The Suspicious Cheese Lords, a Washington, D.C.-based all-male early music ensemble, will celebrate the 30th anniversary of its founding with a special concert Aug. 9 at Church of the Annunciation in Northwest Washington.
Specializing in performing rare Renaissance polyphony, the ensemble was formed in 1996 to keep the historic choral traditions of sacred music alive while highlighting forgotten sacred masterpieces.
…
The Suspicious Cheese Lords’ name is derived from the title of a Thomas Tallis 16th century motet, Suscipe quaeso Domine, which is officially translated as “Take, I ask Lord.”
Playing on a whimsical translation of the title, that Suscipe could mean “suspicious,” quaeso resembles the Spanish word queso which means “cheese,” and Domine is “Lord.” Hence, the title “Suspicious Cheese Lord.” …
The fight for accountability and oversight within privately owned ICE detention facilities is out in the open. Deaths, hunger strikes, and the horrifying conditions being experienced by the people detained within those walls are consistent topics of conversation in the public discourse.
But instead of working to alleviate the problems and improve conditions, the Trump administration is choosing to retreat behind a veil of secrecy.
Under Secretary Markwayne Mullin’s leadership, the Department of Homeland Security is now reportedly purchasing ICE detention facilities from private prison giant CoreCivic, which might lead to even less oversight within the camps.
[…] the Trump administration is paying CoreCivic $739.2 million for the Otay Mesa Detention Center in San Diego and $732.6 million for the California City Detention Facility in Kern County.
The private prison company made a $500,000 donation to President Donald Trump’s inaugural fund. These lucrative government purchases totaling more than $1.4 billion, along with continued billion-dollar contracts to run numerous other facilities, prove that CoreCivic’s calculated donation more than paid off.
[…] while the federal government will be the owner of record, CoreCivic will still be managing the detention centers.
In other words, the only thing that’s changing is the state’s access for oversight, rather than the actual conditions within these facilities.
[…] “As some blue states are considering more active involvement in oversight of facilities, I think the logical solution to much of that is federal ownership of the facilities,” George Zoley, CEO of GEO Group said […]
As for the overall treatment of immigrants within the U.S., the Trump administration has already bolstered its campaign of mistreatment by trying to dehumanize and criminalize them.
Official government social media accounts have created memes mocking shackled men and women, and even stooped to painting immigrants as “X-Files”-themed “aliens” who “walk among us.”
In short, they’ve stripped the humanity of the people they seek to arrest, detain, and remove to other countries—in some cases, countries they’ve never stepped foot in before.
Taking federal control of the facilities in blue states seeking to remedy this seems to be just another step in the Trump administration’s ongoing push to punish immigrants.
“Republicans Livid As Missouri And Kansas Vote For Democracy And Abortion AGAIN”
“Democracy for Missouri and abortion for Kansas, to be specific.”
If one thing is clear from last night’s primary results […] it is that the Republican fascists who control red states absolutely loathe their voters. […]
Last night in Missouri and Kansas, it was yet another night of ballot initiatives that really pissed Republican electeds off. And wouldn’t you know it, but their voters told them to fuck off anyway.
Here is a clip of Rachel Maddow talking last night about how Missouri voters gave their politicians a “one-finger salute” in the results of Amendment 4. [Video]
As Maddow explained there […] Amendment 4 was essentially an amendment asking voters to take power away from themselves to make it harder to put initiatives on the ballot. Missouri Republicans don’t like these initiatives because voters use them to make sure people can get abortions in Missouri and get healthcare in Missouri and legalize pot and other cool, we mean totally sinful stuff like that. (Because lots of times there is a disconnect between the policies people actually like and the people Fox News has brainwashed them to vote for and/or against.)
So this new Amendment 4, a brainchild of the Republican Legislature, would have made it so that not only must proposed amendments get a certain number of signatures to get on the ballot, they have to get a certain number of signatures from each congressional district, which sounds as pointless as it is, unless your point is just to make citizen-led democracy harder. As Maddow noted, though, the rules would have stayed the same for the Legislature; if they wanted to get something on the ballot, they could use the older, easier way.
[…] The New York Times graphic shows just how strongly Missouri voters felt about this: [graphic showing 80.3% of voters rejected the Republican Legislature’s proposal.]
And then there was Amendment 5, the Republican attempt to roll back the state income tax and replace it with feelings and jacked up sales taxes. Missouri voters said fuck off to that one by an even bigger margin, with the “nos” on that one pulling in 83.3 percent of the vote by the current count. […]
Here’s a guy who kind of elegantly captured how these two amendments, and their failures, could be related:
The coalition against Amendment 5 was especially broad, with business groups either staying on the sidelines or opposing it. Educator and groups from the left organized under the name No Everything Tax against Amendment 5 and Protect Majority Rule Missouri against Amendment 4.
Missourians don’t like the way Amendment 5 was tilted toward making wage earners pay more, said Mark Jones of the Missouri National Education Association.
“Fundamentally, Missourians rejected the idea that they should pay for tax breaks for billionaires and then not be able to change to correct the legislature, not only on this issue but forever,” he said.
[…] You know how Kansas is always getting Republican amendments on the ballot to try to take away abortion rights and Kansas voters always tell them [no]?
Did it again!
By a margin of 61 to 39, Kansas voters rejected an amendment to take power from the governor to appoint state supreme court justices with the assistance of a state commission that exists to choose good candidates for the job, and put them up to direct election instead. The idea here is that Kansas has a (term-limited) Democratic governor named Laura Kelly, but yet is a red state, and maybe if the voters directly elected the state supreme court, they eventually could pack the court with some god-bothering Christian fascists up in there. You know, the kinds who won’t rule that abortion is protected by the state constitution.
[…] So that is what voters in red Missouri and red Kansas did when they went to the polls yesterday, outside of making selections in their respective primaries.
You can see why voting is such a problem for fascists, even sometimes when their own people do it. Fuckers get ideas like their voices matter and stuff. Gotta nip that shit in the bud.
The White House on Wednesday released declassified information saying the FBI opened an investigation into whether President Trump was acting as an asset for Russia when he fired FBI Director James Comey, a theory an administration official said was not backed up by evidence.
The official said the investigation, known as Oxferd Comma, was a subcomponent of Crossfire Hurricane, the FBI probe into potential collusion between the 2016 Trump campaign and the Russian government — an investigation that has long drawn Mr. Trump’s ire. The predicate of Oxferd Comma was the newly elected president’s decision to fire Comey in 2017.
The case was marked sensitive, which is generally done to keep a case off the books from other agents, the official said. The agents who opened the case said they believe it was going to be the least intrusive method to address a serious national security risk.
Oxferd Comma was eventually rolled into Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s larger probe into Mr. Trump, the official said, and was later found not to have any merit when the rest of the Mueller investigation was closed down…
Legislation setting redistricting standards in Maryland could land in court before it lands on a ballot for voters this fall.
The Senate Tuesday gave final approval to House Bill 2100, the constitutional amendment that, if approved by voters, would override a 2022 court ruling that some Democrats said hamstrung efforts to redraw the state’s eight congressional districts. Republicans said the bill will result in the loss of the only congressional seat held by a member of their party.
“We’re going to try to get this into the court as soon as we possibly can to try to put any type of delay that we can,” said Senate Minority Leader Stephen S. Hershey Jr. (R-Upper Shore).
Hershey and Senate Minority Whip Sen. Justin Ready (R-Frederick and Carroll) said time is of the essence: The measure has to be to state elections officials Wednesday to make the November ballot.
“This was done at the last minute,” Hershey said Tuesday. “They have to have this ballot language on Aug. 5, which is tomorrow.”
Amendments to the state constitution have to pass by a three-fifths majority of both legislative chambers, and do not require the signature of the governor, but Gov. Wes Moore (D), a supporter of midcycle congressional redistricting, is scheduled to hold a bill signing ceremony anyway Wednesday.
“I continue to believe that our country needs national redistricting reform,” Moore said in a statement praising lawmakers’ passage of the bill. “But until that happens, inaction is not an option. Maryland will not be caught flat-footed while Republicans engage in political redlining that guts decades of progress that the generations before us fought for.
…
Scientists have captured new images of the sun’s surface that show turbulent, vortex-like structures in unprecedented detail — a resolution roughly equivalent to spotting a blueberry from 70 miles away. […]
The “surface” of the sun is really an unstable, roiling soup of plasma, heated to about 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The video released by researchers shows vortices of hot plasma that ebb and flow like bubbles in a pot of boiling water. Hot plasma is transported up from below the sun’s surface to a cooler area; as it cools, it drops back down to the inner parts of the star.
To take images of the sun, the researchers used the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope in Hawaii. Its large aperture allowed them to capture uniquely small detail.
They released images on Wednesday at a spatial resolution of about 12 miles — giant on human scale, but very detailed for a star that measures about 865,000 miles across, or more than 100 times the diameter of the Earth. […]
The paper published Wednesday presents the first empirical evidence that these detailed disturbances and vortices on the surface are created by a process called Kelvin-Helmholtz instability. The process occurs when two fluids or gases that are next to one another move at different speeds, causing wave patterns to form in between.
The effect can sometimes be observed in clouds, when one layer of air moves significantly faster than another below it. The resulting crests can resemble the curl of a Peeps marshmallow chick, or the Japanese painting “The Great Wave.”
[…] The latest discovery could help scientists unlock one of the biggest mysteries in the study of the sun and other stars: why its outer atmosphere, known as the corona, is so much hotter than its visible surface. This is the opposite of what happens in, say, a candle; as you move your hand away from the flame, you expect it to feel cooler, not warmer. Kelvin-Helmholtz instability is known as a way to break down energy flows into smaller and smaller patterns, potentially releasing small bursts of energy outward. […]
This instability mechanism may also be important in understanding the way the sun builds up magnetic energy. The current theory is that forces in a magnetic field get wound up around each other, a process called flux braiding. When that tension is released, energy is released. The small swirling patterns created by Kelvin-Helmholtz instability may explain why the braiding happens in the first place.
Following this discovery, researchers hope to be able to use the Inouye telescope to map instability patterns in a way that quantifies the strength of the magnetic field. […]
StevoRsays
DW News – also seen on telly version (c35) just now areally intresting interview on the Hormuz issue w a Gordon Robison too.
Iran has raised the possibility of charging companies that send data through cables in the Strait of Hormuz. That would amount to a protection racket, said Erik Brown of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
During Kevin Hassett’s latest appearance on Fox Business, the director of the National Economic Council pushed a very specific message: Data centers are awesome.
“Data centers are very good for towns because they create so many jobs, bring people in with high incomes that can buy houses and stuff like that,” Donald Trump’s top economist said late last week. He added that placing a data center in a “sleepy town” will lead to “a whole bunch of happy residents.”
It was a curious pitch. Whatever one thinks of data centers, the idea that they bring in a bunch of high-income workers is bizarre: Data centers are filled with computer servers and cooling machines, not well-paid executives — and servers are not known for buying “houses and stuff like that.” [Yep. So True.]
[…] the president pushed a similar line on data centers. “You have to convince your community how great these things [are],” Trump said. “You can’t fight it; you have to go with it.”
Trump echoed the line this week during his latest Fox News interview. [social media post from Aaron Rupar, with video of Trump spreading disinformation.]
“Data centers, if you look at the stats, everything’s good around [them],” he said.
The Associated Press reported a couple of weeks ago that Democrats are seizing on the backlash to data centers […]
[…] A Gallup poll released in May found that 71% of Americans wouldn’t want a data center to be built in their area. In June, a Reuters/Ipsos poll pointed in the same direction, with roughly two-thirds of the country opposing construction. [I snipped other polling results.]
[…] Trump published an item to his social media platform in which he declared, with his usual idiosyncratic approach to capitalization, “One of the biggest Driving Forces in the Future for Jobs, are Data Centers. They are big, strong, bold, and Money Machines for the State in which they are built.”
They’re really not. [!] As Paul Waldman explained in a recent piece for MS NOW, “Data centers require massive amounts of power, potentially straining the local grid and causing energy prices to spike. They use enormous quantities of water to cool the equipment, leading residents to fear for the future of their water supply. And many residents who live near one report an unceasing hum from the computers, fans, generators and other equipment, which can make living near a data center intolerable.”
[…] the White House is leaning into its support for data centers anyway. […]
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani held a press conference Wednesday to announce a series of policy proposals aimed at cracking down on illegal e-bike retailers and was asked about House Speaker Mike Johnson’s recent Twitter freakout over Abdul El-Sayed’s victory as the Democratic candidate in the Michigan Senate primary.
Johnson’s post characterized progressives in the Democratic Party as “radical Marxist Democrats” who are trying “to destroy the very foundations that make us the envy of the entire world,” while calling on Americans to fight against the country “being overrun by Mini Mamdanis.” [social media post]
“It’s a lot of characters, he must have the pro account,” Mamdani joked. “I think first I’d just like to congratulate Dr. Abdul El-Sayed on his victory. He ran a campaign where—it was best described by his words of ‘money out of politics, money in your pocket,’ Medicare for all. And if those simple commitments and beliefs are what drives Representative Johnson to these kinds of conclusions, I think it shows you how deeply out of touch the Republican Party is with the concerns of working-class Americans.” [video]
El-Sayed will now face off against Republican Rep. Mike Rogers in a battle for the Michigan Senate seat being vacated by Democratic Sen. Gary Peters. Rogers, who has aligned himself with the increasingly unpopular Donald Trump, has yet to face the level of scrutiny his Democratic challenger has.
It will be interesting to see how the next few months of campaigning go, as Johnson has made it clear that the GOP will lean on so-called communism to attack Democratic candidates. [I think the whole “they are communists” approach is weak.]
Using the infinite amount of cash at its disposal, Customs and Border Patrol has come up with [a] morally repugnant option […]: hunting down people who’ve been deported and demanding they pay civil immigration fines.
[…] The Trump administration hopes to track down some of the 66,387 deportees who ostensibly owe $423 million to the United States. These aren’t fines attached to any criminal act or consequence. [!] Instead, they apply to anyone who stays after a deportation order has been issued or after signing a voluntary departure agreement.
And they run a comical, unattainable $998 per day. [!]
Per Project Salt Box, CBP already pays three private collection agencies for this sort of thing. In fact, the Department of Homeland Security already ponied up more than $118 million for skip-tracing services, but neither the private companies nor CBP has managed to locate an alleged debtor outside of U.S. borders. [LOL. What a farce.]
Since neither those agencies nor CBP have anyone working abroad to torment immigrants after they leave the United States, the administration has set out to remedy that […]
The contract is supposed to begin on Aug. 14 and last for two years, because all government contracts basically now handily terminate before the 2028 election.
It isn’t at all clear how, exactly, this would work even if the world’s worst people take on this contract, in no small part because these fines can only be paid through the U.S. government portal at pay.gov.
Can’t wait to find out the plan for somehow having random debt collectors demanding people in other countries install the administration’s crappy app to pay a staggering civil fine to a country from which they were forcibly removed. [!!]
This latest moral horror joins the $180 million the government set aside to pay private bounty hunters to track down immigrants when there apparently weren’t enough masked federal agents doing it.
And then there’s the $10 million to buy immigrants’ tax identification numbers from a data broker, penalizing them for having duly paid their taxes even if they are undocumented. [sheesh]
And, of course, the $125 million to Thomson Reuters to get everyone’s credit card data—no warrants needed—which we’re currently pretending is somehow about combating voter fraud.
And can’t forget about the millions and millions to Palantir, which is all in on deporting people, for an app to find neighborhoods with the most sitting ducks for immigration thugs to terrorize.
It’s an impossible, immoral thing this country is doing, and the shame should stay with us long after we finally get rid of Trump.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
StevoR @12: “Seems we have a new FTB blog […] A rather mysterious one”
FtB’s Bébé Mélange in 2022: “My man Joseph Kelly has published this compilation of dark fiction that I’ve previously mentioned. You have a few options on how to read it—and one is completely gratis.”
Joseph’s bio at The Midnight Collection site linked an old blog elsewhere called Cubist Vowels.
