NPR's coverage and https://apnews.com/live/election-biden-trump-campaign-updates-07-13-2024">AP's coverage of the assassination attempt on Trump. "The man identified as the shooter in the apparent assassination attempt of former President Donald Trump was a 20-year-old from a Pittsburgh suburb not far from the campaign rally where one attendee was killed."
Richard Simmons, Dr Ruth Westheimer, and so it goes.
"The (Colorado) state health department said late Friday afternoon that three new likely human cases of virus infection from avian flu have been identified. The highly pathogenic avian influenza is also called 'H5 bird flu.' The cases are in three poultry workers."
"Lack of a federal ban on tianeptine has meant states have been acting on their own. In 2018, Michigan became the first state to ban sales of the drug, classifying it as a Schedule II controlled substance, the same category as drugs like cocaine and fentanyl. The FDA says at least 12 states have enacted similar bans, which includes products such as Neptune's Fix and prohibits retailers from shipping to those states."
"And yet the dreaded came anyway this June, when monsoon season arrived early and taps in the northern New Mexico community paradoxically nearly went dry. That’s because flash flooding off the 2-year-old burn scar sent toxic debris into the Gallinas River, compromising Las Vegas’ (New Mexico) water treatment plant."
"A fleet of drones patrolling New York City’s beaches for signs of sharks and struggling swimmers is drawing backlash from an aggressive group of seaside residents: local shorebirds."
"So AI really does appear to make people more creative. But there’s a plot twist: When Hauser and Doshi looked at all the stories, they found a different effect... 'Collectively speaking, there was a smaller diversity of novelty in the group that had AI,' Hauser says... In other words, the chatbot made each individual more creative, but it made the group that had AI help less creative... Hauser describes the divergent result as a 'classic social dilemma' — a situation where people benefit individually, but the group suffers."
"But given the litigious nature of environmental law and the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decisions, particularly one limiting the power of federal agencies, legal experts say one of the election’s most consequential aspects for the climate would be the judicial appointments either candidate makes."
"Voters in Midwestern states are seeing ads railing against President Biden’s gas car ban. But there’s one catch: the Biden administration hasn’t prohibited gas-powered vehicles. That’s not stopping fossil fuel industry groups and former President Donald Trump from targeting swing state voters with warnings of car bans." Since when has the truth stopped political action groups?
Sunday, July 14, 2024
Saturday, July 13, 2024
Linkee-poo July 13
"Last year was the hottest year on record for the world. The U.S. is warming up at a faster rate than the global average, which means the effects of global warming will be more pronounced... Arizona, California, Oregon and Nevada have all seen record-breaking heat in recent weeks. And while the heat wave is mostly in the West, states across the country like North Carolina and Maryland have also seen temperature records fall this summer." Considering the US was kept cool by unusually weather patterns for more than a decade (which played into the climate denial camp with, "warming, what warming") we're just catching up to the rest of the world.
"People in India and other countries across the Global South have long figured out ways to deal with horrible heat. I'd like to share a few tips I've learned from my elders back home in India. Some of the advice is just what you'd think —- drinking lots of liquids and staying out of the sun. Other strategies might surprise you."
"Researchers have found toxic metals — including arsenic and lead — in over a dozen popular brands of tampons, raising questions about a menstrual hygiene product used by millions of Americans."
"'We’ve been doing this now for well over three years here,' reCOVer Clinic (a part of Cleveland Clinic) Medical Director Dr. William Lago said. 'And we have people that have literally been sick, really, since the pandemic started.'... Lago said patients like Wickert have been searching for answers since the branch facility opened in 2021." I said at the beginning of this that since this was a novel virus to humans, it would change us. This is part of what I was talking about.
"Rudy Giuliani is no longer entitled to bankruptcy protection, a judge decided Friday, making it possible for creditors to immediately pursue his assets within days... The former mayor of New York sought bankruptcy protection after a jury awarded two Georgia election workers $148 million because Giuliani defamed them after the 2020 election. The judge’s decision Friday, to end his bankruptcy, paves the way for Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, as well as other creditors, who are trying to collect on the more than $150 million Giuliani owes." Good.
"In a stunning turn of events, a New Mexico judge dismissed Alec Baldwin's 'Rust' case Friday, on day three of his manslaughter trial... The judge granted the defense's motion to dismiss the case, in which they claimed live ammunition that came into the hands of local law enforcement related to the investigation into the deadly on-set shooting was 'concealed' from them."
"One of the top stories was about the space junk strike, and even included a photo of the farmer, Barry Sawchuk, standing next to what looked like the charred, battered hood of a semitruck covered with woven carbon fiber and a few slightly melted aluminum protrusions. My jaw dropped in shock: The object looked exactly like debris that fell in an Australian sheep field in 2022, which the U.S. aerospace company SpaceX later admitted was part of a cargo trunk for its Crew Dragon spacecraft. This “trunk” is actually the size of a small grain silo, and is ejected in orbit well before the spacecraft’s atmospheric reentry, to naturally and chaotically reenter on its own and, supposedly, burn up completely."v "It was hard to foresee that parts of South Texas would become a sacrifice zone for SpaceX's ambitions to send people to Mars, but the company set up an impression of maintaining a 'small, eco-friendly' footprint to get what it wanted. But that hasn't been the reality, according to a new report."
"After the House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary released a report accusing the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) of colluding with companies to censor conservative voices online, Elon Musk chimed in. In a post on X (formerly Twitter), Musk wrote that X "has no choice but to file suit against the perpetrators and collaborators" behind an advertiser boycott on his platform… 'Hopefully, some states will consider criminal prosecution,' Musk wrote, leading several X users to suggest that Musk wants it to be illegal for brands to refuse to advertise on X." And here comes the compelled speech defense.
"A World War I veteran is the first person identified from graves filled with more than a hundred victims of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre that devastated the city’s Black community, the mayor said Friday."
"When Anna Wolfe won the Pulitzer Prize for her dogged reporting on Mississippi’s welfare fraud scandal, she had no inkling she was soon going to have to contend with the possibility of going to jail… But just over a year after she secured journalism’s top award for exposing how $77 million in federal welfare funds went to athletes, cronies and pet projects, she and her editor, Adam Ganucheau, are contemplating what to pack for an extended stay behind bars. Sued for defamation by the state’s former governor — a top subject of their reporting — they have been hit with a court order requiring them to turn over internal files including the names of confidential sources. They say the order is a threat to journalism that they will resist."
"The (SCOTUS) decisions, taken together, offer a perfect representation of the current Supreme Court: Our country is being led by an all-powerful, undemocratic institution that is, in many ways, a complete joke — in addition to being simply corrupt. As Justice Elena Kagan wrote in her dissent on Friday, 'The majority disdains restraint, and grasps for power' — and the justices are 'making a laughing-stock' of long-standing judicial principles." And this article was from before the SCOTUS gave the president unparalleled immunity.
"A conservative think tank that is planning for a complete overhaul of the federal government in the event of a Republican presidential win is suggesting that President Joe Biden might try to hold the White House 'by force' if he loses the November election… The Heritage Foundation’s warning — which goes against Biden’s own public statements — appeared in a report released Thursday that the group said resulted from a role-playing exercise gaming out potential scenarios before and after the 2024 election." This is what's known as "seeding the ground" so that when they lose, they can claim, "it was all rigged from the start."
"A network of ultrawealthy Christian donors is spending nearly $12 million to mobilize Republican-leaning voters and purge more than a million people from the rolls in key swing states, aiming to tilt the 2024 election in favor of former President Donald Trump… These previously unreported plans are the work of a group named Ziklag, a little-known charity whose donors have included some of the wealthiest conservative Christian families in the nation… Recipients of Ziklag’s largesse include Alliance Defending Freedom, which is the Christian legal group that led the overturning of Roe v. Wade, plus the national pro-Trump group Turning Point USA and a constellation of right-of-center advocacy groups."
"(The Press) have become a stampeding herd producing an avalanche of stories suggesting Biden is unfit, will lose and should go away, at a point in the campaign in which replacing him would likely be somewhere between extremely difficult and utterly catastrophic. They do this while ignoring something every scholar and critic of journalism knows well and every journalist should. As Nikole Hannah-Jones put it: 'As media we consistently proclaim that we are just reporting the news when in fact we are driving it. What we cover, how we cover it, determines often what Americans think is important and how they perceive these issues yet we keep pretending it’s not so.' They are not reporting that he is a loser; they are making him one."v "President Joe Biden didn’t entirely stumble at his high-stakes NATO press conference on Thursday — but his performance and continuing defiance to stepping aside has frozen Democrats in place once again over the president’s embattled candidacy against Donald Trump." This whole campaign of "Biden must step down" stinks of an information warfare campaign aided by willful fools who think they have something to gain.
"During a news conference Thursday, when asked why he no longer considered himself a 'bridge' to the next generation of leaders, Biden responded that 'what changed was the gravity of the situation I inherited in terms of the economy, foreign policy, and domestic division... We’ve never been here before,' Biden continued. 'And that’s the other reason why I didn’t, you say, hand off to another generation. I gotta finish the job.'"
"Donald Trump is expected to launch a new legal battle to suppress any damaging evidence from his 2020 election-subversion case from becoming public before the 2024 election, preparing to shut down the potency of any 'mini-trials' where high-profile officials could testify against him."
"The Project 2025 playbook was written by more than 20 officials whom Trump himself appointed during his first term. If he has 'no idea' who they are, he’s showing an alarming cognitive decline… One of the leaders of Project 2025 is Russ Vought. Vought was Trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget, a key position in the White House. Vought is also drafting Trump’s 2024 GOP platform… Another Project 2025 leader is John McEntee, another of Trump’s top White House aides…Even the national press secretary for Trump’s campaign appears in the Project 2025 recruitment video."
"People in India and other countries across the Global South have long figured out ways to deal with horrible heat. I'd like to share a few tips I've learned from my elders back home in India. Some of the advice is just what you'd think —- drinking lots of liquids and staying out of the sun. Other strategies might surprise you."
"Researchers have found toxic metals — including arsenic and lead — in over a dozen popular brands of tampons, raising questions about a menstrual hygiene product used by millions of Americans."
"'We’ve been doing this now for well over three years here,' reCOVer Clinic (a part of Cleveland Clinic) Medical Director Dr. William Lago said. 'And we have people that have literally been sick, really, since the pandemic started.'... Lago said patients like Wickert have been searching for answers since the branch facility opened in 2021." I said at the beginning of this that since this was a novel virus to humans, it would change us. This is part of what I was talking about.
"Rudy Giuliani is no longer entitled to bankruptcy protection, a judge decided Friday, making it possible for creditors to immediately pursue his assets within days... The former mayor of New York sought bankruptcy protection after a jury awarded two Georgia election workers $148 million because Giuliani defamed them after the 2020 election. The judge’s decision Friday, to end his bankruptcy, paves the way for Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, as well as other creditors, who are trying to collect on the more than $150 million Giuliani owes." Good.
"In a stunning turn of events, a New Mexico judge dismissed Alec Baldwin's 'Rust' case Friday, on day three of his manslaughter trial... The judge granted the defense's motion to dismiss the case, in which they claimed live ammunition that came into the hands of local law enforcement related to the investigation into the deadly on-set shooting was 'concealed' from them."
"One of the top stories was about the space junk strike, and even included a photo of the farmer, Barry Sawchuk, standing next to what looked like the charred, battered hood of a semitruck covered with woven carbon fiber and a few slightly melted aluminum protrusions. My jaw dropped in shock: The object looked exactly like debris that fell in an Australian sheep field in 2022, which the U.S. aerospace company SpaceX later admitted was part of a cargo trunk for its Crew Dragon spacecraft. This “trunk” is actually the size of a small grain silo, and is ejected in orbit well before the spacecraft’s atmospheric reentry, to naturally and chaotically reenter on its own and, supposedly, burn up completely."v "It was hard to foresee that parts of South Texas would become a sacrifice zone for SpaceX's ambitions to send people to Mars, but the company set up an impression of maintaining a 'small, eco-friendly' footprint to get what it wanted. But that hasn't been the reality, according to a new report."
"After the House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary released a report accusing the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) of colluding with companies to censor conservative voices online, Elon Musk chimed in. In a post on X (formerly Twitter), Musk wrote that X "has no choice but to file suit against the perpetrators and collaborators" behind an advertiser boycott on his platform… 'Hopefully, some states will consider criminal prosecution,' Musk wrote, leading several X users to suggest that Musk wants it to be illegal for brands to refuse to advertise on X." And here comes the compelled speech defense.
"A World War I veteran is the first person identified from graves filled with more than a hundred victims of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre that devastated the city’s Black community, the mayor said Friday."
"When Anna Wolfe won the Pulitzer Prize for her dogged reporting on Mississippi’s welfare fraud scandal, she had no inkling she was soon going to have to contend with the possibility of going to jail… But just over a year after she secured journalism’s top award for exposing how $77 million in federal welfare funds went to athletes, cronies and pet projects, she and her editor, Adam Ganucheau, are contemplating what to pack for an extended stay behind bars. Sued for defamation by the state’s former governor — a top subject of their reporting — they have been hit with a court order requiring them to turn over internal files including the names of confidential sources. They say the order is a threat to journalism that they will resist."
"The (SCOTUS) decisions, taken together, offer a perfect representation of the current Supreme Court: Our country is being led by an all-powerful, undemocratic institution that is, in many ways, a complete joke — in addition to being simply corrupt. As Justice Elena Kagan wrote in her dissent on Friday, 'The majority disdains restraint, and grasps for power' — and the justices are 'making a laughing-stock' of long-standing judicial principles." And this article was from before the SCOTUS gave the president unparalleled immunity.
"A conservative think tank that is planning for a complete overhaul of the federal government in the event of a Republican presidential win is suggesting that President Joe Biden might try to hold the White House 'by force' if he loses the November election… The Heritage Foundation’s warning — which goes against Biden’s own public statements — appeared in a report released Thursday that the group said resulted from a role-playing exercise gaming out potential scenarios before and after the 2024 election." This is what's known as "seeding the ground" so that when they lose, they can claim, "it was all rigged from the start."
"A network of ultrawealthy Christian donors is spending nearly $12 million to mobilize Republican-leaning voters and purge more than a million people from the rolls in key swing states, aiming to tilt the 2024 election in favor of former President Donald Trump… These previously unreported plans are the work of a group named Ziklag, a little-known charity whose donors have included some of the wealthiest conservative Christian families in the nation… Recipients of Ziklag’s largesse include Alliance Defending Freedom, which is the Christian legal group that led the overturning of Roe v. Wade, plus the national pro-Trump group Turning Point USA and a constellation of right-of-center advocacy groups."
"(The Press) have become a stampeding herd producing an avalanche of stories suggesting Biden is unfit, will lose and should go away, at a point in the campaign in which replacing him would likely be somewhere between extremely difficult and utterly catastrophic. They do this while ignoring something every scholar and critic of journalism knows well and every journalist should. As Nikole Hannah-Jones put it: 'As media we consistently proclaim that we are just reporting the news when in fact we are driving it. What we cover, how we cover it, determines often what Americans think is important and how they perceive these issues yet we keep pretending it’s not so.' They are not reporting that he is a loser; they are making him one."v "President Joe Biden didn’t entirely stumble at his high-stakes NATO press conference on Thursday — but his performance and continuing defiance to stepping aside has frozen Democrats in place once again over the president’s embattled candidacy against Donald Trump." This whole campaign of "Biden must step down" stinks of an information warfare campaign aided by willful fools who think they have something to gain.
"During a news conference Thursday, when asked why he no longer considered himself a 'bridge' to the next generation of leaders, Biden responded that 'what changed was the gravity of the situation I inherited in terms of the economy, foreign policy, and domestic division... We’ve never been here before,' Biden continued. 'And that’s the other reason why I didn’t, you say, hand off to another generation. I gotta finish the job.'"
"Donald Trump is expected to launch a new legal battle to suppress any damaging evidence from his 2020 election-subversion case from becoming public before the 2024 election, preparing to shut down the potency of any 'mini-trials' where high-profile officials could testify against him."
