Linkee-poo tries to wrap its head around a Monday on a Thursday

"When Jaissaan Lovett graduated last month as his high school's first black valedictorian, he prepared a speech — but he says his principal wouldn't let him give it. So someone else stepped in who wanted to hear what he had to say: the mayor of Rochester, New York, Lovely Warren. Not only that, she gave him a much wider audience for his message." (Grokked from N.K. Jemisin)

"The energy storage projects are being built to avoid the need to keep three Calpine gas-fired plants running as RMR resources and to shore up congestion issues in the region… 'Storage at this scale is likely now cheaper than the total cost to run the gas plants,' Alex Eller, senior energy research analyst at Navigant, told Utility Dive via email… The announcement includes what is set to be the largest lithium-ion battery installation of its kind: a 300 MW, 1,200 MWh storage…" And there are some who don't think we've achieved the goal of "better, cheaper battery storage" yet. (Grokked from Robert J Bennett)

"The historian Henry Adams was being metaphorical, not medical, when he described power as 'a sort of tumor that ends by killing the victim’s sympathies.' But that’s not far from where Dacher Keltner, a psychology professor at UC Berkeley, ended up after years of lab and field experiments. Subjects under the influence of power, he found in studies spanning two decades, acted as if they had suffered a traumatic brain injury—becoming more impulsive, less risk-aware, and, crucially, less adept at seeing things from other people’s point of view." (Grokked from Ellen Kushner)

"Google has confirmed that private emails sent and received by Gmail users can sometimes be read by third-party app developers, not just machines." They know what you did last Summer. (Grokked from Kathryn Cramer)

Can't remember if I posted about this before. "The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services is creating a new task force. Its goal: to examine what they say are bad naturalization cases, according to Director L. Francis Cissna’s June announcement… As a result, the organization expects to hire dozens of lawyers and immigration officers in the coming weeks to find U.S. citizens they say should not have been naturalized, to revoke their citizenship, and then eventually deport them." Don't think this can affect you? Okay, answer this question, who says they'll only do it for people still alive and they've already floated the idea that "just because you were born here doesn't automatically make you a citizen" (and you thought that was just about "anchor babies"). Also note, they already have the power to do this, they just didn't exercise it unless given cause to re-examine a case (such as for Nazis fleeing justice). (Grokked from Kathryn Cramer)

"The head of Poland's Supreme Court defiantly arrived at work on Wednesday in Warsaw, rejecting a law by the right-wing government that aims at forcing her and many other top judges into retirement."

"California Republicans are banking on a ballot measure this fall that the embattled state party believes can stave off a Democratic wave in November — and perhaps even spark a GOP revival in the run-up to 2020… Carl DeMaio, the former San Diego city councilmember announced this week he’s raised more than $1.1 million online for his campaign to repeal the 12-cent a gallon gas tax backed by Gov. Jerry Brown — and polls suggest it may be heading for a November victory." Grasping at straws.

"One of the facilities (DoHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen) visited, in Los Fresnos, houses parents whose children were taken from them under President Donald Trump’s “zero tolerance” family separation policy. Many of the detainees there are women, and many desperately wanted to speak with Nielsen. Instead, they were moved to a distant soccer field, where they shouted to Nielsen for help but were too far away for her to hear them." Such caring people. (Grokked from Kathryn Cramer, I think)

"At least 10 Canadian fishing boats from New Brunswick have been intercepted in the past two weeks off the coast of Maine by U.S. Border Patrol agents looking for undocumented immigrants, The Canadian Press reported Wednesday." (Grokked from Laura J Mixon)

"Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Tuesday that he doesn’t think the federal government can do much to respond to school shootings… The Kentucky Republican also said that improvements to school security might be the best solution — though, he added, Congress could do little on that front either." Then, with all due respect Majority Leader, we really don't fucking need you at all. This is your good damn job. This is your fucking oath. You can do things, it's just you've taken all those solutions off the table because of money, you whore. You've sold us out. You don't deserve to be voted out, you deserve the fate of all those in governance who failed the social contract. Sad thing is it probably won't happen to you. (Grokked from Jim Hines)

"President Donald Trump plans to meet one-on-one with Vladimir Putin at the start of their July 16 summit in Helsinki, Finland, according to a person familiar with the plans, before allowing other aides to join the highly anticipated encounter with the Russian leader." You don't want witnesses to the bribery or your annual review. He does realize we all can see this, right? (Grokked from Chang)

"Spokespeople for online reputation management companies in the two countries confirmed that they had been paid to write articles attempting to whitewash Trump’s ties to Felix Sater, a Russian-born businessman who, with former Russian trade minister Tevfik Arif, collaborated with the Trump Organization on numerous real estate deals from New York to the former Soviet Union." It doesn't take a lot of money to do it, though. (Grokked from Xeni Jardin)