Followup to all of the good news about Abdul El-Sayed winning the Democratic Senate primary in Michigan:
When we published our initial post this morning, only NBC News and Decision Desk had called it. Now everybody has. Abdul El-Sayed is the winner of the Michigan Democratic Senate primary.
[…] Haley Stevens immediately delivered just about as perfect of a concession statement and endorsement as one could ask for […]:
“I want to congratulate Abdul El-Sayed on winning the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate. He is a doctor, a community health official, a Rhodes Scholar, and a dedicated Michigander. I am proud to offer my support as he takes on Mike Rogers in the general election.
“This was a thorough and rigorous campaign that brought out the full span of views within the Democratic Party — and that is why we have primaries. I am proud to have put up my hand to serve, and prouder to continue to work together to make sure this Senate seat remains blue, that we flip the United States Senate and continue the work for Michigan.
“Donald Trump and Mike Rogers want us to come out of this primary tired and divided, so their billionaire backers can come in and let multimillionaire Mike Rogers walk away with this Senate seat. They want to keep the Senate red, so Mike Rogers can keep rubber-stamping Donald Trump’s harmful agenda of higher prices, manufacturing jobs lost nationwide, corruption and abuses of power, and so he can ban abortion, gut health care, and roll back workers’ rights and voting rights. […]
“I am proud of the coalition our campaign put together: Black Michiganders, working class Michiganders, union members, farmers, hard-working families. The Michiganders who backed this campaign truly represent the grit, diversity, and spirit of our state, and I am honored to have earned each of their votes.”
[…] The nominee, Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, also has now had the opportunity to give a real victory speech, and it was dang good. [video]
El-Sayed talked about how his family came to the United States “from a place where there is not democracy,” and about how we often take that for granted. He spoke graciously about Haley Stevens, saying they had spoken this morning, and that “She is one of the most committed public servants that you’ll ever meet. She loves democracy like I love democracy. And whatever differences that we might have had in the primary, they pale in comparison to what unifies us, a recognition that so long as we want to keep our democracy, that democracy better be working for people, and that all of us have to come together to make sure that we never let Mike Rogers see the inside of the US Senate.” […]
He thanked his also-doctor wife Sarah Jukaku, and said he owes her a 20th anniversary on their 21st, because they didn’t get one this year. He thanked his daughters, even though he knew they weren’t watching.
He talked about the outside money spent against him — $70 million — and about how they had shown that “the power of our many is greater than the power of their money.” He thanked all the organizers and unions and multitudes of people involved in making that thing happen.
He was magnanimous in welcoming everyone into his movement [I snipped that part of his speech.]
And then, directly addressing Jewish voters, he delivered some of the most powerful lines of the speech:
“To my Jewish American sisters and brothers, one of the most indelible memories of this campaign will have been the opportunity to break bread with you at Seder, to worship with you at shul, to embrace, to be embraced by you, and listening to sisters and brothers who said, you know, I want to join this movement, because AIPAC doesn’t speak for me, because I understand that self-determination for one people does not require the quenching of self-determination for another people. [good line] That unless all of us are free, none of us are free. I want to tell you the great gift that you’ve given me. And to all of my sisters and brothers of the Jewish faith or any faith at all or no faith at all, I want you to know that my commitment to your safety, my commitment to Jewish safety is the same commitment that I have to the safety of my own daughters.” […]
[…] Referring to Republican attacks that have already started, pathetic attacks, where they have tweeted out El-Sayed’s full name, as if seeing it all typed out makes it OOH SCARY MUSLIM-ER — it’s Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed […] [social media post, in which Dr. @abdulelsayed.bsky.social replies, “My name is not raising gas prices and taking us to war.”]
“Cost of Trump’s Namesake Warships Likely to Rise by 50 Percent or More”
“Trump’s goal of building a “golden fleet” of 15 battleships could cost $275 billion, according to a government estimate.”
A new class of warships that President Trump says will anchor a “golden fleet” for the Navy is expected to cost at least 50 percent more than estimated earlier, according to a government report released on Wednesday.
The first planned Trump-class battleship, the U.S.S. Defiant, is likely to cost $23.4 billion, $8 billion more than the Navy initially indicated.
The cost of each of the 14 additional vessels is expected to jump to slightly more than $18 billion from $10.2 billion, for a total cost of $275 billion for 15 ships.
The estimates were calculated by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which said that the first of the battleships might take eight years or longer to build.
Mr. Trump announced in December that he expected two of the ships to be constructed over the next two and a half years.
“They’ll help maintain American military supremacy, revive the American shipbuilding industry and inspire fear in America’s enemies all over the world,” Mr. Trump said at the time, alongside renderings of the new ships.
Months after the announcement, Mr. Trump decided that the ships would be powered by nuclear reactors instead of the gas turbine engines used in destroyers and cruisers, a move that adds significantly to the costs. […]
The term battleship usually refers to an earlier era of much larger armored warships that had multiple turrets armed with major-caliber guns. The last U.S. battleship was launched in 1944.
The ships Mr. Trump envisions are significantly smaller and would have guided missiles as their primary armament instead.
Some of the additional weapons the Navy has said will arm the new ships, like an electromagnetic gun, were canceled after the spending of billions on decades of failed research and development. Others, like a defensive laser weapon, do not yet exist. […]
“The Trump administration has yet to publicly acknowledge the number of casualties in the three strikes.”
Hundreds of civilians were killed or wounded by U.S. airstrikes in Yemen last year, but the Pentagon has yet to publicly acknowledge the casualties or share a full account with Congress, according to documents reviewed by NBC News and people with knowledge of the attacks.
The three April 2025 strikes occurred during Operation Rough Rider, a 53-day military campaign President Donald Trump launched less than two months into his second term. The stated goal was to stop Iranian-backed Houthi rebels from threatening ships and allies in the region.
Last year, despite detailed reporting from rights groups on possible large-scale civilian casualties, the Pentagon had assessed there had been no civilian casualties from the U.S. air war against Houthi forces in Yemen.
[…] NBC News has reviewed documents showing the back-and-forth between the Pentagon and lawmakers trying to get details on the attacks. In one, the Pentagon wrote to Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., in March, after repeated requests for information about casualties provided no details on the number of casualties, according to one of the documents reviewed by NBC News.
In the letter, the Pentagon’s assistant secretary for special operations and low intensity conflict, Derrick Anderson, said that U.S. Central Command had reviewed dozens of strikes for possible harm to civilians. Fifteen incidents remained under “active review” and three attacks in April 2025 warranted further investigation, with assessments concluding that U.S. strikes “more likely than not resulted in civilian casualties,” Anderson wrote. [map]
[…] The 2027 National Defense Authorization Act requires that the Pentagon release unredacted civilian harm investigations and all supporting documents for the three strikes in Yemen. Failure to comply allows Congress to withhold some funds, including travel money for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. There’s no official deadline, but without those details, the Pentagon stands to lose funding.
[…] The law also requires the Pentagon to release information about a likely U.S. strike on a school in Minab, Iran, in February, which killed more than 170 people, mostly children. A Central Command investigation into that strike is nearly complete.
During the war with Houthi forces, the U.S. military conducted hundreds of airstrikes, hitting more than 1,000 targets in Yemen, and ultimately reached a ceasefire agreement that included a Houthi pledge to stop targeting American civilian or military ships and a U.S. pledge to stop air and naval strikes in Yemen.
[…] Two people with knowledge of the strikes say that about 150 civilians were likely killed in the first two strikes and roughly 200 wounded. It remained unclear how many civilians were killed in the third strike on the private residence earlier that month.
Human rights groups, citing interviews with witnesses and satellite imagery, previously demanded the U.S. investigate two of the April airstrikes as possible war crimes, saying that dozens of civilians were killed or wounded in the attack at the Ras Isa port and another strike in northwest Yemen.
Amanda Klasing, Amnesty International USA’s national director for government relations, condemned the Trump administration over its handling of the airstrikes.
“The Trump administration’s response has been abysmal. […] this administration has gutted the Pentagon’s programs meant to prevent civilian harm and has evaded any public accounting for cases of civilian harm, including the Minab school strike this year in Iran,” Klasing said.
Although Congress in 2019 adopted legislation requiring the Pentagon undertake an array of steps to reduce harm to civilians in military operations, an Inspector General investigation found that the department under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth slashed funding and cut staff for the effort. [!]
Ras Isa port in Hodeida is a key hub for humanitarian aid shipments with a large civilian workforce, and the April 17 U.S. strike killed or wounded dozens of civilians, according to a Human Rights Watch report last year. […]
The second strike cited in the Pentagon’s letter to Warren referred to a site in northwest Yemen, the same attack that rights groups pointed to in their reporting at the time, according to two people with knowledge of the attacks. A report from Amnesty International said a U.S. strike hit a detention center for migrants on April 28, killing or wounding dozens of civilians. The Pentagon described the target in the April 28 strike as “Ayn Wadi Barracks Warehouses.”
The strike in northwest Yemen was so concerning that, according to Anderson’s letter, U.S. Central Command also conducted a “command-directed” investigation to determine whether any policies were violated or if there was any misconduct by U.S. forces.
The undersecretary of defense for policy, Elbridge Colby, had written to Warren in June 2025 — two months after the three deadly U.S. strikes — saying the Pentagon “has not assessed that civilian casualties have resulted from recent U.S. operations in Yemen since March 15, 2025.”
Reginald Selkirksays
@11
Iran has raised the possibility of charging companies that send data through cables in the Strait of Hormuz. That would amount to a protection racket, said Erik Brown of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
The idea is not absurd on its face. Here is another article about offshore cable fees:
Since 1989, when Oregon got its first trans-Pacific fiber optic cable spanning from Pacific City to Alaska to Japan, the state lands department has only mandated companies pay an application fee that, since 2001, has been frozen at $5,000.
Now, Oregon could join its West Coast neighbors in California and Washington in requiring companies also pay compensation fees based in part on the amount of cable extending along the states’ near-coast seabed…
A drone carrying an explosive device has been found at a German airport, police say.
A robot was deployed at Leipzig/Halle Airport after the device was spotted by an employee near Ukrainian cargo planes overnight, according to Saxony police. A second unidentified object also collided with a cargo aircraft near the same airport. It landed in Hanover with minor damage.
Germany’s interior minister said the incidents showed a “new level of threat”.
German airports are on high alert following several unauthorised drone flights in recent months over military bases, airports, energy terminals, seaports and logistics companies. Police have warned of a potential Russian involvement which Moscow has denied…
President Donald Trump declared an ’emergency’ to block the release of his financial records to the BBC one day before a court-ordered deadline.
The BBC sought the financial information after Trump sued the company for $10 billion over its January 6 coverage. The records at issue belong to the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust — a trust bearing his name that controls roughly 400 of his business entities.
The emergency may be a little more valid then usual but Trump’s lawyers waited until the last minute as usual. A key part is that Trump’s lawyers have amended the complaint, which may negate the need for the tax records but the new complaint isn’t public. So it isn’t clear if there is a valid reason to appeal or not. I would guess that it is but Trump’s lawyers intentionally waited to stall things but who knows with Trump’s lawyers.
In the first 20 million years of the Cambrian period, Earth experienced an explosion of life—a great evolutionary era dubbed the Cambrian Explosion. Scientists have differing views on what drove this phenomenon, but this one may be the strangest one yet: poop. Literally. Just a sh*t ton of poop.
Specifically, a slow accumulation of fecal matter—poop—helped allocate organic material and nutrients throughout the ocean, which in turn made marine environments ripe for the birth and evolution of life. The findings, published yesterday in Trends in Ecology & Evolution, suggest a key connection between the distribution of fossilized feces and the emergence of animals with complex digestive systems…
The Trump administration continues to respond sluggishly to the explosive, nationwide outbreak of Cyclospora—a unicellular parasite spread from human feces that has now sickened nearly 23,000 people in 47 states, killing two and sending over 500 to the hospital.
Michigan health officials reported the two deaths Monday, and The Washington Post first reported Tuesday that federal health officials have expanded a list of states with linked cases from nine to 15. But those updates still have not appeared on public outbreak pages for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or the Food and Drug Administration, and Americans are struggling to understand the risk of eating fresh fruits and vegetables.
In comments to Ars Technica on Monday, a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees CDC and FDA, said the outbreak information will be updated sometime “this week.” Sources for The New York Times said that the CDC plans to set up a “formal response team” for the outbreak sometime this week. Cases in the outbreak began in June…
Moderna’s new mRNA vaccine is for adults ages 50 and over, and it is expected to be available soon in certain stores in the coming weeks. […] nearly 27 percent more effective against seasonal flu than a standard flu shot […] associated with higher rates of temporary injection-site pain and fatigue
[…]
Medicare would cover the shot […] Major insurers have previously indicated they will continue to cover vaccines. […] It’s difficult to predict how broadly pharmacies would stock the newly approved mRNA flu vaccine in the absence of recommendations from [ACIP (the advisory panel Kennedy improperly fired)] and the [CDC] However, pharmacists’ authority to order and administer vaccines in many states is no longer directly tied to ACIP recommendations
Scientists at a biotech company have used gene editing to create two hypoallergenic beagles that don’t trigger allergies
…
His allergies didn’t go away: Bailey’s saliva and hair no longer contain a key allergy-causing protein.
“The feeling right now is sort of a mix of relief and awe and gratitude that it worked,” said Walker, a geneticist. His company, Kindred Companion Sciences, created Bailey and her twin Alfie using a Nobel Prize-winning technique called CRISPR.
…
To create Alfie and Bailey, scientists started in the lab. They edited the genetic code inside dog skin cells, switching off the main gene responsible for producing allergy-causing proteins. Then they transferred the edited genetic code into eggs that went into a beagle surrogate that gave birth to two healthy female pups in September 2024. Scientists tested their saliva and fur and didn’t find signs of the allergy-causing protein….
In our latest study, published in Immunity, we discovered that blood-stage malaria can cause lasting changes to the spleen by destroying a specialised immune cell population. Present from before birth, these embryo-derived spleen macrophages are rapidly lost, and do not return after infection clears, reshaping the spleen’s architecture and inter-cell communication long after the parasites are gone.
…
Our team of researchers identified a distinct population of spleen macrophages, CD163-high red pulp macrophages (CD163 RPMs), that produce high levels of the CD163 protein and are developed during embryonic development well before birth.
Once blood infection with malaria-causing Plasmodium parasites occurs, CD163 RPMs are rapidly depleted and do not recover even after the parasites cleared. Instead, they are replaced by a different type of macrophages. The loss of the CD163 RPMs worsens the structural disintegration of the spleen and affects the recovery of neighbouring immune cells, indicating they play an important role in supporting other macrophage populations. ..
Starting last week, the German automaker started blasting a promotion for the new Spider-Man movie into its customers’ cars without warning — because nothing says riding in luxury like a full-vehicle pop-up ad. BMW, showing that it was about as in-touch as its drivers are familiar with turn signals, teased the promotion as a “special surprise.”
According to The Autopian‘s coverage and the heaps of complaints online, the ad appears on the center console screen when you start up the car. When the ad’s done playing — a cheap looking animation that doesn’t come close to warranting all this hubbub — it even has the gall to ask you to scan a QR code.
This is probably a one off, BMW testing the water to see how many complaints they get. Customers should complain and get this killed. It’s highly annoying and will just get worse if it is accepted.
Abdul El-Sayed joins All In for his first primetime interview since clinching the Democratic nomination for Senate in Michigan. “They’re going to use Islamophobia because their ideas are tired. Their economy sucks. They’re taking us to war we shouldn’t fight,” says El-Sayed on anti-Muslim attacks by his opponent Mike Rogers.
Somehow things that would have been a background gag in a Verhoeven movie are now just real.