"The Project 2025 playbook was written by more than 20 officials whom Trump himself appointed during his first term. If he has 'no idea' who they are, he’s showing an alarming cognitive decline… One of the leaders of Project 2025 is Russ Vought. Vought was Trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget, a key position in the White House. Vought is also drafting Trump’s 2024 GOP platform… Another Project 2025 leader is John McEntee, another of Trump’s top White House aides…Even the national press secretary for Trump’s campaign appears in the Project 2025 recruitment video."
Friday, July 5, 2024
Linkee-poo July 5
"After leaving a trail of destruction across the eastern Caribbean and at least nine people dead, Hurricane Beryl weakened as it chugged over open water toward Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula on Thursday, going from the earliest Category 5 hurricane in the Atlantic to Category 2 by the afternoon."
"Beryl has already racked up multiple alarming superlatives. It is the most powerful hurricane ever recorded this early in the Atlantic hurricane season, and also the earliest storm to strengthen so rapidly as it formed. Beryl grew from a relatively weak tropical depression into a full-blown major hurricane in less than two days, sending residents in its path scrambling to evacuate or find suitable shelter... Climate change is playing a crucial and obvious role in Beryl’s development, scientists say."
"Flooding on the Blue Earth River breached the Rapidan Dam Monday morning and it's now in an "imminent failure condition," officials said... Le Sueur County residents in low-lying areas of the Minnesota River Valley are advised to closely monitor the situation and potentially evacuate, according to the county's emergency management office. The agency initially said the dam had failed, but later updated that the dam had been breached."
"Rushing waters from the Blue Earth River have already left a trail of debris and destruction on the edges of a southern Minnesota dam that partially failed last week, but officials acknowledged Tuesday the structure most in danger may be the bridge that looms nearby."
"The melting of Alaska’s Juneau icefield, home to more than 1,000 glaciers, is accelerating. The snow covered area is now shrinking 4.6 times faster than it was in the 1980s, according to a new study."
"As the demand for electricity has soared, the regional power grid has hummed along uneventfully, backed in part by a relatively new source of energy: thousands of solar panels on rooftops, over parking lots, and along highways. It’s not just helping make the grid more reliable, experts said, but proving that non-fossil fuel generated power is finally playing a significant role in the operation of the regional power grid, with even more due to come online from major wind farms and other large-scale resources under development." Why it's almost like solar is better.
"Researchers, including former CDC director Tom Frieden and Anthony Fauci, who led the nation’s response to COVID, cite testing failures as a key reason the U.S. fared so poorly with COVID. Had COVID tests been widely available in early 2020, they say, the U.S. could have detected many cases before they turned into outbreaks that prompted business shutdowns and cost lives." And now the same thing is happening with H5N1.
"Texas lawmakers touted their heartbeat law as an effort to save lives, but the state's near-total ban on abortion appears to have triggered an increase in infant deaths, according to a new study published Monday." Who could have seen that happening, other than everybody.
"Vice President Kamala Harris is using the second anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade to argue that Donald Trump is 'guilty' of rolling back women’s freedoms and setting off a nationwide health care crisis."
"The Supreme Court said Monday it will hear a major case on transgender rights and decide whether states may prohibit the use of puberty blockers and other hormones for teens who suffer from gender distress."
"'I would call the day it went on the market,' she says, 'and the real estate agent would tell me, "Yeah, I can show you that property. But just so you know, it's already got two cash offers on it."'"
"Investigations by nonprofit news outlet ProPublica have found links between Chinese diplomats, Chinese Communist Party-affiliated organizations, local Chinese criminal syndicates and some marijuana operations in the United States... In the operations reported on in this story, NPR found no signs of Chinese state or Asian organized crime involvement. The businesses did attract small-scale, individual investors from China who were eager to invest abroad."
"Amazon workers left unable to work by injuries on the job have resorted to online fundraising campaigns to pay their bills as they fight for compensation and disability benefits… During interviews with the Guardian, they alleged the company ignored workers’ concerns over the strains of warehouse work, denied requests for compensation or benefits after injuries, and put productivity above all else."
"McDonald’s is ditching its drive-through AI ordering system after too many customers wound up with hilarious, wonky orders from the artificial intelligence tech… The fast food giant, which had been testing voice-automated ordering systems at about 100 restaurant drive-throughs since 2021, is now booting it from the menu. It seems to be because AI, at least when it comes to taking orders as people shout them from their car windows, turns out not to be a very good listener." There are so many jokes here, crappy AI, crappy drive-through audio, and modern business'/computer science's inability to actually test something before it's rolled out. And then there is this… "Chains have high hopes about AI, but the ordering systems haven’t been as smooth or accurate as customers would hope." As "customers" would hope. It ain't the customers rolling out the AI, idiots. But rather than saying, "whelp, that didn't work," McDs "says it will wait until competitors bring in AI, too." So once everybody's drive throughs are crappy, ah, then they will match that crappiness and be the best crappy service in the market place. The current technology is a bunch of shit, folks. It ain't intelligent and it's barely artificial. But corporate America is in love, and so they will throw a metric shit-ton of the economy down the AI rabbit hole before they realize it (if they ever will). Most likely we will end up with implementation that mirrors the AI, in that AI is not artificial intelligence, it has no concept of what it is actually doing except that it's making statistically relevant predictions of "tokens" (words or images), but it doesn't have any concept of the human meaning of those tokens. But computer science has been telling us "AI is ALMOST HERE!" for so long they finally just drew the finish line behind where they were standing and declared victory.
An article floating around my social media groups… "I started working as a data scientist in 2019, and by 2021 I had realized that while the field was large, it was also largely fraudulent. Most of the leaders that I was working with clearly had not gotten as far as reading about it for thirty minutes despite insisting that things like, I dunno, the next five years of a ten thousand person non-tech organization should be entirely AI focused. The number of companies launching AI initiatives far outstripped the number of actual use cases. Most of the market was simply grifters and incompetents (sometimes both!) leveraging the hype to inflate their headcount so they could get promoted, or be seen as thought leaders." The first one to figure out how to make it actually work will be remembered in the same way Jack Welch is remembered for Six Sigma and making GE Financial into a powerhouse (but it's overlooked how he took the largest, most technically savvy corporation in the world and drove it into a smoking crater where it no longer makes its signature product, the consumer light bulb).
"General Motors will pay nearly $146 million in penalties to the federal government because 5.9 million of its older vehicles do not comply with emissions and fuel economy standards... The penalty comes after the Environmental Protection Agency said its testing showed the GM pickup trucks and SUVs emit over 10% more carbon dioxide on average than GM’s initial compliance testing claimed."
"The National Black Farmers Association called on Tractor Supply’s president and CEO Tuesday to step down after the rural retailer announced that it would drop most of its corporate diversity and climate advocacy efforts."
"Rishi Sunak has become mired in a row over alleged betting on the general election date after it emerged that a second Conservative candidate and the party’s campaigns director were being looked into by the Gambling Commission… The watchdog is examining bets allegedly placed by Laura Saunders, the Tory candidate in Bristol North West, and her husband, Tony Lee, who is now on leave of absence from his job at party headquarters." Since this article was published I believe a few more have been caught up in the net. This is just so piss poor competence that it has almost come around the bend back into genius. And the kicker is that it's all for such low stakes (like 100 pounds). If not for totally screwing over the UK, the Tories should lose the election just on this.
"The exit poll suggests that the opposition Labour Party is on course to win 410 of the House of Commons’ 650 seats... The Conservatives are set for 131 seats — the lowest number of Conservative lawmakers on record.. The exit poll also forecasts the left-of-center Liberal Democrats will take 61 seats, and the right-wing, anti-immigration Reform UK is predicted to take 13. The Green Party is expected to take 2."
"WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will plead guilty to a felony charge in a deal with the U.S. Justice Department that will resolve a long-running legal saga that spanned multiple continents and centered on the publication of a trove of classified documents, according to court papers filed late Monday."
"The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office on Friday declined to charge Edan On, the 18-year-old accused of attacking pro-Palestinian protesters at UCLA in April, citing insufficient evidence and referring the case to the Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office for misdemeanor filing consideration… On was identified by his mother to CNN as the man in a white hoodie attacking protesters with a long pole in videos distributed across social media. He was arrested on suspicion of felony assault in May." They say they didn't have enough evidence to tie him to the crime. Yet… "CNN was the first to identify On, along with other counterprotesters, through a review of hundreds of hours of video, social media posts and interviews. Video shows the 18-year-old striking a pro-Palestinian protester with a pole and continuing to strike him even when he was down, as fellow counterprotesters piled on." Yeah, I guess all the physical evidence, statements, video, and other physical evidence that places him at the scene of the crime just wasn't enough. What a load of bullshit.
"A federal appeals court Thursday night rejected Steve Bannon’s bid to delay the July 1 start of his criminal contempt-of-Congress prison sentence… Following the ruling from the US DC Circuit Court of Appeals, it is likely the former adviser to former President Donald Trump will seek the intervention of the Supreme Court."
"The scenarios may sound part of an apocalyptic future. But the plain reality of the 6-3 opinion is that it ensures presidents have a wide berth to carry out official acts without fear of being criminally charged and it could embolden Trump, who was impeached twice and faced four separate prosecutions over the last year and a half, as he eyes a return to the White House."
"With a $100,000 grant from the Heritage Foundation, the goal is to post 100 names of government workers to a website this summer to show a potential new administration who might be standing in the way of a second-term Trump agenda — and ripe for scrutiny, reclassifications, reassignments or firings." You know, like totally normal people do. Because creating lists for Stasi purges never goes wrong.
"The leader of a conservative think tank orchestrating plans for a massive overhaul of the federal government in the event of a Republican presidential win said that the country is in the midst of a 'second American Revolution' that will be bloodless 'if the left allows it to be.'" The only appropriate response to this is a hearty, "Fuck you, Kevin Roberts."
"A U.S. bankruptcy court trustee is planning to shut down conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ Infowars media platform and liquidate its assets to help pay the $1.5 billion in lawsuit judgments Jones owes for repeatedly calling the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting a hoax."
"Beryl has already racked up multiple alarming superlatives. It is the most powerful hurricane ever recorded this early in the Atlantic hurricane season, and also the earliest storm to strengthen so rapidly as it formed. Beryl grew from a relatively weak tropical depression into a full-blown major hurricane in less than two days, sending residents in its path scrambling to evacuate or find suitable shelter... Climate change is playing a crucial and obvious role in Beryl’s development, scientists say."
"Flooding on the Blue Earth River breached the Rapidan Dam Monday morning and it's now in an "imminent failure condition," officials said... Le Sueur County residents in low-lying areas of the Minnesota River Valley are advised to closely monitor the situation and potentially evacuate, according to the county's emergency management office. The agency initially said the dam had failed, but later updated that the dam had been breached."
"Rushing waters from the Blue Earth River have already left a trail of debris and destruction on the edges of a southern Minnesota dam that partially failed last week, but officials acknowledged Tuesday the structure most in danger may be the bridge that looms nearby."
"The melting of Alaska’s Juneau icefield, home to more than 1,000 glaciers, is accelerating. The snow covered area is now shrinking 4.6 times faster than it was in the 1980s, according to a new study."
"As the demand for electricity has soared, the regional power grid has hummed along uneventfully, backed in part by a relatively new source of energy: thousands of solar panels on rooftops, over parking lots, and along highways. It’s not just helping make the grid more reliable, experts said, but proving that non-fossil fuel generated power is finally playing a significant role in the operation of the regional power grid, with even more due to come online from major wind farms and other large-scale resources under development." Why it's almost like solar is better.
"Researchers, including former CDC director Tom Frieden and Anthony Fauci, who led the nation’s response to COVID, cite testing failures as a key reason the U.S. fared so poorly with COVID. Had COVID tests been widely available in early 2020, they say, the U.S. could have detected many cases before they turned into outbreaks that prompted business shutdowns and cost lives." And now the same thing is happening with H5N1.
"Texas lawmakers touted their heartbeat law as an effort to save lives, but the state's near-total ban on abortion appears to have triggered an increase in infant deaths, according to a new study published Monday." Who could have seen that happening, other than everybody.
"Vice President Kamala Harris is using the second anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade to argue that Donald Trump is 'guilty' of rolling back women’s freedoms and setting off a nationwide health care crisis."
"The Supreme Court said Monday it will hear a major case on transgender rights and decide whether states may prohibit the use of puberty blockers and other hormones for teens who suffer from gender distress."
"'I would call the day it went on the market,' she says, 'and the real estate agent would tell me, "Yeah, I can show you that property. But just so you know, it's already got two cash offers on it."'"
"Investigations by nonprofit news outlet ProPublica have found links between Chinese diplomats, Chinese Communist Party-affiliated organizations, local Chinese criminal syndicates and some marijuana operations in the United States... In the operations reported on in this story, NPR found no signs of Chinese state or Asian organized crime involvement. The businesses did attract small-scale, individual investors from China who were eager to invest abroad."
"Amazon workers left unable to work by injuries on the job have resorted to online fundraising campaigns to pay their bills as they fight for compensation and disability benefits… During interviews with the Guardian, they alleged the company ignored workers’ concerns over the strains of warehouse work, denied requests for compensation or benefits after injuries, and put productivity above all else."
"McDonald’s is ditching its drive-through AI ordering system after too many customers wound up with hilarious, wonky orders from the artificial intelligence tech… The fast food giant, which had been testing voice-automated ordering systems at about 100 restaurant drive-throughs since 2021, is now booting it from the menu. It seems to be because AI, at least when it comes to taking orders as people shout them from their car windows, turns out not to be a very good listener." There are so many jokes here, crappy AI, crappy drive-through audio, and modern business'/computer science's inability to actually test something before it's rolled out. And then there is this… "Chains have high hopes about AI, but the ordering systems haven’t been as smooth or accurate as customers would hope." As "customers" would hope. It ain't the customers rolling out the AI, idiots. But rather than saying, "whelp, that didn't work," McDs "says it will wait until competitors bring in AI, too." So once everybody's drive throughs are crappy, ah, then they will match that crappiness and be the best crappy service in the market place. The current technology is a bunch of shit, folks. It ain't intelligent and it's barely artificial. But corporate America is in love, and so they will throw a metric shit-ton of the economy down the AI rabbit hole before they realize it (if they ever will). Most likely we will end up with implementation that mirrors the AI, in that AI is not artificial intelligence, it has no concept of what it is actually doing except that it's making statistically relevant predictions of "tokens" (words or images), but it doesn't have any concept of the human meaning of those tokens. But computer science has been telling us "AI is ALMOST HERE!" for so long they finally just drew the finish line behind where they were standing and declared victory.
An article floating around my social media groups… "I started working as a data scientist in 2019, and by 2021 I had realized that while the field was large, it was also largely fraudulent. Most of the leaders that I was working with clearly had not gotten as far as reading about it for thirty minutes despite insisting that things like, I dunno, the next five years of a ten thousand person non-tech organization should be entirely AI focused. The number of companies launching AI initiatives far outstripped the number of actual use cases. Most of the market was simply grifters and incompetents (sometimes both!) leveraging the hype to inflate their headcount so they could get promoted, or be seen as thought leaders." The first one to figure out how to make it actually work will be remembered in the same way Jack Welch is remembered for Six Sigma and making GE Financial into a powerhouse (but it's overlooked how he took the largest, most technically savvy corporation in the world and drove it into a smoking crater where it no longer makes its signature product, the consumer light bulb).
"General Motors will pay nearly $146 million in penalties to the federal government because 5.9 million of its older vehicles do not comply with emissions and fuel economy standards... The penalty comes after the Environmental Protection Agency said its testing showed the GM pickup trucks and SUVs emit over 10% more carbon dioxide on average than GM’s initial compliance testing claimed."
"The National Black Farmers Association called on Tractor Supply’s president and CEO Tuesday to step down after the rural retailer announced that it would drop most of its corporate diversity and climate advocacy efforts."
