Chuck Darwin

Social and economic justice, technology and tennis.  I'll have what @jbf1755 is having. 
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Last Notes

2024-09-08 16:45:50

#Florida is reportedly 💥sending police officers to the homes of people who signed a #petition supporting an #abortion #rights ballot #initiative.
Florida Governor #Ron #DeSantis’s administration has begun ❌investigating thousands of verified signatures that helped to put a state constitutional amendment protecting the right to abortion on the ballot in November.
The amendment would overturn Florida’s current six-week abortion ban.
Petition organizers collected about 100,000 more signatures than they needed, surpassing the 900,000 that are required by the state and ensuring that their policy would be on the ballot.
Now the Department of State’s spokesperson Ryan Ash claims that his agency has “uncovered evidence of illegal conduct with fraudulent petitions.”
Supervisors in Hillsborough, Orange, Palm Beach, Osceola, Alachua, and Broward counties have been requested to gather around 36,000 signatures for state review, according to the Tampa Bay Times.
One supervisor with 16 years of experience told the Times that the state’s request was entirely unprecedented.
Not only had the state requested signatures that had already been verified, but they did so for a validated petition, not a rejected petition, which are typically the basis of fraud investigations.
https://newrepublic.com/post/185704/florida-police-state-abortion-ballot-initiative

2024-07-20 23:18:14

@npub1ucv…5a8g - Satellite imagery enthusiast,
bee-keeper,
python coder

2024-07-20 13:04:53

Who elected Elon Musk our arbiter of social norms?
Elon Musk’s corporate activities point to what is often described as a “whim of iron.”
He defends his policies and politics as derived from painstaking consideration based on immutable laws of human behavior,
but they don’t hold water on those terms.
Instead, they point to the social dangers of endowing self-interested personalities with the money to buy unaccountable influence in conflict with the public interest.
Musk appears to have a real problem with transgender rights.
According to the Musk biography by Walter Isaacson, this may have originated with the decision of his eldest child, Xavier,
to transition at the age of 16.
“I’m transgender, and my name is now Jenna,” she texted a relative. “Don’t tell my dad.”
Jenna followed up with a political awakening that Musk ascribed to her attendance at a private school in California.
“She went beyond socialism to being a full communist and thinking that anyone rich is evil,” he told Isaacson.
Jenna broke off all contact with him.
https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2024-07-19/column-who-elected-elon-musk-our-arbiter-of-social-policies

2024-07-20 05:35:00

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"Don't look up"

2024-07-20 05:12:41

Asteroid Apophis is ready for its close-up—
In 2029 the sizeable space rock will swing by our planet🔸 within one tenth of the Earth-moon distance.
“This will be the first time in the course of modern human history and human civilization where an object this large has gotten this close,”
says Dani DellaGiustina, a planetary scientist at the University of Arizona, who is leading a NASA mission set to arrive at Apophis.
During the close encounter, Earth’s gravity is expected to change the asteroid in small—and potentially large—ways. Apophis will veer into a slightly different orbit around the sun, its circa 30-hour day could shorten or lengthen, and landslides and temblors may reshape its surface.
European scientists and engineers are now racing against the clock to ready a spacecraft rendezvous to watch the rare encounter firsthand.
The project, dubbed the "Rapid Apophis Mission for Space Safety", or #Ramses, comes from the European Space Agency ( #ESA ).
Ramses must launch by April 2028—an ambitious timeline, especially because ESA budgeting quirks mean that Ramses isn’t yet fully funded, according to a July 16 ESA statement announcing the mission.
But the opportunity is correspondingly historic:
Ramses would arrive at Apophis in February 2029, about two months before the asteroid whizzes past Earth in a cosmic close shave that scientists estimate happens just once every 7,500 years or so for objects of this size
—nearly as wide as the Empire State Building is tall.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/asteroid-apophis-is-target-of-europes-new-ramses-mission/

2024-07-18 01:47:48

Maripedia is an online database of hundreds of print patterns that
#Marimekko has used in their products since the 1940s.
You can browse by decade, designer, or style…
or you can search by image.
That’s right, just upload an image of the pattern on your pillowcase or dress and it’ll tell you who designed it and when.
Also, just take a look at these patterns:
https://kottke.org/24/07/an-online-database-of-marimekko-patterns
https://www.marimekko.com/eu_en/maripedia/patterns

2024-07-17 16:48:14

Nine decades after the publication of "It Can’t Happen Here,"
Sinclair Lewis’s dystopian novel about a fictional fascist dictator seizing power in the US,
the scenario it imagines seems less far-fetched than at any other point in the 250-year existence of the American republic.
Then, Lewis looked to Nazi Germany as a warning:
his wife was the journalist Dorothy Thompson, who had interviewed Adolf Hitler and subsequently been expelled by his regime.
Today, the authoritarian model can be observed in Viktor Orbán’s Hungary.
Fidesz was a centre-right party that became radicalised in power, and since then has deployed anti-migrant hysteria to build support,
demonised opponents as unpatriotic foreign puppets,
rigged the media in its favour
and trashed judicial independence, building what Orbán describes as an “illiberal democracy”.
It is a trajectory perhaps most strikingly pioneered by Putin:
you keep the trappings of democracy, with the substance gradually rotted away.
Shortly before the assassination attempt, Trump hosted Orbán
– who has endorsed the Republican presidential nominee
– at Mar-a-Lago.
Democratic culture in the US is stronger and more embedded than in Hungary.
But Trump is even more demagogic than Orbán, with a more extreme and motivated grassroots base.
Furthermore, he is more vengeful and radicalised than ever
– the relative moderates in his entourage have left in horror at his plans for the presidency.
The supreme court has a conservative majority, and a Trump presidential victory could easily be accompanied by Republican victory in both houses of Congress, meaning precious few checks and balances.
Trump has floated cancelling the US constitution and jailing his political opponents,
and his promise only to be a dictator on “day one” (and not after) is hardly reassuring.
Trump’s return to the White House is likely to be met with a response on the streets.
Any such protests could be used as a pretext to impose authoritarian measures, perhaps even martial law.
Trump reportedly told the top US military leader to shoot Black Lives Matter protesters in 2020.
You can see how it could spiral.
We don’t yet know the motive of Trump’s suspected shooter,
but the episode will be used by Republicans to shut down scrutiny of Trump and the danger he poses to the republic on the grounds that it is inciting further violence against him.
This is despite the fact that the vast majority of extremist violence in the US is perpetrated by rightwing elements.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jul/17/american-republic-democrats-us-trump-demagogue?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

2024-07-17 16:34:33

We are two days into Trump’s nomination party, and no one has asked — much less answered —
whether Donald Trump is a business partner,
paid foreign agent,
or merely an employee of Saudi Arabia.
This is not a frivolous question.
Since Trump left office, his family has received millions in four known deals from the Saudis:
• A deal to host LIV golf tournaments. Forbes recently reported that Trump Organization made less than $800K for about half the tournaments it has hosted. But Trump’s role in the scheme has given credibility to an influence-peddling scheme that aims to supplant the PGA’s influence. When Vivek Ramaswamy learned that two consultants to his campaign were simultaneously working for LIV, he forced them to resign to avoid the worries of influence-peddling. Yet Trump has continued to host the Saudis at his properties.
• A $2 billion investment in Jared Kushner’s private equity firm, in spite of the fact that analysts raised many concerns about the investment, including that he was charging too much and had no experience.
• A deal to brand a property in Oman slated to open in 2028, which has already brought Trump Organization $5 million. The government of Oman is a key partner in the deal, signed with a huge Saudi construction firm.
• A newly-announced deal with the same construction firm involved in the Oman deal, this time to brand a Trump Tower in Jeddah.
These Saudi deals come on top of Trump’s testimony that Turnberry golf course and his Bedford property couldn’t be overvalued
-- because some Saudi would be willing to overpay for them.
https://www.emptywheel.net/2024/07/17/boiled-frog-journalism-is-trump-an-agent-of-saudi-arabia-and-other-pressing-questions-buried-under-bidens-age/

2024-07-16 00:56:02

Fox's Brit Hume on J. D.Vance:
"then you think, well, is this person, how did he get the job?
Did he get it because he was really the best qualified to be president?
Or did he get it because he sucked up effectively to the nominee?
People will have questions about that."
https://www.mediaite.com/tv/foxs-brit-hume-says-voters-will-wonder-if-trump-picked-vance-as-running-mate-because-the-senator-sucked-up-effectively-to-the-nominee/

2024-07-13 17:20:42

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Joe #Kahn, executive editor of the Times, recently told Erik Wemple that the paper’s intense focus on Biden’s age is appropriate,
because it’s
“one of the most important issues on voters’ minds.”
That’s true, and again, Biden’s age absolutely is a critical issue.
But if the Marist poll is right, far more voters are concerned about #dishonesty in a president than about decline associated with aging.
💥Perhaps it’s time to cover Trump’s lying accordingly.
As for making this a political issue that does more damage to Trump
—by casting his bottomless dishonesty as a disqualifier, for instance
—that’s on Biden and Democrats.
Between these Marist numbers and others showing large percentages of Americans
view Trump as the shameless liar that he is,
👉the pieces are all there.
👉Democrats just have to put them together.
#bizarre #contempt
#morally #unfit

2024-07-13 17:14:32

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It’s not easy to say what news coverage of Trump’s lying as a potentially disqualifying trait might look like.
It could involve news analysis pieces that pick at the lying from a number of different angles:
🔸What experts say about the civic degradation caused by such gale-force levels of dishonesty,
🔸what the eager embrace of totalitarian-style propaganda has portended in other countries,
and so forth.
But one thing that coverage should NOT do is to
treat Trump’s lying as savvy or well-executed politics.
Note the #bizarre framing in recent New York Times pieces.
Trump spews lies and hate regularly,
but, hey, he does it with an effective display of performative gusto!
Oh, well
—it’s all just an inevitable background condition of our politics in the Trump era.
But news organizations can choose to not treat Trump’s lying this way,
and find a better approach.
Another problem:
Media fact checks are often cordoned off from other types of stories.
There has to be some way to better integrate fact-checking into the daily drumbeat of news coverage.
#unfit #morally #contempt