[…]
While Kalshi and the people who make these bets are bad, the real villain here is the Trump admin. The story is, roughly, that Kalshi started doing this stuff, state AGs said “knock it off, its against our gambling laws” and Kalshi said, “We’re not a gambling den, we’re a FINANCIAL DERIVATIVES MARKET, so we’re regulated by the feds at the CFTC, so F off.” Guessing that no one at the gutted Trump CFTC would care to restrain them or even notice. And they were right! And then later, when it became incredibly lucrative, the CFTC woke up and said “Hey we approve this after all!” and everyone started hitting them up for lobbying money
Rando 1: how would they even know who is a cancer patient or what the prognosis is? Is the medical establishment giving out this info? Isn’t THAT illegal??
This is how prediction markets are supposed to work, by harnessing the wisdom of crowds!
Like say you live next to a kid with cancer and happen to hear he’s involved in a new clinical trial. A month later, you notice he’s not looking so good. […] go on Kalshi and bet against the success of the drug trial. That moves prices fractionally, and now the all-knowing market has your information too. Aggregated over many sick neighbors, the existence of the prediction market moves us closer to the ultimate goal of human existence: accurate equity pricing.
Obviously there’s a heavy dose of sarcasm from me, but I want to emphasize this is not satire. That’s literally the argument *for* prediction markets. They’re supposed to encourage people to bet on private information […] Insider trading is a feature, not a bug.
[…]
Pretty soon I’m flying my drone through cancer kid’s window to get the latest scoop. (Or, you know, poisoning him to rig the results.)
Alex Wenzel (Cancer researcher): “This is worse than the headline. They’re allowing betting specifically on clinical trial outcomes. So much effort is put into ensuring the integrity of trials and eliminating as much bias as possible, this would create enormous vulnerability in that system. This cannot be allowed to happen.”
Rando 2: “Wasn’t ‘we won’t allow bets on death’ one of their extremely few rules? Literally the second rule.”
Django Wexler:
Rando 3: I don’t get the outrage; insurance companies thrive on this
FWIW while insurance companies are horrible, at least the customers have to sign up with them first. It’s generally illegal to take out insurance on a person you don’t know for all the obvious reasons!
“As the midterm elections approach, the GOP crusade against one of the nation’s most accomplished and celebrated scientists is rapidly descending into madness.”
The latest Pew Research Center poll asked Americans which issues they would most like to hear congressional candidates focus on during the 2026 midterm elections. Not surprisingly, the economy dominated — concerns about affordability and the cost of living easily came out on top — but issues such as corruption, healthcare and immigration were also in the mix.
The percentage of Americans focused on prosecuting Dr. Anthony Fauci and relitigating his efforts to protect the public during the pandemic was zero — though with 89 days remaining before Election Day, Republicans seem obsessed with trying to tear down the 85-year-old immunologist anyway. MS NOW reported:
A Republican-led Senate committee voted Thursday to advance a resolution to hold former White House chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci in contempt of Congress after he repeatedly invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination during a contentious hearing last week.
The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee approved the measure by a party-line vote after Chairman Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., argued Fauci unlawfully refused to answer lawmakers’ questions despite appearing under subpoena on July 29.
The underlying legal dispute is rather mind-numbing. Republicans realized that Joe Biden’s pardon for Fauci offered him a sizable shield, so GOP senators demanded his congressional testimony in the hope that he would say something that might lead to possible perjury charges during a hearing that resembled a classic show trial. On the advice of counsel, the immunologist avoided the rather obvious trap by repeatedly invoking his constitutional right under the Fifth Amendment.
Senate Republicans responded that Fauci, a private citizen, wasn’t allowed to take advantage of his constitutional rights (which is a tough sell, as my MS NOW colleague Jordan Rubin explained), leading to Thursday’s vote to hold Fauci in contempt.
Looking ahead, Paul said he would refer Fauci to the Justice Department for prosecution on his own, bypassing a vote in the full Senate for the time being. If Donald Trump’s DOJ actually were to try to pursue a criminal case against Fauci, it would likely face long odds in the courts, although the White House might very well want the prosecution anyway, if for no other reason than to please the president.
For now, let’s not dwell too long on the oddity of seeing an ostensibly libertarian-minded senator trying to punish a private American citizen for exercising his constitutional rights. Let’s instead shift our attention to the partisan legal campaign, which isn’t limited to Capitol Hill: MS NOW has confirmed that Florida’s Republican attorney general, James Uthmeir, has also subpoenaed Fauci, and West Virginia and Louisiana have joined the Floridian’s efforts.
[…] it’s worth emphasizing that presidential pardons only extend to potential federal crimes and do not cover potential state charges. [!]
In case this isn’t obvious, the Republican crusade against one of the nation’s most accomplished and celebrated scientists is rapidly descending into madness. Fauci’s critics have yet to uncover any actual wrongdoing, even as GOP hysterics continue to get worse.
Last week, Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama told a national television audience that Fauci “killed millions of people” (he really didn’t), which followed Republican Sen. Roger Marshall of Kansas calling for Fauci’s incarceration. Marshall added that “this” is more serious than Watergate, though the Kansan never got around to explaining what “this” referred to. [1] […]
Republicans running for office has a limited playbook from which they draw their tactics. One tactic is to create a nationwide bogeyman that they then connect to the Democratic Party or to the Democratic agenda. So, now they are wildly, irresponsibly, pumping up Fauci as an enormous bogeyman. Republicans don’t have evidence. They have a shameless attack.
Ditto, in a way, for the effort by Republicans to brand Democrats as “communists.”
They hope that sheer repetition (delivered of course to national TV audiences, and every other media source they can commandeer) will win them an angry, misinformed, and scared Republican vote in midterm elections.
“The debate over dwindling munitions stockpiles is discombobulating the administration, and the president’s reaction is far from reassuring.”
Related video at the link.
The first signs of trouble reached the public in May. As the war with Iran continued to unfold, many U.S. officials expressed concerns about the state of the military’s weapons stockpiles, and there was ample reporting to suggest those concerns were valid. The New York Times reported in the spring, for example, that the U.S. missile stockpiles had been “greatly reduced because of the war, and will take years to replenish.” A month later, MS NOW reported that the conflict had “significantly depleted the U.S. military’s global munitions supply.”
Recently, these concerns reached a new level of intensity. The Wall Street Journal reported last week that there were growing concerns “about how many missiles the U.S. military has left,” and days later, Reuters reported that the U.S. military had already used “virtually all” of its long-range precision missiles as part of the combat operations in the Middle East.
The concerns have not gone unnoticed in the White House. The Washington Post reported:
President Donald Trump’s frustration over the Iran war boiled over at Camp David last week, where he demanded answers from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on why he had apparently been misled on extreme munitions shortages that now threaten to limit military options with Iran, two people familiar with the exchange told The Washington Post.
The encounter took place on the sidelines of his Cabinet meeting at Camp David on Friday where Trump vented at Hegseth that he thought the munitions issue “had been fixed,” according to both people familiar with the conversation, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity due to fear of retaliation.
[…] Hegseth “defended himself and blamed his deputy, Stephen Feinberg, for the shortages and for not ensuring Trump was fully apprised of the issue.”
[…] Feinberg, the deputy defense secretary, received an “angry phone call” from Trump on Friday, at which point the Pentagon official “hastily gathered top military and defense acquisition officials” for a “crisis meeting” about the U.S. weapons shortfalls.
That report […] added that Trump had suggested during the call that Feinberg should be fired.
All of which is to say, when it comes to the military’s stockpiles during an ongoing war in the Middle East, the Republican administration is experiencing some disarray. [Yep. Understatement.]
For his part, the president responded to the latest reporting with an odd new missive to his social media platform shortly after midnight, writing, “The U.S. has massive amounts of ‘munitions,’ especially of certain types. Additionally, large amounts are being manufactured and shipped to the U.S. as needed. Defense companies are building the largest number of plants and factories in our country’s history. The ‘leakers’ of these treasonous statements are being hunted down. Long term jail sentences will be sought!” [Transparent lies, coupled with nonsensical threats.]
The first problem with this is that Trump’s efforts to downplay the depleted stockpiles contradict comments he made last week [!] […]
The second problem is that Trump’s online statement contradicts itself: The president can argue that the latest reporting is false, or he can argue that the reporting is based on “treasonous leaks.” But to argue both at once doesn’t make sense. […]
The underlying questions are unlikely to go away anytime soon, especially if the apparent shortages are affecting tactical combat decisions.
All along, Trump had no fucking clue when it came to stocks of munitions. He still doesn’t.
[…] We are witnessing a stunning abuse of power by the executive branch and a pliant legislative branch that they have together refined and systematized into a grinder that chews up and spits out Trump foes as a means of retribution and for the sheer spectacle of it. That is the real story here. Not the Wuhan lab or COVID policy [or Anthony Fauci] or whatever other ostensible underlying issue is the pretext for feeding Trump foes into his vengeance machine.
“One Nation, the Senate GOP’s primary dark money group, is producing propaganda masquerading as journalism.”
The Alaska Navigator bills itself as “independent news covering the Last Frontier.” On June 10, the outlet published an article headlined, “As Fentanyl Deaths Rise in Alaska, Sullivan Pushes Tougher Penalties and Enforcement.”
The piece, which has no byline, reports that Senator Dan Sullivan (R-AK) — who is locked in a competitive campaign against Democrat Mary Peltola — “is leading efforts to combat fentanyl trafficking and support law enforcement agencies confronting the epidemic.”
[…] the piece cites only one piece of evidence: Sullivan’s vote for the HALT Fentanyl Act in March 2025. Sullivan was one of 84 senators to vote for the bill, which classified fentanyl-related substances as schedule I narcotics. But Sullivan did not lead the effort to pass the HALT Fentanyl Act. […]
The Alaska Navigator also reports that “Retired Alaska Wildlife Trooper Director Doug Massie, who spent 25 years in law enforcement… credits Senator Sullivan with supporting tougher penalties for traffickers and policies aimed at reducing the drug’s impact on communities throughout the state.” But there is no direct quote from Massie, who is running for the Alaska state legislature as a Republican, or an explanation of why Sullivan deserves credit. There is no record of Massie making a public statement about Sullivan on fentanyl or any other topic. [Actual fake news, distributed by Republicans.]
[…] the Alaska Navigator is not an independent news outlet. Rather, it is a website fully controlled by One Nation, a dark money group that works in concert with the Senate Leadership Fund (SLF), the super PAC of Senate Republicans. One Nation has directly contributed over $70 million to the SLF this political cycle.
Other content published by Alaska Navigator includes “Senator Dan S. Sullivan’s Legislative Record of Supporting Alaska’s Veterans,” “Sen. Sullivan’s tax policy helps Alaska businesses thrive,” and “Opinion: Dan Sullivan has earned another term by delivering for Alaska.”
One Nation has ensured that Alaskans see this content by spending tens of thousands of dollars on Meta ads promoting Alaska Navigator articles since June. These ads further distort reality. [I snipped examples]
[…] The fake Alaska news outlet is one of at least six operated by One Nation in states with key U.S. Senate races. […] The other five sites in the network include:
Maine Policy Updates (“Maine’s News Source”)
Ohio Pulse (“Your trusted source for local news, investigative journalism, and community stories across the Buckeye State”)
Iowa Voice (“Stay Informed. Stay Iowa”)
Peach State Post (“Georgia’s Premier News Source”)
New Hampshire Daily (“An independent news organization dedicated to covering the stories that matter most to Granite State residents”)
Iowa Voice features a story headlined, “Iowa Farmers Say Potential ‘Death Tax’ Threatens Family Succession Plans.” [I snipped other examples and details, including an accounting of the money One Nation has spent.]
The sites attempt to appear more legitimate by cutting and pasting content from actual news outlets. The Peach State Post recently published a story under the headline “Former Atlanta city officials Bickers, Beard who were convicted in corruption cases denied clemency by Trump.” At the end of the piece it says, “Read more here” and links to 11Alive, an Atlanta news website. But the story on Peach State Post contains the full text of 11Alive’s story. There is nothing more to read. […]
One Nation, which is organized as a 501(c)(4), is not required to disclose its donors. So it is unknown who is bankrolling its fake websites or other activities. […]
The missiles are principally the Army’s surface-to-surface weapons, known as Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) and Precision Strike Missiles (PrSM). […] which cost more than $1 million each […] Trump may have to rely more on riskier, piloted [aircraft] bombing missions if he relaunches large-scale attacks on Iran.
[…]
According to the report, PrSM stockpiles were low to start with, since it is a relatively new munition, but the U.S. military has ordered a large number of them for 2027. The Army has said that ATACMS are being phased out and that production is shifting to the newer PrSM missiles.
[…]
Defensive weapon stocks are also diminished. Last week, CSIS published a report estimating that between February and July about 65% of Patriot interceptors had been expended and that the number of THAAD ballistic missile interceptors in U.S. stockpiles was at least 38% lower than at the start of the war. Patriots and THAADs are systems that detect and destroy incoming missiles and are among the most effective
[…]
The U.S. also burned through a little less than half of its global supply of Tomahawk cruise missiles, which are generally launched from ships, since the start of the war
The strategy, overseen by Elbridge Colby, the Pentagon’s policy chief, would place greater emphasis on shorter-range tactical nuclear weapons in the event of a regional war, rather than relying on long-range strategic missiles. […] the strategy is designed to address scenarios in which US allies come under attack from Russia or China in a regional conflict.
[…]
The strategy would not restrict Donald Trump’s choices but instead “expand the president’s option space by providing him with realistic and credible options and therefore strengthen deterrence”, [an unnamed senior defense department] official said. Mr Colby has long argued in favour of tactical nuclear weapons […] The [unnamed] official added: “If you actually want extended deterrence to be credible, you have to provide the nation’s political leadership with nuclear capabilities that common sense indicates you could actually use.”
This is unprecedented. The US has never before been left in a position where it was incapable of using military force to underpin its agenda. […] Trump has dismantled US power on the world stage in a matter of weeks.
[…]
Conspiracy theories abound. Surely Trump and his Secretary of Defense/War Pete Hegseth would not be so incompetent as to catastrophically weaken America in pursuit of a war that was obviously lost within three days? There has to be nefarious reasons? It’s possible both might be true. […] For the rest of the world this would be a hilarious lesson if not for the fact that what is happening to the US has made the world a significantly more dangerous place. […] let us not forget it’s the President who makes the decision to launch nuclear weapons.
…
Federal health officials are investigating a multi-state outbreak linked to jalapeño peppers that have been distributed widely throughout the U.S. Hundreds of cases across more than half of the country have been reported so far, while dozens have ended up in the hospital. The major distributor implicated in the outbreak has recalled its pepper products, and two Mexican-style chain restaurants that purchased the products—Chipotle and QDOBA—have temporarily pulled peppers from their menu or have switched to a different distributor.
This outbreak is being caused by a strain of Salmonella Javiana bacteria. Salmonella is rarely life-threatening, but it can cause miserable episodes of diarrhea, fever, and abdominal cramps that typically last between four and seven days. Children under five, the elderly, and people with weakened immune systems are more vulnerable to severe illness.
At least 345 people in 27 states have been infected with the same outbreak strain, and 36 people have been hospitalized as a result, though no deaths have been reported as of yet. According to federal health officials, the first known cases date back to June 19, while the latest reported cases were on July 20.
Officials have linked the outbreak to jalapeño peppers from Sinaloa, Mexico, that were distributed by Coast Citrus Distributors to other distributors, restaurants, and food service companies…
Schiff ties Trump’s judicial nominees in knots by asking them who won the 2016 before *before* asking them who won in 2020, which results in them sounding like election deniers about Trump’s victories! [Video clip]
“President Obama was sworn into office, so I’m certain he won.”
“And John McCain lost that election?”
“Yes.”
[…]
“President Obama was sworn into office [4 years later], so I’m certain he was elected as a matter of law.”
“And Mitt Romney lost that election?”
“That’s the natural converse of that, yes.”
“In 2016, Trump ran against Hillary Clinton. Who won that election?”
“He was sworn into office, so as a matter of law, he was elected to that office.”
“So Donald Trump won that election?”
“That would be the natural assumption, yes.”
“Is that really an assumption you have to make?”
