The incredible self-annihilating creationist argument » « Almost October!

Infinite Thread XXXXI

Behold, the Ugly Palace (il Palazzaccio, aka The Palace of Justice in Rome).

It’s nice to know we aren’t the only country that throws away money on hideous, grandiose buildings with terrible cost overruns and rumors of corruption. Of course, if it were built here, it would be excessively gilded, and would be a deathtrap.

Talk among yourselves about construction projects. Or whatever.

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  2. says

    Also, thanks for the ‘deathrap’ link. The article tells us the architect ran away from that disaster that was the ‘tRUMP ballsroom’ design because it won’t allow people to safely exit when it catches fire. The kitchen could easily conduct fire into the main hall. There were only seven stalls in the women’s bathroom for hundreds of people in that atrocity. WTF!

  3. birgerjohansson says

    The palace/ballroom needs to be built in neoclassical style with a marble facade, accompanied by a giant gilded statue of the Great Leader mounted on a turning support that constantly keeps the face towards the sun.
    .
    A great monumental avenue needs to be built on the approach to the site, with Ceaucescu’s palace in Bucuresti as template. This may require tearing down many culturally important buildings, but hey, it worked for Romania.
    These changes will make Trumpgrad (formerly Washington) a proper world city, on a par with Moscow and Pyonyang.

  4. Reginald Selkirk says

    A Buried Oklahoma Crater Was Dated to the Wrong Era—and It Actually Lines Up With a Mass Extinction

    In 1991, an oil company discovered a giant crater buried under Ames, Oklahoma. Subsequent investigations led researchers to propose the meteor responsible for the structure belonged to the many meteors that struck North America some 470 million years ago. New dating, however, challenges this account—while proposing an entirely different context for this enigmatic crater.

    According to a recently published study in Meteoritics & Planetary Science, researchers dated zircon crystals from the site and found that the Ames crater likely formed about 370 million years ago, during the Late Devonian. That represents a whopping 100-million-year gap with the Ordovician meteor event, when Earth saw a large increase in meteor events roughly 467 million years ago. Importantly, this now temporally places the Ames crater within another significant period in geological history: the Frasnian–Famennian mass extinction, which drastically reshaped Earth’s marine ecosystems…

  6. Reginald Selkirk says

    Gene-edited bananas that don’t go brown could hit UK supermarkets

    … Gilad Gershon, the chief executive of Tropic, said the flesh of the new banana resisted browning for an extra day or two – and longer if chilled. ..

    Tropic developed the bananas by using a gene-editing technology called Crispr-Cas9 to alter all three copies of a single gene within the fruit. As a result, they were able to reduce the production of polyphenol oxidase, an enzyme that causes browning. A similar approach has been effective in reducing browning in other produce, including mushrooms…

    A day or two? Sounds pretty hype-licious.

    See also: Arctic apples

  8. outis says

    Ah cam ahn, you find that ugly? Half of Italy is like that and those are actually the nicer-looking buildings! If you want another ugly/oppressive justice shack look at this
    (it’s in Belgium tho, but the style is there):
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palace_of_Justice,_Brussels
    A more modern equivalent:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milan_Courthouse
    the idea was to have something impossibly huge and intimidating, with lots of crenellations (19th century) or blocky and Mordor-like (20th).
    And frankly their build quality and yes even aesthetics are head and shoulders above much of the rubbish being built today, yes sir.

  9. Alverant says

    Good news. Lost 15lbs since last weighed yesterday
    Bad news. Had to get weighed as SOP at the doctor because it looks like I have a UTI.

  11. says

    Italy’s done much nicer stuff than that, but there’s also worse things you could see all over Europe. My biggest complaint about this building is that statue thing on top — a bit too much Brandenburg Gate vibe for my taste; and it’s too small to be appreciated from ground level at such a height. It needs to be either on a shorter building (1-2 stories?), or on a plinth standing in a courtyard or major traffic intersection.

  12. Reginald Selkirk says

    When they say election fraud is real, believe them. And investigate them.

    MAGA candidate in small Calif. town convicted on 9 counts of election fraud

    Gaea Powell echoed a core idea from the Make America Great Again movement when she ran for San Luis Obispo County clerk-recorder earlier this year, arguing for new voter ID rules to improve “election integrity” in the Central California county.

    But it turns out this conservative candidate wasn’t following election laws herself.

    A county jury found Powell guilty on nine counts of election fraud last week, including lying about her residence, unlawfully registering to vote and fraudulently voting. The charges stem from 2022 and 2024 elections, when Powell ran for mayor of Arroyo Grande, a small town near Pismo Beach…

  13. says

    Republicans are slow to learn a simple lesson: They can’t get the better of Jack Smith

    “Three times, Republicans have summoned the former special counsel to Capitol Hill. Each time, they have left humiliated.”

    Related video at the link.

    Almost immediately after Election Day 2024, special counsel Jack Smith and his team grudgingly wrapped up their work — not because they wanted to or because they lacked compelling evidence, but because of Justice Department guidelines against prosecuting a sitting president, and Donald Trump had just won.

    Left without options, Smith resigned, and his criminal indictments against the president effectively evaporated.

    For congressional Republicans, however, that was merely the start of a second phase. Indeed, for GOP lawmakers who saw the former special counsel as part of some conspiratorial plot, his transition to private life offered an opportunity to start demanding answers from Smith.

    It’s amazing how badly this has turned out for the party.

    Late last year, for example, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan scheduled a closed-door hearing with the prosecutor, and Smith offered several hours’ worth of answers. (Smith wanted the Q&A to be public, but the Ohio Republican refused.) After the hearing wrapped up, Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, joked that Jordan “made an excellent decision in not allowing Jack Smith to testify publicly, because had he done so, it would have been absolutely devastating to the president and all the president’s men involved in the insurrectionary activities of Jan. 6.”

    A month later, Jordan and House Republicans thought they should give this a second try, this time for all the world to see. This, too, was a disaster for the GOP.

    In fact, Democratic Rep. Ted Lieu of California told MS NOW after the televised hearing, “I’m thrilled and frankly stunned House Republicans called Jack Smith to testify.”

    The lesson for the GOP seemed rather obvious: Trying to get the better of the former special counsel during a congressional hearing is a very bad idea.

    Nevertheless, eight weeks ago, Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee decided they also wanted to give this a try, though they, like their brethren in the lower chamber, really should’ve known better.

    Over the course of more than four hours, Smith reminded the public about Trump’s many alleged felonies, once again explained why the GOP’s “Arctic Frost” whining doesn’t make any sense, and in one highly memorable instance, watched Republican Sen. Eric Schmitt of Missouri try to play a foolish gotcha game with the former special counsel, only to seemingly confuse a women’s college basketball team with an NBA team in one of the most embarrassing displays I’ve ever seen on Capitol Hill. [social media post and video]

    In case this isn’t obvious, the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Republican members had months to prepare for this hearing. This was not a rushed process: They had plenty of time to organize their thoughts, prepare sensible questions, review the relevant facts and plan for a meaningful and illuminating hearing.

    But they failed. Schmitt flubbing the difference between the Iowa Hawkeyes and the Atlanta Hawks stood out as uniquely humiliating, but he was just one of several GOP members who clearly failed to do their homework ahead of the high-profile hearing they demanded.

    What we’re left with is a pattern of failure: Three times, Republicans have summoned Smith to Capitol Hill. Three times, they had time to prepare for their showdowns with their perceived bête noire. And three times, the hearings ended with GOP members looking worse and the former special counsel looking better.

    If Democrats are lucky, Republicans will bring Smith back for a fourth hearing […]

  14. birgerjohansson says

    THIS is how you do it!
    .
    UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham 
    is basically doing a U-turn, away from the cautious approach of earlier Labour leaders.
    .
    “Burnham’s Conference Speech Was a Belter – Had Almost Everything”
    .https://youtube.com/watch?v=-1eFZMrAb18
    .
    “Andy Burnham expected to say he will push ahead with electoral reform plans” .https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/sep/29/andy-burnham-push-ahead-electoral-reform-plans

    If Britain can do it after deposing a hated and corrupt administration, so can USA. Note they also had to get rid of their conservative-lite previous labour leader to get here. The most important part is the electoral reform, away from the awful and antiquated ‘first past the post’ system (which also is practised in most US states).

  15. says

    For the convenience of readers, here are some links back to the previous set of comments on The Infinite Thread.

    https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2026/06/28/infinite-thread-xxxx/comment-page-7/#comment-2312917
    MS Now: FBI agents probing threats against Stephen Miller’s wife demoted

    https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2026/06/28/infinite-thread-xxxx/comment-page-7/#comment-2312915
    “[Utah Repulican Senator] Mike Lee Writing Fantasy Fiction About Trump Taking Xi To Panda Express”

    https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2026/06/28/infinite-thread-xxxx/comment-page-7/#comment-2312914
    “September 27, 1922, in labor history! [Child Labor laws … still a current issue.]”

    https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2026/06/28/infinite-thread-xxxx/comment-page-7/#comment-2312912
    The Trump administration announced that it had kicked about 750,000 people off Affordable Care Act plans. [Using AI to speed up the process of stripping eligibility from people.]

    https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2026/06/28/infinite-thread-xxxx/comment-page-7/#comment-2312884
    Konstantin Ryabitsev (Linux Foundation sysadmin) – Creepy crawlies [AI crawlers]

  16. Snarki, child of Loki says

    Every case of “voter fraud” that I’ve seen reported has been GOPers. Why? Because it takes a combination of (a) massive stupidity, (b) “getting even” with the other side [see (a)], and (c) a deep, abiding feeling of privilege.

    SO, GOPers want to crack down on “voter fraud”? OKAY!

    On conviction of a first offense: TEN YEAR removal of voting privilege (which is really mild: no jail, no fine, less work). On conviction for a second offense: PUBLIC CRUCIFIXION.

  17. says

    Judge blocks FEMA from connecting counterterrorism funds and election restrictions

    “It’s amazing just how many levers of government the White House has tried to pull in pursuit of a problem that does not exist in any meaningful way.”

    A few months ago, the Federal Emergency Management Agency approached state and local officials with a proposed deal of sorts: If they agreed to use a federal citizenship database, to abandon certain types of voting equipment and to impose other election restrictions in line with Donald Trump’s wishes, they would receive the counterterrorism grants to which they were entitled.

    But, FEMA added, if state and local officials balked at the proposed election changes, the administration would withhold 20% of the anti-terrorism funding.

    If you’re thinking that the pitch doesn’t seem legal, you have something in common with U.S. District Court Judge Amir Ali. The Washington Post reported:

    A federal judge on Monday blocked the Federal Emergency Management Agency from withholding anti-terrorism funds from local governments that don’t change how they run elections.

