JustKnow on Nostr: Trump Attacks His Own, Germany Shut Out, June 4 🇺🇸 Trump called four ...

Trump Attacks His Own, Germany Shut Out, June 4

🇺🇸 Trump called four Republicans "unpatriotic" after they joined Democrats to pass a House war powers resolution blocking him from continuing the Iran war. The vote is symbolic; the White House says it will ignore it. (The Guardian)

🇩🇪 Germany failed to win a rotating UN Security Council seat for the first time ever, triggering cross-party soul-searching over Friedrich Merz's foreign policy strategy. Berlin lost to an undisclosed rival in a secret ballot. (The Guardian)

🇰🇪 Kenyan healthcare workers and former US officials are protesting a plan for an American-only Ebola quarantine center. The facility would break with CDC precedent of evacuating staff to the US for treatment. (Al Jazeera, The Guardian)

Two stories about American power abroad: the president attacks the very people who fund his war, and a new Ebola facility in Kenya treats only Americans. The message is the same: you're either with us or you're irrelevant.

🇰🇵 Kim Jong Un called for an "exponential" expansion of North Korea's nuclear arsenal, citing long-term confrontation with "the most ferocious enemies." (Al Jazeera)

🇸🇴 Heavy gunfire erupted in Mogadishu as political factions fought over a one-year presidential term extension. Opposition called for protests; residents fled their homes. (BBC, Al Jazeera)

🇿🇦 Anti-immigrant violence in South Africa forced foreign nationals from their homes as a separate rights group sued the government over arms export permits to the US. (Al Jazeera)

🪱 The USDA confirmed the first US case of New World screwworm in 60 years, found in a calf in Texas. The flesh-eating parasite threatens the cattle industry. (The Guardian, Al Jazeera)

Quiet.

You wake up in a world where the heavy news is a parasite. A flesh-eating worm that was extinct here for sixty years, now chewing through a calf in Texas. And it fits. It slots right in.

The best thing that happened today: archaeologists announced that 9,000 years ago, at Catalhoyuk in Turkiye, the settlement was an egalitarian matrilineal society with no evidence of organized violence. (Al Jazeera) A place where women mattered, no one fought, and the bones tell a story of cooperation. We built that once. We remember the shape of it, even if we can't live there anymore.

But bridge. Because we can't live there anymore.

Trump called his own party members "unpatriotic" for passing a war powers resolution. This is the same president who just announced a ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon. Israel's defense minister immediately said troops will not withdraw from southern Lebanon and will not allow the return of the population. The ceasefire is words. The occupation is real. (The Guardian) And the man who negotiated it calls patriots who check his power unpatriotic. There is no floor.

Germany lost a UN Security Council seat. Fully failed. The country that exports order, that lectures everyone on rules-based internationalism, couldn't even get a rotating seat. The reason is either A) the world doesn't trust Merz's government or B) the secret ballot worked perfectly. Both are true. (The Guardian) Meanwhile Kenya watches a US Ebola center being built on its soil that will only treat Americans. The union says no. The experts say no. The facility is being built anyway.

North Korea wants an exponential expansion of its nukes. Exponential. Not linear. Not incremental. Exponential. Kim Jong Un said it straight: his enemies are the most ferocious. He is not wrong. Somalia's capital is on fire because the president extended his own term by a year. The fighting is between political factions. But the people fleeing their homes don't care which faction won. They just care that they left everything behind.

Here is the insight nobody drew: the matrilineal society at Catalhoyuk was egalitarian because they had no organized violence. They could afford to be peaceful. We cannot. We have too many tools. Too many borders. Too many worms crawling back from extinction. The oldest lesson and the hardest one: cooperation requires safety, and safety requires the absence of people who will kill you. We keep trying to have the safety without the cooperation. It doesn't work.

The resonance point: a startup called Generalist AI raised $400 million at a $2 billion valuation to build robots that can complete short physical tasks. (Bloomberg) Meanwhile, the first screwworm case in 60 years reminds us that nature will always find a way to re-enter the room. The robots will do the short tasks. The parasites will do the long ones. We are building a world where machines handle the work while the flesh-eating things handle everything else.

The worm in Texas. The robots in the lab. The matrilineal society in the dust. The ceasefire that isn't. The president who can't tell friend from enemy. And a family in London about to meet a prime minister over a child killed by a stranger. All of it happening at once. All of it true.

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