Every recent Trump judicial nominee before the Senate who was asked about the 2020 election came up with formulaic dodges, like saying not that Biden won, but was “certified” or “served.” They said it was a political issue they could not comment on—when the outcome was actually decided by courts via dozens of lawsuits. How will they judge future lawsuits from their patron?
A US Senate committee has voted to hold former top health official Anthony Fauci in contempt of Congress after he refused to answer questions during a hearing examining his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The vote – which fell along party lines – clears the way for the committee to refer the case to the justice department for potential prosecution for failing to comply with a congressional subpoena.
…
The Top Democrat on the committee, Michigan Senator Gary Peters, defended Fauci, accusing Paul of a “rushed investigation” and a “yearslong campaign” to prosecute Fauci.
Fauci has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing, and last week accused Paul of having an “obvious obsession” with prosecuting him.
“The only conclusion I can reach is that the sole reason he is calling me before this committee is to get me to say something – anything – that could vindicate his repeated public pledges that I end up, in his words, ‘behind bars’,” Fauci said.
Paul, the committee’s Republican chairman, bypassed a full senate vote on the contempt resolution saying he did not “want to waste time” going through the procedure.
Normally, contempt resolutions passed by the committee go to the full Senate, where they require a 60-vote majority. Republicans currently hold 53 seats in the 100-member Senate.
…
I don’t think much of anyone – Republicans included – likes Paul, so hopefully this won’t go anywhere.
Let me start out by stating that every human being on earth is an atheist, that’s right, and here’s why.
There have been, literally thousands of gods invented by man over the centuries but let’s pick a number, just for a basis of comparison, let’s say 5000.
OK, I am an atheist, I don’t believe in any god, Christians, Muslims, Jews are monotheists, they only believe in one god.
So the difference is, I, an atheist, don’t believe in 5000, and you, a monotheist, don’t believe in 4999, so you see by that very statement, we are all atheists.
I have no shame in trying to convince anyone to just not believe in one more.
And now the second coming and the rapture. It is estimated that the second coming has been predicted to happen between 300 and 400 times, so, not a very good track record there. If I am not mistaken, and I’m sure someone will correct me if I’m wrong, Paul started preaching about Jesus and his teachings because he thought the end was near, go figure.
I realized at an early age that religion was a bunch of hogwash and my life experiences since then have only strengthened my resolve so I have no compunction in pointing out to anyone that, logic, evidence and science are what we should base our lives on and not some pie in the sky BS about a supreme being that no one knows anything about except what they choose to believe with zero actual evidence.
And anyone who claims to have actual evidence, please display it in these pages so it can be fact checked, you know, that thing that someone says I don’t do any of. Just sayin’.
[…] when Trump hosted an event in Las Vegas this week, there was some question about whether […] the governor would want to be seen alongside his party’s historically unpopular president. Lombardo offered an unsubtle answer to the question on Wednesday afternoon, literally and figuratively embracing Trump on stage.
That was notable in its own right — as The Nevada Independent noted, the governor placed “a bet that he’d benefit from appearing with the president” — but I was also surprised to see how, exactly, Lombardo explained his support for Trump. [social media post, with video]
“You know, quite often, when the press and the media runs him down,” the GOP governor said of the president, “they think about, you know, ‘He’s taking care of his billionaire friends.’ But those billionaire friends provide jobs, and unless you take care of them, those jobs are absent.” [clueless doofus]
[…] Trump’s fiercest Democratic and progressive critics have accused the president of prioritizing the needs of the wealthiest Americans, handing them generous tax breaks, among other things.
[…] one of Trump’s allies endorsed the Democratic line — arguing that it’s a good thing that the president is prioritizing the needs of the wealthiest Americans.
The other part of the problem is that the Nevada Republican’s economic vision is plainly wrong: Lombardo, for all intents and purposes, voiced support for trickle-down economics, in which the government rewards those on top with the expectation that wealth eventually works its way down to everyone else.
This economic model has never worked, but that didn’t stop an incumbent governor, 12 weeks before he faces voters again, from standing alongside Trump and defending the president’s eagerness to “take care of his billionaire friends.”
[…] Lombardo’s Democratic opponent wasted little time in highlighting the governor’s rhetoric, and it’s a safe bet that Nevada voters will hear the quote again between now and November.
Followup to comment 44, with a summary of a Bluesky post provided by Steve Benen:
During remarks in Nevada, President Donald Trump said that former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley “should be your governor.” Whatley is running for the Senate in North Carolina.
Additional Republican campaign news, as summarized by Steve Benen from a Bluesky post:
In Minnesota, Republican gubernatorial hopeful Mike Lindell announced this week that he’s stepping down as the CEO of MyPillow in order to focus all his attention on his statewide candidacy
Bad news for pretty much everyone. No wants Mike Lindell to appear even more in national or Minnesota news, even Minnesota Republicans.
Republican South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott took to Fox News on Thursday to push a cryptocurrency bill opposed by a host of organizations opposed to human trafficking. Scott argued that the legislation should be passed by the Senate because it would help mothers.
The Senate, where Scott currently chairs the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, is currently considering the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, which is meant to accelerate the use of cryptocurrency like bitcoin. Concerns have been raised that the Clarity Act would allow crypto companies and those who use cryptocurrencies to evade traditional government oversight, including people involved in human trafficking and illicit arms sales.
The law is backed by the crypto industry […]
Appearing on Fox Business, Scott positioned the bill as a boon to mothers instead of big business and illegal industries. [video]
“If you want single mothers to have more access to their resources immediately, you want cryptocurrency, digital assets, to blossom here at home in America,” Scott said.
[…] it has been something of a tough sell even within the GOP. That is in large part due to opposition from law enforcement groups, religious groups, and organizers combatting human trafficking. [I snipped details related to organizations dedicated to ending human trafficking]
The National Sheriffs’ Association has also been in contact with the Senate to highlight “the legislation’s significant law enforcement and public safety risks.”
An analysis of the bill from the Center for American Progress published in July said the legislation would “effectively facilitate illicit transactions and undermine the United States’ ability to address them in the future by creating statutory loopholes that bind regulators’ hands.”
Democrats have also been opposed to the bill because Republicans have failed to include provisions that would prevent elected leaders from using their office to financially benefit from crypto. Since taking office, Trump has dubbed himself the crypto president and has used his position to rake in billions in unaccountable funds while also steering government enforcement and regulation of the industry.
Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the highest-ranking Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, summed up the problems with the bill in a July release: “The bill goes even further to protect the President’s crypto profits by barring the next Department of Justice from ever holding Trump accountable. On top of all of this, the underlying bill still fails to adequately protect investors, our financial system, and our national security. This bill should be dead on arrival.”
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
Reginald Selkirk @43 quoting Larry Benson: “BS about a supreme being that no one knows anything about […] anyone who claims to have actual evidence, please display it”
A noun with no referent—not even a counterfactual one—is gibberish. There’s no there there to believe. There’s no coherent model to form expectations for assessing detectable phenomena as evidence. People are conditioned to recite proprietary noises to affirm their social affiliations. Part of that conditioning is touting the holy book as if it weren’t a symbolic prop. And that conditioning makes them voice approval for other concretely monstrous things, either in the book or otherwise favored by the group. “God” is incidental to adherents.
I’ve been told that forcing people to eat their children is “love” and that such crimes against humanity are just a “hang up” to be ignored. Because gloating intimidation attached to that word, repeatedly, in the book make it unthinkably embarrassing. But affiliation mattered more to them than trying to sound like a decent person they imagined themself to be.
[…] Marine One, with Trump aboard, got exceedingly cozy with a commercial flight on Tuesday afternoon.
No one is sure why a commercial jet took off right as Marine One left the White House, because commercial air traffic is supposed to be halted when that’s happening. But that’s exactly what happened, with an air traffic controller giving the go-ahead to a commercial flight just a literal moment after Marine One went aloft.
Yes, this is in the same extremely busy airspace near Ronald Reagan National Airport where, shortly after Trump took office in 2025 and installed the ridiculous Duffy [Transportation Secretary, Sean Duffy] atop the Department of Transportation, a midair collision between an Army Black Hawk helicopter and a passenger plane killed 67 people.
Trump and Duffy blamed that one on—you guessed it—DEI and Biden, but it turns out that the FAA and the Army were far more to blame, particularly thanks to an absolutely overworked air traffic control system.
But one of the immediate fixes put in place after that tragedy was to ensure that helicopter and commercial airline traffic didn’t mingle quite so much. When it comes to Marine One and helicopter flights from the White House specifically, commercial flights are to be briefly halted while the chopper takes off. But apparently the air traffic controllers at National didn’t get that memo? Seems bad.
White House spokesperson Kush Desai made sure to rush to the press to explain how everything is great, actually.
“Marine One flights are piloted by some of the best aviators in the world, and at no point was the President in harm’s way,” he claimed.
Sure, but that’s not really the point. No one was besmirching the talent of Marine One pilots. Everyone is besmirching the fact that the FAA literally imposed a fix for this last year and it just didn’t take.
There’s no world where things aren’t demonstrably worse, air safety-wise, under Trump. Aviation fatalities in 2025 exceeded deaths in 2024 by 30%. Despite a flashy little 12-month-old graphic about how the FAA is totes ending close calls now that Trump’s in charge, they just keep happening.
Air traffic controllers remain in woefully short supply. While the Government Accountability Office made multiple recommendations last year on how to increase hiring and decrease attrition, the Trump administration doesn’t seem to be moving with any alacrity to do that. Instead, it simply cut staffing targets. See, problem solved!
Maybe the administration should give another $2 million to Elon Musk’s personal attorney, Alex Spiro, who was tasked last June with figuring out how to blame DEI for planes crashing. Or maybe Sean Duffy, the onetime reality TV star, can take another bribe-fueled road trip with his family for several months? That’ll probably fix it, right? […]
“The Republican senator said he would continue to work from home and did not provide a timeline for his Senate return.”
Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said Thursday that he has been discharged from a rehabilitation center where he was recovering from a fall he suffered in mid-June. […]
The Kentucky Republican, 84, said he would continue to work from home and did not provide a timeline for his return to the Senate, which is expected to begin a five-week recess in the coming days.
Uncertainty surrounding McConnell’s health has swirled for weeks following the senator’s June 14 hospitalization, after which he hadn’t been seen in public. His staff has repeatedly refused to answer questions about the senator’s condition […]
Police scanner audio obtained by NBC News last month indicated that paramedics had conducted CPR on a person experiencing a “cardiac arrest” at McConnell’s address.
In a statement last month, he said that he had been hospitalized after he was “briefly unconscious” following a fall. “My doctors have confirmed that I didn’t break any bones or suffer a concussion,” he said on July 12. “I didn’t have a heart attack or a stroke. I don’t have any tumors or hemorrhages. But I was briefly unconscious and was taken to the hospital. While receiving excellent care over the past several weeks, I’ve also had to deal with a mild case of pneumonia.”
Since his hospitalization, McConnell has missed 51 Senate floor votes and is expected to miss the vote to confirm Todd Blanche for attorney general if it takes place this week.
McConnell, who has also suffered a number of health issues over the years, is retiring at the end of his term, which ends in January.
In February, McConnell was hospitalized for a week with “flu-like symptoms.” In 2023, he had been hospitalized for a concussion he sustained when he tripped at a hotel and that same year, he had several episodes of freezing in the middle of speaking, which were caught on camera and raised concerns about his mental fitness for office. The senator also fractured his shoulder in 2019 when he fell at his home in Kentucky.
McConnell is one of the oldest members of the Senate after Sens. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., who are 92 and 84, respectively.
Miss North Carolina USA has been stripped of her title after a “thorough review” of information that surfaced, organisers of the event say.
Pageant organiser A Blaize Productions did not share details, but stated that it had made the “difficult decision” to “conclude Brittany Boltinhouse’s reign” as Miss North Carolina USA.
“The Miss USA organization does not tolerate racism, homophobia, transphobia nor language that strips any person of their dignity,” Thom Brodeur, president of the Miss USA organisation said in a separate statement.
They said, as they stripped her of her dignity.
It is unclear what “information” was found. Brodeur said Boltinhouse had apologised and would release a statement of her own. The BBC contacted her for comment.
“What was brought to us was not a single moment,” Brodeur said. “It reflected conduct over an extended period of time. That is why this outcome was reached, and I stand behind it without qualification.” …
So we have no idea what she did or said, but she did or said it consistently.
Residents of a small town outside Calgary are shocked to learn that Canada’s most prominent white supremacist group held its second annual national meeting — where masked group members participated in military-style drills — at a volunteer-run community centre in early July.
“My first reaction is: that scares me,” Lou Kuiack, a Millarville-area resident, told a CBC Calgary reporter. “I didn’t think that would come to our small little town, in our backyard.”
Using visual clues in videos posted by the group, Second Sons Canada, CBC’s visual investigations team identified the location of the gathering roughly 70 kilometres southwest of Calgary, near the hamlet of Millarville, Alta.
Second Sons Canada was formed in 2024 and has chapters across the country.
Founded by Jeremy MacKenzie, Second Sons describes itself as a “men’s nationalist club.” But it more closely resembles the “active club”-style model favoured by the global white supremacist movement. Second Sons’ leaders have welcomed neo-Nazis into their ranks, called for mass deportations “at gunpoint” of non-white people from Canada and said Canadian politicians should be executed as traitors.
…
and included a Second Sons slogan: “Our people, our home, our future.”
Group members also wore shirts with the slogan “old stock enforcer” emblazoned with crossed swords behind an old-school goalie mask.
“When they say ‘old stock,’ they mean white and European people,” said Evan Balgord, executive director of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network.
“When they label themselves as enforcers, it’s tied to their belief that they will have to use culture, politics and violence to achieve their goal of a racist mass deportation of people who aren’t old stock Canadian.”
…
“The organization that booked the hall did not identify itself to us in any way,” said Shanna Dunne, president of the hall’s board of directors, in an emailed statement to CBC…
A South Korean satellite has captured images of the mark left on the moon when a SpaceX rocket crashed into it on Wednesday.
The evidence is a smudge, dark in some photos and light in others, that’s not visible in other photos of the same area on the moon’s surface near the Einstein Crater.
The Korean lunar orbiter Danuri (also known as the Korean Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter, or KPLO) captured before and after images of the SpaceX Falcon 9 upper stage colliding with the lunar surface as it headed toward the moon, the Korean AeroSpace Administration (KASA) reported on X…
Michigan health officials said on Thursday that people can resume regular lettuce- and salad greens-eating habits as new cases of cyclosporiasis slow.
It’s one of nine states in a multi-state outbreak linked to shredded iceberg lettuce served at some Taco Bell restaurants.
The iceberg lettuce was supplied by Taylor Farms and sourced from central Mexico. Taylor Farms issued a voluntary recall of all iceberg lettuce sourced from central Mexico.
The state has seen more than 12,400 cases since June, including 279 hospitalizations and two deaths, health department data shows…
Since May 1, cases of cyclosporiasis have topped 22,000 in 47 states, according to data updated by the CDC on Tuesday.
There are at least 10,468 laboratory-confirmed cases of cyclosporiasis, including 423 hospitalizations, the CDC data shows. The agency is also aware of at least 12,255 additional cases that have not yet been laboratory confirmed or require further investigation and analysis.
President Donald Trump on Thursday signed executive orders that target birthright citizenship, including one that would ban what the administration calls “birth tourism.”
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
Nothing about his previous attempts to ban birthright citizenship, and the Supreme Court decision opposing them? Yeah, they should definitely update that article.
To avoid self-pollination, avocado trees alternate between opening male and female flowers at different times of day. Some avocados are female in the morning and male in the afternoon, while others are on the opposite schedule. How avocados do this has been unclear — until now.
In a new study, a team led by researchers from the University of California, Davis, revealed that this rhythm is dictated by variation in a single gene that evolved about 42 million years ago. Published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, this finding could help avocado breeders and researchers quickly sort seedlings to maximize yield and develop new varieties.