    It marked the latest blow to the Trump administration’s attempts to rewrite election rules.

    The lawsuit was brought by a group of local governments in Tennessee, Texas and Ohio.

    Abbie Kamin, the county attorney for Harris County, Texas, one of the local governments that filed the lawsuit, said in a statement, “Today’s win is the result of cities and counties standing together against blatant federal overreach that jeopardized public safety.”

    Time will tell whether the Trump administration bothers to appeal. But in the meantime, it’s hard not to notice just how many levers of government the White House has tried to pull in pursuit of a problem that does not exist in any meaningful way. [! True.]

    At last count, Trump and his team have tried to combat imaginary election fraud by using FEMA, the Justice Department, the Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Postal Service and even the Social Security Administration.

    These efforts haven’t worked — none of these departments or agencies has advanced the president’s conspiracy theories or successfully imposed new voting restrictions — but the crusade is ongoing.

    In the meantime, the administration could be strengthening agencies such as the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency — an agency the Trump White House helped create in his first term to help strengthen election systems — but the president and his operation have instead taken steps to gut CISA over the past year.

  18. says

    Iran news, as summarized by Steve Benen:

    * As the war with Iran prepares to begin its seventh month: “President Trump said on Saturday that he turned down Iran’s latest cease-fire proposal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and restart talks on the country’s nuclear program in exchange for U.S. concessions.” [Summarized from a New York Times report.]

    * On a related note, I’ve lost count of how many times we’ve heard comments like these: “The U.S. is expected to start another round of peace talks with Iran this week, President Donald Trump said Sunday, just one day after nixing an Iranian proposal aimed at ending the months-long conflict.” [Summarized from an MS NOW report.]

  19. says

    New York Times:

    The Trump administration will move on Monday to sharply scale back fuel-efficiency rules for new cars and light trucks, gutting one of the government’s most significant efforts to reduce gasoline consumption and speed the country’s shift to electric vehicles.

  20. says

    Roll Call:

    A pair of Democratic lawmakers is calling for hearings after the Navy disclosed that there were eight suicide attempts during the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group’s record-long time at sea.

    “That this administration can find endless taxpayer dollars for bombs, ballrooms, and billionaires, but cannot take care of our service members, is completely unacceptable,” Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in a statement Friday. “The American people need hearings, accountability and a clear plan to protect our service members and prioritize American families.”

    Gillibrand was joined in her call for hearings by Rep. Brad Schneider, D-Ill., who represents the area that includes Naval Station Great Lakes where Navy recruits receive basic training.

    […] The aircraft carrier Lincoln spent a record-breaking 286 days at sea without a port visit after being deployed to waters off Venezuela to support operations there before it was redirected to the Middle East to support the war against Iran.

    In August, military news outlets Military Times and Stars and Stripes reported on concerns from family members of those on the carrier that the grueling deployment was causing mental health crises for the sailors, including at least two who tried to jump overboard. The ship reportedly faced food and water shortages and disrupted communications with family, among other hardships. […]

    Link

    More details at the link.

  21. says

    The Supreme Court on Tuesday cleared the way for the Trump administration to continue deporting people to countries where they have no ties and where they may face violence without even guaranteeing them a chance to contest the removal.

    Over the dissent of the three liberal justices, the Court stayed a lower court decision […]

    The order was unsigned, and also added the case to the Court’s docket, fasttracking it to be argued in December. [!] It came at the administration’s behest, and very quickly — just four days after Solicitor General John Sauer asked the court to pause the lower court order.

    […] The Justice Department claims that it’s already sent over 25,000 people to countries including Honduras, Equatorial Guinea and Liberia.

    […] Earlier this month, the First Circuit Court of Appeals mostly upheld Murphy’s [District Judge Brian Murphy’s] final order, that immigrants must be given a chance to challenge their deportations on the grounds of fear of persecution or torture. The Supreme Court has now stayed that order, letting the Trump administration continue the practice at least until the case is decided on the merits.

    “The record shows that class members removed without meaningful notice or an opportunity to present country-specific protection claims have faced prolonged and arbitrary detention, beatings and sexual assault, disappearance, and chain refoulement to countries from which the United States had already granted them protection,” wrote the lawyers for four immigrants under removal orders in their request for the Supreme Court to deny the stay. “These harms cannot be undone.” [Serious]

    If the Supreme Court had denied the stay, it wouldn’t even have ended the third-country deportations; it just would have afforded these immigrants the slightest measure of due process. Even that, it seems, was too much.

    Link

  22. says

    ‘A Massive Power Grab’: White House Proposal Threatens Funding That Helps Disabled Americans Vote

    This story was originally published by ProPublica.

    Without Amy Miller, some elderly and disabled people wouldn’t be able to vote.

    […] Last month, she helped a veteran with a traumatic brain injury fill out change-of-address paperwork so he could vote in the upcoming midterm elections. “He 100% knew who he wanted to vote for,” Miller said, but he struggled to write with a pen.

    Congress funds her organization’s efforts to ensure that even people who might not have access to the internet or transportation have the opportunity to participate in elections.

    Now a White House proposal threatens that work.

    The White House Office of Management and Budget wants to change spending rules to prohibit anyone from using federal grant money for voter registration drives or what it vaguely calls “related activities.” The office is headed by Russell Vought, who has long criticized the use of taxpayer money for voter registration efforts and who more recently used his position to cancel, freeze or redirect vast amounts of federal funding in defiance of Congress’ orders. [Russell Vought is a villain.]

    […] The proposal is part of the Trump administration’s broader assault on federal efforts to expand access to voting, especially among groups that have historically faced discrimination and disenfranchisement.

    President Donald Trump has championed the SAVE America Act, a bill that would require people to provide documents proving their citizenship when registering to vote, and that may require everyone to deliver that proof in person, which would effectively end voter registration drives.

    [I snipped other examples.]

    […] Neither Vought nor his office responded to ProPublica’s questions about the proposed change. But in a letter sent to state officials in 2022, he condemned Biden’s executive order as a “power grab” that would “increase voter registration and turnout, especially among Democratic Party supporters.”

    Vought’s proposed change, which wouldn’t go into effect until after the 2026 midterms, could have ramifications for the next presidential election well beyond voting accessibility.

    Nonprofits that receive government funds to help people sign up for Medicaid benefits, food stamps or other programs subject to the National Voter Registration Act are required to provide registration forms and help people fill them out. Like Disability Rights Nebraska, these groups would be caught between contradictory federal directives if the proposed ban is finalized.

    […] The Help America Vote Act, signed by Bush [in 2002], created grants to assist people with disabilities in registering to vote, casting their ballots and accessing polling places. That funding continues to this day. In recent years, Congress has budgeted $10 million a year, which is spread among 57 nonprofit groups that together cover every state as well as Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico, Native American communities and U.S. territories.

    […] During the 2024 election, 3.6% of registered voters with disabilities reported difficulties with registering, compared to 1.4% of registered voters without disabilities […]

  24. says

    https://www.wonkette.com/p/ready-to-vote-tabs-tues-sept-29-2026

    Oh hey, just checking. Y’all like to vote? OK, well this is a good time to double-check and make sure everything is cool with your registration and your voting plans, and then if there’s anybody you know who needs a nudge, this is the time. Check your state’s regulations, find out when deadlines are, help anybody who might be confused because of redistricting, whatever. It’s getting close to The Time!

    OK, some stories, but not many, because we gotta go to a thing where we are helping voters. […]

    Ummmm, speaking of voting, would you look at these Florida polls? [Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire]

    Sounds like shit has gone hilariously bad with the DOJ’s “investigate the investigators” conspiracy theory against Dear Leader probe down in Florida, the one that’s being overseen by braindead Trump judge Aileen Cannon. You know, where they’re going to figure out who did the Russia Hoax and the Documents Hoax to Donald Trump! It’s Daily Mail but apparently seven or more people just suddenly got up and quit that office yesterday. Imagine we’ll be hearing more on this one very soon. [Daily Mail] [social media post]

    Senator Roger Marshall (R-Asshole Kansas Doctor) is VERY MAD GRR about an ad his opponent Adam Hamilton is running about the way he reportedly would treat his patients who dared to go into debt. VERY MAD GRR! Cease and desist! Cease and desist! That’s a great way to make sure nobody else watches it. [Kansas Reflector / watch the ad here]

    Cannot stop laughing. Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders made a campaign ad about “welfare to work” or some shit like that, and MAGA is looosing it, because the star of the ad was a white guy, as opposed to the usual Black woman they’d like to see when they talk about welfare, because of how they’re racists who hate women. This is the ultimate betrayal, for lazy white MAGA loser racist men. [JoeMyGod]

    Sure, that story about the Massachusetts lesbian bar mask debacle is very very Portlandia, but if you want something even more ridiculous to make fun of, here is Megan McArdle explaining why the Massachusetts lesbian bar mask debacle means that the “Great Awokening” is over. She begins: “For years, the first thing I did upon awakening was check Twitter to see if I had been canceled. After a quick name search to ensure that there was only the usual amount of frothing denunciation, I could get on with my day.” OK, lunatic. [Washington Post gift link]

    Speaking of lunatics:

    Trump said “Income.” [social media post and video]

    He also denies that he offered to sell weapons to Xi Jinping, which leads us to believe in our original theory, namely that he was just babbling and trying to look cool in front of the big dictator man and has no goddamned idea what’s coming out of his mouth at any given time. [The Hill]

    Still speaking of Trump, y’all hear the one about how he wanted to executive decree that all ballots must be sent by certified mail? [ProPublica]

    We may have posted this video in tabs before, but that’s fine, you’re getting it again. We personally did not like Chappell Roan all that much when she first hit the scene, but then this song came out where she somehow flawlessly channeled The Sundays and the Cocteau Twins both simultaneously during the latter half, and we were like OK fine. [Chappell Roan video]

  25. Reginald Selkirk says

    @19 “sharply scale back fuel-efficiency rules”

    At a time when gasoline and diesel prices are very high.

  26. Reginald Selkirk says

    @13

    But they failed. Schmitt flubbing the difference between the Iowa Hawkeyes and the Atlanta Hawks stood out as uniquely humiliating, but he was just one of several GOP members who clearly failed to do their homework ahead of the high-profile hearing they demanded.

    Hawks? Hawkeyes? Schmitt in probing Smith mistakes basketball mascots

    Schmitt accused Smith of perjuring himself during a Senate hearing after repeatedly prodding him about whether he’d attended an NBA game in Atlanta on the evening of Feb. 3, 2024. The hometown Hawks were playing the Golden State Warriors.