2024-07-13 17:04:55

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Voters grasp Trump’s world-historical levels of #dishonesty.
This week’s Pew poll found that only 36 percent of voters view Trump as “honest.”
By contrast, 48 percent view Biden that way
—not good enough, clearly,
but Biden’s large advantage here is especially notable given that as president,
he has been subjected to a far harsher media spotlight for the last four years.
What the new Marist poll adds to this debate is the idea that
voters see excessive lying as a serious problem in a president.
💥Yet ask yourself this:
How often is Trump’s lying covered that way?
Trump’s dishonesty is rarely treated as a sign of his temperamental unfitness for the presidency.
Biden’s age, of course, is constantly covered as an important factor in determining his fitness for the office.
Biden’s age should be covered this way, to be clear.
But so should Trump’s relentless lying.
💥The key distinction here is between mental unfitness for the presidency (where Biden does very badly, relative to Trump),
and temperamental unfitness for that majestic office.
On the latter, Quinnipiac found earlier this year
💥Biden does significantly better than Trump does, with an extraordinary 61 percent saying Trump is temperamentally unfit for the presidency.
Temperamental unfitness also matters!
And honesty is central to that.
🔥So along these lines, what might coverage of Trump’s serial lying look like?
Well, The New York Times offers a clue in its much-discussed new editorial depicting Trump as
#unfit to lead our country.
It labeled the fact that Trump
“lies blatantly and maliciously”
as one of numerous qualities that render him “#morally unfit” for the presidency.
Such lies, the editorial notes, “wrong the country.”
What’s also at issue is what Trump lies relentlessly about.
His constant
🔸denigration of official government statistics that don’t flatter him,
🔸his deranged downplaying of a pandemic that killed unbearable numbers of Americans,
🔸his nonstop falsehoods about the integrity of our elections,
🔸his relentless depiction of the violent January 6 insurrection as rooted in legitimate grievances, as a display of patriotism and heroism
—all of this extracts untold civic costs.
As The Bulwark’s William Saletan effectively demonstrates,
💥Republican voters in particular are adjusting to Trump’s serial debasements
—from 🔸lying about extramarital affairs
🔸to sleazy hush-money payments,
🔸to committing felony-level crimes,
🔸to demands for absolute immunity
—by downgrading their moral expectations associated with leadership on all these fronts.
Beyond this impact on MAGA voters,
all the lying treats countless other ordinary people with a kind of #contempt for basic standards of public life that seems incompatible with a decent society

2024-07-13 16:49:14

A new Marist poll takes the novel step of
asking registered voters which is more off-putting in an occupant of the Oval Office:
dishonesty or excessive age.
The results are surprising,
and along with other polling along these lines, it should influence how Joe Biden’s and Donald Trump’s relative qualifications for the presidency are covered from here on out.
The poll asked:
Which is more concerning in a president,
someone who doesn’t tell the truth,
or someone who might be too old to serve?
The results were lopsided:
By 68 to 32 percent, respondents were more concerned about the lying than the aging.
Given the relentless media focus on presidential age of late, that’s simply remarkable.
While the poll doesn’t directly compare Trump and Biden on that particular question,
it also finds that 52 percent of Americans say Biden has the “character to serve as president,”
whereas only 43 percent say this about Trump.
Fifty-six percent say Trump lacks the character to serve, which surely reflects public perceptions of Trump’s dishonesty.
The new Marist poll, by the way, also shows Biden leading Trump by 50 to 48 percent.
But that’s out of sync with polling averages, so we should be cautious about that finding.
Still, even if the overall poll is off by a few points, the numbers on dishonesty and age remain striking.
Trump was probably the most dishonest president in U.S. history.
His lies and distortions topped 30,000 during his presidency, according to The Washington Post.
That has continued unabated:
CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale tallied up over 30 lies from Trump at the recent presidential debate,
while Biden’s falsehoods amounted to maybe a third of that.
Critically, many of Trump’s whoppers were far more gargantuan lies
—such as the claim that Democratic states execute babies
—leading Dale to describe Trump’s lying as “staggering.”
https://newrepublic.com/article/183784/poll-trump-lying-huge-weakness

2024-07-13 04:07:19

#Cryptocurrency-focused political action committees have raised more than $203 million
to influence 2024 elections.
They have spent
more than $38 million of it.
Top spend so far is
$10,044,813
to oppose progressive warrior #Katie #Porter for California Senate.
✔ Defeated in the non-partisan primary
https://www.followthecrypto.org/

2024-07-12 13:26:30

Yesterday, Raw Story reported that
#Ivan #Raiklin, Trump’s self-declared 👉“Secretary of Retribution”
has compiled a 💥“Deep State target list” 💥of 350 people he wants to see arrested and punished for “treason” if Trump is reelected.
The list includes Democratic and Republican elected officials,
journalists he considers to be Trump’s enemies,
U.S. Capitol Police officers,
and witnesses against Trump in his impeachment trials and the hearings concerning the events of January 6, 2021.
Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD) told Raw Story:
“His hit list is a vigilante death warrant for hundreds of Americans
and a clear and present danger to the survival of American democracy and freedom.”
The Trump campaign did not respond to requests for comment.
Raiklin said the list was just the beginning.
“This is the scratching of the surface of who is going to be criminalized for their treason, okay?”
Former president Donald Trump, the presumptive 2024 Republican presidential nominee, has tried to distance himself from the radical extremist blueprint outlined in #Project2025, spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation.
Today, videos surfaced of Trump cheering the project on from the start.
At a Heritage Foundation dinner in 2022, Trump, slurring his words, said:
“Our country is going to hell…. This is a great group and they’re going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do...when the American people give us a colossal mandate to save America. And that’s coming.”
On a right-wing podcast yesterday, Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts said that Trump’s agenda and Project 2025 have “tremendous” overlap.
“There are some quibbles and differences of opinion here and there, which not only is okay, but it's actually good,” Roberts said.
“I mean, we're gonna be able to sort those out once the presidential administration declares what their priorities are.”
He said that 👉Trump’s attempt to distance himself from the project was “a political tactical decision.” 👈
Media Matters uncovered a video in which Project 2025 director Paul Dans said that
Trump is “very bought in with this.”
The Heritage Foundation, the key author of Project 2025, is a sponsor of the Republican National Convention.
Today the Heritage Foundation preemptively accused the Biden administration of cheating in the 2024 election and warned that Biden might try to hold the White House “by force.”
It said that Biden and his administration could “circumvent constitutional limits and disregard the will of the voters should they demand a new president.”
There is no indication that Biden, who has repeatedly said he will accept the election results, will try to launch a coup against the United States government.
In contrast, Trump, who has refused to say he will accept the election result unless he agrees with it,
has already done exactly what Heritage is trying to pin on Biden:
Trump tried to stay in office against the will of the voters in 2021.
Trump is currently under criminal indictment for that attempt,
although the Supreme Court’s eye-popping July 1 decision in Trump v. U.S. declaring that a president cannot be prosecuted for crimes committed as part of a president’s “official duties”
means Trump can challenge those indictments.
Indeed, in the wake of that decision, Trump’s lawyers have filed a motion to vacate the jury’s conviction of Trump on 24 felony counts related to the falsification of business records in his attempt to skew the 2016 election, and to dismiss the indictment.
While the U.S. and our allies celebrated the seventy-fifth anniversary of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO),
Erin Banco of Politico reported yesterday that Trump advisors have told foreign officials that
Trump plans to scale back U.S. cooperation and support for NATO,
including reducing the sharing of intelligence with NATO countries.
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/july-11-2024

2024-07-09 04:12:20

Some may feel that we made it through one Trump term and are thus likely to make it through another.
But a more apt analogy is that after we survived one round of economic Russian roulette,
Donald Trump is asking us to take another spin
— only this time with many more bullets in the chamber.
That would be a very dangerous game.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/08/opinion/economic-risks-second-trump-term.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

2024-07-06 04:26:54

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The fire is now 500 acres running up slope and is aligned with terrain and wind per south ops. Structures are threatened in the area.
Here is a current view of the fire from the ALERTCalifornia Los Alamos camera.
#LakeFire
https://cameras.alertcalifornia.org/?id=Axis-LosAlamos1&pos=37.2382_-119.0000_6

2024-07-06 02:21:34

Lake Fire @ Area of Zaca Lake, 9 miles N/E of Los Olivos -
Los Padres NF
@LosPadresNF
·
New wildfire. #LakeFire was reported at 3:45 pm near Zaca Lake on the Santa Lucia RD. A full response has been initiated along with Santa Barbara County Fire. Estimated 100 acres burning in grass/brush. Photos courtesy SBC Fire.
#SantaBarbara
https://share.watchduty.org/i/24741