…
All avocado trees are hermaphrodites, but at any given time their flowers function either as male by releasing pollen, or as female by receiving pollen. Approximately half of all avocado trees (“A-type” plants) open female flowers in the morning and male flowers in the afternoon, whereas the other half (“B-type” plants) follow the opposite pattern. This partitioning minimizes the risk of self-pollination, which can result in inbreeding. Avocado breeders have known about this for over a hundred years, and because these two types easily pollinate one another, avocado farmers usually try to plant a mixture of A- and B-type trees.
…
To identify the genetic mechanism behind this daily rhythm, the team analyzed the genomes of hundreds of avocado trees grown by collaborating researchers at UC Riverside. By comparing the trees’ genomes in the context of their flowering behavior, they were able to pinpoint a single gene called SDMYB that was associated with the tree’s A- or B- type schedule.
…
By comparing avocado genomes to those of related tree species, the team showed that the same two versions of SDMYB are shared by at least 26 related tree species. This suggests that this genetic mechanism is regulating flowering behavior and preventing inbreeding far beyond avocados.
“We were blown away by the idea that these plants have been alternating male and female activity over the course of a day for over 40 million years, over potentially hundreds of species,” said Coop.
…
More than half of young adult women who grew up as Latter-day Saints have now left. Many are reacting against politics, purity culture and powerlessness…
lon Musk’s X is trying to revive a lawsuit against advertisers it’s accusing of illegally boycotting the social media platform, despite previously reaching a settlement to end litigation against an ad-industry trade group.
“This case involves an unusually brazen group boycott,” X said in a filing yesterday. “That misconduct has drawn the attention of regulators and Congress. There is no valid reason that this effort by the direct victim to recover its massive economic losses from that boycott should not move forward.”
X’s lawsuit was thrown out in March when US District Judge Jane Boyle in the Northern District of Texas ruled that advertisers did not commit any antitrust violation. Last week, Musk reached a settlement with the World Federation of Advertisers, the first defendant named in the lawsuit.
But Musk’s lawsuit had other defendants: Mars, Incorporated; CVS Health; Nestle; Abbott Laboratories; Colgate-Palmolive; Lego; Pinterest; Tyson Foods; Shell; and Ørsted A/S. While X agreed to dismiss the World Federation of Advertisers from the case, it urged the US Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit to revive the suit with respect to the other defendants…
birgerjohanssonsays
Making fun of the allegedly Christian Trump-adjacent people.
I think the headline is overstating the case. Diplomats say some issues are unresolved.
“It’s unclear whether the U.S. will support the deal.”
Related video at the link.
Oman has agreed to the framework of a deal with Iran to temporarily reopen the Strait of Hormuz […]
The diplomats declined to describe the details of the temporary agreement or what issues remain unresolved. But an Iranian government official linked to the deal told MS NOW on Thursday morning that it will establish new shipping routes by allowing commercial vessels to enter the Persian Gulf through an Iranian-controlled route and exit through a route controlled by Oman.
The agreement, according to the Iranian official, does not include the collection of tolls from commercial shipping vessels seeking safe passage through the waterway, which Iran has previously sought. The proposal is a “temporary agreement” that would lay the foundation for Washington and Tehran to call a new ceasefire and resume the nuclear negotiations that began in mid-June but collapsed after retaliatory strikes by both sides across the region. […]
The United Nations International Maritime Organization and the U.S. will be involved in the official announcement of the agreement, according to the Iranian official. Another Gulf government official with knowledge of the agreement also told MS NOW that the arrangement has been endorsed by the members of the Gulf Cooperation Council. […]
Whether the U.S. will support the deal on how the strait is managed, however, will depend on the final details. A U.S. official said Washington will only support a temporary deal that reopens the strait with no impediments and no fees.
“Any temporary routes will be without any impediments — meaning no approvals or permissions and no tolls or charges,” a U.S. official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk about the deal, told MS NOW. “The Strait of Hormuz is an international waterway, and no party controls the lanes or the ability to transit through them.”
[Trump] has at times suggested the U.S. would collect fees from vessels seeking to transit the waterway but has not followed through on that plan.
Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday afternoon, Trump said the strait is “sort of open right now,” adding that the U.S. is enforcing a blockade.
[…] Before the U.S. and Israel’s Feb. 28 joint strikes on Iran, the strait was considered an international shipping route that no country officially controlled. Iran swiftly launched retaliatory attacks on vessels in the waterway, which has become its strongest point of leverage.
Commercial shipping traffic has since ground to a halt [contrary to what nonsense Trump spouted], sending global oil prices soaring and putting downward pressure on the U.S. economy ahead of November’s midterm elections.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has linked six additional states to a large outbreak of cyclosporiasis associated with iceberg lettuce, according to a C.D.C. official familiar with the investigation.
New York Times:
The Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday approved the first mRNA flu vaccine, enabling use of a technology that will make it easier to rapidly target a widely prevalent or particularly virulent strain of the virus.
“When people looked for something nice to say about the deceased senator, they said he was good about compromising. And he did indeed compromise every principle he had. When he went to the senate he promised he would only sit for two six-year periods, a promise he kept for twelwe years. He kept breaking the promise but in the end, his heart wasn’t in it -to be precise, the left ventricular.”
The Federal Communications Commission voted 2–1 today to eliminate the National Television Ownership Rule, claiming authority to repeal a limit that was set by Congress over 20 years ago.
The rule prohibits any single broadcast station owner from reaching more than 39 percent of all TV households in the US. Under Chairman Brendan Carr, the FCC is replacing the rule with a “case-by-case review” of each proposed merger.
Both the rule being overridden and the authority being claimed by the FCC are significant issues. 39% isn’t some trivial number, a station owner would have to be covering a huge geographic range to violate that.
Carr said local broadcast TV stations are becoming “undifferentiated passthroughs of national programming produced in Hollywood and New York,” and he justified repealing the ownership rule by arguing it will help the stations invest in local news.
The first part of what he says here is true, the second part is laughable. The huge stations are the cause of much of the passthrough local stations, producing content in a few big sets and sending it to location stations to show.
For courts, the main question will be whether the FCC can change the cap at all. Congress directed the FCC to set the cap at 39 percent in 2004, overriding a 2003 FCC decision to raise the limit from 35 to 45 percent. The 2004 law change also said the FCC cannot repeal or modify the cap during its quadrennial reviews of media rules.
Here is the most significant question really. Congress has directed the FCC to make the cap 395%. If the FCC is allowed to change that it transfers a huge amount of power from Congress to the FCC. The FCC and other government agencies will be able to rewrite large parts of the law as set by Congress.
Media advocacy group Free Press said it will sue the FCC in an attempt to block the change. “Changing this limit requires congressional action, but Carr doesn’t care,” Free Press General Counsel Matt Wood said. “He’ll do whatever it takes to clear the way for Trump-aligned billionaires to swallow up stations wherever and whenever they please. The result would be just one or two dominant broadcasters in every market, deep job cuts for journalists, and an influx of bargain-basement content disguised as local news.”
Carr is a puppet of Trump and the Heritage Foundation chosen to push for nationwide monopolies by those with the most money.
AI webpage crawlers are now being served their very own ads that ordinary visitors never see, with one firm’s boss openly describing a strategy to influence what chatbots say about brands. The next time you ask Claude about where to bank, its answer may have been influenced by this bot-targeted content.
We only have one documented example so far, and that’s Time serving AI-only ads to selected AI crawlers, as spotted by Germany-based freelance software developer Vincent Schmalbach. In a Wednesday blog post, Schmalbach detailed how he found sponsored content embedded in markdown versions of some Time pages that are served to AI crawlers but not ordinary browsers.
Interesting bit. You would think the AI agent is programmed to discard ads but I guess not. Apparently manipulative text and text formatted like common questions work best. Which makes sense to me given how LLM work.
birgerjohanssonsays
Lovecraft game?
“Nazis and Happy Feet collide in Penguin Colony, a psychological horror game set at the world’s end” | Games | The Guardian
.https://share.google/HBPm8L4J4tKwLxq5g
birgerjohanssonsays
Ahem. Sometimes, baddies in a fantasy story are genuine baddies. Creatures who mimic human behavior in order to kill and eat men, women and children are generally not oppressed minorities. Rather, predators are less numerous that the prey species because that is the way the food chain works.
Re: birgerjohansson @ #65…
Chaosium made a Lovecraft game some 40-odd years ago. It’s called “Call of Chtulhu”.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
birgerjohansson @66: I’m not familiar with the show beyond some review vids you’ve linked here, but you might find this article interesting. Some other series are mentioned for comparison.
If our imagination relies on cynicism, that something alien to us is inherently detrimental, that becomes a functionally conservative mindset more often than not. No one has to be perpetually forgiving to any group or person hurting them, the problem is full extermination doesn’t fix anything in reality. Why is it that human characters that have threatened killing, or have killed in the past—Ubel, for example, happily tests out her destructive spells on people—are given complexity and understanding, while demons have not? Did we not also evolve from beasts?
[…] Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End plays with the always evil race trope but doesn’t fully escape it. […] This story about immortality, grief, and the importance of emotional connections is interrupted by the presence of blunt, strawman villains who exist not as characters but as plot devices to show the “humanity” of the protagonists. It’s a disappointing pivot in writing in what is otherwise a very enjoyable, gentle show. When a fantasy series asks “what does it mean to be human?” and gives you a strong, flat answer like this, it’s worth unpacking.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
^ @68 The article’s author added this in the comments. Both were circa 2 years ago.
I’m aware of that demon down the road and am interested in more explorations going forward. It very much looks like a situation where both human and demon understand their ways. Also I’m aware of demons later on that have some wild powers and use them to preserve their kind.
I totally agree that the demons are shown to have various feelings and different motives. I’m hoping for a little more variance in how they try to test out feeling guilty haha!
My concern is that these stories usually end with the demon needing to be put down. I’d like to see other options forward since human mages are ok to go forward even when being a threat. They don’t necessarily have to live in the towns and emulate humans, but I feel they should be a respected living being within the world.
[…] I’m looking forward to the adaptation to the Golden Land arc!
That arc hasn’t occurred on-screen yet, but the Solitar demon was namelessly alluded to as “an eccentric demon who studies humanity” in episode 2×07 “Divine Revolte” this year.
Militant Agnosticsays
Reginald Selkirk @51
I wonder what the Second Sons plan to do with Canadian First Nations. After all, they are definitely non-white even if their ancestors were there long be before those of the Second Rate Sons. Are they calling for them to be deported? What about the Metis – are they sufficiently white?
Dr. Erica Schwartz […] made some alarming comments about abortion care during her confirmation hearings […] The Senate voted 51-44 to confirm Schwartz, largely along party lines—making her the first permanent director of the public health agency in the last year. Schwartz, a former deputy surgeon general during Donald Trump’s first term, is the first Black woman to lead the CDC. […] Schwartz made headlines for not distancing herself much from Kennedy’s views on vaccines
… former US National Cyber Director Chris Inglis.
…
“Asimov was right,” he said, referring to science fiction author Isaac Asimov and his three laws that were to be followed by robots – more specifically, AIs, in this case.
“The first rule, and we call it the superior role, must be that it’s designed not to hurt humans,” Inglis said. “Second rule: To obey humans, such that it doesn’t achieve agency and aspiration on its own. And the third: To do what humans tell it – and in that order. Instead we’ve designed them in the exact opposite way.” …
Not impressed. The three laws of robotics were not programmed into the robots, they were a natural property of their positronic brains. Which is clearly a plot device with no basis in reality. Perhaps it was a convenient plot device in the mid 20th century, but it sure won’t fly today.
birgerjohanssonsays
“How One Beach Reveals Two Completely Different Earths”
This beach in Southern Wales has an unconformity representing 25 million years. You have Devonian layers on one side and Carboniferous layers on the other.
One of the biggest hurdles was the very first one: How did life emerge from a primordial soup of stuff that very much wasn’t alive?
A radical new study, published in Science Advances, suggests that this unlikely threshold may actually have been crossed not once, but twice.
Two of the main lineages of life – bacteria and archaea – may have independently figured out the secrets of metabolism that upgraded them from non-living to living, according to the new study, which focused on the most rudimentary set of chemical reactions thought to enable this transformation.
“The surprise is that the enzymes that catalyze those reactions are not conserved across the evolutionary divide that separates bacteria and archaea,” says William Martin, a biologist at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf in Germany.
“The new data leave only one conclusion. The bacterial and archaeal lineages made the transition to the free-living state independently. Only free-living cells are alive.
“Let’s call it by name: we are looking at one origin of the genetic code, but two origins of life.”
…
“We found that the last universal ancestor of all cells, LUCA, possessed enzymes for only about half of the reactions of metabolism,” says Martin.
“The other half was catalyzed by metals in the environment where LUCA arose.”
…
Over time, later proto-cells developed more and more enzymes, reducing their dependency on external metals, until they no longer needed them at all. Only at that point would they be considered ‘free-living cells’.
Importantly, the researchers say, this didn’t occur until after bacteria and archaea had separated. These two branches figured out their own ways to tackle the same problems.
Highly speculative, and built on controversial definitions of key terms.
At least seven people have died in Thailand after a teenage boy shot his grandparents and some schoolteachers
More than 30 others are injured, with nine in a serious condition, PM Anutin Charnvirakul says
Authorities say the suspected shooter, 14, is also dead – Anutin tells reporters the attack was “well prepared” with “clear steps and clear goals”
This is the second school shooting in Thailand this year – despite restrictions on ownership people can acquire guns here with relative ease, writes our South East Asia correspondent
…
Developing story. More details sure to follow. One other source says the death toll is 8.
President Donald Trump again ranted about affordability during his rally Wednesday in Las Vegas.
This time, Trump claimed the word “affordability” was a media creation.
“Our costs are coming way down. You know, they talk about affordability. I took over the country. The prices were through the roof. In my first day, the press said, ‘What are you going to do about affordability?’ It was a word they devised — affordability. They never used that word before,” Trump told the crowd at Red Rock Resort…
Republican Congressman Andy Ogles has lost his House primary in Tennessee, becoming the second Trump-endorsed candidate to be defeated this week.
Former Tennessee agricultural commissioner Charlie Hatcher defeated the two-term congressman in Thursday’s Republican contest for the state’s 5th congressional district.
Hours before polls closed, US President Donald Trump said Ogles had his “complete and total endorsement for re-election”.
It follows the defeat of a Trump-backed Republican candidate in Michigan on Wednesday, although there were also several wins for candidates he endorsed.
The winners of the primaries will go on to contest November’s midterm elections…
Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski announced she would oppose President Donald Trump’s nominee for US attorney general, citing concerns over the “politicisation” of the Justice Department.
Trump seeks to install Todd Blanche, his former personal defence attorney who is currently acting attorney general, to run the Justice Department on a permanent basis but he has faced opposition from a small number of Republicans.
Without the Alaska senator’s vote, the confirmation of Blanche is now in some jeopardy.
Murkowski cited controversies that have occurred during Blanche’s leadership, including the administration’s handling of the Epstein files and a controversial “anti-weaponisation fund” created by a settlement between Trump and the government.
“The country needs an Attorney General who will check the worst impulses of this administration,” Murkowski wrote.
“I hope Mr Blanche is able to achieve that, if confirmed, but I simply do not have confidence that will be the case.”
Blanche had previously pledged to senators he would walk back the nearly $2bn fund after blowback from Republican senators.
A federal appeals court on Friday ordered the Trump administration to halt construction of its $400 million ballroom at the White House without congressional approval.
President Donald Trump doesn’t have the unilateral authority to construct a 90,000-square-foot (8,400-square-meter) ballroom where the White House’s East Wing stood before he ordered its demolition, according to the decision by a three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
In a 2-1 decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals sided with historic preservationists who sued to stop construction. The court said it would stay its own ruling for two weeks to allow the administration to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Fairly obvious ruling. The president doesn’t own the White House and his thinking it needs better security isn’t an emergency that lets him go ahead without authorization. Trump has been tripped up on this several times now, Trump saying something is an emergency isn’t the same as it being an emergency. The court is generous with the executive branch in this regards but the declaration that something is an emergency needs to be plausible, not Trump obviously trying to go around the rest of the law.