    Schmitt appeared to be trying to set Smith in Atlanta at the time Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis was facing scrutiny for her romantic relationship with Nathan Wade, the special state prosecutor she hired for the county’s election-interference case against Trump.

    “So your testimony today is that you did not go to a Hawks game on Feb. 3, 2024. Is that correct?” Schmitt asks sharply. “What would you say if I had a series of text messages from your team that said you were in Atlanta at a Warriors-Hawks game on Feb. 2, 2024?”

    Smith said he didn’t think he had visited Atlanta as special prosecutor, and was even more certain he hadn’t attended an Atlanta Hawks game.

    He did, however, recall attending a University of Iowa women’s game at the University of Maryland on Feb. 3, 2024, recalling the game as one where then-Iowa star Caitlin Clark was playing.

    “Could it then be that the University of Iowa was the Hawkeyes?” Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota interjected. “Perhaps you should have looked at it more carefully.”

    Rube

  29. Reginald Selkirk says

    Trump’s New America.gov Chatbot Seems to Drop Acid When You Tell It to Play Minecraft

    …
    That might be your instinctive reaction to what happens when you tell the official chatbot of the United States of America to “play minecraft.” To say it “glitches out” would be an understatement. It seems to fully enter “bad trip” mode.

    While seemingly incoherent and hallucinatory, the text is a riff on the end poem for Minecraft, originally written by the Irish poet Julian Gough and triggered when you reach the closest thing to an “ending” in Minecraft, which isn’t really a linear game. Where the America.gov output says “I see the constituent you mean,” the original poem said “I see the player you mean.” And the riffing just continues like that, with the references and imagery changed so that instead of the poem seeming to narrate the game’s inner voice reacting to a player, it narrates something sort of like the federal government’s inner voice reacting to a “constituent.” …

  30. Reginald Selkirk says

    Projection

    Trump trade adviser says Canada will ‘pay even more dearly’ if ‘you interfere’ in U.S. midterms

    One of U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade advisers is threatening repercussions for Canada if it “interferes” in the upcoming midterm elections — though it’s not clear what he anticipates the country would do to impact the vote.

    Peter Navarro, who has lashed out at Canada in the past, made these latest remarks during a talk at an economic conference in Washington on Tuesday.

    Navarro was speaking generally about the Trump administration’s trade policy when the conversation turned to the ongoing dispute with Canada. He blasted Canadians on “K Street” — an area in Washington known as a hub for lobbyists — telling them to “get the hell out of our country.”

    “The problem you have is you lobby this country and you’ve been successful in the past and you think you can keep doing that,” Navarro said of Canada’s approach.

    “Memo to Canada: You cannot do that. That game is up and if you interfere in our elections in Maine or Michigan you will pay even more dearly.” …

  32. StevoR says

    New Greens party leaders in Australia -where we can vote for the best ideal candidates and NOT end up with the very worst winning instead because of preferential voting here :

    David Shoebridge has been announced as the new leader of the Greens, with Steph Hodgins-May as deputy.

    Senator Shoebridge, from NSW, emerged as the victor in a three-way contest with former deputy Mehreen Faruqi and Sarah Hanson-Young, the manager of Greens business in the Senate.

    The decision was made by the 11-member party room in Sydney today after the shock resignation of Larissa Waters, who on Monday revealed she was stepping aside from the role to deal with chronic kidney disease.

    After a rare leadership ballot for the party, which has in the past decided leaders by consensus, Senator Shoebridge won with seven votes, while Senator Hodgins-May had six votes.

    Senator Shoebridge is the sixth leader in the environment-focused party’s history.

    He said he wanted the Greens to “fill the vacuum that has been left by the Labor Party rushing to the right”.

    Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-09-30/federal-politics-greens-announce-new-leader-david-shoebridge/107211108

  34. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Justin Hendrix (Tech Policy Press):

    Trump issues executive order instructing federal government agencies to “use the terms ‘Super Intelligence’ and ‘SI’ in place of ‘Artificial Intelligence’ and ‘AI’ and to not acknowledge the usage of ‘Artificial Intelligence’ and ‘AI’ in any applicable setting.”

    Plus, the “White House Accord on Super Intelligence: Joint Commitment on Frontier Responsibilities” signed by Trump, Google’s Pichai, Anthropic’s Amodei, Meta’s Zuckerberg, OpenAI’s Brockman, XAI’s Musk, Nvida’s Huang.

    Interesting picture of today’s festivities. [Photo: Trump, elevated at a mic stand in a street, backed by a mostly White group of men behind him and a very White Mike Johnson]

    Commentary

    Jesus this is bleak. Just boilerplate “we, the undersigned CEOs, promise to try really really hard to only make good artificial super intelligences. We’ve got this. We promise.”

    they spelled United States wrong [below Trump’s signature: President of the Unites States].

    We’re approaching Saparmurat Niyazov territory (a dictator who renamed days of the week).

    So SI units are finally coming to the US. But not like that.

    “SI” means “suicidal ideation” in medical speak, including at VA (where suicide prevention is a major priority.) I’m sure that everyone at VA can’t wait to get emails about how we promote SI and are focused on the benefits of SI.

    Jensen Huang appears to be the only tech CEO who is capable of writing his own name.

    He’s forcing every Executive Branch official to look like a complete moron. Imagine a US official discussing AI with counterparts from another nation—or even with OpenAI or Anthropic—and being required “not to acknowledge the usage of ‘Artificial Intelligence’ and ‘AI.'”

    In Star Trek TNG, there’s an episode [Parallels] where loads of Enterprise Ds appear from parallel universes. There’s one ship that’s all fucked up […] and that version’s Riker is screaming “We won’t go back!!” And I feel like that’s our universe.

    Matt Ford (The New Republic):

    Ezra Klein asked Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang about AI making kids worse at math and reading. Huang’s reply: “Does it matter?”

    Then he said he doesn’t know his own address or phone number. “We’re going to lose some fine intellectual dexterity.” [Screenshots]

    Rando: “My first response to Jensen […] was that he’s lying, just trying to push his point. But he’s a billionaire. He genuinely might not know it. He doesn’t have to. Other people handle it for him.”

  35. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    MotherJones – Germany is building a digital Noah’s ark for US climate data

    these new racks will […] store backup versions of climate simulations from the other side of the Atlantic. The operation aims to ensure that essential work performed by US scientists for the next major U.N. climate assessment, due in 2029, cannot be meddled with or compromised by the administration of President Trump, which has slashed funding for climate research, buried scientific reports, removed references to human-caused warming from dozens of government websites, and sought to prevent satellites from collecting key climate data.
    […]
    it is not standard procedure […] until recently, the world seemed safe enough that scientists saw no need for offsite backups. […] other initiatives have emerged across various fields. For example, the Senckenberg Natural History Museum, in Frankfurt, saves data from wildlife trail cameras in Ukraine and biodiversity data from war-ridden Yemen.

  37. StevoR says

    Scientists have discovered a new planet that defies all expectations. It’s a lava world, but it’s also cold. In fact, it’s the coldest lava world we’ve ever seen with an atmosphere.

    Researchers spotted HD 3167 b, a rocky super-Earth covered in lava, orbiting a star 154 light-years away. This planet orbits so closely to its star that a “year” on the world (one revolution around its star) takes only one Earth day. But it’s not just a lava-covered rock  — it’s the smallest lava world researchers have ever found. And yet, it has managed to hang onto its atmosphere.

    Source : https://www.space.com/astronomy/exoplanets/astronomers-discover-a-cold-lava-planet-that-may-resemble-early-earth

  38. StevoR says

    Meanwhile in space news the SpaceX Starship successfully flew intoorbit and delivered satellites there too t’other day :

    The SpaceX Starship and Super Heavy v3 Booster lift off on its 14th test flight from the SpaceX launch complex in Starbase, Texas, US, September 28, 2026. The mission is expected to send the vehicle into orbit for the first time and deploy 26 Starlink V3 satellites. (Reuters: Steve Nesius)

    Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-09-29/spacex-s-starship-rocket-reaches-orbit-for-first-time/107205898

    Includes 3 mins 15 secs long video.

    Will the people who said it could never succeed and work now apologise and admit they were wrong I wonder?

    Yes, Ihate Musk too but SpaceX do superb rocket science

  39. Reginald Selkirk says

    Israeli officials say diverted flydubai incident may be attempted ‘terror attack’

    The co-pilot of a flight ​from Dubai to Tel Aviv is believed to have stabbed the captain in a possible attempted “terror attack” on Wednesday, forcing the plane to divert to Saudi Arabia where it landed safely, ‌three Israeli officials said.
    They said the cabin crew entered the cockpit and took control of flydubai flight FZ1073 from the United Arab Emirates to Israel, which diverted to Saudi Arabia as it flew over Jordanian airspace. One of the officials identified the attacker as an Omani national…

  41. StevoR says

    Wait they were still there? Hmm.. actuially, yeah, I do recall reading about USA bases in Iraq being attacked by Iran earlier so, okay.

    Also why do the Kurds always end up copping it in the neck?

    The US military has completed the withdrawal of its troops from Iraq, ending a 12-year mission to fight the Islamic State group.

    The last troops have left the last air base where they had been maintaining a presence in northern Iraq under an agreement between Baghdad and Washington, the military announced on Wednesday.

    Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said in a statement that US troops and equipment had completed an “orderly departure” from the air base in Irbil, in northern Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region.

    … (Snip)..

    Officials in Iraq’s Kurdish region have expressed anxiety about the departure and particularly about the removal of US air defence systems.

    The Kurdish regional government’s Peshmerga Ministry said the Kurdish region had faced more than 1,000 drone and ballistic-missile attacks during the recent US-Iran conflict.

    “The departure of the United States from the Kurdistan Region under these complex regional circumstances, without the provision of a defense system, is a matter of concern,” the statement said.

    Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-09-30/us-military-completes-iraq-withdrawal/107214128

  42. StevoR says

    A Utah man will be released on bail after spending decades on death row, following newly analysed DNA evidence from a murder he was convicted of in 1985.

    Douglas Stewart Carter was sentenced to death that same year after a jury found him guilty of murdering Eva Olesen, the aunt of the police chief at the time in Provo, where she was killed.

    No physical evidence linked him to the crime scene, but Carter was convicted partly based on a signed confession he says was coerced.Two witnesses at his original trial also later said they had been bribed by police and threatened with deportation if they did not implicate him.

    Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-09-29/utah-man-released-on-bail-after-40-years-on-death-row/107206618

  43. StevoR says

    Newly formig twin exoplanets found :

    The image shows clear evidence of how forming planets interact with their prenatal cocoon. Visible is a channel created in the protoplanetary disk by WISPIT 2b, a gas giant that already has a mass five times that of Jupiter, as it orbits its parent star, collecting material to facilitate its further growth.