2024-07-05 00:56:10

Long COVID is a brutal illness without a known mechanism or cure.
Far from being psychosomatic in nature, a new study adds weight to the idea that this misunderstood disease is very much biological.
The lingering toll the SARS-CoV-2 virus exacts on the immune system is widespread and hiding in plain sight, argue researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, CellSight Technologies, and Kaiser Permanente South San Francisco Medical Center.
When 24 patients who had recovered from COVID-19 had their whole bodies scanned by a PET (positron emission tomography) imaging test,
their insides lit up like Christmas trees.
A radioactive drug called a tracer revealed ⭐️abnormal T cell activity in the brain stem, spinal cord, bone marrow, nose, throat, some lymph nodes, heart and lung tissue, and the wall of the gut, ⭐️compared to whole-body scans from before the pandemic.
This widespread effect was apparent in the 18 participants with long COVID symptoms and the six participants who had fully recovered from the acute phase of COVID-19.
The activation of immune T cells in some tissues, like the spinal cord and the gut wall, was higher in patients who reported long COVID symptoms compared to those who made a complete recovery.
Participants with ongoing respiratory issues also showed increased uptake of the PET tracer in their lungs and pulmonary artery walls.
That said, 💥even those who recovered fully from COVID-19 still showed persistent changes to their T cell activity in numerous organs compared to pre- pandemic controls💥, in some cases two and a half years after they first contracted the virus.
"In some individuals, this activity may persist for years following initial COVID-19 onset and be associated with systemic changes in immune activation as well as the presence of [long COVID] symptoms," researchers at UCSF conclude.
"Together, these observations suggest that even clinically mild infection could have long-term consequences on tissue-based immune homeostasis and potentially result in an active viral reservoir in deeper tissues."
https://www.sciencealert.com/covids-hidden-toll-full-body-scans-reveal-long-term-immune-effects

2024-07-04 17:27:49

It’s been 34 years since Senate Republicans represented a majority of the U.S. population.
-- Nevertheless, in seven of the 13 Congresses since then, Republicans were the Senate majority party.
How can that be?
The elephant in the room: a senator from California represents more than 39 million residents; from Wyoming, less than 577,000. But both states have the same number of votes in the U.S. Senate.
“At the time of the founding, the biggest state was 13 times the size of the smallest state. Today…a few hundred thousand people in Wyoming have as much power as tens of millions of people in California or New York.”
The situation is worse than that Wyoming example.
California has a greater population than the smallest 21 (of 50) states combined. No “one person, one vote” relationship is happening if you live in California.
One consequence of the Constitutional compromise that gave each state two senators:
- twice in this century the person who won the popular vote did not set foot in the White House.
Our electoral college vote is rigged to favor minority rule because of the Senate’s non-proportional structure.
Every state gets two senators.
(Give the founding leaders a little break; there were no political parties in 1787.)
Al Gore conceded to George Bush in 2000 after the U.S. Supreme Court stopped the Florida recount. Gore received 50,992,235 votes to Bush’s 50,455,456.
Hillary Clinton conceded to Donald Trump in 2016, despite receiving about 2.9 million more votes than Trump.
You have to reach way back to 1876 and 1888 to see that same unequal treatment, a minority-vote president.
https://themoderatevoice.com/tyranny-of-the-minority-four-of-the-six-gop-nominated-justices-were-confirmed-by-senators-representing-less-than-half-of-the-u-s-population/

2024-07-03 00:05:01

WildFire Watch
Severity: Severe
Significant threat to life or property
Weather Event Onset
6:00 PM (PDT), July 4
Description
...CRITICAL FIRE WEATHER CONDITIONS ARE POSSIBLE THURSDAY EVENING THROUGH FRIDAY NIGHT ACROSS THE INTERSTATE 5 CORRIDOR AND SOUTHERN SANTA BARBARA COUNTY...
A long-duration heat waves will bring very hot and dry conditions to Southwestern California through the weekend. The hot and dry conditions will coincide with northwesterly winds, gusting 25 to 40 mph, Thursday evening through Friday night across the Interstate 5 Corridor as well as southern Santa Barbara county. This combination will bring the potential for widespread critical fire weather conditions to these areas Thursday evening through Friday night.
The National Weather Service in Los Angeles/Oxnard has issued a Fire Weather Watch for wind and low relative humidity, which is in effect from Thursday evening through late Friday night.
* WINDS...Northwest to north winds gusting 25 to 40 mph.
* RELATIVE HUMIDITY...Minimum relative humidity 8-20 percent with poor to moderate overnight recovery.
* IMPACTS...Conditions will be favorable for rapid rates of fire growth and spread.
🔸Action Recommended
Make preparations per the Description.
🔸Urgency
Take action in the near future.
🔸Affected Area
Santa Barbara County Southeastern Coast
https://www.weather.gov/

2024-07-02 17:01:43

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Contrary to what many people have come to believe, judicial supremacy is not in the Constitution,
and does not date from the founding era.
It took hold of American politics only after the Civil War,
when the Court overruled Congress’s judgment that the Constitution demanded civil-rights and voting laws…
[I]n its infamous 1857 Dred Scott decision, [the Court interpreted] the Constitution to hold that the federal government lacked the power to abolish slavery anywhere in the United States.
But rather than accept this novel assertion of judicial supremacy over Congress, the Republican Party responded with defiance.
Indeed, Abraham Lincoln successfully ran for president on a platform of repudiating the Court with national legislation.
In his inaugural address, [Lincoln] remarked that
“the candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the Government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court,”
then “the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their Government into the hands of that eminent tribunal"
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/06/supreme-court-power-overrule-congress/661212/

2024-07-02 16:58:00

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Apparently, a president can ask for an investigation into anyone or anything that’s in their way and have immunity from criminal prosecution.
Trump can’t be prosecuted for trying to enlist DOJ in his scheme to steal an election.
This falls within the core functions of the presidency bucket of official action [because] a president’s conversations with Justice Department officials fall within the president’s official duties and are hands-off…
The Court says that because a discussion of their duties between the president and vice president is “official conduct”
Trump’s efforts to pressure Pence “to block certification of the election… involv[ed] official conduct,”
so he is “at least presumptively immune from prosecution for such conduct.”
https://substack.com/home/post/p-146140342

2024-07-02 16:54:48

When questioned during confirmation hearings,
the Republican-nominated members of the Supreme Court of the United States
assured U.S. Senators that they would honor precedent.
Although Democrats were probably focused on Roe v. Wade when they asked those questions,
it turns out that the six had something else up their sleeves:
the unitary executive or imperial presidency.
In the last days of the 2023-24 session, the Court has
eviscerated the power of agencies to write regulations;
muzzled the SEC;
made bribery of a public official legal if the “gratuity” is delivered after the official’s term of office;
and criminalized homelessness when people have no shelter.
Its coup de grâce:
naming the president king with the Court as his interlocutor (in defining what constitutes an official act).
As former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance writes: “
If Nixon had known he had immunity like [the ruling 01 July 2024], he wouldn’t have resigned.”
From Justice Sotomayor, with whom Justice Sagan and Justice Jackson join, dissenting:
Today’s decision to grant former Presidents criminal immunity reshapes the institution of the Presidency.
It makes a mockery of the principle, foundational to our Constitution and system of Government, that no man is above the law.
Relying on little more than its own misguided wisdom about the need for “bold and unhesitating action’ by the President, ante, at 3, 13,
the Court gives former President Trump all the immunity he asked for and more.
Because our Constitution does not shield a former President from answering for criminal and treasonous acts, I dissent
https://themoderatevoice.com/a-radical-scotus-majority-asserts-that-trumps-efforts-to-overturn-the-election-consist-of-official-acts/

2024-07-02 15:56:12

Biden unveils rules to protect millions of US workers from extreme heat
The Biden administration has unveiled a long-awaited proposal to protect workers from extreme temperatures.
If finalized, the rule will establish the nation’s first-ever federal safety standard for excessive heat exposure in the workplace
and protect as many as 36 million indoor and outdoor workers from heat-related injury.
Announced on Tuesday amid temperature warnings across the country,
the rule would require employers to establish heat safety coordinators,
undergo extreme heat safety training,
create and regularly update emergency heat response plans,
and provide workers with shade and water.
It would also require a heat acclimatization process for new employees to gradually increase their exposure to high temperatures.
Three out of four workers who die of workplace heat exposure in the US die during their first week on the job, senior administration officials told reporters on Monday.
The proposed rule includes specific safeguards for when the heat index in a workplace breaches 80F (27C),
including increased access to water and temperature-controlled break rooms.
At a 90F (32C) heat index, the standard would trigger additional protections,
including paid 15-minute breaks every two hours, mandated observation of employees and hazard alerts for all workers.
Employers who fail to meet the standard could be subject to fines.
Under the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s general-duty clause, workplaces with dangerous levels of heat stress can be subject to penalties of roughly $16,000;
the rule would substantially increase that amount, administration officials said.
Advocates and policymakers celebrated the move.
“For decades, workers have been organizing for federal protections from the extreme heat.
Despite opposition from big corporations, these working families are finally winning the protections they deserve,” said Representative Greg Casar of Texas,
who last year went on an all-day thirst strike calling for heat protections.
Extreme heat is the deadliestform of extreme weather, killing hundreds of Americans each year.
The threat is increasing amid the climate crisis.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/jul/02/biden-extreme-heat-proposaal?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

2024-07-01 00:26:41

A rocket stage test firing by Chinese commercial company Space Pioneer
ended in catastrophic failure and a dramatic explosion Sunday.
Space Pioneer conducted what was intended to be a static-fire test of the first stage of its Tianlong-3 launch vehicle at a test facility in Gongyi country, Henan province, Sunday, June 30.
Amateur footage captured by Gongyi citizens and posted on Chinese social media shows the nine-engine test stage igntiing and then,
exceptionally, taking off.
Hold-down clamps and other structures are typically used to securely keep stages in place.
The stage is seen climbing into the sky before halting,
apparently with its engines shutting off,
and returning to Earth.
The stage impacted the ground around 50 seconds after it took off,
apparently with much of its kerosene-liquid oxygen propellant remaining,
causing a large explosion.
The Tianlong-3 first stage would likely fire for a number of minutes on an orbital flight.
https://x.com/AJ_FI/status/1807339807640518690