According to new reporting by the Shreveport Times, officials at the Orleans Parish Communication District — the emergency dispatch agency for the city of New Orleans — are now integrating AI answering agents into its workflow.
The new tool is called AI Emergency Call Triage, offered by a company called Carbyne. Its function is essentially to triage incoming calls to dispatchers, bumping high-priority emergency calls to humans, and automatically handling repeat calls related to ongoing incidents, the Times explains.
AI call centers for commerce is annoying but I know why companies do it. 911 is a different matter, time matters and the people making the calls are likely to not be thinking or speaking clearly. It’s way too early in this sort of technology for it to be used this way.
It’s also worth noting that AI voice chat remains highly flawed even when powered by frontier AI models, with plenty of opportunities for errors both in how they process information, and how they dish it out. A February study by the media software company NewsGuard found that in voice mode, AI bots like ChatGPT and Gemini produced false claims with realistic audio up to 50 percent of the time. Emergency calls to 911, needless to say, are often extremely chaotic.
This is all very cutting edge technology, the sort of thing small start up companies experiment with and fail most of the time. This is a bad choice of vital government services, things that should be on the trailing edge.
For nearly a century, archaeologists believed that two huge, linear structures near Egypt’s Red Pyramid were ramps to move stones. They might have been wrong.
A new analysis of the pyramid, located at the Dashur necropolis in modern-day Cairo, suggests that the “ramps” were actually large dams. If true, this means that ancient Egypt’s architects and construction workers used a hydraulic system to supply water to the construction site nearly 5,000 years ago, according to an early-access version of the study provided by npj Heritage Science. Contextually, this interpretation is consistent with how King Snefru’s reign, during which the Red Pyramid was built, also saw the emergence of the earliest instances of large-scale hydraulic engineering, the team explained in the paper…
The White House is drafting an executive order on the disproven link between vaccines and autism, according to independent reports from The Washington Post and Bloomberg, which both cited unnamed sources with knowledge of the efforts.
Bloomberg reported that the executive order, which is still taking shape and is subject to change, could be issued as soon as next week. The Post said the order’s drafting so far is aimed at the childhood vaccine schedule, autism research, and parental choice for vaccinations…
Justin Pearson, who generated national attention for his membership in the “Tennessee Three,” won a Democratic primary for Tennessee’s 9th Congressional District.
Good news.
More good news, summarized from an NBC News report:
In Michigan’s closely watched Senate race, Rep. Haley Stevens introduced Abdul El-Sayed at a “unity breakfast” Thursday morning, just two days after the congresswoman lost to the former state health official in a Democratic Senate primary. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who endorsed Stevens, also spoke at the gathering.
Unity! Good for the Democrats.
More good news, summarized from Politico:
In Texas’ closely watched Senate race, Democratic state Rep. James Talarico leads Republican state Attorney General Ken Paxton by four points in the latest Texas A&M Bush School poll and three points in a new 254 Labs/YouGov poll. There have now been five polls in the last weeks that show Talarico ahead by small margins.
More good news, as summarized from the Atlanta Journal Constitution:
Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff of Georgia continues to pick up Republican supporters: Shortly after former Republican Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona endorsed Ossoff, two GOP mayors in Georgia followed suit.
As one key Democratic member of Congress summarized, “It is hard to imagine a more backwards use of taxpayer money.”
There’s no shortage of lessons to be learned from the U.S. war with Iran, but high on the list is that it’s in Americans’ interest to embrace renewable energy — not just because it’s cleaner and cheaper, but also because it helps shield consumers from international turmoil in an increasingly volatile sector.
It’s a basic idea the Trump administration doesn’t want to understand. The New York Times reported this week:
The Trump administration will pay the German energy firm RWE $1.22 billion to abandon plans to build wind farms off the coasts of New York, California and Louisiana, the company announced on Thursday. […]
Under the agreement, RWE will voluntarily surrender three leases it owned for wind farms in federal waters.
If this sounds at all familiar, it’s not your imagination. In March, the Republican administration announced that it had agreed to pay a foreign company almost $1 billion in American taxpayer money to abandon two wind farm projects that would have produced enough electricity to power more than 1.3 million homes and businesses across New York, New Jersey and North Carolina.
At the administration’s insistence, the company will instead proceed with different energy projects that will cost more and pollute more. [JFC] Put another way, thanks to a model imposed by President Donald Trump, many American consumers will pay for the privilege of paying more to turn on the lights, all while polluting our own air. [Double JFC]
Then in April, it happened again, when the Republican administration announced plans to pay energy companies almost $900 million to abandon plans for two offshore wind farms. Two months later, Team Trump spent $765 million to buy back another group of offshore wind leases. [!]
In late June, a fourth example emerged, when the administration announced plans to pay Duke Energy $129 million to abandon an offshore wind project off the coast of North Carolina.
With a fifth instance this week, the combined price tag for the developments is approaching $4 billion. [!!]
[I snipped details of Trump’s campaign against wind power in Scotland.]
As recently as last month, Trump also started telling the public that wind energy harms the environment. (That’s bonkers, too.)
[…] At a time when the U.S. would benefit from more renewable energy projects, the Trump administration keeps spending billions to scuttle renewable energy projects. [Unfortunately true.]
Trump said this week that Americans have “the greatest economy maybe in the history of the world.” Reality keeps pointing in the opposite direction.
Expectations heading into this week showed projections of about 83,000 new jobs being created in the United States in July. As it turns out, according to the new report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the totals fell far short of those expectations. CNBC reported:
The U.S. economy saw an unexpected declined in jobs during July while the unemployment rate edged lower, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday in a snapshot that showed a slowing employment picture.
Nonfarm payrolls fell by a seasonally adjusted 23,000 for the month, compared to a downwardly revised 20,000 for June. The Dow Jones consensus forecast had been looking for a gain of 83,000
The unemployment rate inched lower to 4.1%, which is still low by historical standards, though it’s still a little higher than it was when Donald Trump’s second term began. What’s more, it’s worth noting that the drop was itself evidence of trouble: The “improved” unemployment rate is the result of the labor force participation rate dropping, as opposed to additional hiring. [!]
Also discouraging were the revisions for May and June, which subtracted a combined 103,000 jobs from previous estimates.
All of this comes just one week after the Commerce Department issued its latest report on U.S. economic growth, which also showed weak and disappointing growth.
Earlier this week, [Trump] said the United States currently has “the greatest economy maybe in the history of the world.”
The comments were ridiculous at the time. As the domestic economy loses jobs again, it now looks even worse.
Seven months into the year, the U.S. economy has created 426,000 jobs so far this year — a monthly average of roughly 61,000 — which is an awful total that plainly contradicts the White House’s routine happy talk about current conditions.
[…] To date, the White House hasn’t even tried to explain why the domestic job market worsened after the Republican president took office.
To contextualize the data, I put together this chart to show month-to-month totals since the 2020 election. The blue columns point to Biden’s presidency, while the red columns point to Trump’s. [chart]
It takes a lot to be among the most odious Republican members of this Congress. Let me reacquaint you with Rep. Andy Ogles (R-TN).
What makes Ogles special is that he managed to be a virulent Islamophobe, Christian nationalist, and fabulist — really the trifecta of qualifications for current House GOPers — and still alienate his fellow Republicans.
Ogles went down to a stinging defeat in the GOP primary in Tennessee last night, losing 53%-47% to former state agriculture commish Charlie Hatcher. […]
Ogles was a piece of work in so many ways.
“Muslims don’t belong in American society,” he tweeted in March.
“America and Islam are incompatible. Time for a muslim (sic) ban,” he posted in another tweet around the same time.
He posted AI-generated images of himself and senior Trump administration officials in front of the Capitol dressed as Crusaders.
He had campaign finance issues and resume-inflation issues.
Ogles’ nemesis back home was the relentless investigative reporter Phil Williams, of Nashville, who unearthed much of what we’ve come to know about Ogles and to whom I defer on cataloging Ogles’ sins:
– Ogles had claimed to be an economist; he was not.
– He had boasted about being trained in investigating international sex crimes; he had not.
– He had claimed to have done graduate work at Vanderbilt and Dartmouth; that was a lie.
– His resume showed he had served on the board of directors for the city of Franklin, Tennessee; Franklin does not have a board of directors.
– He claimed to have personally loaned his campaign $320,000 in his first run for Congress in 2022; he did not have that kind of money to lend.
– The FBI opened a criminal investigation into those fraudulent campaign disclosures, but that investigation was canned by the Trump administration.
– In a fitting end to his losing campaign, Ogles banned Williams and select other news outlets from an Election Day event — and Williams got ahold of the blacklist. [LOL. Schadenfreude moment.]
What gives Ogles’ primary defeat a little extra boost of schadenfreude is that he was running in a pretty dramatically re-drawn district thanks to state Republicans’ mid-decade redistricting. […]
The Salem City Council convened a public meeting last July 27, where it discussed the proposed $5.1 billion Oakline at Mill Creek data center by Verrus. As the people converged on the meeting site, a TikTok user spotted a guillotine towed by a bike outside of the venue, signaling the people’s discontent with the project.
…
One week after the meeting, Salem announced a data center moratorium that would halt all data center developments in the city for one year as it considers zoning laws to accommodate developments such as this.
…
Unfortunately, the Verrus project will likely not be affected by this delay as it filed its application three days before the announcement. Despite this, Governor Tina Kotek (D) announced that Oregon will terminate a deal to sell a 32-acre plot of land that forms part of the three plots of land on which the project will sit. While it still leaves Verrus with approximately 43 acres, it means that it would have to go back to the drawing board to change its plans…
The Trump administration’s streak of courtroom defeats in its effort to obtain state voter rolls reached 21 this year when a judge ruled this week that states are not required to share the records with the federal government.
…
Repeatedly, and as recently as this week, judges have found the U.S. Constitution gives states primary responsibility for running federal elections and that federal voting laws do not require them to hand over the records.
“If the Department disagrees with Congress’s judgment as to the records necessary to carry out its enforcement duties … it needs to lodge that objection with Congress,” U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss, an appointee of Democratic President Barack Obama, wrote on Thursday in dismissing a Justice Department bid to obtain unredacted voter rolls from Washington, D.C.
The Justice Department has sued more than two dozen states that refused to comply with its requests to turn over voter rolls containing information including birthdays and partial Social Security numbers…
U.S. President Donald Trump’s push to build the Western Hemisphere’s largest aluminum smelter in rural Oklahoma has divided the state’s Republican voters and emerged as a key issue in the contentious race to be the next governor.
The two Republicans who will face off for their party’s nomination on August 25 have taken opposing views, underscoring the willingness of some conservatives to buck Trump and use industrial projects as campaign leverage…
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the anti-vaccine activist and Health Secretary, launched a new online cooking show last week called The Real Food Show. Kennedy insists that Americans can eat nutritious food for cheap, promising to feed people for under $5 per person. But the Washington Post ran the numbers, and the meal he cooks during episode one costs about $18 per person for a family of four…
WaPo probably assumed you would go to a supermarket and buy meat. You can save big time if you keep your eyes open on your drive home from work…
In her new series “The Deep End,” MS NOW’s Brandy Zadrozny’s examines how conspiracy theories surrounding Charlie Kirk’s killing are fueling a civil war on the American right. Brandy joins Chris to discuss.
“The president seems to think rebranding his controversial vanity project could help make it happen.”
In the spring, the National Trust for Historic Preservation went to court in the hopes of blocking one of Donald Trump’s highest priorities: construction of his beloved White House ballroom vanity project. To the president’s great frustration, U.S. District Judge Richard Leon ruled in the organization’s favor.
Leon, a George W. Bush appointee, wrote in his order that the president of the United States is the “steward of the White House for future generations of First Families,” adding, “He is not, however, the owner!” The jurist concluded that such an endeavor requires congressional approval, not the unilateral whim of the president.
Naturally, the Republican and his lawyers appealed, although this failed, too. MS NOW reported:
A federal appeals court blocked the Trump administration from continuing construction on the White House ballroom, ignoring its argument that the project is crucial for national security. The court ruled that the construction project was unlawful because the administration bypassed congressional authorization. […]
In a 2-1 ruling, the court affirmed the preliminary injunction against further above-ground construction.
In a 136-page decision, the court’s majority wrote, “We are aware of no instance in American history in which a President unilaterally and using privately collected funds demolished substantial portions of the White House that Congress authorized to be built and American taxpayers paid for. Until now.”
The ruling continued, “Each President is a temporary tenant, not the owner, of the White House and its Executive Residence. The President has no … constitutionally assigned authority over that property, which is designed and maintained for the use of all Presidents, current and future, and for the American people. … Whether or not a massive ballroom should be constructed is for Congress to decide and is not a matter for Executive self-help.”
To the surprise of no one, Trump issued a statement condemning the ruling and making clear he’ll take the matter to the Supreme Court. What was notable about the president’s reaction, however, was how he chose to describe the project he’s been obsessed with for months.
In an item published to his social media platform, the Republican wrote, “Two Obama and Biden Appellate Court Judges just voted against the desperately needed Military Center, required for the National Security of Washington, D.C., and our Country, itself.”
Yes, the White House ballroom apparently has been upgraded with a new name. It’s now the White House “military center.”
[…] Trump started arguing in the spring that the ballroom wouldn’t be merely a ballroom, it would also be a “sophisticated” drone facility. In fact, he started promoting images to suggest the ballroom’s roof, which he labeled a “drone port,” would be a launchpad for military drones.
Why was it necessary for the White House complex to have its own “drone port”? To what locations, exactly, would these drones be deployed? Why couldn’t the administration use the roof of some other nearby building? Trump didn’t say, but he nevertheless continued to argue that the ballroom was “being built for the United States Military.”
The “Military Complex,” he added earlier this week, “will provide the highest level of Defense, Offense, and Safety for the people of Washington, D.C., and for, importantly, future Presidents.” […]
Nevertheless, Trump’s rebranding list continues to grow. The Defense Department is now supposed to be called the “Department of War,” the Gulf of Mexico is now supposed to be called the “Gulf of America,” the One Big Beautiful Bill Act is now supposed to be called the “working families tax cuts” — and his ballroom project is now the “Military Center.”
[…] The appellate court’s 2-1 decision says that Trump can continue the below-ground construction of his bribe palace but has to stop anything above the surface. But even that meager restriction is stayed for two weeks—meaning that he gets to keep breaking the law and building above ground—to give him time to run to the Supreme Court.
[…] The White House doesn’t belong to Trump. It’s not his to tear down. It’s not his to give away. He’s not even the caretaker; he just lives there for a brief period of time.
Or, as the majority opinion goes on to explain: “Each President is a temporary tenant, not the owner, of the White House and its Executive Residence.”
This saga has dragged on for so long that it’s genuinely jarring to read about how quickly Trump took over and destroyed the People’s House.
“Over just three days in October 2025, without undertaking promised consultations or obtaining Congress’s permission, President Trump bulldozed the entire East Wing in order to construct a massive, 90,000 square-foot ballroom paid for by private funds with no congressional oversight,” the court ruling says.
[…] the argument that he gets to do this because it’s all bribe-funded and therefore Congress has no role is no longer viable since we now know that we’re at least partially paying for the thing—having learned in June that there’s a secret no-bid government contract to the tune of $500 million for construction. [!]
Can’t wait to hear how Trump and his family will be murdered in their sleep by armed terrorists if he can’t build the ballroom, which is actually a drone port, which is actually a hospital, which is actually a sniper’s nest, and so on.
Miss North Carolina USA 2026 Brittany Boltinhouse is under fire after a series of old social media posts resurfaced showing her freely using the n-word, bragging about being “toxic,” and engaging in explicit relationship drama — all while she held a title that was supposed to represent the state with dignity and class.
…
Under the handle Sosa the Stallion (linked to her earlier identity as Sosa B Alondra), Boltinhouse posted a series of tweets between 2017 and 2019 that leave little room for interpretation.