    WISPIT 2c is a little behind its sibling in terms of development, but it is still making its mark in its protoplanetary disk home.

    “We clearly see both planets shaping their environment. WISPIT 2c has carved a cavity, and WISPIT 2b a gap,” team member Myriam Benisty of the Planet Formation and Exoplanets (PFE) department at the Max Planck Institute in Germany, said in a statement. “Around WISPIT 2b, we find swirls of gas that had been predicted by simulations of disk-planet interactions, but never actually seen before. Now there is an image of them!”

    With this new ALMA data, WISPIT 2b has become the only protoplanet for which astronomers can see three important elements of planet formation: the protoplanetary disk, the planet itself, and evidence that the planet is still gathering, or accreting, matter, and, as the final piece of the puzzle, the gas interacting directly with the planet. That adds up to observing planet formation in action.

    Many of these elements have been seen around infant stars before, notably in the system PDS 70, but not in unison.

    .. (Snip)..

    The results are also remarkable because of how far WISPIT 2b is located from its parent star. The planet is accreting matter at a distance of 57 times the distance between Earth and the sun, or almost twice the distance between Neptune and our star. That is an orbit wider than that of almost any other currently known exoplanet.

    Source : https://www.space.com/astronomy/exoplanets/astronomers-have-produced-the-clearest-exoplanet-ultrasound-to-date-and-its-twins

  44. KG says

    Will the people who said it could never succeed and work now apologise and admit they were wrong I wonder? – StevoR@38

    I’ll wait to see how much it is able to deliver to orbit (or further) on a reliable basis. I note that one engine failed on this launch.

  48. says

    Patel boasts about success rate on FBI’s Most Wanted list, but there’s a catch

    “The more the FBI director talks about the bureau’s recent track record, the more allegations arise that he’s padding the statistics.”

    Related video at the link.

    On Tuesday morning, FBI Director Kash Patel used social media to push a familiar boast.

    “This FBI has had historic success manhunting Ten Most Wanted fugitives,” the former podcast personality wrote. “Since the start of the Trump administration, we’ve captured TEN of the Top Ten Most Wanted, 2.5 times the number of TMW [the Ten Most Wanted] fugitives captured during the previous four years combined.”

    Hours later, Patel appeared on Fox News, where Sean Hannity repeated the claim, and the FBI director accepted the host’s congratulatory message. [video]

    To be sure, it’s obviously good news when federal law enforcement personnel take the nation’s most wanted suspects into custody. But as Patel echoes a boast he has made before, there’s a relevant detail that shouldn’t go overlooked.

    MS NOW’s Carol Leonnig and Ken Dilanian reported in May:

    Patel’s FBI has imposed new policies that inflate these numbers and overstate the bureau’s progress in stemming crime, according to a half dozen law enforcement sources with knowledge of the changes. […]

    An MS NOW review of changes in the FBI’s Most Wanted list during Patel’s tenure also found that the FBI manipulated that iconic bureau program to falsely suggest rapid progress; in that time, the bureau quickly added the names of some fugitives just hours or days before agents capture them.

    In other words, the process, at least in some instances, has unfolded like this:

    1. The FBI knows it’s about to apprehend a criminal suspect.

    2. The FBI quickly adds that suspect to the Most Wanted List.

    In one especially striking example, agents apprehended one suspect just one hour and 13 minutes after FBI leadership placed him on the list. [!]

    The bureau denied the accuracy of the reporting at the time, though MS NOW quoted one FBI official who conceded, “They are literally just nominating people they’re about to arrest or that they have solid information on and can arrest. Gone are the days of nominating the worst of the worst and fugitives that we haven’t been able to find.”

    Another former official with the bureau added, “There has always been a bit of gaming of the ‘Top 10,’ but it’s a whole new level under this leadership.”

    None of this came up during Patel’s latest Fox News appearance. But if the director is going to keep using this talking point, it’s a detail worth remembering.

  49. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Rando: “NASA’s big experiment in private space flight is coming back to burn them. Turns out private companies are more interested in their own profits than providing services to NASA.”

    ArsTechnica – NASA has a Dragon dilemma

    For two decades, largely in service to the International Space Station, NASA has sought to foster an “economy” in low-Earth orbit. […] SpaceX has made it clear to NASA that it no longer wishes to fly its Crew Dragon spacecraft, or the Falcon 9 rocket, on missions to low-Earth orbit. The company has agreed to support the International Space Station until 2030. But after that, SpaceX intends to retire the spacecraft.
    […]
    NASA invested $3.1 billion in the development and certification of Crew Dragon as part of the Commercial Crew Program. But SpaceX was only compelled to fly half a dozen missions. It has flown 13 missions for NASA to the space station, and will launch another one in a few days. The company had recently agreed to keep flying through the Crew-17 mission. […] But SpaceX now derives a majority of its revenue from Starlink […] The category of “space enabled solutions,” of which NASA is a fraction, represented approximately 1 percent of what SpaceX views as its “total addressable market.” […] SpaceX wants to focus on launching its own payloads—on the Starship rocket. […] SpaceX has told NASA it is not interested in developing Starship for human launches into Earth orbit
    […]
    Boeing was NASA’s other partner in the Commercial Crew program. The agency has invested $5.1 billion to date in Boeing to develop the Starliner spacecraft. Despite this, Boeing has yet to fly a single operational mission to the space station. […] NASA will invest $359 million more […] Isaacman believes Boeing can meet NASA’s needs, which are something like two seats every six to nine months, to orbit. The real unknown is whether a market beyond NASA—institutional customers from Europe, the Middle East, and beyond, in addition to privately funded astronauts—could exist at Starliner’s prices.
    […]
    SpaceX’s original price per seat for early Dragon flights was approximately $55 million. For more recent missions, the price has increased to $78.8 million. (And if SpaceX were to magically decide to keep flying Dragon longer, the price would only go up). By contrast, the Starliner price to NASA is $90 million per seat […] no one expects prices to go down. […] NASA does have its Orion spacecraft, but the per-seat cost for its missions is likely astronomical ($500 million per seat?), and Orion is needed for lunar missions.

  50. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    StevoR @38: “Will the people who said it could never succeed and work now apologise[?]”

    I’ve been forgetting to check on Lockett. He’s had some posts on Medium recently. Here’s him on the previous Flight 13 and then anticipating Sep 28th’s Flight 14.

    Will Lockett – Was Starship launch 13 a success? (Aug 1)

    I want to separate the authoritarian oligarch from the work, because the actual engineers at SpaceX, the ones tasked with making Musk’s idiotic ideas a reality, pulled off a miracle here, and they deserve praise.
    […]
    Well, this flight successfully deployed 20 functional Starlink V3 satellites […] So, even though they only deployed a third of Starship’s supposed capacity, this is a major step forward for SpaceX actually having a use case for this rocket. […] This was also the first time Starship’s upper stage performed a soft splashdown in the Indian Ocean without exploding. […] it needs to prove it can consistently land safely over the ocean (as part of a soft splashdown) before they attempt a terrestrial landing. This marks a reasonable step towards reaching that critical reusability goal […] Also, because Starship didn’t explode and simply floated in the water, SpaceX was able to source data about its heat shield.
    […]
    But that is where the positives end. […] The Bad […] There is a lot [*snip*]

    * Those satellites burned up 20 mins later because that was a suborbital flight. And the theoretically-reusable booster landed hard and exploded due to engine failures.

    Will Lockett – Starship’s next test flight could be its make-or-break moment (Aug 16)

    Even after three years and 13 test launches, it has yet to demonstrate it can reach orbit, let alone carry a small payload there, be fully reusable, or reach the preposterously low launch costs required to make this entire system viable. All it has done is carry a fraction of its promised payload on suborbital flights and be partially reusable, and even then the success rate hasn’t exactly been great.
    […]
    if Flight 14 does actually reach orbit, deploy satellites, and land the upper stage, then Starship’s actual capacity and potential shortcomings will become dramatically more transparent. There will be nowhere to hide or to sweep uncomfortable issues under the rug. […] It is incredibly hard to increase the payload capacity of a rocket, particularly one using multistage rocket engines that are already pushed to the absolute limit […] But let’s say that somehow, Musk pulls it out of the bag and Starship actually delivers something like 70 tons to LEO, or double the payload of its previous suborbital flight. […] Starship costs some half a billion dollars to build, meaning that 70 tons would be the equivalent of over $7,000 per kg to LEO, making it more than double the cost per kg of Falcon 9. Starship only makes financial sense when both stages are reusable, so we really need to see both stages land for that payload to mean anything.
    [*sniiip*]
    they plan to phase out the wildly successful Falcon 9 for the currently unusable Starship. […] SpaceX only has a few years to turn Starship into a functional and economically viable rocket and then scale its launch capacity […] they can’t afford any more f**k-ups

     
    About how Flight 14 turned out…

    Rando:

    Starship limps up to orbit with an engine failure. Ends flight early with hard landing and explodes. The booster suffers multiple engine failures trying to return. […] They lost the booster and the spaceship. The cost of lifting those satellites is not anywhere close to commercial viability. […] [The satellite payload] was a gimmick, not a success. Until it can be shown to operate reuseably reliably, any commercial demonstrations are just PR.

    ABC news

    SpaceX has ended its mission, calling it a success. […] The company said the spacecraft lost one engine during the ascent to space and was working to determine if it could go into orbit due to the loss of the engine. In an update, however, they said the Starship was in orbit. SpaceX later shared it had decided to end the mission early, taking advantage of its first checkpoint. They said the vehicle would splashdown north of Hawaii about 3 hours into the mission.
    […]
    The mission was expected to last 10 hours, with an estimated six orbits around the Earth […] At the end of the mission, a de-orbit burn using another Raptor engine would help Starship splashdown in the Pacific Ocean, west of Chile. The company said that if the flight ends early because of a technical or mechanical issue, the splashdown location would change.

    Because Starship is not designed to land in cold ocean water, SpaceX said an explosion during splashdown took place, which is not an indication of a problem or an unsuccessful mission.

    BBC live post

    SpaceX usually try to collect the booster and capsules that return to Earth to analyse what happened to them during flight—that may not be possible with the Ship today after it landed so explosively.
    [*scrolling to the next post up*]
    the craft only managed two laps of the Earth—rather than the six that had been planned

  51. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Flight 13: 20 Starlink v3 satellites
    Flight 14: 26 Starlink v3 satellites

    From Locket’s Flight 13 article above:

    The closest estimate we have had for a long time is an announcement a year ago that said V3 Starlink satellites would have a mass of up to two metric tons. But SpaceX’s IPO filing stated that Starship will be able to take 60 satellites to LEO, which, based on a 100-ton payload capacity, puts each satellite at less than 1.6 tons.

