Monday morning Labubu lawsuits

by Didact | Aug 11, 2025 | Mondays | 0 comments

Well, the weekend was fun while it lasted – which really was not very long, or so it seems to me. On the plus side, I did manage to finish HALO Infinite, and I have to say, it is EASILY the best game in the series since HALO 3. (Which, admittedly, is not exactly the highest of bars to clear – NO game in the series since the Bungie days came anywhere close, though HALO 4 certainly gave it the old college try. The less said about H5G, the better.)

Nonetheless, it is Monday, and we must deal with it on its own terms – which is to say, by doing our level best to ignore its horrors altogether. (This week’s headline picture is kindly supplied by LRFotS Chris – thank you, sir.)

This week, we kick off with something about a weird bunch of daemonic toys called “labubus”, which apparently are outlawed in Russia (I might be wrong about this). And, probably, with good reason:

Honestly, this just looks like Huggy Wuggy 2.0:

The first time I came across one of those things was at Tatsminda Park in Tbilisi. It freaked me out to see those things – they are SERIOUSLY creepy. Those things ARE, in fact, banned in Russia, and, again, with VERY good reason.

#BasedTucker is Based

The next two videos are absolute must-watches:

Dawn of Battle

The Male Brain has plenty of great stuff for us to kick off the week:

Death Smiles At Us All…

Culture Beats

Veterans’ Day

Judge’s Ruling

MUH RUSHIAN KAHLOOOOOOOZHUN!!!

Царь Приказывает

Дед Сварливый Говорит!

Доктор Бровкин Учит

Дядя Стась Объясняет

Polonium

Timeo Danaos Et Donna Ferentes…

Bad Medicine

Warriors of Faith

Manly Men of Manliness

Burn Paedowood to the Ground

Reading Too Much Into Things

Your Science is F***ing Weird moment of the week is from The Male Brain, and looks at how we might just be able to eat food made from “air” very soon:

In the last century, we’ve inched toward creating food from nothing, making progress by teasing apart the incredibly complex biochemical pathways associated with plant physiology. But if we’ve learned anything since Berthelot’s experiments, it’s that photosynthesis—what plants are naturally programmed to do—can’t be easily replicated industrially. But that hasn’t stopped a handful of companies from trying.

In April 2024, Solar Foods opened a factory in Vantaa, Finland—a sleek facility where workers monitor large tanks filled with atmospheric gases. Inside the tanks, water transforms into a protein-rich slurry. Dehydrated, the slurry becomes a golden powder packed with protein and other nutrients, ready to be turned into pasta, ice cream, and protein bars. The powdery substance, Solein, resembles Berthelot’s vision, as does the factory, which uses atmospheric gases to enable “food production anywhere in the world,” according to a 2025 company press release, “as production is not dependent on weather, climate conditions, or land use.” But the similarities with Berthelot’s vision end there. Solar Foods may not require land or plants to produce food, but their technology derives from a living organism. Using a form of fermentation, it relies on a microbe to digest air and water to produce protein.

The U.S.-based company Kiverdi uses a similar microbial fermentation process, first devised by NASA as far back as the 1960s for deep space travel, to convert carbon dioxide into protein. Austria-based Arkeon Technologies has developed its own microbial fermentation process to also produce food from carbon dioxide without the need for land or other nutrients. Microbial fermentation may represent a promising new chapter in synthetic foods, but don’t expect tomatoes or corn to materialize from thin air anytime soon—it’s not artificial photosynthesis.

While Berthelot’s understanding of photosynthesis was primitive a century ago, he was ahead of his time in many ways, and his vision was remarkably prescient. Although we still haven’t figured out how to replicate photosynthesis chemically—literally growing fruits and vegetables as plants do from air and light—it’s worth acknowledging the strides we’ve made in just the last decade: Companies like Arkeon Technologies and Kiverdi may help remove excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere while offering solutions to future food shortages. Or they may not. Only the next century will tell.

Linkage is good for you:

Georgiy Berezovskiy explains that Russia is bringing intermediate-range assbeat back in a big way after withdrawing from the remaining strictures of the INF;
Timofey Bordachyev elaborates on how Russia is resetting its relationship with the Central Asian republics, and is making it clear that there will be no more handouts or freebies;
Sergey Poletayev shows that America needs the summit in Alaska this week, whereas Russia simply does not;
Tarik Cyril Amar notes with approval that Russia also is not going to take any more guff from the West;
Aleksandr Bobrov wonders whether Drumpf’s “Art of the Deal” applies any longer in the realm of peace talks over the 404 War (spoiler alert – IT DOESN’T);
The Russians are rapidly expanding the Su-57’s suite of combat capabilities in the 404 War, making it by far the most heavily combat-tested fifth-generation jet in the world;
Larry Johnson asks and answers a critical question about whether or not the Neo-Tsar has learned the critical lessons of the past 20 years in dealing with the West;
Farhad Ibragimov torches the West for its ridiculous double-standards on dumbocracy, after Moldova just jailed a dissident leader of an autonomous region;
Constantin von Hoffmeister has some not very nice things to say about dumbocracy, and its sheer pointlessness, in the modern upside-down Clown World;
Does Drumpf understand what he is doing when he threatens nuclear attacks and escalations with the Russians? Probably not;
In a sign that the aviation market is returning to normal, Boeing and Airbus are axing their silly “green plane” projects;
There is a new Darksiders game coming up, and I have to say, it does look and sound rather impressive;

And some more from Dawn Pine:

The French cannot help but act stupidly and inconsistently with respect to Palestinian statehood;
Just when you thought peacocks could not be any more awesome, they find a way to be just that;
A new scientific paper tries to answer the question of why humans harm themselves;
The Resource Trap seems to have ensnared the Norwegians, of all people;
Do you want to attend a wedding in France, held by total strangers? Only costs 150 Euros a pop!;
The Chinese are getting desperate to find matches for their “leftover women” – they should get their men to buy one of Roosh’s old books, if they can find them;
The Euroweenies are stuck in a trap around digital sovereignty, which they cannot easily resolve;
Women’s sports were always silly, but they have gotten even more absurd of late, what with all the sex toys being thrown onto basketball courts;
So the Earth will run out of oxygen soon – if by “soon”, we mean, “over a billion years from now”;
If you live in PommieBastardLande, it turns out that the network engineers who install your WiFi are likely to be total assholes;
Just when you thought ‘Straya couldn’t get any more ridiculous and dangerous, they somehow find a way;