"Rishi Sunak has become mired in a row over alleged betting on the general election date after it emerged that a second Conservative candidate and the party’s campaigns director were being looked into by the Gambling Commission… The watchdog is examining bets allegedly placed by Laura Saunders, the Tory candidate in Bristol North West, and her husband, Tony Lee, who is now on leave of absence from his job at party headquarters." Since this article was published I believe a few more have been caught up in the net. This is just so piss poor competence that it has almost come around the bend back into genius. And the kicker is that it's all for such low stakes (like 100 pounds). If not for totally screwing over the UK, the Tories should lose the election just on this.
"The exit poll suggests that the opposition Labour Party is on course to win 410 of the House of Commons’ 650 seats... The Conservatives are set for 131 seats — the lowest number of Conservative lawmakers on record.. The exit poll also forecasts the left-of-center Liberal Democrats will take 61 seats, and the right-wing, anti-immigration Reform UK is predicted to take 13. The Green Party is expected to take 2."
"WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will plead guilty to a felony charge in a deal with the U.S. Justice Department that will resolve a long-running legal saga that spanned multiple continents and centered on the publication of a trove of classified documents, according to court papers filed late Monday."
"The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office on Friday declined to charge Edan On, the 18-year-old accused of attacking pro-Palestinian protesters at UCLA in April, citing insufficient evidence and referring the case to the Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office for misdemeanor filing consideration… On was identified by his mother to CNN as the man in a white hoodie attacking protesters with a long pole in videos distributed across social media. He was arrested on suspicion of felony assault in May." They say they didn't have enough evidence to tie him to the crime. Yet… "CNN was the first to identify On, along with other counterprotesters, through a review of hundreds of hours of video, social media posts and interviews. Video shows the 18-year-old striking a pro-Palestinian protester with a pole and continuing to strike him even when he was down, as fellow counterprotesters piled on." Yeah, I guess all the physical evidence, statements, video, and other physical evidence that places him at the scene of the crime just wasn't enough. What a load of bullshit.
"A federal appeals court Thursday night rejected Steve Bannon’s bid to delay the July 1 start of his criminal contempt-of-Congress prison sentence… Following the ruling from the US DC Circuit Court of Appeals, it is likely the former adviser to former President Donald Trump will seek the intervention of the Supreme Court."
"The scenarios may sound part of an apocalyptic future. But the plain reality of the 6-3 opinion is that it ensures presidents have a wide berth to carry out official acts without fear of being criminally charged and it could embolden Trump, who was impeached twice and faced four separate prosecutions over the last year and a half, as he eyes a return to the White House."
"With a $100,000 grant from the Heritage Foundation, the goal is to post 100 names of government workers to a website this summer to show a potential new administration who might be standing in the way of a second-term Trump agenda — and ripe for scrutiny, reclassifications, reassignments or firings." You know, like totally normal people do. Because creating lists for Stasi purges never goes wrong.
"The leader of a conservative think tank orchestrating plans for a massive overhaul of the federal government in the event of a Republican presidential win said that the country is in the midst of a 'second American Revolution' that will be bloodless 'if the left allows it to be.'" The only appropriate response to this is a hearty, "Fuck you, Kevin Roberts."
"A U.S. bankruptcy court trustee is planning to shut down conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ Infowars media platform and liquidate its assets to help pay the $1.5 billion in lawsuit judgments Jones owes for repeatedly calling the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting a hoax."
Tuesday, June 18, 2024
Linkee-poo June 18
"Astronomers expect that this year you'll be able to see the explosion of a star system in our Milky Way galaxy by simply looking up at the sky."
"The tour was not organized by Reay’s publisher, Harper Muse, an imprint of HarperCollins, which organized its own promotion of the book. Reay footed the bill for the tour herself… This arrangement is far from unique. According to independent events planners, publicists and marketers, more and more authors are seeking out their services to augment the efforts of their publishers’ in-house staff… Depending on who you ask, the trend is a result of surging promotional workloads over decades – or publishers’ disinvestment in staff."
"The websites are tantalizing: 'You can catch conditions before they become crises,' reads one. Another promises to make cancer 'easier to beat' and claims it can detect 'over 500 other conditions in up to 13 organs.' Full-body scans are attracting celebrity promoters, tech mogul investors and long waiting lists of people hoping to identify life-threatening conditions, usually more treatable in early stages." These are scams. I work in radiology, and I have personally suffered the consequences of submitting images for report that show potential pathologies but that don't meet the criteria for quality imaging practices (and yes, two of those were cancer, and I received a "fail" for one comp and a "QC report"/professional reprimand on another). And yes, incidental findings are definitely a thing and many diseases do not show up symptomatically (pain, etc) until it can be too late. However, these full body scans are a scam run by unscrupulous fucks usually using outdated equipment and they don't do anything to help you. Human bodies are full of anomalies (look up sesamoid bones or "lumbar vertebrae L6") that have zero impact on your health BUT could be potentially an indicator of disease. You have cysts, muscle anomalies, calcifications (especially if you're older) and size variants that can be read as a pathology that have no real impact on your health now or in the future. These companies are banking on the latent hypochondria present in American culture. If you have a concern, most certainly talk with a doctor who will take your concerns seriously (this is a whole other very long conversation), but don't get a full body scan unless your real symptoms/family history warrant such a scan.
Why do we need a strong regulatory function in government? "The air throughout south-east Louisiana’s 'Cancer Alley' is probably being poisoned with a highly carcinogenic gas at levels much higher than previously thought, new research reveals… Using cutting-edge equipment that more accurately checks for the gas, ethylene oxide, which is primarily used in plastic production, researchers found levels more than 1,000 times above previous measurements, and about 10 times higher on average than regulators’ modeling."
"A federal judge on Monday ordered BNSF Railway to pay the Swinomish Tribe $395 million for illegally running mile-long oil trains through the tribe’s reservation for nearly a decade… BNSF has permission from the tribe to run two oil trains a day, totaling no more than 50 tanker cars, through its reservation… Instead, BNSF has been running oil trains with 100 or more cars each across the reservation’s northern end up to six times a day." Wow, actual consequences.
And talking about a strong regulatory function of government, from the FTC blog… "Your therapy bots aren’t licensed psychologists, your AI girlfriends are neither girls nor friends, your griefbots have no soul, and your AI copilots are not gods. We’ve warned companies about making false or unsubstantiated claims about AI or algorithms. And we’ve followed up with action, including recent cases against WealthPress, DK Automation, Automators AI, and CRI Genetics. We’ve also repeatedly advised companies – with reference to past cases – not to use automated tools to mislead people about what they’re seeing, hearing, or reading." Someone is about to open a big can of whoop ass.
"As far back as 2006, when Google launched Google Translate, the translation industry has been 'speculating about the potential for AI to replace human translators,' says Bridget Hylak, a representative from the American Translators Association… So, yeah, translators have been grappling with AI for a while. Yet, despite the fact that anyone with a smartphone has long been able to use this machine translation technology for free or at a relatively low cost — there are still a ton of jobs for human translators and interpreters out there."
"President Biden is set to announce Tuesday new executive actions that will offer protection against deportation to an estimated half a million undocumented spouses of U.S. citizens."
"Today, an eight-member jury in West Palm Beach, Florida, found Chiquita Brands International liable for funding a violent Colombian paramilitary organization, the United Self-defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), that was responsible for major human rights atrocities during the 1990s and 2000s. The weeks-long trial featured testimony from the families of the nine victims in the case, the recollections of Colombian military officials and Chiquita executives, expert reports, and a summary of key documentary evidence produced by Michael Evans, director of the National Security Archive’s Colombia documentation project." Unfortunately, though, no one will go to jail over it and their total fines ($35m from this judgement and $25m from having been found to supporting a terrorist organization) of about $60m are a drop in the bucket of their profits.
"A federal judge in Kentucky blocked a new Biden administration Title IX rule Monday in six states that would have banned discrimination on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation — not solely sex. The opinion applies to Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Virginia and West Virginia… Chief Judge Danny Reeves of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky began his 93-page opinion by writing, 'There are two sexes: male and female.' He concluded by blocking the enforcement of the new rule that would have been implemented in August." As a medical worker and husband of a biologist I can tell you the judge is absolutely fucking wrong here.
"Other states considering wealth tax proposals, like Pennsylvania and Vermont, are taking note of Massachusetts' revenue numbers. The voter-approved surtax here brought in nearly a billion dollars more than the state budgeted for. But officials are still watching for whether the wealthy are leaving in droves; economists say there's not yet enough data to know."
"A federal jury in Delaware has convicted President Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, on felony gun charges stemming from his purchase of a Colt revolver in 2018 when he was addicted to crack cocaine."
"Like her husband, Mrs. Alito is unbowed by the criticism and controversy — as she makes clear in comments recorded by liberal documentary filmmaker Lauren Windsor. Windsor, posing as a Christian conservative, spoke at length with Mrs. Alito at a dinner reception hosted by the Supreme Court Historical Society last week. Windsor attended the dinner as a dues-paying member and bought a ticket; a colleague joined her."
"An influential group called the True Texas Project is hosting a conference in July that will actively promote Christian nationalism and the racist 'great replacement theory,' the Texas Tribune reports. The group, which subscribes to the idea of a 'war on white America,' has ties to many Texas GOP officials, the report says, including Senator Ted Cruz and Attorney General Ken Paxton, a major supporter of Donald Trump."
"The Republican-led House of Representatives voted 216 to 207 to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress, escalating a tug-of-war over audiotapes of President Biden’s interview with a special prosecutor."
"George E. Norcross III, a powerful executive and political figure in New Jersey for decades, was indicted Monday on racketeering and related charges, the state attorney general announced… The sweeping indictment alleges he led a criminal enterprise that used extortion to promote his vast business and political and philanthropic empire — in the process, illegally securing hundreds of millions of dollars in tax credits and rights to build developments on the valuable Camden waterfront, across from Philadelphia." Jaw drop. While the impact and focus of this is very local, the bringing of this indictment, IMHO, is even bigger than charging the former president with insurrection.
They're at it again. "Tens of thousands of Columbus-area voters are at risk of seeing their registrations canceled ahead of the upcoming presidential race, but they have about a month to prevent it from happening… By the numbers: A total of 158,857 Ohio voters face cancellation this year, Secretary of State Frank LaRose recently announced. That's around 2% of total registered voters."
"The tour was not organized by Reay’s publisher, Harper Muse, an imprint of HarperCollins, which organized its own promotion of the book. Reay footed the bill for the tour herself… This arrangement is far from unique. According to independent events planners, publicists and marketers, more and more authors are seeking out their services to augment the efforts of their publishers’ in-house staff… Depending on who you ask, the trend is a result of surging promotional workloads over decades – or publishers’ disinvestment in staff."
"The websites are tantalizing: 'You can catch conditions before they become crises,' reads one. Another promises to make cancer 'easier to beat' and claims it can detect 'over 500 other conditions in up to 13 organs.' Full-body scans are attracting celebrity promoters, tech mogul investors and long waiting lists of people hoping to identify life-threatening conditions, usually more treatable in early stages." These are scams. I work in radiology, and I have personally suffered the consequences of submitting images for report that show potential pathologies but that don't meet the criteria for quality imaging practices (and yes, two of those were cancer, and I received a "fail" for one comp and a "QC report"/professional reprimand on another). And yes, incidental findings are definitely a thing and many diseases do not show up symptomatically (pain, etc) until it can be too late. However, these full body scans are a scam run by unscrupulous fucks usually using outdated equipment and they don't do anything to help you. Human bodies are full of anomalies (look up sesamoid bones or "lumbar vertebrae L6") that have zero impact on your health BUT could be potentially an indicator of disease. You have cysts, muscle anomalies, calcifications (especially if you're older) and size variants that can be read as a pathology that have no real impact on your health now or in the future. These companies are banking on the latent hypochondria present in American culture. If you have a concern, most certainly talk with a doctor who will take your concerns seriously (this is a whole other very long conversation), but don't get a full body scan unless your real symptoms/family history warrant such a scan.
Why do we need a strong regulatory function in government? "The air throughout south-east Louisiana’s 'Cancer Alley' is probably being poisoned with a highly carcinogenic gas at levels much higher than previously thought, new research reveals… Using cutting-edge equipment that more accurately checks for the gas, ethylene oxide, which is primarily used in plastic production, researchers found levels more than 1,000 times above previous measurements, and about 10 times higher on average than regulators’ modeling."
"A federal judge on Monday ordered BNSF Railway to pay the Swinomish Tribe $395 million for illegally running mile-long oil trains through the tribe’s reservation for nearly a decade… BNSF has permission from the tribe to run two oil trains a day, totaling no more than 50 tanker cars, through its reservation… Instead, BNSF has been running oil trains with 100 or more cars each across the reservation’s northern end up to six times a day." Wow, actual consequences.
And talking about a strong regulatory function of government, from the FTC blog… "Your therapy bots aren’t licensed psychologists, your AI girlfriends are neither girls nor friends, your griefbots have no soul, and your AI copilots are not gods. We’ve warned companies about making false or unsubstantiated claims about AI or algorithms. And we’ve followed up with action, including recent cases against WealthPress, DK Automation, Automators AI, and CRI Genetics. We’ve also repeatedly advised companies – with reference to past cases – not to use automated tools to mislead people about what they’re seeing, hearing, or reading." Someone is about to open a big can of whoop ass.
"As far back as 2006, when Google launched Google Translate, the translation industry has been 'speculating about the potential for AI to replace human translators,' says Bridget Hylak, a representative from the American Translators Association… So, yeah, translators have been grappling with AI for a while. Yet, despite the fact that anyone with a smartphone has long been able to use this machine translation technology for free or at a relatively low cost — there are still a ton of jobs for human translators and interpreters out there."
"President Biden is set to announce Tuesday new executive actions that will offer protection against deportation to an estimated half a million undocumented spouses of U.S. citizens."
"Today, an eight-member jury in West Palm Beach, Florida, found Chiquita Brands International liable for funding a violent Colombian paramilitary organization, the United Self-defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), that was responsible for major human rights atrocities during the 1990s and 2000s. The weeks-long trial featured testimony from the families of the nine victims in the case, the recollections of Colombian military officials and Chiquita executives, expert reports, and a summary of key documentary evidence produced by Michael Evans, director of the National Security Archive’s Colombia documentation project." Unfortunately, though, no one will go to jail over it and their total fines ($35m from this judgement and $25m from having been found to supporting a terrorist organization) of about $60m are a drop in the bucket of their profits.
"A federal judge in Kentucky blocked a new Biden administration Title IX rule Monday in six states that would have banned discrimination on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation — not solely sex. The opinion applies to Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Virginia and West Virginia… Chief Judge Danny Reeves of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky began his 93-page opinion by writing, 'There are two sexes: male and female.' He concluded by blocking the enforcement of the new rule that would have been implemented in August." As a medical worker and husband of a biologist I can tell you the judge is absolutely fucking wrong here.
"Other states considering wealth tax proposals, like Pennsylvania and Vermont, are taking note of Massachusetts' revenue numbers. The voter-approved surtax here brought in nearly a billion dollars more than the state budgeted for. But officials are still watching for whether the wealthy are leaving in droves; economists say there's not yet enough data to know."
"A federal jury in Delaware has convicted President Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, on felony gun charges stemming from his purchase of a Colt revolver in 2018 when he was addicted to crack cocaine."
"Like her husband, Mrs. Alito is unbowed by the criticism and controversy — as she makes clear in comments recorded by liberal documentary filmmaker Lauren Windsor. Windsor, posing as a Christian conservative, spoke at length with Mrs. Alito at a dinner reception hosted by the Supreme Court Historical Society last week. Windsor attended the dinner as a dues-paying member and bought a ticket; a colleague joined her."
"An influential group called the True Texas Project is hosting a conference in July that will actively promote Christian nationalism and the racist 'great replacement theory,' the Texas Tribune reports. The group, which subscribes to the idea of a 'war on white America,' has ties to many Texas GOP officials, the report says, including Senator Ted Cruz and Attorney General Ken Paxton, a major supporter of Donald Trump."
