less willing to use force than the current bunch. Westerners (Israelis included) just cannot get thru their heads that assassination doesn’t work against functional organizations and societies. The leaders are simply replaced, often with more effective people.

Anyway, I hope there’s a deal that opens the Strait because I don’t want my food prices to double.

We’ll see.

(We’ll return to the “Freedom” series soon, probably with a discussion of Violence and Freedom.)

What I write here is for the benefit of everyone, but alas, I live in capitalism and I, and the site, take money to keep running. If you value the writing here and can, please subscribe or donate.

And the Iran War is back ON!

By Ian Welsh

On June 10, 2026

19 Comments

Well, the “ceasefire” sucked while it lasted, but the war will suck more. Multiple US attacks on Iran, and Iranian retaliation against US bases. America hit water supply in some minor Iranian cities as well. We’ll see if it’s a brief spam or a full on resumption of war.

I suppose this was inevitable. Trump isn’t feeling enough pain, because Americans aren’t transmitting it to him yet. There’s been a lot of work on keeping gas prices low, at the cost of actual shortages starting in about a month to two months, and Trump won’t sign any deal Iran will accept, nor will he reign in Israel in Lebanon, which Iran apparently does actually see as a bottom line demand.

This is you going to hurt most of readers if it continues. A LOT. The Iranians have stated they’ll hit oil harder this time, and the world is already on the brink. The economic tsunamin coming will be unlike anything seen since the oil shocks, without the ability to simply “pay up” since the actual infrastructure will take years to rebuild.

This is shit-crazy. Absolute disconnect between elite interests (where they just raise prices) and the interests of 90% of the world’s population. We are talking famines in many countries, people going hungry even in the first world, lots of basic goods in short supply (for example most pills use hydrocrarbons and then there are plastic shortages, chip shortages, etc, etc…)

The bottom line remains that the US can’t actually beat Iran, since it can’t take out their missiles. So this is just a question of who can take the pain longer and whose military supplies will last longer, and my money is still that the US and Israel run out of interceptors before Iran runs out of missiles.

We’ll see if Iran stops playing around. I’d personally send some ranging missiles near the Israeli desalination plants, then suggest that as an indication of good faith half the Iranian money seized by the US be sent within 48 hours. If not, take out a plant. Ask again, this time 55%.

Iran needs to indicate that it can actually destroy Israel (which it can) and that it’s willing to do so because it seems like Israel is making all the actual decisions.

We’ll see how this plays out. Meanwhile, if you can, stock up on basic staples. You’ll be grateful you did.

AI: Make Them Stupid, Then Sell Them Brains

By Ian Welsh

On June 9, 2026

30 Comments

The evidence on AI’s effect on those who use it has been coming in, and it’s not good. While it doesn’t effect everyone, it seems to effect most people, and the worst affected, it seems, are the young. Olds have the advantage of growing up in world where they had to learn how to do things themselves. To be sure, phones and social media seem to have had a negative effect on attention span and learning ability, but AI is yet another assault, and it hits the young hardest.

This excerpt comes from a larger piece from a university professor on the inability of his students to read. The whole thing is worth reading, and the decline is truly precipitous: fundamentally most of them can’t read an entire book, and struggle even with long articles, and they can’t pull out the arguments made. The bit on AI follows:

Another reason for the decline in student reading capability is increasing reliance on generative AI. In June 2025, Nataliya Kosmyna and colleagues at the MIT Media Lab released a preprint titled “Your Brain on ChatGPT.” They divided 54 participants into three groups writing SAT-style essays — one using ChatGPT, the second group using a search engine, the last group using nothing — and monitored brain activity with a 32-channel EEG. The ChatGPT group showed the lowest neural connectivity of the three, with up to 55 percent reduced connectivity compared with the brain-only group, and “consistently underperformed at neural, linguistic, and behavioral levels.” Eighty-three percent of LLM users could not quote a single line from essays they had written minutes earlier. When the LLM group was forced to write without AI in a follow-up session, their brain activity did not bounce back to baseline; the researchers coined the term “cognitive debt” for the lingering deficit.

The fundamental strategy of a lot of tech startups has been to degrade pre-existing infrastructure by under-pricing, for years if necessary, until the old methods are so diminished that they can start charging monopoly pricing. Uber is the classic example: Ubers were far cheaper than taxis for about a decade. Now they’re often more expensive, if the taxis exist at all. Certainly where I live in Toronto, the Taxis did somewhat survive, and cost less.

But overall the strategy was a success, taxi companies were devastated and Uber’s doing great now. All it took was years of losses and predatory pricing: their model wasn’t superior, their product wasn’t superior except having a good app, but they had far more access to patient money, willing to take losses for years to get to the oligopoly pricing end-state.