2024-06-27 01:12:29

Election denialism isn’t gone. Trump’s backers are probing for weaknesses.
 The Carter Center, founded by former president Jimmy Carter, normally sends election observers to countries such as Sierra Leone, Venezuela and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
⭐️This fall, the group will deploy nonpartisan monitors in Michigan, Arizona and, yes, Georgia ⭐️
— not the country but the state where the group is based.
Such vigilance, in the world’s oldest democracy, reflects 💥the corrosive downstream effects of former president Donald Trump’s years of relentless election denialism.💥
 Mostly under the radar, 🔥Trump backers in some key states are probing for weaknesses in the nation’s decentralized election administration system. 🔥
For example, Mr. Trump’s allies appear to be exploring whether county-level officials can block the certification of vote tallies, if the election doesn’t go their way.
 The United States has more than 3,000 counties. Dragging out certification in one could create a cascading problem in which a state is unable to certify its results by the Dec. 17 deadline to cast its electoral votes so that they can be sent to the Capitol for counting on Jan. 6, 2025.
If no candidate receives 270 electoral votes, the House might be forced to pick the president
— with each state’s delegation getting one vote,
a system that favors Republicans.
 The Electoral Count Reform Act that passed in 2022 addressed weaknesses exposed by Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
State legislatures will find it harder to block certification, and the threshold is higher for members of Congress to block the counting of electoral votes a state submits.
Yet, while significant and valuable, the bipartisan measure did not address every vulnerability.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/06/26/2024-election-certification-denial/

2024-06-24 19:08:17

Hi – Happy Pride Month! 🏳️‍🌈
Will Rollins here, openly gay Democrat running to flip California's 41st District and defeat MAGA Republican Ken Calvert.
Like many, my partner Paolo and I came of age at a time when being gay was still considered a crime in many states.
As a 17-year old in the wake of 9/11, I had a deep sense of duty to serve the country. But policies like “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” discouraged me from joining the military.
Things have changed for the better since, but despite the progress that’s been made, we’re seeing a rise in anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment -- from book bans, anti-trans legislation, and boycotts against businesses that prioritize equality.
This trend has been perpetuated by politicians like my opponent Ken Calvert and the rest of the MAGA Party.
This November, we can send a clear message that we reject their hateful agenda by turning the House blue. That starts by flipping CA-41:
If you’re with me, can you make a donation of $10 to my campaign today?
https://willrollins.us/l/VQk6IK
-Will

2024-06-23 18:36:55

More pedestrians and bicyclists are being killed on U.S. streets than at any time in the past 45 years
– over 1,000 bicyclists and 7,500 pedestrians in 2022 alone.
Vehicle size is a big part of this problem.
A recent paper by urban economist Justin Tyndall found that increasing the front-end height of a vehicle by roughly 4 inches (10 centimeters) increases the chance of a pedestrian fatality by 22%.
The risk increases by 31% for female pedestrians or those over 65 years, and by 81% for children.
It’s hard to argue with physics, so there is a certain logic in blaming cars for rising traffic deaths.
In fact, if a bicyclist is hit by a pickup truck instead of a car, Tyndall suggests that they are 291% more likely to die.
Yet automakers have long asserted that if everyone simply followed the rules of the road, nobody would die. Vehicle size is irrelevant to that assertion.
My discipline, traffic engineering, acts similarly.
We underestimate our role in perpetuating bad outcomes, as well as the role that better engineering can play in designing safer communities and streets.
https://theconversation.com/traffic-engineers-build-roads-that-invite-crashes-because-they-rely-on-outdated-research-and-faulty-data-223710

2024-06-23 02:03:34

MI5 refused to investigate ‘Russian spy’s’ links to Tories, says whistleblower
MI5 repeatedly refused to investigate evidence that an alleged Russian spy was attempting to cultivate influence with senior Conservative politicians
and channel illegal Russian funds into the party, a Tory member has alleged in a new complaint lodged with the investigatory powers tribunal (IPT).
Sergei Cristo, a Conservative Party activist and a former journalist with the BBC World Service, has lodged a complaint with the investigatory powers tribunal,
filing the case after corresponding with the chair of parliament’s intelligence and security committee, Conservative MP Julian Lewis,
who recommended he take the information to the authorities.
The committee’s Russia report claimed in 2020 that the security services had turned a blind eye to “credible evidence” of Russian interference
and Cristo’s allegations offer potentially explosive new evidence that confirms its findings.
Labour MP Ben Bradshaw said “allegations that the security services ignored evidence from a Conservative whistleblower exposing Russian infiltration at the highest levels of the party are truly shocking”
and claimed the “Conservative party’s Russia problem” was an ongoing threat to Britain’s national security.
Cristo says that it was reading the Russia report that made him “suddenly aware that maybe the story I had was more significant than I thought”
and, at Lewis’s suggestion, he wrote to Cressida Dick, then commissioner of the Met police.
He received a response from the counter-terrorism command (SO15) who said it was not a matter for the Met and advised him to take it to the IPT
– which oversees the security services
– which he has now done.
The allegations centre around the formation of a group called
🔸Conservative Friends of Russia 🔸in 2012, and its relationship with a Russian diplomat, #Sergey #Nalobin.
In August of that year, the Russian ambassador, #Alexander #Yakovenko, hosted a lavish launch party for the group in the gardens of his residence in Kensington
with guests who included the former minister of culture, media and sport, #John #Whittingdale,
and Boris Johnson’s now wife, #Carrie #Symonds.
The Russian government also funded an all-expenses-paid trip to Moscow
for a handpicked group of members including the future CEO of Vote Leave, #Matthew #Elliott.
Cristo says his suspicions about Nalobin, who was the political first secretary at the embassy, had been aroused two years earlier
when he was approached by the diplomat and they met at the Carlton Club.
When Nalobin learned that Cristo was a volunteer with the treasurers’ department of the Conservative campaign headquarters (CCHQ), he said he could
“make introductions to Russian companies who would donate money to the Conservative party”.
“I knew straight away that what he was suggesting was illegal under UK law,” Cristo wrote in a letter to Lewis last year.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/jan/21/mi5-refused-to-investigate-russian-spys-links-to-tories-says-whistleblower?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

2024-06-22 23:53:01

A Guy Says He Was Questioned On A Plane For Doing Math During
A Flight
A woman sitting next the Ivy League economist told flight crew she had security concerns about the man, after seeing him write in a foreign script.
It turned out to be a differential equation.
• @TetraspaceWe...
Replying to @_fembOt:
Suspected of ties to Al-Gebra
https://s3.c.im/media_attachments/files/112/662/478/415/384/127/original/199a8ff976a4260a.jpeg

2024-06-22 08:27:52

Late Friday evening, NASA said it was "adjusting" the date of the #Starliner spacecraft's return to Earth from June 26 to an unspecified time in July.
The announcement followed two days of long meetings to review the readiness of the spacecraft, developed by Boeing, to fly NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to Earth.
Just a few days ago, on Tuesday, officials from NASA and Boeing set a return date to Earth for June 26. But that was before a series of meetings on Thursday and Friday during which mission managers were to review findings about two significant issues with the Starliner spacecraft:
five separate leaks in the helium system that pressurizes Starliner's propulsion system
and the failure of five of the vehicle's 28 reaction-control system thrusters as Starliner approached the station.
https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/06/nasa-indefinitely-delays-return-of-starliner-to-review-propulsion-data/

2024-06-19 04:58:51

Roger Stone, was secretly recorded at Mar-a-Lago
spilling the beans on the former president’s strategy to challenge the results of the 2024 election should he lose again.
Stone, who was a key figure in Trump’s “Stop the Steal” efforts following the 2020 election,
characterized his plan to challenge election results in 2024 with three pillars:
“Lawyers, judges, technology.”
He also bragged that the Trump campaign occupied strong “offensive footing” this time around.
“In some states, it’ll be easier to stop. In other places it won’t,”
Stone told Sammarco.
“At least this time when they do it, you have a lawyer and a judge, his home phone number standing by so you can stop it,” apparently referring to the certification of 2024 results.
“We made no preparations last time, none,” he added.
Stone also tacitly endorsed storming the Capitol building after Sammarco told him she was at the insurrection.
“That may not be necessary,” Stone continued.
“There are technical, legal steps we have to take to try to have a more honest election.”
Stone noted during the conversation that
💥the Trump campaign is attempting to change state voting laws 💥
and plans to 🔥immediately file a number of lawsuits seeking to change the results should the former president lose again, 🔥
as Trump allies did in Michigan and several other states in 2020.
🌟 “We should be suing in a half a dozen places,” Stone said of the Michigan lawsuit,🌟 adding that the RNC’s war chest would be tapped to fund the various lawsuits.
The Trump campaign launched 62 lawsuits contesting the results of the election across the country in 2020.
However, most were quickly dismissed or dropped due to a lack of standing or evidence, according to Bloomberg Law.
Stone told Windsor that
♦️the Trump campaign even has governors who are ready to contest this November’s election results
—though he qualified, candidly, that there “aren’t many” willing to put their reputation on the line in service of the former president.
https://dnyuz.com/2024/06/18/roger-stone-caught-on-tape-discussing-trumps-plan-to-challenge-2024-election/

2024-06-18 16:36:14

The Gun Lobby’s Hidden Hand in the 2nd Amendment Battle
Case after case challenging gun restrictions cites the same Georgetown professor.
His seemingly independent work has undisclosed ties to pro-gun interests.
A little-known political economist at Georgetown University,
Dr. English conducted a largest-of-its-kind national survey
that found gun owners frequently used their weapons for self-defense.
That finding has been deployed by gun rights activists to notch legal victories with far-reaching consequences.
He has been cited in a landmark Supreme Court case that invalidated many restrictions on guns,
and in scores of lawsuits around the country to overturn limits on assault weapons, high-capacity magazines and the carrying of firearms.
His findings were also offered in anotherSupreme Court case this term, with a decision expected this month.
Dr. English seems at first glance to be an impartial researcher
interested in data-driven insights.
He has said his “scholarly arc” focuses on good public policy,
and his lack of apparent ties to the gun lobby has lent credibility to his work.
But Dr. English’s interest in firearms is more than academic:
He has received tens of thousands of dollars as a paid expert for gun rights advocates,
and his survey work, which he says was part of a book project, originated as research for a National Rifle Association-backed lawsuit, The New York Times has found.
He has also increasingly drawn scrutiny in some courts over the reliability and integrity of his unpublished survey,
which is the core of his research,
and his refusal to disclose who paid for it.
Other researchers say that the wording of some questions could elicit answers overstating defensive gun use,
and that he cherry-picked pro-gun responses.
“I have been struck by the enormous attention and influence the William English paper has had,” said Joseph Blocher, co-director of the Center for Firearms Law at Duke University.
“It just sort of came out of nowhere, posted online without going through formal peer review, and by a guy most of us had never heard of.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/18/us/gun-laws-georgetown-professor.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