"The Republican-led House of Representatives voted 216 to 207 to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress, escalating a tug-of-war over audiotapes of President Biden’s interview with a special prosecutor."
"George E. Norcross III, a powerful executive and political figure in New Jersey for decades, was indicted Monday on racketeering and related charges, the state attorney general announced… The sweeping indictment alleges he led a criminal enterprise that used extortion to promote his vast business and political and philanthropic empire — in the process, illegally securing hundreds of millions of dollars in tax credits and rights to build developments on the valuable Camden waterfront, across from Philadelphia." Jaw drop. While the impact and focus of this is very local, the bringing of this indictment, IMHO, is even bigger than charging the former president with insurrection.
They're at it again. "Tens of thousands of Columbus-area voters are at risk of seeing their registrations canceled ahead of the upcoming presidential race, but they have about a month to prevent it from happening… By the numbers: A total of 158,857 Ohio voters face cancellation this year, Secretary of State Frank LaRose recently announced. That's around 2% of total registered voters."
Monday, June 10, 2024
Linkee-poo June 10
So, doing search for t-shirt designs for a general Radiology (instead of the specific topic I'm designing). And I gotta say in the last 4 years the t-shirt biz has produced a lot of good work for Radiology. Part of me is, "hey, that's great, I'm jazzed" and part of me is, "get the fuck off my lawn!"
The Hidden Brain podcast on… "Thinking is a human superpower. On a daily basis, thinking and planning and effort bring us innumerable benefits. But like all aspects of human behavior, you can sometimes get too much of a good thing. This week, we talk with philosopher Ted Slingerland about techniques to prevent overthinking, and how we can cultivate the under-appreciated skill of letting go." And I think this is in part what happened to my writing. In 2009 I was in a good place, I had learned enough and internalized enough that I was able to relax. I could hit the writing equivalent of my designing mind. Since my life was turned upside down in January 2010, I've learned more, but have been trying too hard because I'm 1) running out of time, and 2) need to break out quickly. And so I became like the centipede who was asked how they can walk with all those legs. I'm thinking about the process. Suddenly I couldn't. I would break down. It was too important to let go. I lost the "ease" of writing. Can I still find it? Sure, but not when I'm working on fiction. Instead of flow, my mind is racing, "am I building tension properly, and I including all the Chekov's guns I'll need, and I using the correct homophone?"
"A majority of Americans believe that the economy is in a recession even though it’s not. On this week’s On the Media, hear why there’s a mismatch between facts and feelings about the economy. Plus, how the outlandish claims of AI companies often go unchecked by the press."
https://www.npr.org/2024/06/04/nx-s1-4992305/housing-innovation-showcase-affordability "On the wide open, grassy space on the National Mall, halfway between the U.S. Capitol and the Washington Monument, a temporary village has sprouted up in recent days. Several tiny houses line the paths, and workers assemble what looks like an instant log cabin. A few manufactured homes are clustered near the Smithsonian Castle." The problem, I've looked for these solutions, and I can't really find them.
"Enter the 'hospital facility fee': a charge hospitals can add to bills from doctors’ offices, outpatient surgical clinics and diagnostics centers that they own, rebranding them as 'outpatient hospital departments', even if the facility is miles from a hospital campus… 'It’s one of the most egregious examples of hospital financing at the expense of consumers,' said Liz Hagan, director of policy solutions at the United States of Care, a non-profit advocacy group that released a new report on the practice." My own hospital system does this, and it was announced to great fanfare as "what a wonderful thing." No, it's not. And I made my opinion known. It didn't do anything, of course, because the administrators don't think the patients are going to do anything at all about it (unlike me who sees a major reform coming).
"Demoralized doctors and nurses are leaving the field, hospitals are sounding the alarm about workforce shortages and employees are increasingly unionizing and even going on strike in high-profile disputes with their employers." Our hospital system has a 23% turnover rate for healthcare providers. And they think this is "normal" and "sustainable." And it was slightly possible (ignoring the morale and 'tribal knowledge' issues that level brings) when there were so many people graduating from nursing and allied health programs. But what's not mentioned here is that schools have hit the demographic cliff, that is the student population has plummeted. When I went through radiography there was a 2 year wait after you were accepted to the program (this was after 1 full year of pre-req courses which we had to pass before we could even apply to the program). Of the two schools we accept students for clinical experience, there is now no wait times. We may not even have students from one of the schools this Fall. Management has begrudgingly begun to work on this problem, but only on the recruitment side (we now have several "tech assistants", ie. student we pay nominally to lock them into working for the system before they realize all their options). There is zero work on the retention side.
"More than half of patients (60%) diagnosed with advanced forms of lung cancer who took lorlatinib were still alive five years later with no progression in their disease, data presented at the world’s largest cancer conference showed. The rate was 8% in patients treated with a standard drug, the trial found." "Battlefield medicine has come a long way. But that progress could be lost…" And then there was this part… "A Defense Department internal memo obtained by NPR found that outsourcing did not actually save the military money, but it did hurt readiness." Outsourcing government functions always costs more, and does not provide better services.
"Top-line results from two clinical trials were impressively positive, with MDMA therapy in combination with psychotherapy showing statistically significant, clinically meaningful improvements for PTSD symptoms. But, as the discussion dove deeper into the data, the experts identified a damningly large number of trial flaws, including missing data and bias, that threw the validity of those positive results into serious question." This really is on the poor record keeping and mismanagement of the company seeking the approval. Which is a shame, because it appears (except the double-blind portion of the test really wasn't) that it is an effective treatment.
"Now, new disclosures seen by HuffPost shed some light. Just weeks before she issued the ruling, Mizelle had discreetly attended an all-expenses-paid luxury trip from a conservative group whose primary mission is to persuade more federal judges to adopt the use of corpus linguistics. For five days, Mizelle and more than a dozen other federal judges listened to the leading proponents of corpus linguistics in the comfort of The Greenbrier, an ostentatious resort spread out over 11,000 acres of West Virginia hillside." JFC, there's this long running social media thing about, "but the dictionary defines this word to mean…" completely missing both the actual real definition (which is usually multipart) and the connotation of the words. And now we're going to have judges pulling this trolling bullshit. Great.
"Anna Harrold should have been celebrating her victory at the Great West Run in Exeter on Sunday, but instead she faced a barrage of abuse from people online who called her “disgusting”, 'revolting' and a 'disgrace'… The comments were centred on false claims she was born a man." Gee, who could have seen the anti-trans people trying to police women's bodies to see if they're "feminine enough"?
Prepare for eyerolls. No, I'm serious, you might want to stretch first because it's gonna be a big one. "But there are foods, the bullies and the priggish suggest, that alert the world you are gay in a negative way. It’s mostly the stuff of immature oooOOOOOooos and teenage razzing, but studies show men will avoid everything from yogurt to rosé to “products with rounded edges” because they are associated with femininity, and for a man to do a womanly thing could give someone the wrong idea. Because to come off as queer is still the “wrong idea.” The feeling behind the joke is that to be queer is to be lesser, and that you could be perceived that way with the slip of the tongue across a scoop of mint chip." The article does do a good breakdown on gender and how culture perceives it. This week we decorated the workroom with our names of Summer icons, cutouts of watermelon, sandals, icecream cones, etc. There was a brouhaha (not from me) because whomever did the names (it was the students I think) put my name on "pink" flip-flops. Much profuse apologies and a call for making a new item for me. I stopped it. I don't care if my name is on a pink piece of paper I told them to their objections. Seriously, my "maleness" and "manhood" was settled long ago and frankly cannot be affected in the slightest by something exterior to me, especially not by what someone else may say, think, or do. Pink as feminine is a 1950s marketing construct. Most of this bullshit is created by insecure social gatekeepers or by someone trying to sell you something. Don't fall for it.
"The Affordable Connectivity Program, which helped low-income Americans get online, is no more… On (May 31), the US government announced the final closure of the broadly popular federal program, which has helped tens of millions of households afford internet service, after Republicans in Congress ignored calls by consumer advocates and Democratic lawmakers to approve more funding this spring… The program’s lapse threatens to throw nearly 60 million Americans into financial distress, CNN has reported."
"Moreover, retailers’ decision to hike prices in the first place can’t all be attributed to inflation, Lindsay Owens, executive director of economic policy group Groundwork Collaborative, argued. She told the Washington Post that companies actually increased their margins in times of increased operating costs. A March 2024 Federal Trade Commission report found retail revenue for food and beverages increased 7% above total costs in the first three quarters of 2023, indicating that grocery stores’ decision to raise prices wasn’t just a result of inflation, supply-chain disruptions, or the rising prices of commodities." There's another name for this. It's called "price gouging." And some companies are realizing that they went too far, and even with their increased margins were starting to lose overall revenue.
"'When a cop tells you to do something, you fucking do it,' one officer told the shopkeeper… The surveillance video was shared with THE CITY on the condition that the identity of the shopkeeper be protected. The arrest and criminal charge was confirmed by police records… The shopkeeper’s lawyer, Steve Zissou, told THE CITY that the video shows both due process violations and personal civil rights violations." Well, there's a lawsuit waiting to happen. And it might be a class action.
"An off-duty armed security guard shot and killed a teen who he thought had a gun and was about to rob a Renton sporting goods store, detectives said. According to court documents, the teen didn't even have a real gun on him."
"Alex Jones, who spread lies about the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary that killed 26 first-graders and staffers, has dropped efforts to declare bankruptcy and agreed to liquidate his assets in order to finally start paying the nearly $1.5 billion in damages he owes the victims' families." That's a good start.
"Steve Bannon, a longtime ally of former President Donald Trump, must report to prison by July 1 to serve his four-month sentence for defying a subpoena from the House committee that investigated the U.S. Capitol insurrection, a federal judge ruled Thursday." Again, a good start.
"A liberal former neighbor of conservative Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito is publicly offering her account of a series of tense interactions she had with Alito’s wife, Martha-Ann, around the time of the 2020 presidential election and the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol." You mean the Alitoes lied? Shocked, shocked I am…
"A Manhattan jury on Thursday found Trump guilty of falsifying business records in order to influence the 2016 presidential election. Soon after the verdict was read, right-wing politicians and pundits including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., Fox News contributor Guy Benson and far-right conspiracy theorist Ali Alexander shared images of an inverted American flag on social media. Alexander, organizer of the 'Stop the Steal' rally that pushed false claims about the 2020 election, posted the upside-down flag on Telegram with the message: 'No one is coming to save us. We must.'"
"When Donald J. Trump was found guilty on all counts in the hush money trial, some in the press were caught off guard. But the former president and conservative pundits primed for this result with a strategic messaging campaign. On this week’s On the Media, hear how Trump uses Truth Social to disseminate talking points to a web of right-wing influencers."
"Nine witnesses in the criminal cases against former President Donald Trump have received significant financial benefits, including large raises from his campaign, severance packages, new jobs, and a grant of shares and cash from Trump’s media company… The benefits have flowed from Trump’s businesses and campaign committees, according to a ProPublica analysis of public disclosures, court records and securities filings. One campaign aide had his average monthly pay double, from $26,000 to $53,500. Another employee got a $2 million severance package barring him from voluntarily cooperating with law enforcement. And one of the campaign’s top officials had her daughter hired onto the campaign staff, where she is now the fourth-highest-paid employee." Criminals gonna criminal.
"The Proud Boys say recruitment is growing and they’re ready to serve again as Donald Trump's unofficial protection force." As long as there have been supposed strong men, there have been toadies. However, the long term prospects of such groups, especially if the "strong man" gets into power, is not a good one. I think the Proud Boys really should look at Operation Hummingbird, or as it's more often called, the Night of the Long Knives.
The Hidden Brain podcast on… "Thinking is a human superpower. On a daily basis, thinking and planning and effort bring us innumerable benefits. But like all aspects of human behavior, you can sometimes get too much of a good thing. This week, we talk with philosopher Ted Slingerland about techniques to prevent overthinking, and how we can cultivate the under-appreciated skill of letting go." And I think this is in part what happened to my writing. In 2009 I was in a good place, I had learned enough and internalized enough that I was able to relax. I could hit the writing equivalent of my designing mind. Since my life was turned upside down in January 2010, I've learned more, but have been trying too hard because I'm 1) running out of time, and 2) need to break out quickly. And so I became like the centipede who was asked how they can walk with all those legs. I'm thinking about the process. Suddenly I couldn't. I would break down. It was too important to let go. I lost the "ease" of writing. Can I still find it? Sure, but not when I'm working on fiction. Instead of flow, my mind is racing, "am I building tension properly, and I including all the Chekov's guns I'll need, and I using the correct homophone?"
"A majority of Americans believe that the economy is in a recession even though it’s not. On this week’s On the Media, hear why there’s a mismatch between facts and feelings about the economy. Plus, how the outlandish claims of AI companies often go unchecked by the press."
https://www.npr.org/2024/06/04/nx-s1-4992305/housing-innovation-showcase-affordability "On the wide open, grassy space on the National Mall, halfway between the U.S. Capitol and the Washington Monument, a temporary village has sprouted up in recent days. Several tiny houses line the paths, and workers assemble what looks like an instant log cabin. A few manufactured homes are clustered near the Smithsonian Castle." The problem, I've looked for these solutions, and I can't really find them.
"Enter the 'hospital facility fee': a charge hospitals can add to bills from doctors’ offices, outpatient surgical clinics and diagnostics centers that they own, rebranding them as 'outpatient hospital departments', even if the facility is miles from a hospital campus… 'It’s one of the most egregious examples of hospital financing at the expense of consumers,' said Liz Hagan, director of policy solutions at the United States of Care, a non-profit advocacy group that released a new report on the practice." My own hospital system does this, and it was announced to great fanfare as "what a wonderful thing." No, it's not. And I made my opinion known. It didn't do anything, of course, because the administrators don't think the patients are going to do anything at all about it (unlike me who sees a major reform coming).
"Demoralized doctors and nurses are leaving the field, hospitals are sounding the alarm about workforce shortages and employees are increasingly unionizing and even going on strike in high-profile disputes with their employers." Our hospital system has a 23% turnover rate for healthcare providers. And they think this is "normal" and "sustainable." And it was slightly possible (ignoring the morale and 'tribal knowledge' issues that level brings) when there were so many people graduating from nursing and allied health programs. But what's not mentioned here is that schools have hit the demographic cliff, that is the student population has plummeted. When I went through radiography there was a 2 year wait after you were accepted to the program (this was after 1 full year of pre-req courses which we had to pass before we could even apply to the program). Of the two schools we accept students for clinical experience, there is now no wait times. We may not even have students from one of the schools this Fall. Management has begrudgingly begun to work on this problem, but only on the recruitment side (we now have several "tech assistants", ie. student we pay nominally to lock them into working for the system before they realize all their options). There is zero work on the retention side.
"More than half of patients (60%) diagnosed with advanced forms of lung cancer who took lorlatinib were still alive five years later with no progression in their disease, data presented at the world’s largest cancer conference showed. The rate was 8% in patients treated with a standard drug, the trial found." "Battlefield medicine has come a long way. But that progress could be lost…" And then there was this part… "A Defense Department internal memo obtained by NPR found that outsourcing did not actually save the military money, but it did hurt readiness." Outsourcing government functions always costs more, and does not provide better services.
"Top-line results from two clinical trials were impressively positive, with MDMA therapy in combination with psychotherapy showing statistically significant, clinically meaningful improvements for PTSD symptoms. But, as the discussion dove deeper into the data, the experts identified a damningly large number of trial flaws, including missing data and bias, that threw the validity of those positive results into serious question." This really is on the poor record keeping and mismanagement of the company seeking the approval. Which is a shame, because it appears (except the double-blind portion of the test really wasn't) that it is an effective treatment.