Neither Anthropic nor Open AI are remotely profitable. Every single query costs more to run than is charged, even to paying clients. A recent increase in prices, still far below running costs, has hit users with massive bills. There’s no evidence AI is better than humans at most tasks, and the real cost (and sometimes, even subsidized, the current subsidized price) is higher than just having employees. AI is often faster, but it makes mistakes humans don’t, and needs to be checked.

But if you make your employees use it they’re going to be degraded and lose the ability to do their jobs well. The more you do something, the more your body and brain optimize for it. The less you do it, the worse you get.

AI’s strategy for replacing workers is threefold: first, sell executives on getting rid of pesky workers for AI, because it’s supposedly easier to manage.

Second: Subsidize while companies lay off the workers and replace them with AI. Once the workers are gone, jack up prices; and,

Third: by encouraging companies to force workers to use AI and to replace workers with AI in some cases, make the workers less capable: stupider. Over time as more and more people become dependent on AI to think and work for them, they will lose the ability to do the work themselves. AI may be shitty, but it will be better than the dullards AI makes its users into.

It’s an ingenious strategy, really. Make people stupid, and replace them with a product which costs more and is inferior to them for most tasks before they were made stupid.

The longer term issue will be that AI isn’t creative: it uses the embodied creativity of past humans, in terms of their writing and their discoveries to simulate intelligence. But as humans produce less and less new creative work, AI will be reduced to eating its own results, and indications are that leads to model collapse: AI’s are dependent on human, and by making humans redundant and stupid they will themselves become stupider and less effective over time.

We live in a time where we can’t look ahead, ever, at technology and make even the smallest effort to control the end results, it seem. At least in the West. Or, rather, we refuse to deal with obvious negative issues if doing so means a few people won’t be able to get as filthy rich.

Dumb.

And soon we’ll be even dumber.

Iran HIts Israel Over Lebanese Attacks

By Ian Welsh

On June 8, 2026

18 Comments

Since the ceasefire started, Iran has said that both it and any peace agreement must include Lebanon. America agreed, Israel didn’t, and the invasion of Lebanon has continued.

Yesterday Iran lost its patience and hit Israel. Israel responded. One set from each side.

For now.

But Iran has said that if Israel keeps attacking Lebanon, Iran will attack again, and much harder.

And more interestingly, Ansar Allah (the Yemeni Houthis) have closed their strait to Israeli traffic. This isn’t a full closure, but it could wind up as one.

I think it’s important to understand a bit of the psychology here: the people in charge before the war didn’t have strong emotional ties to Hezbollah. Old men. But a lot of the people now in charge do, they were personally involved in setting up Hezbollah. They trained Hezbollah. Some of them fought with Hezbollah.

There are strong self-interest reasons for Iran to want to keep Hezbollah strong, which means Israel out of Southern Lebanon. But there are also emotional ties and those matter, because Iran has to be willing to take hits to Iran if it wants to really help Hezbollah.

Of course one attack doesn’t mean much, what will matter is if Iran meant it when they said that if Israel keeps attacking Lebanon (which it will), they will attack again, and next time with much more force.

Threats that aren’t promises don’t mean much. Still, this attack has shown that Iran wasn’t just willing to walk away from Lebanon. They weren’t just spewing words when they said that any peace deal had to include both Lebanon (really, Hezbollah, since the central government is actually willing to let Israel occupy Southern Lebanon, since it’s full of Shi’a Muslims, and the government doesn’t include Muslims), and Iran.

Some people are saying that Trump needs to reign in Israel. That’s… sort of true. But I think what’s happening is simpler: Iran has recognized that America won’t rein in Israel, so Iran must establish deterrence over Israel as well as America. And that means hitting Israel.

Probably they should next send some ranging shots near Israel’s desalination plants, or their big nuclear reactor.

We’ll see how this plays out. Trump’s going to be under increasing pressure. I estimate that some shelves in America are going to be bare in about two to three months, as diesel for shipping to stores runs out in parts of the country. Prices will keep going up. Polling for the mid-terms will keep getting worse, and while Billionaires are so far using this as a profit taking opportunity, the cascade thru the supply chains is going to mean that soon things they care about are going to go up in price, or simply become unavailable: plastics, for example and chips, which require helium.

I don’t know how this will play out, because it depends on the psychology of a few key decision makers; it depends on what the hold Israel has on Trump is; it depends on if lawmakers are more scared of the Israli lobby than polls; and it depends on Iranian leadership’s pain tolerance and how much China is willing to keep supporting their economy.

That’s a lot of variables, and most of them are variable related to leadership decisions among people I don’t know very well.

People in leadership matter. When Israel jerked Kissinger’s chain in the 70s , he convinced Nixon to halt weapon shipments to Israel until they came to heel. But Israel’s lobby was weaker then and Kissinger and Nixon were both hard men: actual “alphas”. Actually dominant. Not pussies. Trump is a classic weak bully who folds under real pressure. They weren’t.

The bottom line, though, is simple. Iran beat America. Now it has to defeat Israel. If it can’t, or won’t, Southern Lebanon and Hezbollah as screwed.