2024-06-18 03:05:50

I’d wanted to interview Jennifer Harris for years.
She has been the quiet intellectual force behind the Biden administration’s economic policies,
and she seemed key to understanding why both parties in Washington had walked away from free trade and neoliberalism
— the belief that free markets will bring prosperity and democracy around the world.
These matters felt personal to me.
I spent much of the Trump administration following steelworkers in Indiana who lost their jobs when their factory moved to Mexico.
They felt betrayed by elites
— and they weren’t wrong.
I was thrilled when the Biden administration came in with a plan for big federal investments in the American industrial base, tariffs, support for labor unions and actions against monopolies.
No one knew what to call it
— Post-neoliberalism? Democratic capitalism? Neopopulism?
— but for the first time in generations a U.S. administration was saying that people should control the market, not the other way around.
I believed in it. But if it was the right path, why didn’t more voters trust President Biden on the economy?
To understand who Ms. Harris is, you have to know who she used to be.
As a young State Department policy planner in the 2000s, she was a lonely voice in Washington raising the alarm about the rise of China.
She pushed for tariffs and against trade agreements before it was cool,
and was an author of a book called
“War by Other Means” about how blind faith in free markets put the United States at a geopolitical disadvantage.
For years, she felt like an oddball in Washington, where both parties were still in thrall to neoliberalism.
But after Donald Trump’s election in 2016,
which tapped into a deep well of anger over free trade,
she was suddenly an It Girl in the world of Washington policy wonks.
The Hewlett Foundation hired her as the head of an initiative that has given away $140 million so far
to people who are devising a new economic philosophy.
Then she served a stint in the White House.
Today, she’s an intellectual leader of a growing, bipartisan consensus that my colleague David Leonhardt recently highlighted.
The thinking behind it goes like this:
Unquestioning belief in the free market created a globalism that funneled money to the 1 percent,
which has used its wealth to amass political power at the expense of everyone else.
It produced free trade agreements that sent too many U.S. factories to China
and rescue plans after the 2008 financial crisis that bailed out Wall Street instead of Main Street.
Fury over all that helped elect Mr. Trump,
who denigrated elites for selling out the country.
But if Mr. Trump correctly identified a problem
— “China is eating our lunch”
— he did not solve it,
beyond putting tariffs on Chinese products.
His tax cut for the rich hurt rather than helped matters.
It’s the Biden administration that came in with a plan to build an economy that was good for workers,
not just shareholders,
using some strategies Ms. Harris had been talking about for years.
...
In 2016 Ms Harris argued passionately that Hillary Clinton should denounce the Trans-Pacific Partnership,
something Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders had already done.
Mrs. Clinton did eventually reject the agreement, though Mr. Trump won anyway.
“Jen not only offered unique perspectives,” Mrs. Clinton told me in a statement, but also “ideas that were often ahead of their time.”
The excruciating loss made Mr. Sullivan far more open to Ms. Harris’s views.
(They eventually wrote an article together in Foreign Policy calling for a new economic philosophy.)
And it sent Democrats back to the intellectual drawing board.
Larry Kramer, then the president of the Hewlett Foundation, recruited her in 2018 to promote alternatives to ideas that had guided U.S. policy for decades.
He hoped she could do for free-market skepticism what Milton Friedman and his allies had done for free-market fundamentalism,
which became policy under the Reagan administration and eventually was embraced by both parties as truth.
Her work at Hewlett was just getting off the ground in 2020 when Mr. Biden won.
Ms. Harris couldn’t resist the chance to join the administration.
“It felt like the ‘Nerd Justice League’ was assembling,” she told me.
“And I had some FOMO.”
As an adviser on international economic policy, Ms. Harris had a hand in everything from making the case for industrial policy to designing a new framework for trade.
This time, she wasn’t a lonely voice.
Numerous grantees or partners from the Hewlett initiative entered the administration as well:
Heather Boushey, an expert on equitable growth, became a member of Mr. Biden’s Council of Economic Advisers;
K. Sabeel Rahman, a scholar of antitrust law, became head of regulatory affairs;
and his collaborator Lina Khan became chair of the Federal Trade Commission.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/17/opinion/jennifer-harris-bidenomics.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

2024-06-18 01:51:45

- reply

When Arizona passed the legislation that allowed for ♦️private (religious) school vouchers♦️
the program was projected to cost $65 million in 2024 and $125 million in 2025.
But the most recent estimates put that cost at a staggering $940 million per year,
more than 1,000 percent of the initial estimate.
The news of the cost overruns came just a few days after two of the program’s leaders resigned
A report last month from Brookings Institution, the nonpartisan policy think tank, found that Arizona’s program was disproportionately used by wealthy families
—even though it was designed to boost the academic achievement of students from families in underserved school districts.
As it turned out, families in the highest poverty areas were five times less likely than people in the wealthiest areas to use vouchers.

2024-06-18 01:41:35

Christian Nationalists Are Opening Private Schools.
Taxpayers Are Funding Them.
Trump’s favorite Arizona megachurch has one.
Trump held his first campaign rally as a convicted felon at 🔸Dream City Church 🔸in Phoenix, Arizona,
hosted by the arch-conservative student group 💥Turning Point USA. 💥
This wasn’t Trump’s first appearance at Dream City Church;
he also held a rally there with Turning Point USA in 2020.
For events like this, it’s an ideal venue:
A weekly attendance of around 21,000 believers makes this one of the largestchurches not just in Arizona but in the nation.
Dream City, is a mecca for special guests who blur the line between religion and politics.
Its annual conference has featured notables like musician and pastor Sean #Feucht, who participated in a White House prayer session for President Trump in 2019 and is currently leading a tour of prayer rallies at state capitol buildings across the country.
The lineup for this year’s event also included David #Barton, whose organization,
💥WallBuilders, 💥teaches K-12 students about the supposed Christian origins of America;
Jurgen #Mathesius, a pastor at San Diego’s far-right Awaken Church, which has become a stopon Mike #Flynn’s
💥ReAwaken America 💥tour;
and Jentezen #Franklin, a televangelist who also spoke at the 2022 💥Pray Vote Stand Summit💥, which mobilizes conservative Christian voters to engage in political activism.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/06/christian-nationalists-are-opening-private-schools-taxpayers-are-funding-them/

2024-06-17 17:22:13

Paper accuses incoming editor of using stolen private records
The Washington Post has published an investigation that accuses its own future editor of using the work of a self-described "blagger" who stole private records to order.
Under the headline
“Incoming Post editor tied to self-described ‘thief’ who claimed role in his reporting”,
the newspaper claimed that Robert #Winnett used material from a self-confessed "blagger", John #Ford, while working as a journalist on the Sunday Times during the 2000s.
Winnett, who runs the Daily Telegraph’s newsroom, is due to become the editor of the Washington Post in the autumn.
If the British journalist does take up the post, he will inherit a publication in turmoil, filled with journalists who have been digging through Winnett’s record as a reporter.
The Washington Post’s near 3,000-word report relies heavily on a 2018 interview with Ford published by the Guardian, in which the former actor gave numerous examples of his extensive work as a “blagger” for the Sunday Times.
The US outlet has now directly linked some of these examples to Winnett, who worked at the weekend outlet during the 2000s before moving to the Telegraph.
It suggests exclusive stories by Winnett about a takeover of Leeds United, Tony #Blair’s finances, and the client list for a new Mercedes-Benz model were all connected to work by Ford.
Ford has described himself as a
👉“common thief” who was a master of mimicry and would put on accents to talk banks into handing over information.
👉Although such blagging is against the law, it can often be legally justified if there is a public interest in the information that is revealed.
He specialised in blagging financial and phone records but also got his hands dirty on behalf of the Sunday Times.
During the early 2000s he would root through the bins of New Labour figures while hunting for stories, with Alastair Campbell’s refuse a particularly good source of stories.
He worked for the newspaper for many years before accepting a police caution for a bodged attempt in 2010 to blag a pre-release copy of Tony Blair’s autobiography from the book’s publisher.
He was paid £2,100 by the Sunday Times for the failed blag but his work for the paper dried up after the arrest, which took place amid growing scrutiny of the dark arts of British journalism.
According to the Post, when Ford was arrested he turned to his old colleague Winnett for help.
The journalist allegedly helped find him a lawyer, obtained an untraceable phone for future communications “and reassured Ford that the ‘remarkable omertà’ of British journalism would ensure his clandestine efforts would never come to light”.
The Washington Post, owned by the Amazon founder Jeff #Bezos, has been in turmoil since the appointment last year of a new chief executive, Will #Lewis.
Lewis, a former editor of the Daily Telegraph, has been tasked with turning around the newspaper’s fortunes and improving its financial position after years of heavy losses.
His arrival has instead prompted renewed attention on his past links to the News UK phone-hacking scandal.
In recent weeks Lewis has been accused of trying to kill stories by his outlet about his links to phone hacking, contributing to the departure of the former editor Sally #Buzbee.
A spokesperson for Lewis has denied that the publisher put pressure on his editor.
Lewis has now tasked Winnett, a former colleague, with leading the US newsroom.
The duo worked together on the 2009 MPs’ expenses scandal, which dominated the news for weeks after the Telegraph paid £110,000for a stolen disc featuring politicians’ spending data.
The decision to pay for the information has raised eyebrows
👉 in the US, where buying up stories is against journalistic norms.
Lewis has been damning of the current state of the Washington Post.
According to Vanity Fair, he recently told the outlet’s journalists:
“We are losing large amounts of money. Your audience has halved in recent years. People are not reading your stuff. I can’t sugarcoat it any more. So I’ve had to take decisive, urgent action to set us on a different path, sourcing talent that I have worked with that are the best of the best.”
News UK said: “The Sunday Times has a strong record of investigative journalism over decades and has employed many contributors and researchers to work on stories, or parts of stories. The paper strongly rejects the accusation that it has in the past retained or commissioned any individual to act illegally.
“Some allegations related to the research work of John Ford have been aired previously and we cannot comment on the specifics of these new allegations, which all predate 2011.”
https://www.theguardian.com/media/article/2024/jun/17/washington-post-accuses-incoming-editor-robert-winnett-of-using-work-of-blagger?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