  53. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Al Jazeera – Satellite images show Gaza in ruins

    Newly updated Google Maps satellite imagery shows […] neighbourhood after neighbourhood reduced to rubble and little left but the faint outlines of main roads […] Farmland has been charred, and centuries-old places of worship have been damaged or wiped from the landscape. […] the number of destroyed structures across Gaza has increased by 9 percent since a “ceasefire” took effect nearly a year ago. Overall, about 82 percent of structures in Gaza, roughly 200,000 buildings, have been damaged, and about two-thirds of those have been destroyed

  54. JM says

    The Hill: Appeals court backs finding Trump colluded with IRS, Treasury

    An appeals court Tuesday sided with a lower court judge who determined President Trump colluded with the Department of Justice (DOJ) in bringing and later dismissing a case seeking $10 billion in damages from the IRS.
    Florida-based U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams in July found that the lawsuit that served as the hook for the $1.776 billion “anti-weaponization” fund amounted to collusion as the two parties were never truly averse. She also sanctioned two Trump attorneys in the process.

    “The appellants did not submit or offer any evidence to explain their litigation conduct or demonstrate that the lawsuit and the settlement were not collusive. Given the record before us, the appellants have not made a strong showing that the district court committed clear error in its collusion and bad faith findings,” a three-judge panel for the 11th Circuit wrote in its opinion Tuesday.

    Expect further appeals of course but this is a big step. The appeal court notes that Trump, who is doing the appealing with his private lawyers, is barely trying to make a case. He doesn’t provide any evidence, just repeat the claim that Williams ruled against. Trump surely plans to appeal up the Supreme Court and hope they invent a new type of legal protection for the president.

    The judge, who was appointed by former President Obama, has prohibited the Trump administration from referring to the litigation around the case as reaching a settlement. Such matters must often be approved before a judge, and the DOJ created the now-defunct compensation fund outside of the court process.
    “The appellants have not persuaded us to construe the sanction more broadly and have not made a strong showing that they will prevail on their First Amendment challenges,” the appeals court wrote. “They do not cite any authorities suggesting that a speech-related prohibition imposed as a penalty for conduct determined to be sanctionable violates the First Amendment.”

    The appeals court also sided with the judge on the 1st Amendment issue. Trump doesn’t have a good case here either because judge William’s prohibition is very narrow. It only blocks Trump from saying something that would be a blatant lie, Williams finding against Trump/DOJ and the appeals are not settlement negotiations.

  56. Reginald Selkirk says

    Fifth unvaccinated person dies of measles; CDC still not counting all deaths

    A fifth, unvaccinated person has died of measles in Pennsylvania, the state’s health department announced Wednesday.

    The department identified the deceased as a resident of Lancaster County, which is the epicenter of a raging outbreak that began in late April. The updated case count as of Wednesday is 943 across 39 counties, including 119 cases reported in just the last seven days. At least 176 people have been hospitalized.

    Lancaster County has reported 381 cases and three of the five deaths in the outbreak. The previous two deaths were both in infants too young to be vaccinated. That includes a newborn boy and a 6-week-old baby girl. So far, no other information has been released about the county’s third death announced today.
    …
    Prior to these five deaths in Pennsylvania, the state had not reported a measles death in 35 years…

  57. Reginald Selkirk says

    RFK Jr. thinks AI will free us from the “tyranny” of medical facts, expertise

    At a Make America Healthy Again event Tuesday, anti-vaccine Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy opened a “fireside chat” with Vice President JD Vance on the topic of artificial intelligence. While MAHA generally coalesces around things like healthy lifestyles and mistrust of drugmakers, Kennedy quickly turned to extolling the potential of artificial intelligence, surprising Vance, who said he was expecting to discuss “weight loss and acid, not AI.”

    Kennedy boasted that the Trump administration is “making it easy for every American to use AI,” which he claimed would free us from the “medical tyranny” of doctors and health experts. He suggested Americans should start using AI to get second opinions about medical recommendations, saying AI is “better informed than any doctor in the country.” He also suggested that the technology would confirm his misinformation about vaccines and contrarian views on public health guidance.

    “We’re never, ever again going to be able to be dominated by public officials who tell us trust the experts, because every American will be able to check their own medical advice,” Kennedy said…

  58. StevoR says

    Rare Aussie fossil bird find from the Cretaceous :

    An “extremely rare” fossil discovery in outback Queensland has revealed a new species of prehistoric bird that roamed Australia more than 100 million years ago.

    … (Snip)…

    Researchers used the fossilised tarsometatarsus, a fused foot bone found in birds, and tibiotarsus, the longest leg bone, to formally describe a new bird species, Tenuicruris piscanexum, which experts believe lived during the Cretaceous period about 100 million years ago.

    Dr White said the bird likely had teeth and was roughly the size of a scrub turkey, with completed fossils found in China and Germany from the same period used to fill critical gaps in the animal’s appearance.

  61. StevoR says

    @50 -51 . CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain : “I’ve been forgetting to check on Lockett. He’s had some posts on Medium recently. Here’s him on the previous Flight 13 and then anticipating Sep 28th’s Flight 14.”

    Thanks for that and the links.

  62. Reginald Selkirk says

    The Future of War Is These Four Jerks, Apparently

    … During a Wednesday speech to assembled troops at Quantico, Virginia, CNN reported, Secretary of War (née Defense) Pete Hegseth announced plans for a new combatant command titled the Autonomous Warfare Command. That’s the same tier of military organization as STRATCOM or Cyber Command, and comes with its own four-star commander. The Pentagon simultaneously issued an announcement that it would be forming Project Meridian, which has 120 days to study the future of warfare “from subterranean depths to the cislunar frontier.”

    We’ll skip the fact that the military currently does not fight in either of those places, and probably won’t any time soon unless something with the Earth’s surface goes horribly wrong. The Project Meridian co-directors recruited by Hegseth are Tesla/SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, Anduril Industries co-founder Palmer Luckey, and former GOP Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich…

    With the exception of Hegseth, none of these people have ever served in the military or commanded troops—Hegseth’s highest command was an infantry platoon, and he left the National Guard as a major…

  63. JM says

    Politico: Alito bows out of blockbuster Supreme Court climate case

    Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito is stepping back from a major climate argument just a week before the court is scheduled to take up the case.
    Alito had faced calls to recuse himself from Suncor v. Boulder over his financial interests in energy companies. A Monday letter from Scott Harris, clerk of the court, informed the parties that Alito “has determined that he will not continue to participate in this case.” The notice did not further explain his decision to sit out arguments Oct. 5, the first day of the court’s new term.

    Slipped through while we changed threads. Alito had been hearing calls to step back from this case for some time because he is invested in oil companies. He is not invested in the two in this case but the ruling will effect many cases around the country and some of those will effect his investments. He had been rejecting those calls so his recusing himself just before hearing the case is odd. It may be a bit of ethics, it could be that he plans to buy more and that would turn it into a big conflict.
    This sort of case is a good example of why Supreme Court justices should only be invested in blind trusts. Many of the rulings of the Supreme Court have too many ripple effects.

  64. Reginald Selkirk says

    California bans child marriage, a practice still legal in 32 US states

    California has officially banned child marriage, with Governor Gavin Newsom signing legislation to end the practice that is still legal in 32 US states.

    The new law, which will come into effect on 1 January, states people must be 18 to get married in the Golden State.

    Newsom called it a “long overdue measure to protect young Californians and minors”. He signed the bill into law with Courtney Stodden whose parents allowed her to marry a 50-year-old Hollywood actor when she was just 16…

  65. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Reginald Selkirk @62 beat me to it.
    Aaron Rupar:

    Hegseth: “[…] We are no longer the woke department or the weak department. Simple translation of that—no fatties no tr*nnies no beardos no weirdos no wimps no radicals. Just warriors.” [Video clip]

    Commentary

    Giving a speech in front of a giant American flag like he’s Patton, but all he knows about Patton is that single monologue in the 1970 film “Patton.”

    The defense secretary yet again uses a slur about troops forced out of the military (and who are suing over discrimination).

    He comes *so* close to throwing in the n-word and the f-word.

    This guy had a makeup room installed at the pentagon.

    Gillian Brockell (The American Prospect, married into Sikh family):

    Servicemember beard exemptions are all on religious or medical grounds. They’re either Sikhs (mostly South Asian) or have a skin condition related to shaving curly hair (mostly African American). “No beardos” is racist as hell.

    “No beardos, just warriors” says chucklefuck trying to expel bearded dudes called by God to be warriors. What do you think these are, my guy? [Khanda Sikh symbol] They aren’t butter knives! My son’s name literally means warrior.

     
    Rando: “This is good coffee. Now let me take a big sip…”

    Aaron Rupar:

    Hegseth: “Project Meridian will be co-led by three of our nation’s best minds: Elon Musk, Palmer Luckey, and Newt Gingrich.” [Video clip]

    Commentary

    Worst game of fuck marry kill ever.

    Bruh, you literally JUST SAID “no fatties” and “no weirdos”.

    just named a guy who looks like he has a goat tail glued to his chin.

    [Palmer Luckey is] Head of [Silicon Valley] weapons manufacturing firm Anduril, another descendant of Thiel.

    [Video clip: Palmer Lucky saying, “you’re supposed to be having kids when you’re 16, 17, 18”]

    Luckey’s sister, Ginger Luckey, is married to former U.S. representative Matt Gaetz.

    Newt Gingrich is 83!

    Ah yes, you may remember Newt Gingrich, bastion of “Christian values”. Had affairs on all of his wives. Left the first one while she battled cancer, the second with MS. And they had to sue him for child support. And had the gall to call out Clinton. Nevermind, he fits right in.

    Last November, Tesla shareholders approved a $1 trillion pay package “designed to keep Elon’s time, energy and considerable talents focused on Tesla for years to come.” So he’s… busy?

    Can we just all grasp that the richest person ever to live, a serial fraudster, a pathological liar, an admitted drug addict, who is hated by his children, and he says empathy is bad, is now getting his hands on part of the military?

    One month until midterms one month until midterms one month until midterms one month until midterms.

  66. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    TechCrunch – Hackers stole 3.1 million US military personnel records during months-long data breach

    several unauthorized users exploited a security vulnerability in an unspecified file-sharing system […] including Social Security numbers, alongside a person’s name, date of birth, sex, race, and other information about their military service. The notice says that the personnel records were unencrypted. […] The DMDC maintains over 60 million records for U.S. military and civilian staff and their family members to help determine benefits [and] links active service members, employees, and contractors to credentials […] to access Pentagon computer systems, buildings, and bases.
    […]
    following a recent breach at the FBI earlier in September attributed to the ShinyHunters hacking group. […] billed as a “counterintelligence disaster” amid the risks that a foreign government could obtain and use the information to profile, target, or coerce federal workers into handing over sensitive information. The ShinyHunters hackers have said that they will not publicly release the stolen FBI data.

