John Refior

Supporter of progressive economic policy. Aspiring small business owner. Volunteer lawyer. Amateur economist. Software developer.
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#BLM
#economics
#BoycottMeta

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npub1yug4u25qk0s7ch6lhpans7068c5x36lsr8qf3y7zqtkglhhhjyxq708p7y

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[email protected]

Profile Code

nprofile1qqszwy2792qt8c0vta0ms7ec08aru2rga0cpnsycj0pq9my0mmmezrqpz4mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumt0wd68ytnsw43qzup9zc

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relay.mostr.pub

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npub1yug4u25qk0s7ch6lhpans7068c5x36lsr8qf3y7zqtkglhhhjyxq708p7y

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Last Notes

2025-08-13 17:06:10 GMT

Napkin cartoon by Bill Amend ( @nprofile…efw6 )
https://media.hachyderm.io/media_attachments/files/115/022/545/310/795/770/original/8dba0ed5798cd20b.png

2025-06-14 23:23:48 GMT

Per @nprofile…uh2y :
"One block over from the White House: the aspirational security line setup"
#dictatorship #DictatorParade #NoKings
https://media.hachyderm.io/media_attachments/files/114/684/289/744/059/075/original/67be51248d33a983.png

2025-06-14 23:03:55 GMT

Per Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand:
"It should not be lost on anyone that Minnesota Rep Melissa Hortman, who was shot to death in her home last night by an assassin, was a gun safety advocate who worked tirelessly to protect her constituents from gun violence."
#minnesota #guns #PoliticalViolence

2025-06-14 23:00:04 GMT

For the US Army's 250th birthday, US Marines in LA detain an Army veteran for (being black and crossing caution tape while) trying to walk to the Department of Veteran Affairs
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-marines-carry-out-first-known-detention-civilian-los-angeles-video-shows-2025-06-13/
#250years #USMC #USArmy

2025-05-21 02:45:15 GMT

Added Kseniia Petrova's arrest to the timeline. Ms. Petrova is a young scientist at Harvard whom the Trump administration unlawfully arrested and attempted to deport to Russia because she criticized the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
https://www.trumpisarussianasset.info/timeline/more/jailing-putins-critics-kseniia-petrova
#KseniiaPetrova #dictatorship #FirstAmendment #Harvard #TIARA

2025-05-11 00:09:21 GMT

Senator Markey live streaming on YouTube: “Rümeysa Öztürk and her legal team speak at Logan Airport after arriving home from ICE detention in Louisiana”
https://www.youtube.com/live/vrHq1xKtdEM
#ozturk #massachusetts #tufts #boston #aclu #constitution

2025-04-24 22:51:50 GMT

"The largest union for federal employees is planning to lay off more than half of its staff nationwide after President Donald Trump’s executive actions have rapidly weakened the organization’s finances, the union said Thursday.
"The American Federation of Government Employees will move ahead with a reduction in force that could cut its 355 employees to approximately 150, eliminating organizers, national representatives, support staff and others.
"The layoffs will weaken a leading opponent to Trump’s dramatic reshaping of the federal government."
https://apnews.com/article/afge-federal-union-trump-cuts-layoffs-downsizing-53c0a1491cc5af65278fbd16b8cfb6b5
#unions #AFGE #constitution #dictatorship

2025-04-19 21:02:41 GMT

I've seen posts and articles today about the 250th anniversary of the battle of Lexington, but none of them mentioned this excellent local organizing page that leans into that history:
https://lexingtonalarm.org/
#NoKings #HandsOff #LexingtonMA #local #ThomasPaine #AmericanRevolution250

2025-04-17 12:08:39 GMT

The government went from telling miners to become coders, to telling coders to become miners
https://media.hachyderm.io/media_attachments/files/114/353/216/731/972/928/original/74009a2049236b91.jpeg

2025-04-06 02:55:16 GMT

In 1773, Boston stood up to a tyrant who called himself king. Today, Boston did so again.
#Boston #HandsOff #DefendTheConstitution #massachusetts
https://media.hachyderm.io/media_attachments/files/114/288/756/679/854/441/original/f6d4a878256cad1d.mp4

2025-04-04 19:18:43 GMT

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@nprofile…6yg2
A good legal research project would be to find cases where a judge held the government in contempt, see what the judges ordered as punishment, and check whether the punishments occurred.