2024-06-16 19:38:11

The kid was returning a BB gun to a suburban strip mall,
which is not something that carries the death penalty in Washington state.
The man, who saw himself as the protector of his community, decided that the child was a danger,
because he had decided that it was his job to choose who was dangerous and who was not.
So he pulled out his people-killing tool—the ownership and use of which is seen as a fundamental right in this country—and issued some commands,
and the child obeyed, because he was being accosted by an armed stranger.
However, the community protector was unsatisfied with the child's compliance,
so he killed the child.
This is also seen by many people as a fundamental right in this country,
provided you're the kind of person who is allowed by our dominant cultural narrative to appoint yourself a community protector.
https://www.the-reframe.com/cruel-luxuries/

2024-06-14 23:09:01

Microsoft embodies the idea that you either die a rebel hero or live long enough to become the evil emperor you dethroned.
Bill Gates didn't become one of the richest people on earth simply by emerging from a lucky womb:
He also owed his success to vigorous antitrust enforcement.
The IBM PC was his company's first major initiative, after it was targeted by the DOJ for a 12-year antitrust enforcement action.
IBM tapped its vast monopoly profits to fight the DOJ, spending more on outside counsel to fight the DOJ antitrust division than the DOJ spent on all its antitrust lawyers, every year, for 12 years -- and IBM's delaying tactic paid off:
When Reagan took the White House, he let IBM off the hook.
But the company was still seriously scarred by its ordeal,
and when the PC project kicked off, the company kept the OS separate from the hardware
(one of the DOJ's major issues with IBM's previous behavior was its vertical monopoly on hardware and software).
IBM didn't hire Gates and Allen to provide it with DOS because it was incapable of writing a PC operating system:
they did it to keep the DOJ from kicking down their door again.
The post-antitrust, gunshy IBM kept delivering dividends for Microsoft.
When IBM turned a blind eye to cloned PC-ROMs and allowed companies like Compaq, Dell and Gateway to compete directly with Big Blue,
this produced a whole cohort of customers for Microsoft
– customers Microsoft could play off on each other, ensuring that every PC sold generated income for Microsoft,
creating a wide moat around the OS business that kept other OS vendors out of the market:
Why invest in making an OS when every hardware company already had an exclusive arrangement with Microsoft?
The IBM PC story teaches us two things:
stronger antitrust enforcement
-- and weaker IP protections
-- spur innovation and open markets for scrappy startups to grow to be big, important firms.
Microsoft learned the opposite:
Monopolies are wildly profitable;
Expansive IP protects monopolies;
You can violate antitrust laws so long as you have enough monopoly profits rolling in to outspend the government -- until a Republican bootlicker takes the White House
(Microsoft's antitrust ordeal ended after GW Bush stole the 2000 election and dropped the charges against them).
@npub1fdr…lvhs
https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/14/patch-tuesday/

2024-06-09 19:43:47

Texas officials are urging residents in some areas to use different modes of transportation other than their cars on Friday
as ozone pollution in the state reach concerning levels.
The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) has declared an 🔸Ozone Action Day🔸 for the Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, Galveston and Brazoria areas
because of high levels of ozone, also known as smog.
Officials suggested that to help reduce the pollution, people should minimize the use of their vehicles.
https://www.newsweek.com/texas-asks-people-avoid-using-their-cars-1909517

2024-06-04 06:46:39

The Untold Story of the Network That Took Down Roe v. Wade
A conservative Christian coalition’s plan to end the federal right to abortion began just days after Trump’s 2016 election.
It happened almost by accident, over cocktails.
Exactly the kind of accident that #Leonard #Leo intended to happen at his Federalist Society’s annual conference
— a three-day gathering of the conservative tribe and a strategy session for right-wing lawyers, officials and judges
that drew both big names and those who had lower profiles but were no less ambitious.
Nine days after Donald Trump won the 2016 election, the halls of the Mayflower Hotel, just blocks from the White House, were adorned with twinkling Christmas lights and abuzz with the possibilities of a future that had changed overnight.
Hillary Clinton, the woman the anti-abortion movement feared more than perhaps anyone, had failed to win the presidency.
And Leo and the conservative legal movement that he worked for years to create were about to reclaim power.
With that power would come the chance to do what seemed unthinkable until this moment:
🔹strategize to take down Roe v. Wade.🔹
For more than 40 years, a passionate band of conservative and mostly Christian activists tried to find ways to undermine the 1973 Supreme Court ruling that guaranteed a constitutional right to abortion and revolutionized America.
But they had been losing. The country appeared to be moving away from them,
increasingly secular and increasingly liberal on sexual matters.
The anti-abortion movement lacked the critical mass needed in Washington and the control of courts to end federal abortion rights.
But now, with Trump, who promised to name “pro-life judges,” in the White House, there was a new vista before them.
Leo, the force behind this network, arrived at the Mayflower after spending the day at Trump Tower in New York.
He met with the president-elect and his top aides about turning the list of Supreme Court justice candidates that Leo curated into legal reality.
Republicans in the Senate had taken a risk by refusing to hold hearings to fill the seat left open by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia toward the end of Barack Obama’s presidency.
Now, with Trump positioned to nominate one of its own, Leo’s movement stood on the verge of an enormous triumph, with a court that would once again be dominated by Republican-appointed justices
— and those who were firmly on the side of restricting abortion.
Trump confirmed in the meeting that if someone was not on the list, that person would not be considered.
At the Mayflower, those on the list were
not just names on paper.
At least nine judges of Trump’s 21 possible Supreme Court nominees at the time were scheduled to speak,
and most of the other hopefuls attended at various points.
So did some of those who already held seats on the highest court.
Leo opened the conference by introducing his friend Justice Samuel A. #Alito Jr. to the ballroom, overflowing four deep in the balcony.
The mood was both exuberant and serious as the new power brokers considered the opportunities ahead.
So when it was time for cocktail hour, the young solicitor general of Wisconsin, Misha Tseytlin, who had clerked for Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, was surprised when he overheard someone say that Roe v. Wade would never be overturned.
There was no reason to think overturning Roe was impossible now, Tseytlin believed.
Republicans had the White House, an open Supreme Court seat and legislatures passing a flood of laws restricting abortion in states across the country.
If there really was no right to abortion in the Constitution, as many at the Mayflower believed, this was the time to prove it.
And Tseytlin had an idea of how to do just that.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/28/magazine/roe-v-wade-christian-network.html?unlocked_article_code=1.xE0.Y0ht.9ii_qegQ6Va2&smid=url-share

2024-06-03 15:04:56

A pair of Texas professors figured out that their female students have sex and, boy, they do not like it.
So now the philosophy professor and finance professor are suing for the right to punish their students who, outside of class, have abortions.
"Pregnancy is not a disease, and elective abortions are not 'health care,'" University of Texas at Austin professor Daniel Bonevac sneers in a federal court filing with professor John Hatfield.
Instead, Bonevac writes, because pregnancy is the result of "voluntary and consensual sexual intercourse," students should not be allowed time off to get abortions.
If the students disobey and miss class for abortion care, the filing continues, the professors should be allowed to flunk students.
Additionally, Bonevac asserts that he has a right to refuse to employ a teaching assistant who has had an abortion, calling such women "criminals."
https://www.salon.com/2024/06/03/texas-professors-to-fail-students-seek-abortions/

2024-06-02 18:58:35

Republican Voters...
Trump in 2016: "She shouldn't be allowed to run...If she wins, it would create an unprecedented constitutional crisis.
In that situation, we could very well have a sitting president under felony indictment and, ultimately, a criminal trial. It would grind government to a halt."
https://s3.c.im/media_attachments/files/112/548/083/528/145/314/original/68ad61668da03218.jpeg

2024-06-01 19:56:48

Dahlia Lithwick: I think the merits can get lost when we talk about the flags.
But there is a substantive problem that we’re starting to pick up on, and that is Justice Alito, in recent weeks, making very real and serious errors in his opinions.
They’re actually prompting corrections from sources that he cites, who say, “No, my work reflects the opposite of what you’re claiming.”
I’d love for you to unpack that
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/05/samuel-alito-upside-down-american-flag-supreme-court.html

2024-06-01 17:00:16

Hundreds of millions wiped from Trump fortune in wake of conviction
https://www.theguardian.com/business/article/2024/may/31/trump-media-stock-wealth-declines-guilty-verdict?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

2024-06-01 16:57:58

Donald Trump had lots of negative opinions about felons.
Now he is one.
Trump has spent years complaining
that American police and the criminal legal system should be
“very much tougher,”
arguing that some criminals should not be protected by civil liberties,
police should rough up suspects
and that a much wider range of people should face the
death penalty for breaking the law.
Now that he has been convicted on 34 felony counts for falsifying business records,
Trump is arguing that the US legal system is out of control.
“They can do this to anyone"
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jun/01/donald-trump-crime-punishment?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