    [Both were reminiscent of China’s 2015 theft of 22m records from the Office of Personnel Management.]

    * Reginald Selkirk previously shared coverage of the ShinyHunters FBI hack.

  68. StevoR says

    PBS Newshour interviews Hakeem Jeffries :

    The latest polling shows Democrats with a solid shot of regaining control of the House of Representatives in the midterm elections. If they do, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries could become Speaker of the House, with debates over the economy, government spending, and President Trump’s agenda all unfolding. Jeffries joined Geoff Bennett to discuss those issues.

    Source : https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/affordability-and-accountability-top-priorities-if-democrats-take-house-jeffries-says

  69. Militant Agnostic says

    This airline pilot explains why this was probably not a suicide attempt, but was an attempt to take control of the aircraft. The speed reached during the dive was so high that most of the rudder was torn off. This is not a major catastrophe because differential thrust from the engines can be used for yaw control. The door was probably opened by the wounded Captain. Two pilots who were riding in the plane (it is very common for company pilots to be “dead heading” in the passenger compartment) and two flight attendants entered the cockpit and got the situation under control.

    The linked video does not contain any graphic images from inside the plane.

  71. Reginald Selkirk says

    Tennessee death-row prisoner Christa Pike survives lethal injections

    Christa Pike, convicted of murdering a classmate three decades ago, has survived Tennessee’s effort to execute her ⁠by means of lethal injection, prison officials said.

    Her lawyers said late on Wednesday that she had been taken away from the prison in an ambulance and was being treated at a hospital, but they said they had not been told about her condition.

    Officials gave Pike two doses of pentobarbital, her lawyers said in court filings.

    Journalists who witnessed the attempted execution described snoring, ⁠loud exhales, gasps and complaints from Pike about pain, as well as her kicking her feet so often that she knocked off the sheets laid over her, according to NBC News…

  72. Reginald Selkirk says

    @69

    This airline pilot explains why this was probably not a suicide attempt…

    Because he stabbed someone else, and not himself‽ Doesn’t seem like a hard question.

  74. JM says

    Mediate: Trump Threatens to Sue Federal Reserve Board Member Jerome Powell ‘at the Highest Level’ in Response to Fed Renovation Report

    President Donald Trump insisted Jerome Powell, a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, “should be sued at the highest level” by the U.S. government following the release of a report by the Inspector General Wednesday.
    Trump launched into a lengthy screed against Powell that he shared via Truth Social.
    The president wrote:

    The Inspector General’s Report just came out on Jerome ‘Too Late’ Powell’s ‘renovation’ of the Federal Reserve Headquarters in Washington, D.C. The IG’s Report states that there were ‘deficiencies in the management of the renovation project.’ The Building is over budget, at a Record Setting rate and, at a minimum, ‘Too Late’ Powell should be forced to resign from the Board. He can’t manage a Building, and he certainly shouldn’t be allowed to manage his High Interest Rate Policy (only on ‘TRUMP!’).

    Powell is no longer head of Fed but he managed the renovation project for years. Trump may be trying to make a point to the current head of the Fed, Trump may want Powell out entirely so he can stack the committee further or Powell may just still be on Trump’s dump list.
    There is something funny about Trump complaining that an over budget project is grounds to remove somebody.

    The inspector general cited failures in oversight that “contributed to major cost overruns in the central bank’s headquarters renovation,” but crucially “found no grounds for a criminal referral,” CNBC reported Wednesday.

    That isn’t stopping Trump, who has referred this to Blance for possible criminal prosecution.

  75. Alverant says

    @10 You know what I mean. I was weighed Monday and I was 15lbs lighter than the previous time I was weighed.
    Also, they now think my prostrate is infected and there was a round of layoffs at work. Those of us still employed have to face a 3% pay cut starting next year. (Better a 3% cut than 100% cut.)

  76. JM says

    AP News: DC judge permanently dismisses case charging ex-Olympian with vandalizing Reflecting Pool

    A judge in the nation’s capital agreed on Thursday to permanently dismiss a criminal case charging a former Olympian with vandalizing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, a move that could prevent federal prosecutors from reviving the case under political pressure from President Donald Trump.
    D.C. Superior Court Judge Todd Edelman ordered the dismissal of David Hearn’s case with “prejudice,” which would block U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s office from refiling the felony charge against him. The judge ruled nearly a month after hearing attorneys’ arguments.

    Trump and the DOJ have continued to talk about this case despite the DOJ having to admit they had no evidence at all against Hearn and the issues with the Reflecting Pool came from botched contracting work. The judge agreed with Hearn to spike the case so it can not be brought again.

  77. JM says

    The Hill: 7 takeaways from Hegseth’s address to officers: Warfare’s future, faith and a new base

    Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth made a flurry of announcements during a wide-ranging speech to active-duty officers Wednesday.
    At the beginning of the address, the Pentagon chief stuck to his bread and butter: culture-war grievances, stripping the “woke” out of the Department of Defense (DOD), bashing the news media for its coverage of the Iran war, and proclaiming the “warrior ethos” has been revived and the U.S. military has been “rebuilt.”

    Hegseth announced the formation of a new four-star combatant command focused on developing autonomous warfare like drones and defense robotics.

    Potentially sensible depending on how it is run. The risk here is that it will be run like an independent command with it’s own forces when a lot of what it should be doing is working with existing forces.

    Hegseth revealed that SpaceXAI CEO Elon Musk, Anduril co-founder Palmer Luckey and former Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) will lead a new Pentagon effort to study the future of warfare, dubbed Project Meridian.

    The idea of getting outside information is good but the people involved here suggest it’s to insure that money gets directed to the right big contractors.

    States invited to bid for ‘next great American’ base

    That Hegseth is asking all states means he is looking for money to flow to him and Trump. If there was actually a coherent plan there would be a more limited range of states, such as ones with coast, low density flat states, large land area near a major city or something depending on what the goal of the base is.

    ‘Fortress America’ takes bases off civilian grid

    Pretentious name but Hegseth may not be responsible for that, it’s typical of major Pentagon proposals. Parts of the plan is to insure that military bases don’t depend on civilian infrastructure. In the modern age of drone and infiltration attacks this makes sense. Other parts about building up key US industries may make sense but shouldn’t be under Pentagon control.

    New non-Ivy League partnerships for cadets

    There is some sense in the plan but the list is rigged for Christian religious bias. Liberty University made the list and that shows they are not interested in quality of school at all. There is also the problem that the US doesn’t by any means have a shortage of cadets.

    Creates Office of Religious Affairs

    This is really Hegseth creating a private channel of communication between him and chaplains. Part of the goal is to make more money available for religious services. Hegseth dumps on secular humanism but is careful not be explicitly Christian here.

    Hegseth defends officer cuts

    Hegseth says nothing except he plans to shake up the command. He is careful to not say what or why. In reality this is a purge, biased towards remove of non-White and women officers and filling the ranks with yes men.

  78. Reginald Selkirk says

    Renee Good’s family sues US government and immigration officials over her killing in Minneapolis

    Renee Good’s family sued the U.S. government and several immigration officials Thursday, alleging wrongful death, conspiracy and other violations in the 37-year-old woman’s killing by an immigration officer during a federal crackdown in Minneapolis.

    The two lawsuits were filed by Good’s partner, Becca Good, and Renee’s brother Brent Ganger.
    …
    The lawsuit against the United States of America seeks damages for Good’s wrongful death and “the immense suffering Renee endured in the final moments of her life and for the profound and permanent losses that her death has inflicted upon her family,” according to a news release by lawyers for Ganger and Good.

    The lawsuit, which seeks a bench trial, also alleges “intentional infliction of emotional distress and negligent infliction of emotional distress” on Becca Good.
    …
    The other lawsuit alleges a conspiracy to interfere with civil rights and seeks a jury trial. It says the federal government moved to hide the evidence of what actually happened on Jan. 7.

    The lawsuit says the shots fired by Jonathan Ross, the immigration officer who killed Good, “were the predictable and intended product of the operation.”
    …

  79. says

    The White House’s taxpayer-financed election ads were shaped by Trump personally

    Related video at the link.

    It’s tempting to think Donald Trump would have plenty on his plate right now, but The Wall Street Journal reported (and MS NOW confirmed) that the president recently took time out of his schedule to personally oversee the creation of three propagandistic campaign ads, which are being financed entirely by American taxpayers and which appear to ignore federal law prohibiting the use of public funds for “propaganda purposes.”

    In light of the fact that ethics lawyers have used phrases such as “impeachable offense” when discussing the burgeoning scandal, it’s notable that Trump won’t be able to simply blame overzealous aides for this obvious and legally dubious misuse of public money.

    With this in mind, a reporter asked Trump at an unrelated White House event on Wednesday why American taxpayers should foot the bill for his campaign ads ahead of the midterm elections. [social media post, with video]

    “Well, I’m not running for office, first of all, and so, the ads are, you know, given by me, but I’m not running for office,” the president replied, adding, “I’m not promoting myself because I’m not running for office.”

    The idea that the commercials, which have run on MS NOW, aren’t promoting Trump is obviously bonkers. All three of the ads are clearly intended to glorify the president, and one of them was literally a Trump campaign ad two years ago.

    The underlying shell game isn’t exactly sophisticated: An incumbent president, fearing voter backlash and desperate to boost enthusiasm among his MAGA base, is using taxpayer money for propagandistic campaign ads as the early voting window opens — all while telling the electorate to “pretend” that his name isn’t on 2026 ballots.

    Trump may not literally be “running for office” this year, but that doesn’t magically make the abuse any less outrageous. (Even several congressional Republicans have conceded the White House went too far on this one.)

    Congressional Democrats appear unlikely to let this go. Politico reported:

    Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, who is poised to lead the panel if Democrats win the majority in November, joined California Democratic Rep. George Whitesides in sending a letter to the Government Accountability Office and the Office of Special Counsel. It asks the GAO to investigate the “source, accounts, and total amount of taxpayer funds used by the Executive Office of the President to produce and distribute this advertisement across major television markets and official White House social media channels.”

    The lawmakers also asked the Office of Special Counsel to investigate whether the ads “paid for by millions of dollars of taxpayer funds, constitute a violation of the Hatch Act, and determine who should be held accountable.”

    “These ads constitute an illegal use of taxpayer funds, perhaps best demonstrated by the fact that they are virtually identical to the ones Donald Trump used during his 2024 presidential campaign, and in fact use the same footage and the same inept ideological messaging,” Raskin and Whitesides contended.