2025-03-20 00:33:58 GMT

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@nprofile…mf8r
Hard to believe it’s only been two months

2025-03-17 03:50:20 GMT

Republicans (used to?) idolize Reagan. But the Reagan administration would likely love the racism of the present day Republican party, and loathe most of the rest of it. Electing a Russian asset president of the US would be inconceivable to them.
If the author of the excerpt below, Andrew Michta, sounds like a Reagan Republican, it's because he pretty much is. He's written right-leaning editorials, blames Biden for the world's problems, etc.
And yet he writes that if Trump hands Russia significant territorial gains in Ukraine—and so far giving Putin everything he wants seems to be the no. 1 goal of this administration—it will essentially undo America's victory in the Cold War:
"In 1991, the Soviet Union lost the Cold War, as it could no longer compete either in the economic, political, or military spheres... Post-1991, the United States exercised its victor’s prerogative, together with its democratic allies, to structure the post-Soviet space in Central Europe and the Baltics in a way that stabilized the region and served the United States’ interests and those of its European allies.
"...it was not the West’s aggressive pursuit of an anti-Russian agenda, but rather the weakness and lack of strategic clarity it communicated at every turn post-Cold War that encouraged Moscow’s revisionism. It was not the West’s alleged geostrategic assertiveness, but its timidity each time Putin used military power to occupy territory—first in Georgia in 2008, then in Ukraine in 2014, in Syria in 2015, and finally in Ukraine for the second time in 2022—that set the stage for the unfolding tragedy in Eastern Europe.
"The West is poised to communicate weakness once again, only this time unabashedly and without pretense that it is doing so because of norms or the 'rules-based international order.' If the final peace agreement on Ukraine simply ratifies the status quo on the battlefield, the Trump administration will hand Moscow a major win, in effect undoing the consequences of the Western victory in the Cold War."
https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/the-real-reason-russia-invaded-ukraine-hint-its-not-nato-expansion/
The Republican Party has advertised itself as racist since ~1964. That seems to be its only center of gravity.
#russia #ukraine #GOP #Reagan #Republicans

2025-03-06 21:05:35 GMT

Not an authority, but...
"Elon Musk's AI chatbot says a 'Russian asset'
"The chatbot Grok scoured available public data and found a '75-85% likelihood' that Donald Trump more or less works for Vladimir Putin...
"According to the AI chatbot called Grok, which was developed by Elon Musk’s company xAI, there is a '75-85% likelihood' that the person who delivered the State of the Union address on Tuesday night is a 'Putin-compromised' Russian asset.
"In describing Grok, by the way, Musk said it is a 'maximally truth-seeking AI, even if that truth is sometimes at odds with what is politically-correct.'"
https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/ej-montini/2025/03/05/trump-speech-state-union-russia-elon-musk-grok/81507335007/
#trump #russia #AI #ukraine

2025-03-02 04:33:19 GMT

Last night, the PBS NewsHour spoke to "one of the country's leading historians on Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union":
"Strategically, what we are doing, what the United States is doing, is trading a set of Western alliances for an alliance with Russia. Now, the main way Russia engages with us is by stealing our technology and by hacking into our infrastructure. The Russian economy is smaller than Canada's, but we are nevertheless going to trade 80 years of alliance with reliable partners that are 15, 16, 17 times bigger than Russia as an economy for an alliance with Russia."
Worth watching/reading. One should expect no less, but it was still somehow reassuring to hear this sane analysis of what happened at the White House yesterday.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11QBNJj_8gM
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/historian-analyzes-devolving-relations-between-u-s-and-ukraine-after-oval-office-spat
#TimothySnyder #yale #Russia #crime #Ukraine #useconomy #europe

2025-03-01 19:59:42 GMT

nVidia's annual revenue two years ago was $27 billion.
When they reported earnings Wednesday, revenue for the last *quarter* was $39.3 billion. Wall St. was disappointed and the stock fell 8%.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/nvidia-gives-upbeat-forecast-sign-212552833.html
#nvidia #ai #corporations #investors #expectations

2025-02-10 05:27:21 GMT

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@nprofile…49kh @nprofile…92y4
omg "The Crash Reel" was such an emotional, educational film on the reality (and inevitability) of TBI in competitive snowboarding
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2499076/
#TheCrashReel #movie

2025-01-29 21:26:19 GMT

Good graffiti, seen today in Waltham, Massachusetts.
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#WalthamMA #massachusetts #graffiti #america
https://media.hachyderm.io/media_attachments/files/113/913/748/764/468/544/original/83fff10d2bb81e15.jpeg