2024-06-01 16:42:16

Trump’s gag order
—which has not yet been lifted
—bars him from publicly attacking the court staff, witnesses, or jurors involved in the case.
And he’s already been hit with repercussions for previous transgressions a $10,000 fine
But that ruling came with an added threat that is still on the table.
Since the court could not craft an “appropriate” financial penalty for a deep-pocketed defendant like Trump,
Merchan wrote that, in order to “protect the dignity of the judicial system and to compel respect for its mandates,”
the court “must therefore consider whether in some instances, jail may be a necessary punishment.”
Trump is due to be sentenced on July 11, just days before the Republican National Convention.
And his words could come back to haunt him in that hearing:
In criminal cases, judges often consider a defendant’s level of remorse (or lack thereof) when deciding a sentence.
https://newrepublic.com/post/182135/felon-trump-jail-gag-order-michael-cohen

2024-06-01 16:15:59

Democrats gained ground in 2022, winning a Senate seat, 2 governorships, 4 state legislative chambers and keeping the House close enough to make more likely we win it back this time.
In 2023 we took away a Supreme Court seat in Wisconsin, two of the largest GOP held cities in America
- Colorado Springs and Jacksonville, the Ohio abortion ban, the Virginia Assembly, and state senate and house seats in special elections all across the country.
In 2024 we took away NY-3 in February, and continue to win special elections across the US.
In all these elections since Dobbs we just keep overperforming expectations and winning, and they keep struggling, and losing.
There has been one strong party - us - and one very weak party - them.
👉Trump’s conviction is giving us a new growth and expansion opportunity that we need to seize.
⭐️It is likely that in the coming weeks,
particularly if Trump decides to show up at the debate a month from now,
tens of millions of Americans are going to start checking into this election for the first time.
💥We need to talk to them. We need to get loud, and we need to get loud not about him, for they will hearing lots about him.
🔥We need to get loud about us, about Joe Biden,
about his successful Presidency
and how together we have made things better in America today and for generations to come.
👍As Trump gets uglier, by going positive, really positive, we can establish and reinforce this basic contrast - Joe Biden good, Trump bad - that is essential to winning the election this year.
https://www.hopiumchronicles.com/p/trump-is-a-rapist-fraudster-traitor

2024-05-31 16:46:11

Mexico’s Likely Next President Is a Climate Scientist
Sheinbaum, who served as AMLO’s environment secretary, is looking to build on the success of those social programs, which have also involved raising the minimum wage and making it easier to organize new unions. One of the areas where she’s likely to differ the most from her predecessor is in her approach to climate and environmental issues.
https://newrepublic.com/article/182099/claudia-sheinbaum-mexico-president-climate-scientist

2024-05-29 14:30:22

As the American economy grows radically unequal it is holding back economic growth
The "elephant in the room"
is #extreme income #inequality.
How big is this elephant?
A staggering $50 trillion.
That is how much the upward redistribution of income has cost American workers over the past several decades.
This is not some back-of-the-napkin approximation.
According to a groundbreaking new working paper by Carter C. Price and Kathryn Edwards of the RAND Corporation,
had the more equitable income distributions of the three decades following World War II (1945 through 1974) merely held steady,
🔸the aggregate annual income of Americans earning below the 90th percentile would have been $2.5 trillion higher in the year 2018 alone.
🔸That is an amount equal to nearly 12 percent of GDP
—enough to more than double median income
—enough to pay every single working American in the bottom nine deciles an additional $1,144 a month.
— Every month.
— Every single year.
Price and Edwards calculate that the cumulative tab for 🔹our four-decade-long experiment in radical inequality 🔹had grown to over $47 trillion from 1975 through 2018.
At a recent pace of about $2.5 trillion a year,
that number we estimate crossed the $50 trillion mark by early 2020.
That’s $50 trillion that would have gone into the paychecks of working Americans had inequality held constant
—$50 trillion that would have built a far larger and more prosperous economy
—$50 trillion that would have enabled the vast majority of Americans to enter this pandemic far more healthy, resilient, and financially secure.
As the RAND report [whose research was funded by the Fair Work Center which co-author David Rolf is a board member of] demonstrates,
💥a rising tide most definitely did not lift all boats.
💥It didn’t even lift most of them,
as nearly all of the benefits of growth these past 45 years were captured by those at the very top.
https://time.com/5888024/50-trillion-income-inequality-america/

2024-05-27 20:58:08

- reply

AI is a marketing term, not a technical term of art.
The term “artificial intelligence” was coined in 1956 by cognitive and computer scientist John McCarthy
– about a decade after the first proto-neural network architectures were created.
In subsequent interviews McCarthy is very clear about why he invented the term.
First, he didn’t want to include the mathematician and philosopher Norbert Wiener in a workshop he was hosting that summer.
You see, Wiener had already coined the term “cybernetics,” under whose umbrella the field was then organized.
McCarthy wanted to create his own field, not to contribute to Norbert’s
– which is how you become the “father” instead of a dutiful disciple.
This is a familiar dynamic for those of us familiar with “name and claim” academic politics.
Secondly, McCarthy wanted grant money.
And he thought the phrase “artificial intelligence” was catchy enough to attract such funding from the US government,
who at the time was pouring significant resources into technical research in service of post-WWII cold war dominance.
Now, in the course of the term’s over 70 year history, “artificial intelligence” has been applied to a vast and heterogeneous array of technologies that bear little resemblance to each other.
Today, and throughout, it connotes more aspiration and marketing than coherent technical approach.
And its use has gone in and out of fashion, in time with funding prerogatives and the hype-to-disappointment cycle.
So why, then, is AI everywhere now?
Or, why did it crop up in the last decade as the big new thing?

2024-05-27 20:54:22

The toxic surveillance business model
– and the big tech monopolies that built their empires on top of this model:
The roots of this business model can be traced to the 1990s, as scholar Matthew Crain’s work illuminates.
In a rush of enthusiasm to commercialize networked computation,
the Clinton administration laid down the rules of the road for the profit-driven internet in 1996.
In doing so, they committed two original sins
–sins that we’re still paying for today.
🔸First, even though they were warned by advocates and agencies within their own government about the privacy and civil liberties concerns that rampant data collection across insecure networks would produce,
they put NO restrictions on commercial surveillance.
None.
Private companies were unleashed to collect and create as much intimate information about us and our lives as they wanted
–far more than was permissible for governments.
(Governments, of course, found ways to access this goldmine of corporate surveillance, as the Snowden documents exposed.)
And in the US, we still lack a federal privacy law in 2024.
🔸Second, they explicitly endorsed advertising as the business model of the commercial internet–fulfilling the wishes of advertisers who already dominated print and TV media.
This combination was–and is–poison.
Because, of course, the imperative of advertising is
“know your customer,”
in service of identifying the people most likely to be convinced to buy or do the things you want them to.
And to know your customer you need to collect data on them.
This incentivized mass surveillance, which now feeds governments and private industry well beyond advertising,
with strong encryption serving as one of our few meaningful checks on this dynamic.
On this toxic foundation, over the course of the 2000s, the Big Tech platforms established themselves
through search, social media, marketplaces, ad exchanges, and much more.
They invested in research and development to enable faster and bigger data collection, processing, and to build and maximize computational infrastructures and techniques that could facilitate such collection and ‘use’ of data.
Economies of scale, network effects, and the self-reinforcing dynamics of communications infrastructures enabled the firms early to this toxic model to establish monopoly dominance.
This was aided by the US government’s use of soft power, trade agreements, and imperial dominance to ensure that the EU and other jurisdictions adopted the US paradigm.
This history helps explain why the majority of the world’s big tech corporations are based in the US, with the rest emerging from China.
The US got a head start, via military infrastructure and neoliberal policies and investment,
while China built a self-contained market, capable of supporting its own platforms with its own norms for content that further limited external competition.
https://www.helmut-schmidt.de/en/news-1/detail/the-prizewinners-speech

2024-05-27 18:19:07

Are you terrified of migrants squatting in your home
or randomly punching you in the face while you walk down the street?
Maybe you find yourself thinking a lot about Hunter Biden
or gas prices and how they were lower four years ago?
Then, dear reader, you probably have 💥Fox News brain.💥
Juliet Jeske, author of the highly recommended
"Decoding Fox News" newsletter, is one of the world’s foremost experts on that condition.
“Propaganda is a very difficult thing to erase from somebody's brain,” she told me.
“Some people just want to be in that Fox News rage spiral. They’re riding a rollercoaster of fear, paranoia, and hate.
And people enjoy that.
They enjoy sitting in their homes and being angry at the world.
I don't understand that mentality at all.
But that's what Fox provides them.”
https://www.publicnotice.co/p/juliet-jeske-decoding-fox-news-interview-2024

2024-05-25 23:02:08

Mrs. Clinton accused four justices
— John G. Roberts Jr., Neil M. Gorsuch, Brett M. Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett
— of being “teed up to do the bidding” of conservative political and religious organizations and leaders
— though she believed many Democrats had not realized that during those justices’ confirmation hearings.
“It is really hard to believe that people are going to lie to you under oath, that even so-called conservative justices would upend precedents to arrive at ridiculous decisions on gun rights and campaign finance and abortion,” she said. “It’s really hard to accept that.”
Yet, she also had tough words for her former colleagues. In the Senate, she said, Democratic lawmakers did not push hard enough to block the confirmation of the justices who would go on to overturn federal abortion rights. When asked in confirmation hearings if they believed Roe was settled law, the nominees noted that Roe was precedent and largely avoided stating their opinion on the decision.
Those justices “all lied in their confirmation hearings,” she said, referring to Justices Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Coney Barrett, all of whom were appointed by Mr. Trump. “They just flat-out lied. And Democrats did nothing in the Senate.”
“More people have got to wake up, because this is the beginning,” she said. “They really want us to just shut up and go home. That’s their goal. And nobody should be in any way deluded. That’s what they will force upon us if they are given the chance.”
She added: “I know history will prove me right. And I don’t take any comfort in that because that’s not the kind of country or world I want for my grandchildren"
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/25/us/politics/hillary-clinton-abortion.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