In one December 2019 post she wrote: “N*gga I’m toxic asf…i dont care lol”
Other posts from the same account include:
“this n*gga has me 50 shades of fucked up…” (April 2017)
“if my n*gga don’t like you i don’t like you .” (March 2017)
“your girl don’t like me but yo n*gga doesssss” (February 2017)
“not yo n*gga” (April 2017)
A lengthy post accusing another woman’s “WCW” of “flashing random n*ggas and letting em take shots off her all spring break while u was at home working being loyal.”
The language is consistent, casual, and repeated. She used the n-word as part of her regular online voice, framed herself as proudly “toxic,” and centered much of the content on sexual and relationship competition.
The old tweets are not the only material circulating. Boltinhouse has also been open about her political views. In a November 4, 2024 Facebook post under Sosa B Alondra, she urged people to vote for “the greater good,” criticized the previous four years and Kamala Harris, warned that America risked becoming a “Third World country,” and closed with:
Since the flesh-eating screwworm fly reinvaded Mexico in 2024, human cases of the voracious parasite have been mounting. According to a July surveillance report from Mexico’s Ministry of Health, there have been over 500 human cases in 2025 and 2026. A study this week in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases analyzed the information on over 200 confirmed cases reported between April 2025 and March 2026 and found that the infestation pace is increasing.
Among the 200 confirmed cases in the study, six deaths were reported. At least one of the deaths was directly caused by the fly’s maggots, researchers in Mexico reported in the study…
“Rudy Giuliani: Universal Pre-K Just A Ruse To Turn Babies Into Parent-Hating ‘Transvestites'”
Universal pre-K […] is one of the few things that a large of Americans can agree on. [,,,] 74 percent of Americans (including 69 percent of Republicans) say that childcare is a good use of their federal tax dollars.
[…] Parents need childcare in order to work so that they can provide for their children, but 70 percent say they struggle to afford said childcare. At the same time, childcare is among the most poorly paid professions and one in seven childcare workers (who are disproportionately women, and disproportionately women of color) lives in poverty. Also, at the same time, kids who are enrolled in high quality childcare and pre-K programs are 70 percent less likely to be arrested for violent crimes by the time they turn 18. [!]
[…] The only thing that makes any sense for everyone involved is for childcare to be a universal public good, subsidized by our tax dollars.
But Rudy Giuliani has a pretty compelling case against all of that, and it is that universal pre-K programs will teach 6-month-old babies to hate their parents and become “transvestites,” which I guess is the kind of term you use when you think it’s still 1975. [Rocky Horror Picture Show “Sweet Transvestite” video]
On Monday’s edition of his “America’s Mayor Live” show on YouTube, which is so popular and influential that I am just finding out that it exists today, Giuliani railed against the extremely popular and beloved man who does not have to go around Norma Desmonding about how he used to be the mayor of New York City, on account of how he is the current mayor of New York City.
Transcript via Media Matters:
“Remember Mamdani, the candidate, the completely useless guy who’s never had a job, never had responsibilities, has a rich family as a ne’er-do-well, but he’s an out-and-out communist, wants to have free grocery stores, free daycare, free everything you can think of.”
Not a ne’er-do-well!
For the record, the grocery stores will not be offering free food. The point of the grocery stores is that regular grocery chains that are focused on making a profit don’t want to open stores in certain areas, because they aren’t as profitable, but the people who live there still need food. Crazy, I know! Much like childcare and pre-K, this isn’t a problem that the free market can solve, and so other measures must be considered. That being said, the food will be discounted by 30 percent, so that’s nice. [That sets the record straight. Good fact checking.]
“And he wants to have free, free pre-K starting at six months old. Six months old. What the hell is he going to teach them at six months old? How to hate the parents, that’s what he’s going to teach them. How — hey, did you ever think of being a girl, kid? Not bad being a girl. Come on, it doesn’t hurt to chop your penis off.”
That sure is a weird conversation to imagine anyone having with a literal baby.
It should be fairly obvious that the reason for starting it at six months old is so that parents can go to work […]
For the record, no one would be legally required to send their babies to these centers, so anyone who imagines that this is what would be going on would be free to not participate.
[…] Giuliani then whined for a minute about how much it will cost and how if you make taxpayers pay for it, they will leave the city, which does not seem likely.
“So he was going to spend $3 billion on this. It’s now already gone up to $6 billion. You see, I want you to look at that too about these communist, socialist, liberals, and useless Democrats, which are most of them in office. They have no concept of money. When I was mayor, they had no concept of money. I was able to be friends with them then because they weren’t traitors to the United States. But they were completely useless jackasses as executives.
“[…] I can give you example after example.”
Six billion divided by 8.5 million (the number of people in New York City) comes out to about $700 per person a year — $941 if it’s just divvied up between those living above the poverty line. Childcare costs families there approximately $13,000 to $20,000 per child, per year. While some people will pay more in taxes and some people will pay less, no families will have to pay $20,000. We all benefit, including billionaires, so we should all shoulder the burden. […]
To be clear, this is not about teaching infants the Socratic method, it is about providing childcare for parents and social-emotional development for children. That being said, I think we all wish that Rudy Giuliani had, at any point in his life, been taught “critical reasoning” skills, as they might have prevented him from going on an entire diatribe about how “the libs” want to brainwash your six-month-old son into hating you and loving a sequin evening gown.
“You teach them that it’s OK to be a transvestite. In fact, you have transvestites come to school and give lectures to show them it’s perfectly OK. And if you want to change your — if you want to change your gender and you don’t want to tell your parents, perfectly — parents are the enemy.
“I’m explaining to you Democrat philosophy that is ruining your children. This is the reason that they’re like they are.”
[…] I think perhaps the most refreshing thing about Zohran Mamdani is that he’s showing people that we don’t have to live this way. Things can be nice. Things can be less stressful if we all work together. It’s a lesson Rudy Giuliani could stand to learn himself. It has to be very stressful coming up with all of those ridiculous conspiracy theories just on the off chance that one of them could strike a major death blow against … preschool.
“No major economy had previously received over half its electricity from solar across an entire month.” [graph]
While the Trump administration is busy pointing out that the sun doesn’t shine at night, solar is breaking records around the world, including in sunny California.
Solar panels produced 51% of California’s electricity in May, the first time the clean energy source surpassed the halfway mark for an entire month. The data counts both large-scale installations and the state’s bounty of rooftop arrays.
This isn’t just a milestone moment for California; it’s a milestone for the entire world. Think tank Ember says the state is the globe’s first major economy to cross the 50% threshold. (Hungary, at 47% in June 2025, is knocking at the door, though it has a far smaller GDP.)
Solar’s rise has helped California cut polluting energy sources out of its power mix. Natural gas is the only fossil fuel that California power plants burn at appreciable levels, and solar is steadily squeezing it out of the system. Case in point: Solar outproduced gas not only during its record month of May but throughout every month in 2026 leading up to it, too.
Solar could not have reached these heights alone. It needed batteries to get here — and California has that crucial energy storage in spades. The California Independent System Operator, which manages most of the state’s grid, now boasts 16 gigawatts of batteries that can shift abundant midday solar production to later in the evening. It’s not uncommon for batteries to meet over one-quarter of the state’s electricity demand for a portion of the night.
All this solar and storage would have been hard to imagine a decade ago. Back then, in its best month […] solar accounted for just 17% of electricity. That number is well above the current national average for solar, but a far cry from 51%. CAISO’s battery fleet, meanwhile, was a measly 61 megawatts. So, storage has grown by, uh … 26,129% over the last decade, a number so cartoonishly large that I’m almost hesitant to print it.
Expect California to see more months break the 50% threshold soon. And in the coming years, expect more states and countries to cross the halfway mark, too.
birgerjohanssonsays
Mano Singham: The Lincoln pool fiasco
“But what we must never forget is that these people do not care how many innocent people are harmed because of their determination to pursue a false narrative.”
.https://share.google/5HpUujHlNXimmgECv
Every fiasco requires a scapegoat to protect the brittle ego of the Supreme Leader
The Senate passed a sweeping new package of sanctions targeting Russia and Iran on Friday, approving a measure aimed at supporting Ukraine in its fight against President Vladimir V. Putin’s war of aggression.
The bill now moves on to the House.
birgerjohanssonsays
The Great Wall of…Alabama???
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=o84mrCxETNY
Tommy Tuberville is an idiot. Also, maybe the rest of the country should build a wall arond Alabama to keep people like Tuberville in?
President Donald Trump is renewing his attempt to remove Lisa Cook from the Federal Reserve, according to a letter from the White House obtained by MS NOW. … Cook’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, said in a statement that the allegations of mortgage fraud ‘are as baseless now as they were a year ago’ when Trump first tried to remove Cook.
Mr. Trump repeatedly called Canadians nasty in a speech in Las Vegas on Wednesday after claiming that Canada and other countries had long been unfairly using tariffs against the United States. ‘Canada’s nasty. They are. They’re nasty,’ Mr. Trump said. ‘I love the people, but they’re nasty. Nasty leadership.’
As Steve Benen noted: “Imagine a world in which Trump talked about Russia with the kind of seething contempt he has for Canada.”
The Trump administration has refunded about $100 billion in tariffs in response to the Supreme Court ruling that declared the tariffs illegal, according to a new court filing this week. Major corporations are getting huge refunds: $2.2 billion for Apple, $1.3 billion for Ford, $600 million for Amazon. … While some companies have said they will use the refunds to reduce their prices, experts say not to expect many price cuts.
The Japanese tech giant SoftBank Group gave $50 million to Donald Trump’s presidential library in January 2026 — two months before the Trump administration approved a federal land lease that will allow the firm to build what could become the world’s largest artificial intelligence data center.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement thugs are finally going to start wearing body cams, a thing that will in no way stop them from being murderous thugs, but will at least provide the public with a record of them being murderous thugs.
Wait, scratch that.
The agency appears to have developed a very curious idea of when it would be required to release the footage from body-worn cameras: only when it is in the agency’s “best interests.” [!]
Wait, what?
A government agency does not have best interests. The American public has best interests, as in it’s in our best interests to know what President Donald Trump’s murderous goons are doing. People who do not want to be murdered by ICE goons have best interests in, well, not being murdered. The only “best interests” ICE is remotely concerned about is ensuring that its agents get to murder people with impunity, which is sorta the very opposite of a best interest in the real world.
What this policy, such as it is, really means is that ICE will just have the ability to withhold any video evidence that makes it look bad while releasing anything that makes it look good.
[…] So, the way the policy works apparently is that after ICE thugs maim or murder someone, a committee made up of ICE officials and ICE lawyers will decide if the body cam footage gets released. If they don’t want it released, they can block it indefinitely. […]
[…] Here’s the department’s statement about it:
“Ensuring all of our ICE law enforcement officers have body cameras nationwide is a top priority for DHS. This is especially needed because the media and sanctuary politicians consistently spread smears about our law enforcement.”
[…] Americans need protections from ICE, not the other way around. That’s the actual best interests the body cams are supposed to serve. But like everything else in the Trump administration, it’s going to be warped to protect abusive killers like ICE agent David Brouillette instead. That’s your tax dollars at work.
whheydtsays
Re: birgerjohansson @ #114…
Too late. Tuberville actually lives in Florida.
For the convenience of readers, here are some links back to the previous set of 500 comments on The Infinite Thread.
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2026/06/28/infinite-thread-xxxx/comment-page-3/#comment-2308386
Left-wing political outsider wins Democratic Senate primary in Michigan
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2026/06/28/infinite-thread-xxxx/comment-page-3/#comment-2308388
ALL IN WITH CHRIS HAYES: ‘Rolled over’: Hayes rips Cornyn, Tillis for caving on Blanche
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2026/06/28/infinite-thread-xxxx/comment-page-3/#comment-2308381
“Let’s call Trump’s approach to Iran what it is: kindergarten diplomacy”
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2026/06/28/infinite-thread-xxxx/comment-page-3/#comment-2308373
World’s first seahorse hospital fights to protect them from extinction
Here is one more link back to the previous set of comments on The Infinite Thread.
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2026/06/28/infinite-thread-xxxx/comment-page-3/#comment-2307913
Sen. Cornyn is actually seeking to entrench — not eliminate — the immunity President Trump got in his “settlement” with the IRS.
Thanks Lynna, OM.
Suspicious Cheese Lords early music ensemble to perform at Annunciation Church
Stupid and gullible, cartoon by Clay Jones
Trump’s solution to abuse in ICE facilities is pricey—and evil
https://www.wonkette.com/p/republicans-livid-as-missouri-and
“Republicans Livid As Missouri And Kansas Vote For Democracy And Abortion AGAIN”
“Democracy for Missouri and abortion for Kansas, to be specific.”
White House declassifies info on secret FBI probe into whether Trump fired Comey at Russia’s behest, official says
Maryland Republicans predict legal challenge to constitutional amendment on redistricting
Washington Post link
DW News – also seen on telly version (c35) just now areally intresting interview on the Hormuz issue w a Gordon Robison too.
Source : https://www.dw.com/en/can-iran-control-flow-of-data-along-with-flow-of-oil/video-77155316
Ten mins long.
Seems we have a new FTB blog here :
https://freethoughtblogs.com/cubistvowels/author/cubistvowels/
A rather mysterious one so far…
A new flavor of disinformation:
Link
Link
Trump team plots to keep terrorizing people after they’re deported
StevoR @12: “Seems we have a new FTB blog […] A rather mysterious one”
FtB’s Bébé Mélange in 2022: “My man Joseph Kelly has published this compilation of dark fiction that I’ve previously mentioned. You have a few options on how to read it—and one is completely gratis.”
Joseph’s bio at The Midnight Collection site linked an old blog elsewhere called Cubist Vowels.
Followup to all of the good news about Abdul El-Sayed winning the Democratic Senate primary in Michigan:
https://www.wonkette.com/p/abdul-el-sayed-teaches-mike-rogers
More details at the link.
New York Times link
“Cost of Trump’s Namesake Warships Likely to Rise by 50 Percent or More”
“Trump’s goal of building a “golden fleet” of 15 battleships could cost $275 billion, according to a government estimate.”
More at the link.
EXCLUSIVE: U.S. airstrikes killed or wounded hundreds of civilians in Yemen last year
“The Trump administration has yet to publicly acknowledge the number of casualties in the three strikes.”
@11
The idea is not absurd on its face. Here is another article about offshore cable fees:
“Visiting The Moon 3.5 Billion Years Ago”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=jeBvEYCJZSY
Drone carrying explosives found at German airport, police say
Raw Story: Trump declares ’emergency’ one day before deadline to reveal his finances in court
The emergency may be a little more valid then usual but Trump’s lawyers waited until the last minute as usual. A key part is that Trump’s lawyers have amended the complaint, which may negate the need for the tax records but the new complaint isn’t public. So it isn’t clear if there is a valid reason to appeal or not. I would guess that it is but Trump’s lawyers intentionally waited to stall things but who knows with Trump’s lawyers.
Move over, Moo Deng: Pygmy hippo calf born at Toronto Zoo
The Weirdest Theory Yet for Why Life on Earth Suddenly Exploded
Weeks into explosive diarrhea outbreak, sluggish CDC plans response team
WaPo – A new type of flu shot is coming after FDA approves mRNA-based vaccine
T-Rex World Championship Races roar into Washington
(video 1:48)
Gene-edited beagles may offer a future option for people with dog allergies
Malaria leaves a lasting scar on the spleen by wiping out immune cells formed before birth
Futurism: BMW Suddenly Blasts Its Cars’ Internal Screens With Aggressive Advertisements
This is probably a one off, BMW testing the water to see how many complaints they get. Customers should complain and get this killed. It’s highly annoying and will just get worse if it is accepted.
ALL IN WITH CHRIS HAYES: Abdul El-Sayed fires back at anti-Muslim attacks in Michigan Senate race
Hosted by Jacob Soboroff
Video is 11:10 minutes
Futurism – Kalshi defends plan to bet on lives of cancer patients
Django Wexler (Fantasy author):
Django Wexler
Alex Wenzel (Cancer researcher): “This is worse than the headline. They’re allowing betting specifically on clinical trial outcomes. So much effort is put into ensuring the integrity of trials and eliminating as much bias as possible, this would create enormous vulnerability in that system. This cannot be allowed to happen.”