2025-01-28 21:40:46 GMT

"According to a report from The New York Times, the second-largest fossil fuel company in the country is teaming up with an investment firm to build natural gas power plants designed specifically to power data centers—just in time for the entire market to rethink whether we actually need to burn all these resources on AI models.
"Per the Times, Chevron is already ordering equipment and pursuing potential locations for these power plants, which the company believes it can get up and operational in just three years. The plan, according to Chevron CEO Mike Wirth, is to 'meet the moment and address this growing need for reliable and affordable power.'"
https://gizmodo.com/chevron-is-ready-to-burn-gas-to-power-ai-2000556000
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#climate #AI #energy #chevron #FossilFuels

2025-01-23 22:51:29 GMT

"Much like secondhand smoke, driving a gigantic vehicle endangers those who never consented to the danger they face walking, biking, or sitting inside smaller cars. Although not widely known, car bloat’s harms are well-documented. Heavier vehicles can pulverize modest-sized ones, and tall front ends obscure a driver’s vision, putting pedestrians and cyclists at particular risk. Deaths among both groups recently hit 40-year highs in the US. The threat of hulking vehicles could even deter people from riding a bike or taking a stroll, a loss of public space akin to avoiding places shrouded in tobacco smoke."
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/391733/gigantic-suvs-are-a-public-health-threat-why-dont-we-treat-them-like-one
by @nprofile…vyea
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#SUV #EmotionalSupportVehicle #SpendingTenGrandMoreToHurtYourCommunity

2024-12-10 21:03:01 GMT

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@nprofile…fecl
Even better would be monthly cash assistance for the poor, instead of canceling debts that are mostly held by the middle and upper classes.
If you look at the bottom quintile (lowest 20%) of Americans by income, 80% of those people have zero educational debt.
That's because most poor people can't afford to go to college *even with loans*
While most high income families take unsubsidized Stafford loans
https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/scfindex.htm
https://media.hachyderm.io/media_attachments/files/113/630/528/109/604/508/original/0569b0d581874e2d.png

2024-12-08 01:10:16 GMT

Really incredible what just happened in #Romania. A Russian asset no one's heard of goes from polling under 1% to winning the first round of the presidential election three weeks later with 23%, thanks to a campaign by Russia. Much of which occurred on #TikTok. And, unlike what we did in the US in 2016 and this year, Romania threw out the results of the election. It's surreal, and a wild lens through which to view US politics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQZpc6A2gvU
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#Russia #NATO #SocialMedia

2024-12-02 20:36:14 GMT

Please avoid/minimize the perfume/cologne. And if you use a dryer that vents to the outdoors, please use unscented laundry detergent.
"Scientists have linked a group of chemicals used in fragrances to numerous adverse health outcomes, including insulin resistance and cardiovascular disease."
https://wapo.st/4fRlPwh
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#odor #pollution #fragrance #perfume #cologne #GiftArticle

2024-11-15 23:32:12 GMT

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@nprofile…ulpn
"The WBUR Viewfinder is a symbol that represents our role in a new, memorable way. The square represents the solid facts at our foundation. And the circle is the shape we bring to each story. It's both head and heart."
https://www.wbur.org/inside/2024/10/07/may-we-have-your-undivided-attention

2024-11-15 15:39:47 GMT

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@nprofile…u38r
Isn't that a problem with almost all chocolate, because it's grown in poor African countries where leaded gasoline was still common until less than a decade ago, because oil co's had tons of supply leftover from the 50s to 70s and sold it cheap? And it takes decades to remove heavy metals from an environment?
When I can afford it, I buy South/Central American chocolate, which usually tests better, e.g.
https://www.info.equalexchange.coop/partners/category/Farmers+%E2%80%A2+Cacao
The Panama is delicious:
https://shop.equalexchange.coop/collections/chocolate-bars/products/organic-panama-extra-dark-chocolate-80-cacao

2024-11-10 21:55:55 GMT

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@npub1uul…dkn7
Yes, there are certainly a number of low-income people burdened by educational debt. (And these are the ones the upper income people held up to justify a policy that would be a windfall to them.)
And black Americans are disproportionately burdened by educational debt, just like they are by *every* other financial hardship.
Best policy: progressive monthly cash assistance for those with no wealth and little income, up to around the ~60th percentile of income; plus a wealth tax.