"Now, new disclosures seen by HuffPost shed some light. Just weeks before she issued the ruling, Mizelle had discreetly attended an all-expenses-paid luxury trip from a conservative group whose primary mission is to persuade more federal judges to adopt the use of corpus linguistics. For five days, Mizelle and more than a dozen other federal judges listened to the leading proponents of corpus linguistics in the comfort of The Greenbrier, an ostentatious resort spread out over 11,000 acres of West Virginia hillside." JFC, there's this long running social media thing about, "but the dictionary defines this word to mean…" completely missing both the actual real definition (which is usually multipart) and the connotation of the words. And now we're going to have judges pulling this trolling bullshit. Great.
"Anna Harrold should have been celebrating her victory at the Great West Run in Exeter on Sunday, but instead she faced a barrage of abuse from people online who called her “disgusting”, 'revolting' and a 'disgrace'… The comments were centred on false claims she was born a man." Gee, who could have seen the anti-trans people trying to police women's bodies to see if they're "feminine enough"?
Prepare for eyerolls. No, I'm serious, you might want to stretch first because it's gonna be a big one. "But there are foods, the bullies and the priggish suggest, that alert the world you are gay in a negative way. It’s mostly the stuff of immature oooOOOOOooos and teenage razzing, but studies show men will avoid everything from yogurt to rosé to “products with rounded edges” because they are associated with femininity, and for a man to do a womanly thing could give someone the wrong idea. Because to come off as queer is still the “wrong idea.” The feeling behind the joke is that to be queer is to be lesser, and that you could be perceived that way with the slip of the tongue across a scoop of mint chip." The article does do a good breakdown on gender and how culture perceives it. This week we decorated the workroom with our names of Summer icons, cutouts of watermelon, sandals, icecream cones, etc. There was a brouhaha (not from me) because whomever did the names (it was the students I think) put my name on "pink" flip-flops. Much profuse apologies and a call for making a new item for me. I stopped it. I don't care if my name is on a pink piece of paper I told them to their objections. Seriously, my "maleness" and "manhood" was settled long ago and frankly cannot be affected in the slightest by something exterior to me, especially not by what someone else may say, think, or do. Pink as feminine is a 1950s marketing construct. Most of this bullshit is created by insecure social gatekeepers or by someone trying to sell you something. Don't fall for it.
"The Affordable Connectivity Program, which helped low-income Americans get online, is no more… On (May 31), the US government announced the final closure of the broadly popular federal program, which has helped tens of millions of households afford internet service, after Republicans in Congress ignored calls by consumer advocates and Democratic lawmakers to approve more funding this spring… The program’s lapse threatens to throw nearly 60 million Americans into financial distress, CNN has reported."
"Moreover, retailers’ decision to hike prices in the first place can’t all be attributed to inflation, Lindsay Owens, executive director of economic policy group Groundwork Collaborative, argued. She told the Washington Post that companies actually increased their margins in times of increased operating costs. A March 2024 Federal Trade Commission report found retail revenue for food and beverages increased 7% above total costs in the first three quarters of 2023, indicating that grocery stores’ decision to raise prices wasn’t just a result of inflation, supply-chain disruptions, or the rising prices of commodities." There's another name for this. It's called "price gouging." And some companies are realizing that they went too far, and even with their increased margins were starting to lose overall revenue.
"'When a cop tells you to do something, you fucking do it,' one officer told the shopkeeper… The surveillance video was shared with THE CITY on the condition that the identity of the shopkeeper be protected. The arrest and criminal charge was confirmed by police records… The shopkeeper’s lawyer, Steve Zissou, told THE CITY that the video shows both due process violations and personal civil rights violations." Well, there's a lawsuit waiting to happen. And it might be a class action.
"An off-duty armed security guard shot and killed a teen who he thought had a gun and was about to rob a Renton sporting goods store, detectives said. According to court documents, the teen didn't even have a real gun on him."
"Alex Jones, who spread lies about the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary that killed 26 first-graders and staffers, has dropped efforts to declare bankruptcy and agreed to liquidate his assets in order to finally start paying the nearly $1.5 billion in damages he owes the victims' families." That's a good start.
"Steve Bannon, a longtime ally of former President Donald Trump, must report to prison by July 1 to serve his four-month sentence for defying a subpoena from the House committee that investigated the U.S. Capitol insurrection, a federal judge ruled Thursday." Again, a good start.
"A liberal former neighbor of conservative Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito is publicly offering her account of a series of tense interactions she had with Alito’s wife, Martha-Ann, around the time of the 2020 presidential election and the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol." You mean the Alitoes lied? Shocked, shocked I am…
"A Manhattan jury on Thursday found Trump guilty of falsifying business records in order to influence the 2016 presidential election. Soon after the verdict was read, right-wing politicians and pundits including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., Fox News contributor Guy Benson and far-right conspiracy theorist Ali Alexander shared images of an inverted American flag on social media. Alexander, organizer of the 'Stop the Steal' rally that pushed false claims about the 2020 election, posted the upside-down flag on Telegram with the message: 'No one is coming to save us. We must.'"
"When Donald J. Trump was found guilty on all counts in the hush money trial, some in the press were caught off guard. But the former president and conservative pundits primed for this result with a strategic messaging campaign. On this week’s On the Media, hear how Trump uses Truth Social to disseminate talking points to a web of right-wing influencers."
"Nine witnesses in the criminal cases against former President Donald Trump have received significant financial benefits, including large raises from his campaign, severance packages, new jobs, and a grant of shares and cash from Trump’s media company… The benefits have flowed from Trump’s businesses and campaign committees, according to a ProPublica analysis of public disclosures, court records and securities filings. One campaign aide had his average monthly pay double, from $26,000 to $53,500. Another employee got a $2 million severance package barring him from voluntarily cooperating with law enforcement. And one of the campaign’s top officials had her daughter hired onto the campaign staff, where she is now the fourth-highest-paid employee." Criminals gonna criminal.
"The Proud Boys say recruitment is growing and they’re ready to serve again as Donald Trump's unofficial protection force." As long as there have been supposed strong men, there have been toadies. However, the long term prospects of such groups, especially if the "strong man" gets into power, is not a good one. I think the Proud Boys really should look at Operation Hummingbird, or as it's more often called, the Night of the Long Knives.
Sunday, June 2, 2024
Linkee-poo June 2
"Heat-related howler monkeys deaths have now been reported in two more states in southern Mexico, after two other states reported die-offs earlier this month, environmental authorities said."
"'We are at record levels for 11 consecutive months now – so since last June through April,' she said. 'And we're still counting, of course.'… It's already been so hot that 2024 is guaranteed to be one of the five hottest years ever recorded. As another sweltering summer approaches, the potential for climate-fueled disaster comes with it."
"With this year’s Atlantic hurricane season expected to be yet another stampede, Florida and other states around the Gulf of Mexico should keep an eye out for an underappreciated ingredient in the Gulf that can quickly turn storms into lethal monsters: hot ocean eddies."
"The new initiative between the feds and 21 states aims to make faster fixes and improvements to the grid, committing to build a bigger and more modern grid as part of a larger effort to reduce power outages and increase electrical transmission capacity – a massive hurdle to getting more clean energy on the grid and reducing the planet-warming pollution causing the climate crisis."
"Wind farms have been the primary source of electricity in the United Kingdom for the past two consecutive quarters, marking the longest stretch on record that renewable energy has surpassed fossil fuels in U.K. electricity generation."
"These days, an unknown author’s chances of success hinge on cobbling together an audience through aggregate. Last fall, while reporting Esquire’s “Future of Books” predictions, I asked industry insiders about trends they’d noticed in recent years. Almost everyone mentioned that debut fiction has become harder to launch. For writers, the stakes are do or die: A debut sets the bar for each of their subsequent books, so their debut advance and sales performance can follow them for the rest of their career. For editors, if a writer’s first book doesn’t perform, it’s hard to make a financial case for acquiring that writer’s second book. And for you, a reader interested in great fiction, the fallout from this challenging climate can limit your access to exciting new voices in fiction."
"For decades, the Romance Writers of America (RWA) served as a champion for the mostly female authors of one of the country’s most popular – and denigrated – genres of fiction… But even as sales of romance novels have boomed in recent years, RWA has struggled, reporting that its membership has declined 80% amid bitter internal battles over racism within publishing, and within the group itself."
"Ohio lawmakers are advancing a new bill that would charge teachers and librarians with felonies for handing out books and materials deemed 'obscene.'" But they'll still allow Shakespeare, which just tells me these people have never read Shakespeare.
"South Australian public hospitals are under strain with the health department boss declaring a system-wide internal emergency due to many staff being sick with COVID… SA Health chief executive Robyn Lawrence called a code yellow on Thursday afternoon, opening all available beds and paused almost all elective surgeries in metropolitan and regional public hospitals."
"Antibiotics cannot cure COVID. They don’t help a bit. And yet, new data shows that, during the pandemic, COVID patients were given antibiotics – a lot of antibiotics… That’s bad because the overuse of antibiotics can breed superbugs that are resistant to medications. The impact of this pandemic overuse has lingered even as the pandemic has faded."
"She never expected a diagnosis of babesiosis, a dangerous and potentially deadly disease transmitted by the bite of the Blacklegged tick infected with the Babesia microti parasite. That diagnosis is on the rise in New England, due to climate change and more human interactions with ticks."
"A synthetic rubber manufacturer accused of increasing the cancer risk for the nearby majority-Black community in Louisiana told a federal appeals court it will have to shut down 'likely permanently' if it’s forced to meet the Biden administration’s deadline to reduce emissions." Don't threaten me with a good time.
"A trial to determine how much Ohio’s historical society must pay to restore public access to a set of ancient ceremonial earthworks that has been leased for over a century to a country club has been rescheduled for July 15."
"Erlinger acknowledged that he and many franchisees were frustrated by a post on X last summer about a Big Mac meal in Connecticut that cost $18, calling the price 'an exception.' He noted that franchisees own and operate 95% of U.S. McDonald’s locations and set their own pricing but 'work hard to minimize the impact of price increases.'" And they blame it all on their costs. So let's take a look at the numbers, shall we… "McDonald's gross profit for the twelve months ending March 31, 2024 was $14.688B, a 9.03% increase year-over-year, McDonald's annual gross profit for 2023 was $14.563B, a 10.26% increase from 2022, McDonald's annual gross profit for 2022 was $13.207B, a 4.98% increase from 2021, McDonald's annual gross profit for 2021 was $12.58B, a 29% increase from 2020." And… "According to McDonald's latest financial reports and stock price the company's current Operating Margin is 41.16%. At the end of 2022 the company had an Operating Margin of 33.76%." Razor thin margins my ass. This isn't, "ZOMG, we gotta pay our workers at least $15/hr" this is, "Hey, most low income workers are making $15hr, we can charge them more."
"The state department falsified a report earlier this month to absolve Israel of responsibility for blocking humanitarian aid flows into Gaza, overruling the advice of its own experts, according to a former senior US official who resigned this week." Oh look, an actual scandal. Probably won't hear of it again.
"Critics of a new Louisiana law, which makes it a crime to approach within 25 feet (7.6 meters) of a police officer under certain circumstances, fear that the measure could hinder the public’s ability to film officers — a tool that has increasingly been used to hold police accountable."
"Colorado legal officials on Tuesday approved an agreement with Jenna Ellis, a onetime attorney for former President Donald Trump, barring her from practicing law in the state for three years after she pleaded guilty to helping Trump try to overturn the 2020 election."
"CLAIM: New York Judge Juan M. Merchan told the jury in former President Donald Trump’s hush money trial that they don’t need a unanimous verdict to convict Trump… AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. Merchan said that to convict Trump the jury will have to find unanimously, on each of 34 felony counts, that he falsified business records and that he did so with the intent of concealing another crime — in this case, violating a state election law during his 2016 campaign. The judge said jurors could consider three different ways the law may have been broken and that they don’t have to be unanimous on this decision."
"Michael Fanone, a former police officer who was nearly killed by a mob during the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, spoke outside the courthouse during closing arguments in Donald Trump's hush money trial on Tuesday, calling Trump 'an authoritarian' with 'a violence fetish.'… Hours later, Fanone's mother was 'swatted' at her home in Virginia."
"Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has condemned the removal of Confederate statues, saying he had a 'visceral reaction against' the destruction of monuments honoring southern leaders from the Civil War." Dumpster fire.
"The conservative media company behind the book and film '2,000 Mules,' which alleged a widespread conspiracy by Democrats to steal the 2020 election and was embraced by former president Donald Trump, has issued an apology and said it would halt distribution of the film and remove both the film and book from its platforms." To fucking late.
"'We are at record levels for 11 consecutive months now – so since last June through April,' she said. 'And we're still counting, of course.'… It's already been so hot that 2024 is guaranteed to be one of the five hottest years ever recorded. As another sweltering summer approaches, the potential for climate-fueled disaster comes with it."
"With this year’s Atlantic hurricane season expected to be yet another stampede, Florida and other states around the Gulf of Mexico should keep an eye out for an underappreciated ingredient in the Gulf that can quickly turn storms into lethal monsters: hot ocean eddies."
"The new initiative between the feds and 21 states aims to make faster fixes and improvements to the grid, committing to build a bigger and more modern grid as part of a larger effort to reduce power outages and increase electrical transmission capacity – a massive hurdle to getting more clean energy on the grid and reducing the planet-warming pollution causing the climate crisis."
"Wind farms have been the primary source of electricity in the United Kingdom for the past two consecutive quarters, marking the longest stretch on record that renewable energy has surpassed fossil fuels in U.K. electricity generation."
"These days, an unknown author’s chances of success hinge on cobbling together an audience through aggregate. Last fall, while reporting Esquire’s “Future of Books” predictions, I asked industry insiders about trends they’d noticed in recent years. Almost everyone mentioned that debut fiction has become harder to launch. For writers, the stakes are do or die: A debut sets the bar for each of their subsequent books, so their debut advance and sales performance can follow them for the rest of their career. For editors, if a writer’s first book doesn’t perform, it’s hard to make a financial case for acquiring that writer’s second book. And for you, a reader interested in great fiction, the fallout from this challenging climate can limit your access to exciting new voices in fiction."
"For decades, the Romance Writers of America (RWA) served as a champion for the mostly female authors of one of the country’s most popular – and denigrated – genres of fiction… But even as sales of romance novels have boomed in recent years, RWA has struggled, reporting that its membership has declined 80% amid bitter internal battles over racism within publishing, and within the group itself."
"Ohio lawmakers are advancing a new bill that would charge teachers and librarians with felonies for handing out books and materials deemed 'obscene.'" But they'll still allow Shakespeare, which just tells me these people have never read Shakespeare.
"South Australian public hospitals are under strain with the health department boss declaring a system-wide internal emergency due to many staff being sick with COVID… SA Health chief executive Robyn Lawrence called a code yellow on Thursday afternoon, opening all available beds and paused almost all elective surgeries in metropolitan and regional public hospitals."
"Antibiotics cannot cure COVID. They don’t help a bit. And yet, new data shows that, during the pandemic, COVID patients were given antibiotics – a lot of antibiotics… That’s bad because the overuse of antibiotics can breed superbugs that are resistant to medications. The impact of this pandemic overuse has lingered even as the pandemic has faded."
"She never expected a diagnosis of babesiosis, a dangerous and potentially deadly disease transmitted by the bite of the Blacklegged tick infected with the Babesia microti parasite. That diagnosis is on the rise in New England, due to climate change and more human interactions with ticks."
"A synthetic rubber manufacturer accused of increasing the cancer risk for the nearby majority-Black community in Louisiana told a federal appeals court it will have to shut down 'likely permanently' if it’s forced to meet the Biden administration’s deadline to reduce emissions." Don't threaten me with a good time.
"A trial to determine how much Ohio’s historical society must pay to restore public access to a set of ancient ceremonial earthworks that has been leased for over a century to a country club has been rescheduled for July 15."