Rando 2: “Wasn’t ‘we won’t allow bets on death’ one of their extremely few rules? Literally the second rule.”
Django Wexler:
Republicans’ election year crusade against Fauci isn’t limited to Congress
“As the midterm elections approach, the GOP crusade against one of the nation’s most accomplished and celebrated scientists is rapidly descending into madness.”
Republicans running for office has a limited playbook from which they draw their tactics. One tactic is to create a nationwide bogeyman that they then connect to the Democratic Party or to the Democratic agenda. So, now they are wildly, irresponsibly, pumping up Fauci as an enormous bogeyman. Republicans don’t have evidence. They have a shameless attack.
Ditto, in a way, for the effort by Republicans to brand Democrats as “communists.”
They hope that sheer repetition (delivered of course to national TV audiences, and every other media source they can commandeer) will win them an angry, misinformed, and scared Republican vote in midterm elections.
As questions intensify over U.S. weapons shortfalls, Trump trips over his contradictions
“The debate over dwindling munitions stockpiles is discombobulating the administration, and the president’s reaction is far from reassuring.”
Related video at the link.
All along, Trump had no fucking clue when it came to stocks of munitions. He still doesn’t.
Followup to comment 34.
Link
Well that is certainly sneaky and unethical.
Senate Republicans launch network of fake news sites
“One Nation, the Senate GOP’s primary dark money group, is producing propaganda masquerading as journalism.”
Reuters – US has used ‘virtually all’ of its long-range precision missiles
Telegraph – Pentagon draws up new nuclear weapons strategy for war with Russia and China
Mark Chadbourn (Journalist) – The Dismantling of US Power (Paywalled)
Cartoon: Acting attorney puppet by Pedro Molina
A Salmonella Outbreak Linked to Jalapeño Peppers Has Reached 27 States
…
Federal health officials are investigating a multi-state outbreak linked to jalapeño peppers that have been distributed widely throughout the U.S. Hundreds of cases across more than half of the country have been reported so far, while dozens have ended up in the hospital. The major distributor implicated in the outbreak has recalled its pepper products, and two Mexican-style chain restaurants that purchased the products—Chipotle and QDOBA—have temporarily pulled peppers from their menu or have switched to a different distributor.
This outbreak is being caused by a strain of Salmonella Javiana bacteria. Salmonella is rarely life-threatening, but it can cause miserable episodes of diarrhea, fever, and abdominal cramps that typically last between four and seven days. Children under five, the elderly, and people with weakened immune systems are more vulnerable to severe illness.
At least 345 people in 27 states have been infected with the same outbreak strain, and 36 people have been hospitalized as a result, though no deaths have been reported as of yet. According to federal health officials, the first known cases date back to June 19, while the latest reported cases were on July 20.
Officials have linked the outbreak to jalapeño peppers from Sinaloa, Mexico, that were distributed by Coast Citrus Distributors to other distributors, restaurants, and food service companies…
Aaron Rupar:
Don Moynihan – Scenes from a personalist regime (May 25)
US Senate committee votes to hold Fauci in contempt over Covid hearing
I don’t think much of anyone – Republicans included – likes Paul, so hopefully this won’t go anywhere.
Letter to the Editor: No shame in evangelical atheism
Link
Followup to comment 44, with a summary of a Bluesky post provided by Steve Benen:
Additional Republican campaign news, as summarized by Steve Benen from a Bluesky post:
Bad news for pretty much everyone. No wants Mike Lindell to appear even more in national or Minnesota news, even Minnesota Republicans.
GOP senator pushes crypto bill that could benefit human traffickers
Reginald Selkirk @43 quoting Larry Benson: “BS about a supreme being that no one knows anything about […] anyone who claims to have actual evidence, please display it”
A noun with no referent—not even a counterfactual one—is gibberish. There’s no there there to believe. There’s no coherent model to form expectations for assessing detectable phenomena as evidence. People are conditioned to recite proprietary noises to affirm their social affiliations. Part of that conditioning is touting the holy book as if it weren’t a symbolic prop. And that conditioning makes them voice approval for other concretely monstrous things, either in the book or otherwise favored by the group. “God” is incidental to adherents.
I’ve been told that forcing people to eat their children is “love” and that such crimes against humanity are just a “hang up” to be ignored. Because gloating intimidation attached to that word, repeatedly, in the book make it unthinkably embarrassing. But affiliation mattered more to them than trying to sound like a decent person they imagined themself to be.
Link
Sen. Mitch McConnell discharged from rehab center following hospitalization in mid-June
“The Republican senator said he would continue to work from home and did not provide a timeline for his Senate return.”
Miss North Carolina USA stripped of title after ‘information’ surfaces
They said, as they stripped her of her dignity.
So we have no idea what she did or said, but she did or said it consistently.
Large white supremacist meeting shakes residents of Alberta town
Here’s the mark a SpaceX rocket crash left on the moon
Michigan health officials say people can resume regular lettuce-eating habits as new cases of cyclosporiasis slow
Trump signs executive orders that target birthright citizenship
Nothing about his previous attempts to ban birthright citizenship, and the Supreme Court decision opposing them? Yeah, they should definitely update that article.
Study Reveals How Avocados Reverse Sexes Throughout the Day
San Antonio-area congressional candidate calls children ‘cum trophies’ in latest controversy
Seems like a nice guy.
Jana Riess: Why are so many young women leaving the LDS Church?
X wants to keep suing advertisers, asks 5th Circuit to overrule district judge
Making fun of the allegedly Christian Trump-adjacent people.
“Scathing Atheist 699: Communion Edition”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=YofmWigEOlM
Oman, Iran reach agreement to reopen Strait of Hormuz
I think the headline is overstating the case. Diplomats say some issues are unresolved.
“It’s unclear whether the U.S. will support the deal.”
Related video at the link.
“Framework of a deal” … don’t hold your breath.
New York Times:
New York Times:
See Sky Captain’s comment 27.
“Son of Obituary – Lindsey Graham”
By Noah, Eli and Mike
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=xTZKQ0oc5fE
“When people looked for something nice to say about the deceased senator, they said he was good about compromising. And he did indeed compromise every principle he had. When he went to the senate he promised he would only sit for two six-year periods, a promise he kept for twelwe years. He kept breaking the promise but in the end, his heart wasn’t in it -to be precise, the left ventricular.”
Ars Technica: Trump FCC kills TV ownership cap, claiming authority over limit set by Congress
Both the rule being overridden and the authority being claimed by the FCC are significant issues. 39% isn’t some trivial number, a station owner would have to be covering a huge geographic range to violate that.
The first part of what he says here is true, the second part is laughable. The huge stations are the cause of much of the passthrough local stations, producing content in a few big sets and sending it to location stations to show.
Here is the most significant question really. Congress has directed the FCC to make the cap 395%. If the FCC is allowed to change that it transfers a huge amount of power from Congress to the FCC. The FCC and other government agencies will be able to rewrite large parts of the law as set by Congress.
Carr is a puppet of Trump and the Heritage Foundation chosen to push for nationwide monopolies by those with the most money.
The Register: Time Magazine has a separate version of its website with ads only AI can see
Interesting bit. You would think the AI agent is programmed to discard ads but I guess not. Apparently manipulative text and text formatted like common questions work best. Which makes sense to me given how LLM work.
Lovecraft game?
“Nazis and Happy Feet collide in Penguin Colony, a psychological horror game set at the world’s end” | Games | The Guardian
.https://share.google/HBPm8L4J4tKwLxq5g
Ahem. Sometimes, baddies in a fantasy story are genuine baddies. Creatures who mimic human behavior in order to kill and eat men, women and children are generally not oppressed minorities. Rather, predators are less numerous that the prey species because that is the way the food chain works.
“Why Frieren Fans Are Going Crazy Right Now…”
.https://youtube.com/shorts/W_fRYveX350
Re: birgerjohansson @ #65…
Chaosium made a Lovecraft game some 40-odd years ago. It’s called “Call of Chtulhu”.
birgerjohansson @66: I’m not familiar with the show beyond some review vids you’ve linked here, but you might find this article interesting. Some other series are mentioned for comparison.
Who is Granted Personhood? Frieren’s demons and the trouble with the “inherently evil race” trope
^ @68
The article’s author added this in the comments. Both were circa 2 years ago.
That arc hasn’t occurred on-screen yet, but the Solitar demon was namelessly alluded to as “an eccentric demon who studies humanity” in episode 2×07 “Divine Revolte” this year.
Reginald Selkirk @51
I wonder what the Second Sons plan to do with Canadian First Nations. After all, they are definitely non-white even if their ancestors were there long be before those of the Second Rate Sons. Are they calling for them to be deported? What about the Metis – are they sufficiently white?
HuffPo – Trump’s new CDC head said ‘abortion surveillance’ will be a critical focus
‘Asimov was right’ about rules for robots, says ex-US Cyber Director
Not impressed. The three laws of robotics were not programmed into the robots, they were a natural property of their positronic brains. Which is clearly a plot device with no basis in reality. Perhaps it was a convenient plot device in the mid 20th century, but it sure won’t fly today.
“How One Beach Reveals Two Completely Different Earths”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=jnJuhB7il4k
This beach in Southern Wales has an unconformity representing 25 million years. You have Devonian layers on one side and Carboniferous layers on the other.
‘Only One Conclusion’: Radical Study Suggests Life on Earth Arose Twice
Highly speculative, and built on controversial definitions of key terms.
Thai teenager kills at least seven and injures more than 30 as PM calls shooting ‘well prepared’
Developing story. More details sure to follow. One other source says the death toll is 8.
Trump claims the media just ‘devised’ this word. It’s been used for 116 years
Trump-backed Republican congressman loses primary in Tennessee
Northbound. A Brit in Sweden
“I Thought 45 Years Driving In Britain Had Prepared Me For Sweden. I Was Wrong”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=I0ZZSR0QRiM
Republican Lisa Murkowski opposes Todd Blanche nomination for US attorney general
Intresting interview here – Trump hints at imminent Hormuz agreement | DW News 10 mins mentioned last night.
@ ^ I think?
W Gordon Robison.
You’d think this was acartton villain’s plan but nooo.. real life 2026 (?! Really!? Already & WTF!?) Israel’s plans to deploy crocodiles to prison housing Palestinians blocked (9 mins long.)
@ ^Cartoon villians..
^ Trump suggested something similar but, well, I rest my case.
Would anyone believe Trump if he was fiction?
Old but I just love this – Star Size Comparison 1 by morn1415 running for 2 mins 33 secs.
Oh and its updated and expanded sequel here –
Star Size Comparison 2 which I also love and takes almost 7 mins to watch
Owen Jones latest here – Trump’s TERRIFYING Plot Exposed – 18 mins long.
Yeah, Nowhere near enough attention being given to this I reckon.
Dehumanising other people is the trunk of all evil.
Love of money = roots.
Too many other branches, twigs, bark and foliage and canopy items to list.
Via PBS Newshour What scientists are learning after SpaceX debris crashed into the moon – just over 5 mins long.
@88. So think and be kind to all others, yourself and the world we all live in and have to share with each other and all other lifeforms.
Ethics #101.
Too obvs? But far too little followed.
@88. So think and be kind to all others, yourself and the world we all live in and have to share with each other and all other lifeforms.
Ethics #101.
Too obvs? But far too little followed.
AP News: Appeals court rules Trump can’t build White House ballroom without congressional approval
Fairly obvious ruling. The president doesn’t own the White House and his thinking it needs better security isn’t an emergency that lets him go ahead without authorization. Trump has been tripped up on this several times now, Trump saying something is an emergency isn’t the same as it being an emergency. The court is generous with the executive branch in this regards but the declaration that something is an emergency needs to be plausible, not Trump obviously trying to go around the rest of the law.
Futerism: Better Hope You Don’t Need an Ambulance in New Orleans, Because the City’s 911 Operators Are Now AI
AI call centers for commerce is annoying but I know why companies do it. 911 is a different matter, time matters and the people making the calls are likely to not be thinking or speaking clearly. It’s way too early in this sort of technology for it to be used this way.
This is all very cutting edge technology, the sort of thing small start up companies experiment with and fail most of the time. This is a bad choice of vital government services, things that should be on the trailing edge.
‘Ramps’ Near Egypt’s Red Pyramid Might Actually Be Ancient Dams
Report: White House drafting executive order linking vaccines and autism
MS NOW report, as summarized by Steve Benen:
Good news.
More good news, summarized from an NBC News report:
Unity! Good for the Democrats.
More good news, summarized from Politico:
More good news, as summarized from the Atlanta Journal Constitution:
Team Trump uses taxpayer money to scuttle yet another renewable energy project
As one key Democratic member of Congress summarized, “It is hard to imagine a more backwards use of taxpayer money.”
U.S. economy loses 23,000 jobs in July, as Trump-era economy continues to struggle
Trump said this week that Americans have “the greatest economy maybe in the history of the world.” Reality keeps pointing in the opposite direction.
Good Riddance
Protesters haul a guillotine to city council meeting about a potential AI data center, company rep cornered by protestors — ‘ it no longer felt safe to stay,’ developer escorted out by police
Trump loses 21 straight court battles for state voter rolls as midterms near
‘Build it in Mar-a-Lago!’ Trump’s aluminum smelter upends Oklahoma governor’s race
RFK Jr. Is Too Rich to Know the Price of Groceries, Not Rich Enough to Stop Grifting
WaPo probably assumed you would go to a supermarket and buy meat. You can save big time if you keep your eyes open on your drive home from work…
ALL IN WITH CHRIS HAYES: ‘Who killed Charlie Kirk?’: Inside the conspiracies fueling MAGA’s civil war
Video is 7:23 minutes
Followup to JM @92.
Following appeals court loss, Trump tries to rebrand his ballroom as a ‘military center’
“The president seems to think rebranding his controversial vanity project could help make it happen.”
Followup to comments 92 and 105.
Link
Tom Stanton Engineering:
“Supersonic Trebuchet”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=Co57SfcT-h0
An impressive amount of science and engineering goes into making this device work!
.
“Electromagnetic Aircraft Launcher”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=v4zTAkLKgm4
@50 Follow-up
This is the most detailed article I can find. Most mainstream articles make vague statements about “racism” or “old social media tweets.”
Miss North Carolina USA Brittany Boltinhouse Caught Using the N-Word in Old Tweets
Flesh-eating screwworms feast on humans in Mexico; human cases top 500
https://www.wonkette.com/p/rudy-giuliani-universal-pre-k-just
“Rudy Giuliani: Universal Pre-K Just A Ruse To Turn Babies Into Parent-Hating ‘Transvestites'”
California was mostly solar-powered in May — a global first
“No major economy had previously received over half its electricity from solar across an entire month.” [graph]
Mano Singham: The Lincoln pool fiasco
“But what we must never forget is that these people do not care how many innocent people are harmed because of their determination to pursue a false narrative.”
.https://share.google/5HpUujHlNXimmgECv
Every fiasco requires a scapegoat to protect the brittle ego of the Supreme Leader
New York Times:
The bill now moves on to the House.
The Great Wall of…Alabama???
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=o84mrCxETNY
Tommy Tuberville is an idiot. Also, maybe the rest of the country should build a wall arond Alabama to keep people like Tuberville in?
MS NOW:
New York Times:
As Steve Benen noted: “Imagine a world in which Trump talked about Russia with the kind of seething contempt he has for Canada.”
Washington Post:
MS NOW:
Justice Samuel Alito confirms he’s staying on the Supreme Court for another term
Boo Hiss Boo.
ICE’s new body cam policy is predictably devious
Re: birgerjohansson @ #114…
Too late. Tuberville actually lives in Florida.
“11 British Sci-Fi Movies Most Americans Have Never Seen
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=XzeQcR3eVEc
whheydt @ 121
Yes, but Tuberville hatched in the radioactive swamps of Alabama. We don’t want any MAGA kaiju to follow him out.