2024-11-10 21:31:11 GMT

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@npub1uul…dkn7
You know this is false, right? The data shows the majority of student debt is held by the middle to upper classes. If you look at the bottom quintile (lowest 20%) by income, 80% of those people have zero educational debt.
That's because most poor people can't afford to go to college *even with loans*
While most high income families take unsubsidized Stafford loans.
If you want to target aid to the poor, give poor people cash, don't look to student debt
https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/scfindex.htm
https://media.hachyderm.io/media_attachments/files/113/460/762/534/733/341/original/ab1d48e44273918c.png

2024-11-06 17:58:45 GMT

Why did most white people vote for Trump? Today I see lots of people saying it was "economic anxiety"
h/t @npub1tpa…xh3y
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#election #EconomicAnxiety #racism
https://media.hachyderm.io/media_attachments/files/113/437/295/354/114/971/original/05dcbde929f68220.png

2024-07-07 19:00:03 GMT

"The first projections in the 2024 French legislative election say leftists have won most seats. The surprise projections put President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist alliance in second and the far right in third... A final national tally is expected by early Monday."
https://apnews.com/live/france-election-results-updates-round-2-macron-le-pen
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#GoodNews #France #elections

2024-06-23 21:35:04 GMT

"Pedestrian deaths have increased 83% since reaching their low point in 2009...
"In a study of pedestrian crashes between 2009 and 2016, IIHS researchers found that fatal single-vehicle crashes involving SUVs increased 81%, more than any other vehicle type"
https://www.iihs.org/topics/pedestrians-and-bicyclists#vehicle-design
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#SUV #truck

2024-05-25 02:59:19 GMT

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@npub1jdw…awld
Yes to the omega-3s. But vitamin D supplements are usually D3 derived from fish as well. You can’t make D3 without organic processing of UV light, and fish do that. I think most vitamin A also comes from fish

2024-05-24 22:58:29 GMT

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@npub1jdw…awld
Haven’t we (in the US) been putting fish oil supplements into almost all milk sold in the grocery store for decades? (In the form of vitamin D and vitamin A)

2024-05-23 19:44:24 GMT

"A political consultant who sent artificial intelligence-generated robocalls mimicking President Joe Biden’s voice to voters ahead of New Hampshire’s presidential primary faces a $6 million fine and more than two dozen criminal charges"
https://apnews.com/article/biden-robocalls-ai-new-hampshire-charges-fines-9e9cc63a71eb9c78b9bb0d1ec2aa6e9c
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#FCC #AI #election #fraud

2024-04-23 19:42:45 GMT

"Complaints that pregnant women were turned away from U.S. emergency rooms spiked in 2022 after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, federal documents obtained by The Associated Press reveal."
https://apnews.com/article/pregnancy-emergency-care-abortion-supreme-court-roe-9ce6c87c8fc653c840654de1ae5f7a1c
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#abortion #GOP #women #healthcare #SCOTUS

2024-02-23 21:37:28 GMT

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@npub1l0s…pgrv
Great article!

2023-09-18 02:09:57 GMT

Why are cops using force to stop a high school band from continuing to play at the end of a football game?
So much for freedom in #Alabama
"police were trying to clear the stadium after the game and asked both bands to stop playing so people wouldn’t linger.
"Police say the director disregarded officers and told his students to keep playing."
They arrested and tasered him.
https://apnews.com/article/alabama-birmingham-band-director-tased-arrested-d5700475e63b76272caa5fd64d641cd2
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#wth #police #birmingham

2023-08-17 19:45:04 GMT

"Former Special Agent in Charge (SAC) of the FBI Counterintelligence Division in New York, Charles McGonigal, 54, of New York City, pleaded guilty today to conspiring to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) and to commit money laundering in connection with his 2021 agreement to provide services to Oleg Deripaska, a sanctioned Russian oligarch."
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/former-special-agent-charge-new-york-fbi-counterintelligence-division-pleads-guilty
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#FBI #McGonigal #NewYork #Russia #sanctions #traitor

2023-08-05 11:45:54 GMT

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@npub1rkj…ufed
Aren’t these attackers almost always outside the US, usually in Russia? And isn’t the Russian state happy to have them there as long as they attack targets in enemy countries, like the US?
If cryptocurrency had no market value (it should have negative value to reflect the cost to society), they would have no motive, because it would be nearly impossible to get paid