"Erlinger acknowledged that he and many franchisees were frustrated by a post on X last summer about a Big Mac meal in Connecticut that cost $18, calling the price 'an exception.' He noted that franchisees own and operate 95% of U.S. McDonald’s locations and set their own pricing but 'work hard to minimize the impact of price increases.'" And they blame it all on their costs. So let's take a look at the numbers, shall we… "McDonald's gross profit for the twelve months ending March 31, 2024 was $14.688B, a 9.03% increase year-over-year, McDonald's annual gross profit for 2023 was $14.563B, a 10.26% increase from 2022, McDonald's annual gross profit for 2022 was $13.207B, a 4.98% increase from 2021, McDonald's annual gross profit for 2021 was $12.58B, a 29% increase from 2020." And… "According to McDonald's latest financial reports and stock price the company's current Operating Margin is 41.16%. At the end of 2022 the company had an Operating Margin of 33.76%." Razor thin margins my ass. This isn't, "ZOMG, we gotta pay our workers at least $15/hr" this is, "Hey, most low income workers are making $15hr, we can charge them more."
"The state department falsified a report earlier this month to absolve Israel of responsibility for blocking humanitarian aid flows into Gaza, overruling the advice of its own experts, according to a former senior US official who resigned this week." Oh look, an actual scandal. Probably won't hear of it again.
"Critics of a new Louisiana law, which makes it a crime to approach within 25 feet (7.6 meters) of a police officer under certain circumstances, fear that the measure could hinder the public’s ability to film officers — a tool that has increasingly been used to hold police accountable."
"Colorado legal officials on Tuesday approved an agreement with Jenna Ellis, a onetime attorney for former President Donald Trump, barring her from practicing law in the state for three years after she pleaded guilty to helping Trump try to overturn the 2020 election."
"CLAIM: New York Judge Juan M. Merchan told the jury in former President Donald Trump’s hush money trial that they don’t need a unanimous verdict to convict Trump… AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. Merchan said that to convict Trump the jury will have to find unanimously, on each of 34 felony counts, that he falsified business records and that he did so with the intent of concealing another crime — in this case, violating a state election law during his 2016 campaign. The judge said jurors could consider three different ways the law may have been broken and that they don’t have to be unanimous on this decision."
"Michael Fanone, a former police officer who was nearly killed by a mob during the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, spoke outside the courthouse during closing arguments in Donald Trump's hush money trial on Tuesday, calling Trump 'an authoritarian' with 'a violence fetish.'… Hours later, Fanone's mother was 'swatted' at her home in Virginia."
"Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has condemned the removal of Confederate statues, saying he had a 'visceral reaction against' the destruction of monuments honoring southern leaders from the Civil War." Dumpster fire.
"The conservative media company behind the book and film '2,000 Mules,' which alleged a widespread conspiracy by Democrats to steal the 2020 election and was embraced by former president Donald Trump, has issued an apology and said it would halt distribution of the film and remove both the film and book from its platforms." To fucking late.
Thursday, May 30, 2024
GUILTY
on all 34 felony counts. The wrap up on NPR. Sentencing on July 11, just a few short days before the RNC. And then we'll have the appeal. In the mean time there will be joy, followed by nastiness and whatevertherfuck the militias have been brewing. But a big win for the rule of law today. And the best part of today? It is no longer a high bar to charge abd convict a former president of felony crimes. Because its now been done.
Monday, May 27, 2024
Linkee-poo Memorial Day
"This year’s Atlantic hurricane season is expected to be extremely active, putting tens of millions of Americans in the eastern half of the country at risk from flooding and damaging winds, forecasters at the National Hurricane Center warn. The increased activity is partially caused by abnormally warm ocean temperatures driven by climate change."
"Hospital staff are forced to write notes by hand and deliver orders for tests and prescriptions in person in the ongoing fallout from a recent ransomware attack at the national health system Ascension… Ascension is one of the largest health systems in the United States, with some 140 hospitals located across 19 states and D.C." In healthcare we are never that far from paper systems. But mostly this is about hardening systems and creating actual penalties for the asshats who make these attacks.
"But Braun’s scramble to find long-term care for a loved one is an experience shared by many families. And many of them are unprepared for what can be an emotional, costly and guilt-inducing process… Advance planning helps, but an AP-NORC poll in 2021 showed most Americans don’t discuss the possibility of long-term care, let alone prepare for it."
"For thousands of older Americans like the Whites, Third Age Adult Day Center and similar adult day services provide safe, stimulating places for those who have physical or cognitive disabilities and give respite to their caregivers."
"More than 100 hospitals have downsized services or closed altogether over the past decade in rural communities like Williamston, where people openly wonder if they’d survive the 25-minute ambulance ride to the nearest hospital if they were in a serious car crash." And just like the Red Lobster story where they blamed "unlimited shrimp" when the actual problem was having been bought by private capital, had their property stripped out from under them (to enhance profit skimming by the private capital company) and having been locked into a high cost single supplier, I wonder how many VPs/Directors/Chairs this hospital had?
"More and more people who started taking the new GLP-1 agonist drugs are now confronting the realities of their limitations; medications like Wegovy and Mounjaro tend to help with sustained weight loss only while people are on them. But because of cost, for example, negative side effects, or supply shortages, many people are having to transition off of them — while trying not to regain the weight."
"Governor Gavin Newsom (D) announced in late April that California hit the 10 gigawatt mark for installed battery capacity, well beyond what any other states — or entire countries — have achieved. That’s about 13 times more battery capacity than the state had installed just five years ago, and it’s enough to make batteries a meaningful portion of the state’s power supply. For reference, 10 gigawatts are enough to meet about 20 percent of the peak electricity demand recorded in the grid managed by the California Independent System Operator (CAISO)."
"Jobless claims for the week ending May 18 fell by 8,000 to 215,000, down from 223,000 the week before, the Labor Department reported Thursday."
"The job posting sparked outrage and accusations of discrimination when it circulated online last year, reading, 'Only Born US Citizens [White] who are local within 60 miles from Dallas, TX [Don’t share with candidates].' The words in brackets are not paraphrases; they appeared in brackets in the posting, the Justice Department noted."
"An Israeli airstrike triggered a fire that killed 45 people in a tent camp in the Gazan city of Rafah, officials said on Monday, prompting an outcry from global leaders who urged the implementation of a World Court order to halt Israel's assault."
"The U.S. Department of Justice and the Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday announced a settlement with Norfolk Southern Railway Company over the railroad’s discharge of toxic substances following the 2023 derailment in East Palestine, Ohio… Under the agreement, Norfolk Southern will pay nearly $235 million to cover the EPA’s past and future clean-up costs for the contaminated air, water, and soil in and around where the train derailed."
"As some Republicans try to moderate their messaging on abortion over concerns about voter backlash this November, some activists are trying to go much further." There is no moderation. It's faked. It's always been about rolling back the sexual revolution and shaming women. They will come for birth control, even banning condoms, they will come for fertility medicine, they will not stop until it's all shoved back into a closet.
"But amid confusion over what abortion care is allowed in Mississippi, Regina says she was unaware Ashley qualified for an abortion in Mississippi under the law's exception for cases of rape. Yet, even if she was aware, it's unlikely Ashley would have been able to get an abortion in Mississippi; with heavy restrictions in effect and the high penalties on physicians who violate the abortion ban, it is unlikely she would have found a doctor willing to perform a procedure… Ashley, now 13 years old, is the mother of an 8-month-old baby boy nicknamed Peanut."
"Senate Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., a member of the Judiciary panel, wrote Roberts on Thursday asking him for a meeting to discuss Supreme Court ethics and to take steps to ensure that Alito recuses himself from any cases before the court concerning the Jan. 6 attack or former President Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn his 2020 election defeat."
"The Democratic political consultant behind a robocall that used artificial intelligence to impersonate President Biden is facing a steep federal fine and criminal charges in New Hampshire." Good.
"A New Jersey electrician who repeatedly attacked police officers during the Jan. 6, 2021, siege at the U.S. Capitol was sentenced on Friday to 12 years in prison by a judge who called him 'a menace to our society.'" He seems smart.
"Hospital staff are forced to write notes by hand and deliver orders for tests and prescriptions in person in the ongoing fallout from a recent ransomware attack at the national health system Ascension… Ascension is one of the largest health systems in the United States, with some 140 hospitals located across 19 states and D.C." In healthcare we are never that far from paper systems. But mostly this is about hardening systems and creating actual penalties for the asshats who make these attacks.
"But Braun’s scramble to find long-term care for a loved one is an experience shared by many families. And many of them are unprepared for what can be an emotional, costly and guilt-inducing process… Advance planning helps, but an AP-NORC poll in 2021 showed most Americans don’t discuss the possibility of long-term care, let alone prepare for it."
"For thousands of older Americans like the Whites, Third Age Adult Day Center and similar adult day services provide safe, stimulating places for those who have physical or cognitive disabilities and give respite to their caregivers."
"More than 100 hospitals have downsized services or closed altogether over the past decade in rural communities like Williamston, where people openly wonder if they’d survive the 25-minute ambulance ride to the nearest hospital if they were in a serious car crash." And just like the Red Lobster story where they blamed "unlimited shrimp" when the actual problem was having been bought by private capital, had their property stripped out from under them (to enhance profit skimming by the private capital company) and having been locked into a high cost single supplier, I wonder how many VPs/Directors/Chairs this hospital had?
"More and more people who started taking the new GLP-1 agonist drugs are now confronting the realities of their limitations; medications like Wegovy and Mounjaro tend to help with sustained weight loss only while people are on them. But because of cost, for example, negative side effects, or supply shortages, many people are having to transition off of them — while trying not to regain the weight."
"Governor Gavin Newsom (D) announced in late April that California hit the 10 gigawatt mark for installed battery capacity, well beyond what any other states — or entire countries — have achieved. That’s about 13 times more battery capacity than the state had installed just five years ago, and it’s enough to make batteries a meaningful portion of the state’s power supply. For reference, 10 gigawatts are enough to meet about 20 percent of the peak electricity demand recorded in the grid managed by the California Independent System Operator (CAISO)."
"Jobless claims for the week ending May 18 fell by 8,000 to 215,000, down from 223,000 the week before, the Labor Department reported Thursday."
"The job posting sparked outrage and accusations of discrimination when it circulated online last year, reading, 'Only Born US Citizens [White] who are local within 60 miles from Dallas, TX [Don’t share with candidates].' The words in brackets are not paraphrases; they appeared in brackets in the posting, the Justice Department noted."
"An Israeli airstrike triggered a fire that killed 45 people in a tent camp in the Gazan city of Rafah, officials said on Monday, prompting an outcry from global leaders who urged the implementation of a World Court order to halt Israel's assault."
"The U.S. Department of Justice and the Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday announced a settlement with Norfolk Southern Railway Company over the railroad’s discharge of toxic substances following the 2023 derailment in East Palestine, Ohio… Under the agreement, Norfolk Southern will pay nearly $235 million to cover the EPA’s past and future clean-up costs for the contaminated air, water, and soil in and around where the train derailed."
"As some Republicans try to moderate their messaging on abortion over concerns about voter backlash this November, some activists are trying to go much further." There is no moderation. It's faked. It's always been about rolling back the sexual revolution and shaming women. They will come for birth control, even banning condoms, they will come for fertility medicine, they will not stop until it's all shoved back into a closet.
"But amid confusion over what abortion care is allowed in Mississippi, Regina says she was unaware Ashley qualified for an abortion in Mississippi under the law's exception for cases of rape. Yet, even if she was aware, it's unlikely Ashley would have been able to get an abortion in Mississippi; with heavy restrictions in effect and the high penalties on physicians who violate the abortion ban, it is unlikely she would have found a doctor willing to perform a procedure… Ashley, now 13 years old, is the mother of an 8-month-old baby boy nicknamed Peanut."
"Senate Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., a member of the Judiciary panel, wrote Roberts on Thursday asking him for a meeting to discuss Supreme Court ethics and to take steps to ensure that Alito recuses himself from any cases before the court concerning the Jan. 6 attack or former President Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn his 2020 election defeat."
"The Democratic political consultant behind a robocall that used artificial intelligence to impersonate President Biden is facing a steep federal fine and criminal charges in New Hampshire." Good.
"A New Jersey electrician who repeatedly attacked police officers during the Jan. 6, 2021, siege at the U.S. Capitol was sentenced on Friday to 12 years in prison by a judge who called him 'a menace to our society.'" He seems smart.
Thursday, May 23, 2024
Linkee-poo May 23
Girding my loins for the annual Summer of Remembering People Who Died for Your Freedom bullshit. The traditional launch of which occurs on Memorial Day, which ironicly is a day set aside for us to remember those who have died to protect our freedom (or at least our "national interests" for the various definition of those). So in honor of those who gave all, don't forget to shop the crazy sales of mattresses, cars, and everything else.
"The economic damage wrought by climate change is six times worse than previously thought, with global heating set to shrink wealth at a rate consistent with the level of financial losses of a continuing permanent war, research has found." We're boned.
"The crew of a sinking yacht was rescued off the coast of Spain this week after a pod of orcas apparently rammed the vessel – the latest "attack" by the marine mammals in the area that has left scientists stumped, several boats at the bottom of the ocean and scores more damaged." Team Orca.
"More than 200 people with diabetes were injured when their insulin pumps shut down unexpectedly due to a problem with a connected mobile app, the US Food and Drug Administration said Wednesday… Version 2.7 of the t:connect Apple iOS app – used with the t:slim X2 insulin pump with Control-IQ – has been recalled due to a software issue that causes the app to crash and relaunch. This cycle drains the pump battery, causing it to shut down sooner than expected and suspend insulin delivery." Oopsie.
"So Americans are not likely to get those other sunscreens — which do a better job of blocking UVA rays that can cause skin cancer and lead to wrinkles — in time for this summer, or even the next… Sunscreen makers say the U.S. approval standards are unfair because companies, including BASF Corp. and L'Oréal which make the newer sunscreen chemicals, submitted safety data on sunscreen chemicals to the European Union authorities some 20 years ago."
"'Steward Health Care has done everything in its power to operate successfully in a highly challenging health care environment,' said Steward's CEO Ralph de la Torre… Flanked by health care officials, union leaders and the state's attorney general Monday morning, Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey placed the blame for Steward's bankruptcy squarely on the shoulders of company leaders… 'This situation stems from and is rooted in greed, mismanagement and lack of transparency on the part of Steward leadership in Dallas, Texas,' Healey said."
"Military servicemembers like Grahfls are known as 'atomic veterans,' and they're on the verge of losing federal benefits meant to compensate for the long-term health effects of their work… They're part of a group fighting for a critical lifeline known as the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, or RECA. The 34-year-old law is set to expire next month."
"Red Lobster, America's largest seafood chain known for its shrimp and Cheddar Bay biscuits, has filed for bankruptcy… Its seafood restaurants are in hot water after a series of bad choices by a parade of executives, including an ill-fated promotion for all-you-can-eat-shrimp starting at $20." Most of the articles surrounding this site the "all you can eat shrimp" but then hide… "A private equity firm bought the chain ten years ago… The firm… funded the deal partly by selling Red Lobster's real estate… That's now a major financial factor in Red Lobster's bankruptcy filing, which asks the court to reject 108 leases, letting the company abandon those locations… After massive financial losses during the pandemic, followed by increases in the costs of food and wages, Thai Union pursued extensive cost-cutting at Red Lobster. The chain was run by a conveyor belt of executives; it had no CEO for a year." So I'm thinking it wasn't really the shrimp deal.
"Congress has less than a decade to fix Social Security before the popular program runs short of cash, threatening a sharp cut in benefits for nearly 60 million retirees and family members, according to a government report released Monday." Remove the income cap for paying Social Security and Medicare taxes. Reclassify streams of income that have been removed from taxes (pass through, capital gains, etc) back into "earned income."
"President Biden has quadrupled tariffs on electric vehicles from China — from 25% to an eye-watering 100% — in a move designed to bolster U.S. jobs and manufacturing." Now the question is, while American businesses take the baton and run with it. History points to no. We tried to do the same thing with HD TV. And what did we do? American companies produced a fairly robust system, and then sold all their IP to Asian companies (or at the very least, outsourced the manufacture and licensed the IP).
"About 8.9% of credit card balances fell into delinquency over the last year, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York — a sign that a growing number of borrowers are feeling the strain of rising prices and high interest rates." Rhut rho.