    On the other end of Capitol Hill, Sens. Patty Murray of Washington and Chris Murphy of Connecticut — the top Democrats on the Senate Appropriations Committee and the Homeland Security Committee’s appropriations subcommittee, respectively — wrote to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin regarding reports that the agency has redirected $20 million in funding originally intended for Customs and Border Protection to “bankroll the obscene political ads.”

    To date, the price tag for these campaign ads is nearing at least $2.5 million, which is coming from money the Republicans’ domestic policy megabill had directed to Customs and Border Protection. The problem might very well get worse before it gets better: The Associated Press reported that the Department of Homeland Security has “tapped $20 million” to pay for the campaign ads, and the administration has given every indication that the abuse of taxpayer money will intensify as Election Day draws closer. [FFS, that’s even worse!]

  80. says

    Trump says he regrets appointing Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett

    Asked specifically if he wants from his Supreme Court nominees, the president replied, “I do like loyalty, yeah.”

    Donald Trump’s tantrum in February after the Supreme Court rejected his tariffs policy was extreme, even by his standards. The president not only condemned the six-member majority as “a disgrace to our nation,” but he also insisted that the justices who dared to rule in a way he didn’t like were “very unpatriotic and disloyal to our Constitution.”

    Asked then whether he regretted nominating Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Gorsuch, Trump didn’t answer the question directly, though he said he considers their role in the ruling “an embarrassment to their families.”

    In his latest Time magazine interview, the president was even more direct on the subject. From the article:

    Yet with so much at stake — for the country and the world, for his party and his own power — Trump can seem curiously preoccupied. During a 75-minute Oval Office interview with TIME, he was discursive and grievance-fueled, veering from the crises of his presidency to resentments old and emerging. He said he regretted appointing Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, after they ruled against him on tariffs, mail ballots, and birthright citizenship. “I gave them the position of a lifetime,” he said, “and they voted against me often.”

    The transcript of the interview added remarkable details. Asked specifically if he regretted nominating Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett, Trump said he did — and then he kept going.

    “The Democrats stick like glue — those three, they virtually never vary,” the president said, referring to Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson. “You can come up with the worst thing in the world and they’ll vote as a group. And while I don’t like it, there’s something I admire about it: There’s loyalty. So they have loyalty to Barack Hussein Obama. They have loyalty to Biden, even though Biden doesn’t even know who the hell they are. He wouldn’t know. He doesn’t even know what the Supreme Court is.”

    The petty and unhinged whining didn’t stop there. After an additional harangue about the birthright citizenship and tariff rulings — which really weren’t close calls, and which legal experts of every ideological stripe expected him to lose — Time asked, “You mentioned the word loyalty a moment ago. Is that what you want from your Supreme Court picks?”

    The president replied, “I do like loyalty, yeah.”

    To be sure, the rhetoric was not altogether surprising. As recently as April, Trump declared by way of his social media platform that “certain” conservative justices on the court have “gone weak, stupid, and bad.” A month later, on Mother’s Day, Trump broke new ground, publishing a 544-word screed in which he said Gorsuch and Barrett “have hurt our Country so badly!” He added, “[I]t’s really OK for them to be loyal to the person that appointed them.”

    The problem with these rants isn’t just the impropriety or errors of fact and judgment. Collectively, what they also offer is a reminder that Trump still doesn’t understand how the government works in the United States.

    […] Trump seems utterly baffled by the idea that he could appoint Supreme Court justices who, in turn, sometimes evaluates cases on the merits, which is, the last time I checked, their literal job. In other words, the president keeps publicly complaining not about justices being corrupt, but about justices not being corrupt enough to make him happy. [Yes, that is unfortunately true.]

    It’s tempting to think Trump would keep these attitudes private, perhaps limiting his complaints to close allies behind closed doors, but he instead keeps sharing them publicly, as if it were normal for a president to make these ridiculous complaints.

    It’s not.

  81. says

    Thursday’s Campaign Round-Up, 10.1.26: Paxton’s jet-setting lifestyle draws new scrutiny

    In Texas’ closely watched U.S. Senate race, Republican state Attorney General Ken Paxton has already faced difficult questions about the wealth he has accumulated while in office, including his ownership of at least 15 homes. A new report from The Associated Press makes matters considerably worse.

    The report noted that when Paxton launched his Senate bid last year, he skipped the usual launch event in his home state, instead announcing his intentions during a Fox News appearance. At that point, the AP reported, he “cleared his calendar and booked a hotel in Augusta, Georgia, during the storied Masters golf tournament, a trip that cost Texas taxpayers at least $25,000.”

    This was not especially unusual for him. From the article:

    Since assuming office in 2015, Paxton left about 730 workdays blank on his official calendars and took over 275 out-of-state trips to places such as the California wine country, Caribbean resorts and European tourism hot spots. The travel cost Texas taxpayers a minimum of $1.9 million to cover expenses charged by his security detail, records show. […]

    “There is clearly a pattern of behavior here that may make some voters question how seriously Ken Paxton has taken the job,” said Joshua Blank, the director of research for the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin.

  82. says

    Followup to comments 62, 65 and 77

    A year ago this week, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth summoned the military’s top commanders — roughly 800 generals and admirals — who were spread around the world to come to Virginia to listen to him give a bizarre, self-indulgent and wildly unnecessary pep rally speech. By all accounts, the audience was unimpressed.

    On Wednesday afternoon, the former Fox News host whom Senate Republicans confirmed to lead the Pentagon gave it another try, though at times Hegseth appeared to be doing an imitation of Colin Jost imitating him on NBC’s “Saturday Night Live.”

    “The ideological clowns are out,” the defense secretary said, sounding very much like an ideological clown. “The patriotic cowboys are in — with testosterone testing on top.” [OMFG]

    He proceeded to condemn the free press, American higher education, overweight people and transgender people, as well as “beardos,” “weirdos,” “wimps” and “radicals.” For good measure, the prescreened [!] attendees at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia were also rewarded with a bound collection of Hegseth’s speeches, packaged as a “field manual.”

    But there was one unexpected element of Hegseth’s presentation that stood out for me. From MS NOW’s live coverage:

    Hegseth announced that tech billionaire and former Department of Government Efficiency head Elon Musk, alongside former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Oculus headsets founder Palmer Luckey, will co-lead an effort called Project Meridian to “study the future of warfare.”

    “Those three great Americans are going to be joined by a team of senior leaders, handpicked private sector leaders [Uh-oh] and subject matter experts from across our nation’s unmatched innovation, academic and policy ecosystems,” Hegseth said.

    The specific purpose of Project Meridian is a little unclear, and the Pentagon’s announcement about the initiative was filled with tiresome corporate phrasing — these guys are apparently going to be “facilitating” a “proactive vision” by “leveraging” experts— but this apparently has something to do with identifying “the domains” that the U.S. armed forces “must conquer.” [gobbledygook]

    Hegseth picked a curious trio for the endeavor.

    Luckey, who arguably has the lowest profile of the bunch, is a tech entrepreneur, generous Republican donor and Donald Trump enthusiast. Gingrich, meanwhile, is a former House speaker whose own GOP members drove him from Capitol Hill more than a quarter of a century ago.

    Collectively, they have zero days of military experience, and Gingrich famously received a great many deferments while avoiding military service during the war in Vietnam.

    And then, of course, there’s Musk, a billionaire who also never served in the military, whose overt racism and antisemitism should make him politically radioactive. The New York Times’ Jamelle Bouie posited in a July column:

    Why does Musk get a pass? Why do politicians, journalists and commentators treat his far-right racist radicalism as a sideshow rather than the core of his political, ideological and industrial project, seen in everything from his deep support for Donald Trump in the United States and Restore Britain in Britain to his decision to construct a massive pollution-generating data center in predominantly Black Memphis?

    Musk spends a large part of his free time fomenting violence and spreading the same hateful ideology that motivated some of the deadliest shootings and attacks ever to happen on American soil. It is that fact, and not the cars he builds or the rockets he launches, that ought to define his place in public life.

    […] Musk began trying to buy the midterms for Republicans, and then Hegseth invited him to help lead “Project Meridian.”

    It is difficult to be optimistic about the initiative’s future.

    Link

  83. says

    Trump hedges when asked about using the Insurrection Act ahead of midterms

    “In light of his track record, it’s tough to shrug when he dodges a question about possibly declaring a state of emergency ahead of the elections.”

    Donald Trump has never taken advantage of the Insurrection Act, though he has talked about it quite a bit throughout his political career. A year ago this month, during a Fox News interview, Trump went so far as to say, “Don’t forget I can use the Insurrection Act … and that’s unquestioned power.”

    Earlier this year, he also said of the Insurrection Act, “It does make life a lot easier. You don’t go through the court system.”

    So when Time magazine spoke with the president for a lengthy, newly published interview, it included a question about that unsettling possibility: “Would you rule out declaring a state of emergency in the lead up to the midterms unless there’s widespread violence in the streets?”

    “I don’t rule anything out or in,” Trump replied. “We’ll see. You mean the Insurrection Act?”

    When Time clarified that it was, in fact, referring to the Insurrection Act, the president added, “No, I’ve never used it. I could use it. A lot of people think I should use it sometimes.”

    At that point, Trump changed the subject, talked about crime rates and lied about how many undocumented immigrants entered the United States during Joe Biden’s presidency.

    The exchange came roughly a month after Trump spoke to a far-right conspiracy theorist who pitched the president on the idea of unilaterally declaring a national security emergency for the midterm elections — even in the absence of an actual national security emergency — at which point Trump could theoretically impose wildly unnecessary voting restrictions on Americans by fiat and without congressional approval.

    “Let me just say, stranger things have happened, OK?” Trump said in response to the suggestion at the time. “I’ll leave it at that.” [eyebrow-raising statement from Trump]

    To be sure, Trump didn’t explicitly say he would invoke the Insurrection Act — a federal law that grants the president emergency powers to deploy military troops on U.S. soil, who would act at his command — but when asked whether he would rule out declaring a state of emergency in the run-up to the midterms, the correct answer should have been, “Of course I’d rule that out.”

    […] Earlier this year, the president mused publicly about canceling the midterm elections. A few months earlier, during a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy — whose country cannot hold elections during Russia’s deadly war — Trump said, “Say, three and a half years from now, so you mean, if we happen to be in a war with somebody, no more elections.”

    There’s also the unavoidable fact that, after he lost his re-election bid six years ago, Trump launched a radical and ultimately violent effort to overturn the results he didn’t like, as part of a bid to remain in office despite the will of American voters.