2024-05-21 15:05:30

Who is on trial over Germany coup plot?
A self-styled aristocrat, his Russian girlfriend, retired military officers and a former judge have gone on trial in Frankfurt on charges of plotting to violently overthrow the German state.
The defendants were among nine alleged conspirators
– seven men and two women
– who were led into the purpose-built court flanked by armed police officers on Tuesday for what has been described as
the most important of three trials of suspected members of the anti-constitutional Reichsbürger scene.
Some of the defendants, variously dressed in hunting jackets, suits, hoodies and Burberry scarfs, waved and smiled at each other and chatted with their lawyers after being led to their seats.
One woman covered her face with a grey folder as cameras captured the defendants’ walking into court.
Heinrich XIII Prince Reuss, whose seat was marked with the sign “Prinz Reuss” and who is alleged to have been the group’s ringleader, appeared relaxed, nodding as his lawyer spoke to him.
Dressed in a dark jacket and trousers, navy pullover and open-necked shirt, the 72-year-old estate agent greeted fellow defendants before taking his place in court.
The group, referred to as the #Patriotic #Union, stands accused of high treason after plotting to storm the Reichstag.
It allegedly aimed to take MPs hostage and show a shackled chancellor, Olaf Scholz, on television in expectation of winning over ordinary Germans.
Had the alleged coup succeeded, Reuss was to have become Germany’s new chancellor.
The defendants were arrested in December 2022, when heavily armed forces stormed houses, flats, offices and a remote hunting lodge.
Investigators had been surveilling the group for months.
All defendants deny the charges.
The trial was slow to get under way on Tuesday after several lawyers lodged complaints to the judge, Jürgen Bonk, in which they expressed their objections to the proceedings taking place at all.
Outside the court, Roman von Alvensleben, a lawyer for Reuss, told journalists he objected to the fact that,
because there were three trials in separate locations,
“it is almost impossible to follow the cases properly and to cross reference them,” he said.
Across the three trials, a total of 26 defendants are in the dock for their alleged involvement in the plot.
A 27th, a 72-year-old who had been due to be on trial in Frankfurt, recently died.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/21/germany-far-right-coup-plot-who-is-on-trial-in-frankfurt?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

2024-05-21 14:54:25

Homes evacuated in Italy after strongest quake in 40 years near supervolcano
Cracks form in buildings after 150 quakes follow 4.4-magnitude tremor around Campi Flegrei near Naples
Many people slept in their cars or on the street after the strongest earthquake in 40 years shook the area around the sprawling Campi Flegrei supervolcano close to Naples.
The 4.4-magnitude tremor in Pozzuoli, a densely populated port city, was followed by 150 quakes that were also strongly felt in Naples.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/21/homes-evacuated-earthquake-supervolcano-naples-campi-flegrei?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

2024-05-21 13:25:42

California Assembly passes bill allowing Amsterdam-style cannabis cafes
A bill that would allow Amsterdam-style cannabis cafes in California passed the state Assembly Monday afternoon on a 49-4 vote and is headed to the Senate.
But even if the Legislature’s upper chamber approves AB 1775, legalization remains far from a sure thing.
Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed a prior iteration of the bill in October, citing the state’s long-standing smoke-free workplace protections.
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-05-20/california-cannabis-cafes-assembly-vote-matt-haney-weed-marijuana

2024-05-20 16:32:40

International Criminal Court Prosecutor Requests Warrants for Netanyahu and Hamas Leaders
While the request must be approved by the court’s judges, the announcement is a blow to Israel’s government and will likely fuel international criticism of its war strategy in Gaza.
The I.C.C. prosecutor requests warrants for Hamas leaders and Netanyahu.
A Netanyahu rival said a warrant for his arrest would be a ‘historic crime.’
Here’s what to know about the I.C.C.’s prosecutor’s request.
Leaders of past protests in Israel re-emerge as Parliament reconvenes.
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/05/20/world/israel-gaza-war-hamas-rafah?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

2024-05-20 00:18:13

In 1940, from a jailhouse in Rouen, France, André Weil wrote one of the most consequential letters of 20th-century mathematics.
He was serving time for refusing to join the French army, and he filled his days in part by writing letters to his sister, Simone, an accomplished philosopher living in London.
In a previous letter, Simone had asked André to tell her about his work. With war all around, André began his reply cautiously, warning his sister that past a certain point “you will understand nothing of what follows.”
Over the next 14 pages, he sketched his idea for a “Rosetta stone” for mathematics.
Following the example of the famous engraving by that same name — a trilingual text that made ancient Egyptian writing legible to Western readers through translation into Ancient Greek — Weil’s Rosetta stone linked three fields of mathematics:
number theory, geometry, and, in the middle, the study of finite fields.
Other mathematicians had proposed ideas in this direction, but Weil was the first to spell out an exact vision.
His letter presaged the Langlands program, a major initiative in contemporary mathematical research
https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-rosetta-stone-for-mathematics-20240506/

2024-05-18 20:01:42

In September 2023, scientists funded by a mining company reported finding what could be the
🔸largest deposit of lithium in an ancient US supervolcano. 🔸
Now public researchers on the other side of the country have uncovered
👉 another untapped reservoir in wastewater from Pennsylvania's gas fracking industry.
– and could cover nearly half the nation's lithium demands.
Lithium is arguably the most important element in the nation's renewable energy transition
– the material of choice for electric vehicle batteries.
And yet, there is but one large-scale lithium mine in the US, meaning for the moment the country has to import what it needs.
https://www.sciencealert.com/a-vast-untapped-source-of-lithium-has-just-been-found-in-the-us

2024-05-18 13:10:43

How Can This Country Possibly Be Electing Trump Again?
With democracy itself on the line, the 2024 election will almost certainly be the nation’s most consequential since 1860.
It will also be the weirdest.
There are two fundamental facts about this campaign that do not appear to be making much of an impact on what, at least today, seems to be close to a majority of the electorate.
The first and more obvious one is that few people in history have ever been less qualified to hold a position of any responsibility, much less the most powerful position in the world, than Donald Trump. If elected, he will certainly deploy that power to destroy virtually everything Americans have historically held dear about the nation’s democratic traditions.
The second, less obvious, but no less objective fact is that Joe Biden has been a remarkably good president. Not everything has worked out, and one can certainly disagree with many of his decisions. His embrace of Bibi Netanyahu has clearly had disastrous consequences for Israel, Gaza, the United States, and likely for his own reelection prospects. But in terms of the way presidents are traditionally measured, Biden has been a smash. The U.S. economy is the envy of the world. Yes, inflation is higher than one would like, but jobs are plentiful, and so are raises for the people in them; wages are rising faster than inflation, as it happens. Violent crime is way down. Infrastructure investments are way up since 2020. Student loans are being forgiven. The labor movement is rebounding. We are leading the world in defending democracy in Ukraine. And yet, the danger of a Trump takeover remains as high as ever.
Consider just a few of Trump’s qualities that quite recently would have disqualified him in the eyes of all responsible voices in the discourse. I have no room to do justice to even a fraction, so I’ll have to stick to just keywords: insurrectionist; election denier; pathological liar; corrupt; racist; antisemite; (digital) rapist; serial adulterer; Islamophobe; con man; tax cheat; patsy to dictator; wannabe dictator; isolationist; bully; psychopathically narcissist; sociopath; almost certainly medically demented. We all know I could go on. (I haven’t even mentioned the Democrats’ single best issue: Trump’s proud boast that he was able to “kill Roe v. Wade.”)
So, what gives? Have roughly half of Americans of voting age lost their minds? Is Joe Biden really this bad a candidate? How is all this possible?
https://newrepublic.com/article/181287/can-america-possibly-elect-trump-again

2024-05-16 17:21:11

Dow Jones Industrial Average hits 40,000 points for first time
"Breaking the 40,000 barrier is a big psychological boost for the bulls as round numbers hold special significance in people’s hearts and minds.
“We are in a Bull Market and people are showing some irrational exuberance (meme stocks) and dismissing bad news (slowing retail sales) and focusing on good news (slightly slowing inflation).”
https://www.theguardian.com/business/live/2024/may/16/japan-economy-shrinks-bt-cost-savings-bank-of-england-stock-markets-pound-business-live?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

2024-05-14 07:58:25

The rapid emergence of low-priced EVs from China could shake up the global auto industry in ways not seen since Japanese makers exploded on the scene during the oil crises of the 1970s.
BYD, which stands for “Build Your Dreams,” could be a nightmare for the U.S. auto industry.
“Any car company that’s not paying attention to them as a competitor is going to be lost when they hit their market,” said Sam Fiorani, a vice president at AutoForecast Solutions near Philadelphia.
“BYD’s entry into the U.S. market isn’t an if. It’s a when.”
https://apnews.com/article/china-byd-auto-seagull-auto-ev-cae20c92432b74e95c234d93ec1df400

2024-05-05 01:10:59

As you approach maximum throughput, average queue size
– and therefore average wait time
– approaches infinity.
This applies to people as well as to computers
https://blog.danslimmon.com/2016/08/26/the-most-important-thing-to-understand-about-queues/

2024-04-20 00:00:42

𝑩𝑹𝑬𝑨𝑲𝑰𝑵𝑮: NEW TEXAS POLL, a virtual tie!
🔴Ted Cruz (R): 41%
🔵Colin Allred (D): 41%
Another Ted Cruz victory would be a 𝐝𝐢𝐬𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫 for our Senate.
We’re launching a fundraising POWER HOUR to fill our Defend the Senate fund to the brim, and boost Democrats like Colin Allred to victory!
The stakes are too high to sit this one out.
Rush $7 now to do your part and defend our Senate majority!
>> https://utspac.us/l/L18Myc
— UTS