"Major U.S. airlines are suing the U.S. Transportation Department over a new rule requiring upfront disclosure of airline fees, the latest clash between air carriers and the Biden administration." On noes, someone is upset they have to be honest and forthright with their customers.
"Target says it is dropping the prices of 5,000 common items, joining a growing list of stores trying to draw inflation-weary shoppers… Target's list of price cuts, posted on Monday, includes 'milk, meat, bread, soda, fresh fruit and vegetables, snacks, yogurt, peanut butter, coffee, diapers, paper towels, pet food and more.' The company said it has already lowered prices of about 1,500 items and will continue to do so throughout the summer." If they can lower the prices, that means they raised the prices without cause in the first place.
"Lawyers for Scarlett Johansson are demanding that OpenAI disclose how it developed an AI personal assistant voice that the actress says sounds uncannily similar to her own… Johansson's legal team has sent OpenAI two letters asking the company to detail the process by which it developed a voice the tech company dubbed 'Sky,' Johansson's publicist told NPR in a revelation that has not been previously reported." OpenAI thinks it can do whatever it wants because they have been able to get away with it so far.
"Individual members of Israel’s security forces are tipping off far-right activists and settlers to the location of aid trucks delivering vital supplies to Gaza, enabling the groups to block and vandalise the convoys, according to multiple sources… Settlers intercepting the vital humanitarian supplies to the strip are receiving information about the location of the aid trucks from members of the Israeli police and military, a spokesperson from the main Israeli activist group behind the blockades told the Guardian."
"Photos: Authorities move in to clear pro-Palestinian protesters from UC Irvine."
"Spokespeople at several Ohio universities, including Ohio State, Kent State and University of Akron have said they are reviewing race-based scholarships and programs for potential noncompliance." Segregation comes in many forms.
"The problem is getting worse. Sheriffs' officers are twice as deadly as they were a decade ago, according to a CBS News analysis of FBI data, and increasingly, they are taking on a larger role in policing American towns, since small police departments have been shutting down and ceding their responsibilities to county sheriffs… A dozen sheriffs interviewed by CBS News said they hold themselves to a high standard. But some acknowledged that there is little is in place to hold them accountable if they don't. Many attribute that to their unique status as independently elected officials who are, nonetheless, empowered with the discretion to take away a person's life or liberty."
"A new report adds to a growing line of research showing that police departments don’t solve serious or violent crimes with any regularity, and in fact, spend very little time on crime control, in contrast to popular narratives."
"For decades, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has routinely warned its agents that the white supremacist and far-right militant groups it investigates often have links to law enforcement. Yet the justice department has no national strategy designed to protect the communities policed by these dangerously compromised law enforcers. As our nation grapples with how to reimagine public safety in the wake of the protests following the police killing of George Floyd, it is time to confront and resolve the persistent problem of explicit racism in law enforcement."
"Republican lawmakers in Tennessee gave final approval on Monday to an aggressive plan to split Nashville, a Democratic bastion, in a deeply Republican state, into several congressional districts as part of an effort to tilt the state’s congressional map in their favor. The plan is now waiting for approval from Governor Bill Lee, who is likely to sign it."
"After the 2020 presidential election, as some Trump supporters falsely claimed that President Biden had stolen the office, many of them displayed a startling symbol outside their homes, on their cars and in online posts: an upside-down American flag… One of the homes flying an inverted flag during that time was the residence of Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., in Alexandria, Va., according to photographs and interviews with neighbors." They're not really hiding anymore. Although, when the shit hit the fan, Alito started blaming everyone else, including his wife and a neighbor.
"Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, argued that President Joe Biden should have pardoned Donald Trump after the Justice Department brought indictments against the former president and pressured New York prosecutors not to pursue Trump's ongoing hush money trial." Romney is so wrong, it's almost impossible for him to even see what is right.
"Donald Trump’s lawyers rested their defense Tuesday without the former president taking the witness stand in his New York hush money criminal trial, moving the case closer to the moment the jury will begin deciding his fate."
"Arizona prosecutors have tried for weeks – and so far failed – to serve Rudy Giuliani with notice of his indictment related to an alleged scheme to overturn the 2020 election results in that state."
And then… "Former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani was officially served with a felony indictment on Friday night for allegedly interfering in Arizona's 2020 presidential election. Officials with the office of Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes served Giuliani in front of nearly 100 guests at his 80th birthday celebration in the Palm Beach, Florida area."
"In 2010, Kennedy, now 70, experienced severe memory loss and mental fog, he said in a deposition two years later. According to the Times, he consulted top neurologists familiar with the medical history of his uncle, the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, who had died of brain cancer in 2009. A New York doctor, after reviewing a scan of his brain, told him that his health issues could be 'caused by a worm that got into my brain and ate a portion of it and then died,' Kennedy said in the 2012 deposition, which concerned a divorce from his second wife, Mary Richardson Kennedy. Robert Kennedy said at the time that his earning power had been negatively affected by the cognitive issues, the Times reported." In a normal election, that would be the end of his campaign.
"Former President Donald Trump posted a video on Monday showing images of a fake newspaper article that references a 'unified Reich' if he’s reelected in 2024… The video details 'what happens after Donald Trump wins”' with a narrator reading hypothetical headlines like 'Economy Booms!' and 'Border is closed,' styled as World War I-era newspaper clippings. Under one headline that reads 'What’s next for America?' is a reference to the 'creation of a unified Reich.'"
"Nearly three in five Americans wrongly believe the US is in an economic recession, and the majority blame the Biden administration, according to a Harris poll conducted exclusively for the Guardian. The survey found persistent pessimism about the economy as election day draws closer… The poll highlighted many misconceptions people have about the economy…" It's like there's a constant stream of misinformation that is sometimes amplified by the media. No, the information war has not ended. "Another thing that hasn’t changed: views on the economy largely depend on which political party people belong to." Shocked, shocked I am…
"The economic damage wrought by climate change is six times worse than previously thought, with global heating set to shrink wealth at a rate consistent with the level of financial losses of a continuing permanent war, research has found." We're boned.
"The crew of a sinking yacht was rescued off the coast of Spain this week after a pod of orcas apparently rammed the vessel – the latest "attack" by the marine mammals in the area that has left scientists stumped, several boats at the bottom of the ocean and scores more damaged." Team Orca.
"More than 200 people with diabetes were injured when their insulin pumps shut down unexpectedly due to a problem with a connected mobile app, the US Food and Drug Administration said Wednesday… Version 2.7 of the t:connect Apple iOS app – used with the t:slim X2 insulin pump with Control-IQ – has been recalled due to a software issue that causes the app to crash and relaunch. This cycle drains the pump battery, causing it to shut down sooner than expected and suspend insulin delivery." Oopsie.
"So Americans are not likely to get those other sunscreens — which do a better job of blocking UVA rays that can cause skin cancer and lead to wrinkles — in time for this summer, or even the next… Sunscreen makers say the U.S. approval standards are unfair because companies, including BASF Corp. and L'Oréal which make the newer sunscreen chemicals, submitted safety data on sunscreen chemicals to the European Union authorities some 20 years ago."
"'Steward Health Care has done everything in its power to operate successfully in a highly challenging health care environment,' said Steward's CEO Ralph de la Torre… Flanked by health care officials, union leaders and the state's attorney general Monday morning, Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey placed the blame for Steward's bankruptcy squarely on the shoulders of company leaders… 'This situation stems from and is rooted in greed, mismanagement and lack of transparency on the part of Steward leadership in Dallas, Texas,' Healey said."
"Military servicemembers like Grahfls are known as 'atomic veterans,' and they're on the verge of losing federal benefits meant to compensate for the long-term health effects of their work… They're part of a group fighting for a critical lifeline known as the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, or RECA. The 34-year-old law is set to expire next month."
"Red Lobster, America's largest seafood chain known for its shrimp and Cheddar Bay biscuits, has filed for bankruptcy… Its seafood restaurants are in hot water after a series of bad choices by a parade of executives, including an ill-fated promotion for all-you-can-eat-shrimp starting at $20." Most of the articles surrounding this site the "all you can eat shrimp" but then hide… "A private equity firm bought the chain ten years ago… The firm… funded the deal partly by selling Red Lobster's real estate… That's now a major financial factor in Red Lobster's bankruptcy filing, which asks the court to reject 108 leases, letting the company abandon those locations… After massive financial losses during the pandemic, followed by increases in the costs of food and wages, Thai Union pursued extensive cost-cutting at Red Lobster. The chain was run by a conveyor belt of executives; it had no CEO for a year." So I'm thinking it wasn't really the shrimp deal.
"Congress has less than a decade to fix Social Security before the popular program runs short of cash, threatening a sharp cut in benefits for nearly 60 million retirees and family members, according to a government report released Monday." Remove the income cap for paying Social Security and Medicare taxes. Reclassify streams of income that have been removed from taxes (pass through, capital gains, etc) back into "earned income."
"President Biden has quadrupled tariffs on electric vehicles from China — from 25% to an eye-watering 100% — in a move designed to bolster U.S. jobs and manufacturing." Now the question is, while American businesses take the baton and run with it. History points to no. We tried to do the same thing with HD TV. And what did we do? American companies produced a fairly robust system, and then sold all their IP to Asian companies (or at the very least, outsourced the manufacture and licensed the IP).
"About 8.9% of credit card balances fell into delinquency over the last year, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York — a sign that a growing number of borrowers are feeling the strain of rising prices and high interest rates." Rhut rho.
"Major U.S. airlines are suing the U.S. Transportation Department over a new rule requiring upfront disclosure of airline fees, the latest clash between air carriers and the Biden administration." On noes, someone is upset they have to be honest and forthright with their customers.
"Target says it is dropping the prices of 5,000 common items, joining a growing list of stores trying to draw inflation-weary shoppers… Target's list of price cuts, posted on Monday, includes 'milk, meat, bread, soda, fresh fruit and vegetables, snacks, yogurt, peanut butter, coffee, diapers, paper towels, pet food and more.' The company said it has already lowered prices of about 1,500 items and will continue to do so throughout the summer." If they can lower the prices, that means they raised the prices without cause in the first place.
"Lawyers for Scarlett Johansson are demanding that OpenAI disclose how it developed an AI personal assistant voice that the actress says sounds uncannily similar to her own… Johansson's legal team has sent OpenAI two letters asking the company to detail the process by which it developed a voice the tech company dubbed 'Sky,' Johansson's publicist told NPR in a revelation that has not been previously reported." OpenAI thinks it can do whatever it wants because they have been able to get away with it so far.
"Individual members of Israel’s security forces are tipping off far-right activists and settlers to the location of aid trucks delivering vital supplies to Gaza, enabling the groups to block and vandalise the convoys, according to multiple sources… Settlers intercepting the vital humanitarian supplies to the strip are receiving information about the location of the aid trucks from members of the Israeli police and military, a spokesperson from the main Israeli activist group behind the blockades told the Guardian."
"Photos: Authorities move in to clear pro-Palestinian protesters from UC Irvine."
"Spokespeople at several Ohio universities, including Ohio State, Kent State and University of Akron have said they are reviewing race-based scholarships and programs for potential noncompliance." Segregation comes in many forms.
"The problem is getting worse. Sheriffs' officers are twice as deadly as they were a decade ago, according to a CBS News analysis of FBI data, and increasingly, they are taking on a larger role in policing American towns, since small police departments have been shutting down and ceding their responsibilities to county sheriffs… A dozen sheriffs interviewed by CBS News said they hold themselves to a high standard. But some acknowledged that there is little is in place to hold them accountable if they don't. Many attribute that to their unique status as independently elected officials who are, nonetheless, empowered with the discretion to take away a person's life or liberty."
"A new report adds to a growing line of research showing that police departments don’t solve serious or violent crimes with any regularity, and in fact, spend very little time on crime control, in contrast to popular narratives."
"For decades, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has routinely warned its agents that the white supremacist and far-right militant groups it investigates often have links to law enforcement. Yet the justice department has no national strategy designed to protect the communities policed by these dangerously compromised law enforcers. As our nation grapples with how to reimagine public safety in the wake of the protests following the police killing of George Floyd, it is time to confront and resolve the persistent problem of explicit racism in law enforcement."
"Republican lawmakers in Tennessee gave final approval on Monday to an aggressive plan to split Nashville, a Democratic bastion, in a deeply Republican state, into several congressional districts as part of an effort to tilt the state’s congressional map in their favor. The plan is now waiting for approval from Governor Bill Lee, who is likely to sign it."
"After the 2020 presidential election, as some Trump supporters falsely claimed that President Biden had stolen the office, many of them displayed a startling symbol outside their homes, on their cars and in online posts: an upside-down American flag… One of the homes flying an inverted flag during that time was the residence of Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., in Alexandria, Va., according to photographs and interviews with neighbors." They're not really hiding anymore. Although, when the shit hit the fan, Alito started blaming everyone else, including his wife and a neighbor.
"Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, argued that President Joe Biden should have pardoned Donald Trump after the Justice Department brought indictments against the former president and pressured New York prosecutors not to pursue Trump's ongoing hush money trial." Romney is so wrong, it's almost impossible for him to even see what is right.
"Donald Trump’s lawyers rested their defense Tuesday without the former president taking the witness stand in his New York hush money criminal trial, moving the case closer to the moment the jury will begin deciding his fate."
"Arizona prosecutors have tried for weeks – and so far failed – to serve Rudy Giuliani with notice of his indictment related to an alleged scheme to overturn the 2020 election results in that state."
And then… "Former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani was officially served with a felony indictment on Friday night for allegedly interfering in Arizona's 2020 presidential election. Officials with the office of Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes served Giuliani in front of nearly 100 guests at his 80th birthday celebration in the Palm Beach, Florida area."
"In 2010, Kennedy, now 70, experienced severe memory loss and mental fog, he said in a deposition two years later. According to the Times, he consulted top neurologists familiar with the medical history of his uncle, the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, who had died of brain cancer in 2009. A New York doctor, after reviewing a scan of his brain, told him that his health issues could be 'caused by a worm that got into my brain and ate a portion of it and then died,' Kennedy said in the 2012 deposition, which concerned a divorce from his second wife, Mary Richardson Kennedy. Robert Kennedy said at the time that his earning power had been negatively affected by the cognitive issues, the Times reported." In a normal election, that would be the end of his campaign.
"Former President Donald Trump posted a video on Monday showing images of a fake newspaper article that references a 'unified Reich' if he’s reelected in 2024… The video details 'what happens after Donald Trump wins”' with a narrator reading hypothetical headlines like 'Economy Booms!' and 'Border is closed,' styled as World War I-era newspaper clippings. Under one headline that reads 'What’s next for America?' is a reference to the 'creation of a unified Reich.'"
"Nearly three in five Americans wrongly believe the US is in an economic recession, and the majority blame the Biden administration, according to a Harris poll conducted exclusively for the Guardian. The survey found persistent pessimism about the economy as election day draws closer… The poll highlighted many misconceptions people have about the economy…" It's like there's a constant stream of misinformation that is sometimes amplified by the media. No, the information war has not ended. "Another thing that hasn’t changed: views on the economy largely depend on which political party people belong to." Shocked, shocked I am…
Thursday, May 9, 2024
Linkee-poo May 9
"New York police entered Hamilton Hall at Columbia University to end a student-led occupation of the building late Tuesday after Columbia University said it was left 'with no choice.'"
"But this initial hesitance from Columbia to allow reporters onto campus amid a crisis was only the beginning of a day marked by suppression of free press unlike anything we’ve ever seen during our time on Spectator."
"'The idea that we will halt the war before achieving all of its goals is out of the question. We will enter Rafah and we will eliminate the Hamas battalions there — with or without a deal — in order to achieve the total victory,' Netanyahu said, according to a statement released by his office… More than a million displaced Palestinians have fled to Rafah, the city along the Gaza Strip's southern border with Egypt." So, no reason to have negotiations then.
"Astronomers expect that this year you'll be able to see the explosion of a star system in our Milky Way galaxy by simply looking up at the sky."
"Almost from the start, arguments about mitigating climate change have included an element of cost-benefit analysis: Would it cost more to move the world off fossil fuels than it would to simply try to adapt to a changing world? A strong consensus has built that the answer to the question is a clear no, capped off by a Nobel in Economics given to one of the people whose work was key to building that consensus."
"Almost a third of all working adults in the United States are carrying some kind of medical debt — that’s about 15% of all U.S. households. This debt is also the leading cause of bankruptcies in the country."
"More than half of cats around the first Texas dairy farm to test positive for bird flu this spring died after drinking raw milk from the infected cows, scientists reported this week, offering a window into a toll the virus has taken during its unprecedented spread through the cattle industry." Oopsie.
"A former U.S. Marine was sentenced Monday to nine years in prison for firebombing a Southern California Planned Parenthood clinic in 2022, federal prosecutors prosecutors said."
"Feeling burned out and looking for reasons to work less? A new study shows that working nights and volatile schedules in young adulthood can leave you vulnerable to depression and poor health in middle age." Rhut rho.
"An owl. A sharky looking bullet. The Hindu deity Ganesh. The Yin and Yang sign. All painstakingly selected and etched onto a microchip that measures about an inch square. Each microscopic silicon doodle was the handiwork of engineers at Qualcomm Incorporated, a San Diego-based company that creates wireless technology-related products and services. The engineers slipped the drawings into Qualcomm's Q1650 data decoder with care not to disturb any of the chip's functions."
"Armed to educate; teachers across the state are picking up their weapons and vowing to protect their students… State leaders say they're pledging to train those educators by purchasing two modular 'shoot houses' demonstrating live active shooter simulations." Hey, ho, way to go Ohio.
"A Maryland high school athletic director is facing criminal charges after police say he used artificial intelligence to duplicate the voice of Pikesville High School Principal Eric Eiswert, leading the community to believe Eiswert said racist and antisemitic things about teachers and students."
"Terra Morehead, who retired as a federal prosecutor last August, has agreed to turn over her law license as part of an agreement with a Kansas disciplinary board. As a Wyandotte County prosecutor in the 1990s, Morehead helped KCKPD Detective Roger Golubski frame an innocent man who spent 23 years in prison."
"Each girl was to receive a proclamation to recognize their projects. Lindley’s original proclamation would’ve told the full story of her unique project to fight book bans, as well as detailed the School Board’s decisions that inspired her project. Then, of all the Girl Scout proclamations, Cold Harbor District Supervisor Michael Herzberg decided to change only Lindley’s. The revision stripped the proclamation of any mention of book banning and censorship, including a line that explicitly referenced Hanover County Public School libraries’ book bans. Herzberg’s unnecessary changes were approved almost unanimously by the Board."
"The Arkansas Legislative Audit released a report on Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ purchase of a lectern Monday afternoon, saying the governor may have broken state law after she spent tax money on a pricey Falcon podium… In June, the governor spent in-total $19,029 on the purchase. The price of the podium itself was a little over $11,000, combined with an additional $2,500 for consulting fees, $2,200 for a road case, plus additional costs for freight, shipping and taxes. The report says even the governor found this price to be high."
"Fox News has pulled down a six-part series in which it staged a mock trial of hypothetical criminal charges against Hunter Biden after the president's son threatened to sue the network… The series, which was first posted on the cable network's right-wing streaming service back in October 2022, was removed only a day after Biden's legal team publicly made its threat. Biden says the network defamed him, among other accusations." Wow, look at that old dog learning new tricks.
"The Supreme Court announced on (April 15) that it will not hear Mckesson v. Doe. The decision not to hear Mckesson leaves in place a lower court decision that effectively eliminated the right to organize a mass protest in the states of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas… Under that lower court decision, a protest organizer faces potentially ruinous financial consequences if a single attendee at a mass protest commits an illegal act."
"Trump’s response stunned several of the (oil and gas) executives in the room overlooking the ocean: You all are wealthy enough, he said, that you should raise $1 billion to return me to the White House. At the dinner, he vowed to immediately reverse dozens of President Biden’s environmental rules and policies and stop new ones from being enacted, according to people with knowledge of the meeting, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a private conversation." He's selling us out, and he isn't even in office. And these idiots are just dumb enough to buy it. "'(Fossil fuels) got a great return on their investment during Trump’s first term, and Trump is making it crystal clear that they’re in for an even bigger payout if he’s reelected,' (Alex Witt, a senior adviser for oil and gas with Climate Power) said." That's not how this scam works, Alex. Will Trump trash the environment? Yes. But that's a given if the oil and gas industry pays him or not. But if you think you're in line for a payout if you give Trump his billion and he gets in, you're sorely mistaken. Because he'll ask you for a cut. And then he'll ask you for your business. And if you don't give it to him, he'll move you out of the way just take it. That's how a protection racket works.
"About a year ago, Florida Governor- and then presidential candidate- Ron DeSantis passed one of the toughest crackdowns on immigration in the country... Many local Florida businesses say the new law has led to workers leaving the state that's hurt their bottom line. 'A lot of people are scared,' says Sanchez. 'A lot of people went north and never came back.'... The Federal government estimates that nationwide over 40% of farmworkers are undocumented." Time for all those retirees to get a job picking fruit.
"A Delta Air Lines flight that departed from John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City was forced to make an emergency return to the airport Friday morning after an emergency slide came apart from the Boeing 767, the airline said. A search for the slide was ongoing."
"Tennessee Republican Gov. Bill Lee said Monday that he thinks workers at a Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga made a mistake by voting to unionize under the United Auto Workers in a landslide election but acknowledged the choice was ultimately up to them."
"The Federal Communications Commission voted 3-2 on Thursday to reclassify broadband as a public utility, such as water and electricity — to regulate access to the internet. The move to expand government oversight of internet service providers comes after the COVID-19 pandemic exposed the magnitude of the digital divide, forcing consumers to rely on high-speed internet for school and work, as well as social and health support."
How goes the war? "Ukraine has sidelined U.S.-provided Abrams M1A1 battle tanks for now in its fight against Russia, in part because Russian drone warfare has made it too difficult for them to operate without detection or coming under attack, two U.S. military officials told The Associated Press."
"All charges have been declined against the 57 people arrested in connection with Wednesday's pro-Palestinian protest at the University of Texas... The Travis County attorney's office said the 57 arrests, which were all criminal trespassing charges, lacked probable cause."
"Columbia University students who inspired pro-Palestinian demonstrations across the country said Friday that they had reached an impasse with administrators and intended to continue their encampment until their demands were met."
"The owner of a suburban Detroit business that caught fire and exploded, killing a man, was arrested at a New York airport as he was preparing to depart for Hong Kong on a one-way ticket, authorities said Friday."
"Recognizing that some members of cleanup crews had likely become sick, BP agreed to a medical claims settlement two years after the 2010 disaster. Experts hailed it as 'an extraordinary achievement' that would compensate workers fairly with little hassle... But it hasn’t turned out that way."
"A Maryland high school athletic director is facing criminal charges after police say he used artificial intelligence to duplicate the voice of Pikesville High School Principal Eric Eiswert, leading the community to believe Eiswert said racist and antisemitic things about teachers and students." Not where I thought it would emerge first, but sure. Right on time.
Conservative can't be that bad. Like they don't shoot their dogs or anything. "South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem — a potential running mate for presumptive Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump — is getting attention again. This time, it’s for a new book where she writes about killing an unruly dog, and a smelly goat, too." And look, yes, the dog was trouble and would probably never be the working dog she wanted, but it could be a family pet, or some family's pet.
"The Supreme Court on Thursday appeared likely to reject former President Donald Trump’s claim of absolute immunity from prosecution over election interference, but several justices signaled reservations about the charges that could cause a lengthy delay, possibly beyond November’s election."
"But this initial hesitance from Columbia to allow reporters onto campus amid a crisis was only the beginning of a day marked by suppression of free press unlike anything we’ve ever seen during our time on Spectator."
"'The idea that we will halt the war before achieving all of its goals is out of the question. We will enter Rafah and we will eliminate the Hamas battalions there — with or without a deal — in order to achieve the total victory,' Netanyahu said, according to a statement released by his office… More than a million displaced Palestinians have fled to Rafah, the city along the Gaza Strip's southern border with Egypt." So, no reason to have negotiations then.
"Astronomers expect that this year you'll be able to see the explosion of a star system in our Milky Way galaxy by simply looking up at the sky."
"Almost from the start, arguments about mitigating climate change have included an element of cost-benefit analysis: Would it cost more to move the world off fossil fuels than it would to simply try to adapt to a changing world? A strong consensus has built that the answer to the question is a clear no, capped off by a Nobel in Economics given to one of the people whose work was key to building that consensus."
"Almost a third of all working adults in the United States are carrying some kind of medical debt — that’s about 15% of all U.S. households. This debt is also the leading cause of bankruptcies in the country."
"More than half of cats around the first Texas dairy farm to test positive for bird flu this spring died after drinking raw milk from the infected cows, scientists reported this week, offering a window into a toll the virus has taken during its unprecedented spread through the cattle industry." Oopsie.
"A former U.S. Marine was sentenced Monday to nine years in prison for firebombing a Southern California Planned Parenthood clinic in 2022, federal prosecutors prosecutors said."
"Feeling burned out and looking for reasons to work less? A new study shows that working nights and volatile schedules in young adulthood can leave you vulnerable to depression and poor health in middle age." Rhut rho.
"An owl. A sharky looking bullet. The Hindu deity Ganesh. The Yin and Yang sign. All painstakingly selected and etched onto a microchip that measures about an inch square. Each microscopic silicon doodle was the handiwork of engineers at Qualcomm Incorporated, a San Diego-based company that creates wireless technology-related products and services. The engineers slipped the drawings into Qualcomm's Q1650 data decoder with care not to disturb any of the chip's functions."
"Armed to educate; teachers across the state are picking up their weapons and vowing to protect their students… State leaders say they're pledging to train those educators by purchasing two modular 'shoot houses' demonstrating live active shooter simulations." Hey, ho, way to go Ohio.
"A Maryland high school athletic director is facing criminal charges after police say he used artificial intelligence to duplicate the voice of Pikesville High School Principal Eric Eiswert, leading the community to believe Eiswert said racist and antisemitic things about teachers and students."
"Terra Morehead, who retired as a federal prosecutor last August, has agreed to turn over her law license as part of an agreement with a Kansas disciplinary board. As a Wyandotte County prosecutor in the 1990s, Morehead helped KCKPD Detective Roger Golubski frame an innocent man who spent 23 years in prison."
"Each girl was to receive a proclamation to recognize their projects. Lindley’s original proclamation would’ve told the full story of her unique project to fight book bans, as well as detailed the School Board’s decisions that inspired her project. Then, of all the Girl Scout proclamations, Cold Harbor District Supervisor Michael Herzberg decided to change only Lindley’s. The revision stripped the proclamation of any mention of book banning and censorship, including a line that explicitly referenced Hanover County Public School libraries’ book bans. Herzberg’s unnecessary changes were approved almost unanimously by the Board."
"The Arkansas Legislative Audit released a report on Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ purchase of a lectern Monday afternoon, saying the governor may have broken state law after she spent tax money on a pricey Falcon podium… In June, the governor spent in-total $19,029 on the purchase. The price of the podium itself was a little over $11,000, combined with an additional $2,500 for consulting fees, $2,200 for a road case, plus additional costs for freight, shipping and taxes. The report says even the governor found this price to be high."
"Fox News has pulled down a six-part series in which it staged a mock trial of hypothetical criminal charges against Hunter Biden after the president's son threatened to sue the network… The series, which was first posted on the cable network's right-wing streaming service back in October 2022, was removed only a day after Biden's legal team publicly made its threat. Biden says the network defamed him, among other accusations." Wow, look at that old dog learning new tricks.
"The Supreme Court announced on (April 15) that it will not hear Mckesson v. Doe. The decision not to hear Mckesson leaves in place a lower court decision that effectively eliminated the right to organize a mass protest in the states of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas… Under that lower court decision, a protest organizer faces potentially ruinous financial consequences if a single attendee at a mass protest commits an illegal act."
"Trump’s response stunned several of the (oil and gas) executives in the room overlooking the ocean: You all are wealthy enough, he said, that you should raise $1 billion to return me to the White House. At the dinner, he vowed to immediately reverse dozens of President Biden’s environmental rules and policies and stop new ones from being enacted, according to people with knowledge of the meeting, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a private conversation." He's selling us out, and he isn't even in office. And these idiots are just dumb enough to buy it. "'(Fossil fuels) got a great return on their investment during Trump’s first term, and Trump is making it crystal clear that they’re in for an even bigger payout if he’s reelected,' (Alex Witt, a senior adviser for oil and gas with Climate Power) said." That's not how this scam works, Alex. Will Trump trash the environment? Yes. But that's a given if the oil and gas industry pays him or not. But if you think you're in line for a payout if you give Trump his billion and he gets in, you're sorely mistaken. Because he'll ask you for a cut. And then he'll ask you for your business. And if you don't give it to him, he'll move you out of the way just take it. That's how a protection racket works.
"About a year ago, Florida Governor- and then presidential candidate- Ron DeSantis passed one of the toughest crackdowns on immigration in the country... Many local Florida businesses say the new law has led to workers leaving the state that's hurt their bottom line. 'A lot of people are scared,' says Sanchez. 'A lot of people went north and never came back.'... The Federal government estimates that nationwide over 40% of farmworkers are undocumented." Time for all those retirees to get a job picking fruit.
"A Delta Air Lines flight that departed from John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City was forced to make an emergency return to the airport Friday morning after an emergency slide came apart from the Boeing 767, the airline said. A search for the slide was ongoing."
"Tennessee Republican Gov. Bill Lee said Monday that he thinks workers at a Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga made a mistake by voting to unionize under the United Auto Workers in a landslide election but acknowledged the choice was ultimately up to them."
"The Federal Communications Commission voted 3-2 on Thursday to reclassify broadband as a public utility, such as water and electricity — to regulate access to the internet. The move to expand government oversight of internet service providers comes after the COVID-19 pandemic exposed the magnitude of the digital divide, forcing consumers to rely on high-speed internet for school and work, as well as social and health support."
How goes the war? "Ukraine has sidelined U.S.-provided Abrams M1A1 battle tanks for now in its fight against Russia, in part because Russian drone warfare has made it too difficult for them to operate without detection or coming under attack, two U.S. military officials told The Associated Press."
"All charges have been declined against the 57 people arrested in connection with Wednesday's pro-Palestinian protest at the University of Texas... The Travis County attorney's office said the 57 arrests, which were all criminal trespassing charges, lacked probable cause."
"Columbia University students who inspired pro-Palestinian demonstrations across the country said Friday that they had reached an impasse with administrators and intended to continue their encampment until their demands were met."
"The owner of a suburban Detroit business that caught fire and exploded, killing a man, was arrested at a New York airport as he was preparing to depart for Hong Kong on a one-way ticket, authorities said Friday."
"Recognizing that some members of cleanup crews had likely become sick, BP agreed to a medical claims settlement two years after the 2010 disaster. Experts hailed it as 'an extraordinary achievement' that would compensate workers fairly with little hassle... But it hasn’t turned out that way."
"A Maryland high school athletic director is facing criminal charges after police say he used artificial intelligence to duplicate the voice of Pikesville High School Principal Eric Eiswert, leading the community to believe Eiswert said racist and antisemitic things about teachers and students." Not where I thought it would emerge first, but sure. Right on time.
Conservative can't be that bad. Like they don't shoot their dogs or anything. "South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem — a potential running mate for presumptive Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump — is getting attention again. This time, it’s for a new book where she writes about killing an unruly dog, and a smelly goat, too." And look, yes, the dog was trouble and would probably never be the working dog she wanted, but it could be a family pet, or some family's pet.
"The Supreme Court on Thursday appeared likely to reject former President Donald Trump’s claim of absolute immunity from prosecution over election interference, but several justices signaled reservations about the charges that could cause a lengthy delay, possibly beyond November’s election."
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