    So when Trump hedges after being asked about possibly declaring a state of emergency in the lead-up to the 2026 midterms, I find it difficult to shrug and laugh it off as meaningless nonsense.

  84. coffeepott says

    always disappointed to be reminded newt gingrich is still alive. more disappointed to see his name brought up without mentioning that he divorced two of his three wives when they got sick, both times moving on to marry a mistress.
    piece of shit asshole good christian

  85. says

    […] just five days before the fiscal year was set to end and federal funds allocated for that year set to expire — the Trump White House sent Congress a special message laying out its intention to once again impound congressionally approved funds through their “pocket rescissions” scheme, which a legislative watchdog agency has described as illegal.

    The term “pocket rescissions” describes a loophole Vought and his allies claim they found in the Impoundment Control Act of 1974 (ICA). It, they maintain, allows the administration to declare congressionally approved funding rescinded if a rescissions package is sent to Congress close to the end of the fiscal year when funds are set to expire. In other words, it allows the administration to simply not spend funds Congress directed the executive branch to spend […] The administration’s impoundments have largely targeted programs it sees as helping disfavored groups such as immigrants, people of color and blue states.

    […] David Super, law professor at the Georgetown University Law School, told TPM: “There’s nothing in law that authorizes pocket rescissions.”

    […] Other experts agreed, reiterating that the ICA [Impoundment Control Act] requires the White House to immediately notify Congress if the executive branch decides they will not be using or [will be] pausing the use of certain funds through a rescission or a deferral request.

    […] “And by the way,” Bobby Kogan, who served in the Biden White House as adviser to the director of the OMB, added, “‘I hate this program’ or ‘I hate the activities in these programs’ is not one of the legally allowed reasons for a deferral.”

    The Trump administration has been open about their dislike of certain programs. They have called programs “woke,” they have framed them as “waste, fraud and abuse.” The list goes on. But the reality is, neither the president nor the OMB has unilateral power to refuse to use funds congressionally appropriated for a program simply because they do not like its contents. [!]

    “They have just been sitting on this money illegally [!],” Kogan said.

    […] It’s been calculated all along.

    […] as Kogan puts it “all the illegal pauses they did along the way that leaves them with huge chunks of unobligated money just five days before the fiscal year is about to end — when the funds are supposed to be used up — is already a written admission that they broke budget law [!!] on their way to their illegal pocket rescission.”

    The Friday special message is “them flagrantly, openly saying that they did illegal activities to get here,” Kogan said.

    […] they are pocket rescinding 99% of a Department of Education program aimed at providing “grants and fellowships to support institutions in bridging foreign students and faculty to the United States to study or teach language, conduct research, and provide professional and curriculum development.”

    The administration is also impounding 96.6% of a Department of Housing and Urban Development program “that provides grants to nongovernmental organizations (NGOS) and public entities for counseling and education to individuals on a spectrum of housing matters.”

    […] the administration is trying to expand its reach so that they can choose what gets spent regardless of appropriations law.

    Link

  86. says

    It is a published record. It was drawn up by ai. The criminal tech plutocrats signed it. The magat-in-chief called it super intelligence and signed it. It is a completely useless declaration. And, right below his signature it illiterately proclaims him: ‘President of the Unites States’
    We are SO SCREWED
    As I created a week ago, to be accurate to dozing don, it must be called Stupor Intelligence.

    and –

    This is true. It’s not funny.
    https://www.gocomics.com/mikeluckovich
    WE ARE SO SCREWED.

  87. says

    https://www.wonkette.com/p/pete-hegseth-announces-beardo-weirdo

    “Pete Hegseth Announces Beardo-Weirdo-Free Testosterone Cowboy CRUSADES Office!”

    When Pete Hegseth started begging for hot Army guys to join him for his latest State of the Force speech about who’s invited to his He-Man Woman Haters Club, No Girls, Gays, Or Black Guys Allowed Christian Nazi treehouse, he tried to sweeten the deal by saying that troops who came to the event would have the “opportunity” to work out with Pete.

    “Opportunity.” Like people are sitting around dreaming of watching him dance and/or maybe get kicked in the face while he tries to heave his sad body through a pull-up. [video]

    […] Well, we regret to inform you that the Pentagon is still not in on the joke — or maybe they are — and they have again breathlessly released footage of Whiskeydick just bein’ one of the guys, working out with the troops, and it is just as sad and needy and pick-me and cringe-inducing as every other time the man shows his face and bad skin in public.

    Here are your latest dorkass videos […] [videos] OK, that’s enough videos. They’re all like that. […]

    What if we told you attendees also got their own special copy of a book of Pete’s speeches? […] when you’re stuck in a foxhole or trying to go to sleep at night, what more could you want for comfort than the print version of “No Fatties, No Tr*nnies, No Beardos, No Weirdos, No Wimps, No Radicals”? Does it include last year’s speech about hairdos that he made the generals fly to Quantico for? Does it include pictures of Pete personally administering the testosterone tests to the patriotic cowboys? […] [photo of 144-page book, plus excerpts]

    Any excuse to propagandize the troops with the teachings of a Christian extremist culture warrior!

    […] Secretary Crusades Tattoos announced that he would be starting a new Office of Religious Affairs, set up to provide “first class religious support.” This new position, which we bet will be held by a white supremacist Christian conservative man, will report directly to Shitfaced, because you can’t do the Crusades if you’re busy with woke bureaucracy […] establishing Christian nationalism at the top of what is still the world’s most powerful military […]

    Right now, we’re supposed to be scared of Iran — which Pete is losing a war against — because it’s run by “religious fanatic lunatics,” per Marco Rubio. Hegseth thinks he’s fighting a holy war against Iran, which makes it even more pathetic that he’s losing it. […] It’s supposed to be OK when the religious fanatic lunatics are Christians. These people aren’t against religious extremism, they’re just Christian nationalist bigots.

    […] He proclaimed in his speech that “blessed is the nation in which God is the Lord.” (Psalm 33:12 […])

    […] he’s a culture warrior, not a real warrior. And every person who temporarily answers to him — highly temporarily — knows it.

  88. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    shermanj @86.
    Semafor: “The idea […] came from a conversation between Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and House Speaker Mike Johnson at last week’s state dinner […] Zuckerberg then circulated a draft”
    Doesn’t mention he used an LLM to generate the draft, but it’s a safe bet.

  89. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Reuters

    The US State Department has waived human rights conditions for ​more than $300 million of military aid to Egypt in light of Cairo’s “helpful role” since the launch of the US ‌war with Iran, according to a letter to US lawmakers
    […]
    Egypt has played a central role in ceasefire negotiations over conflicts in Gaza, including a truce deal agreed in October 2025, but has been less prominent in mediation over the Iran war.

    Rights groups have long accused Egypt of widespread human rights abuses under President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, including torture and enforced disappearances. This week Egyptian police arrested six journalists from a fact-checking and investigative media outlet

    Mai El-Sadany (Human rights lawyer):

    It’s ironic […] recognizing Egypt for its ‘helpful role’ throughout the Iran war, given that Egypt is carrying out one of the most significant crackdowns on press freedom in years, a step which makes the country less stable (less stable Egypt = less stable region).

     
    Meanwhile.
    Zeteo – Israel has kidnapped another American teenager

    Israeli security forces snatched an American teenager with Texas roots from his family’s West Bank home in the middle of the night. […] the third young American languishing in Israeli prison. […] Administrative detention is a mechanism under which Israel imprisons people without charge or trial, typically based on secret evidence. […] His detention order expires on Oct. 28—which would be a more than four-month stint […] His family fears Israel could renew the detention indefinitely, as it does for many prisoners.

    Brad Simpson (US intl pol historian):

    Israeli IDF personnel routinely arrest and even murder US citizens with absolutely zero consequences under both Republican and Democratic administrations. When I was in grad school an IDF sniper shot a Jewish-American friend of mine in the face and Clinton era Embassy folks refused to do anything.

    Under every US administration for the last 30+ years, US citizens have been arrested and/or murdered by the IDF and not once has the US government ever sanctioned Israel, withdrawn an arms sale or transfer, or called for the perpetrators to be held accountable in any way.

  90. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Marisa Kabas (The Handbasket):

    Late yesterday, the court granted former US Institute of Peace employees’ motion, which prohibits the Trump administration from carving his name into the side of the building while litigation over control of the space is ongoing.

  91. birgerjohansson says

    Militant agnostic @ 69
    “This is not a major catastrophe because differential thrust from the engines can be used for yaw control.”
    .
    During the Dubya and Obama precidencies transport aircraft would come under fire from missiles fired by insurgents. Software was developed to help the pilots control the aircraft if control surfaces were damaged. The system sort of feels out what it can do with the remaining control options and then helps the pilots fly the aircraft.

  92. birgerjohansson says

    Today southwestern Sweden had heart records for October, with one site reaching 22.3°C. We are outside the reach if El Nino, this is global warming.

  94. birgerjohansson says

    Lynna, OM @ 80
    Every Trump voter should be confronted with this.
    I picked some excerpts that are particularly damning.
    .
    “Trump says he regrets appointing Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett” .https://share.google/NABmnnjkfHYIZ6A68

    “…on Mother’s Day, Trump broke new ground, publishing a 544-word screed in which he said Gorsuch and Barrett “have hurt our Country so badly!” He added, “[I]t’s really OK for them to be loyal to the person that appointed them.”
    […]
    “…He said he regretted appointing Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, after they ruled against him on tariffs, mail ballots, and birthright citizenship. “I gave them the position of a lifetime,” he said, “and they voted against me often.”
    […]
    ‘Asked specifically if he wants from his Supreme Court nominees, the president replied, “I do like loyalty, yeah.”

    […] Trump seems utterly baffled by the idea that he could appoint Supreme Court justices who, in turn, sometimes evaluates cases on the merits, which is, the last time I checked, their literal job. In other words, the president keeps publicly complaining not about justices being corrupt, but about justices not being corrupt enough to make him happy.’

  95. birgerjohansson says

    Is there a way for generals and admirals to get back their jobs if the firings are judged to have been corrupt?

  97. Pierce R. Butler says

    birgerjohansson @ # 96: The evidence that the land we walk on is ancient seafloor should be hammered home during every confrontation with creationists.

    They (at least the bible-bangers) already believe that.

  98. says

    MS NOW report, as summarized by Steve Benen:

    It’s worth emphasizing that this incident was the second in recent years in which Tennessee tried to execute someone and botched it: “Christa Pike remained alive Thursday, a day after she survived a failed attempt to execute her for the 1995 murder of a woman, one of her lawyers said. Lawyer Randy Pivey said Pike is being treated at a hospital, but that he and the rest of her legal team didn’t know her condition.”

  99. says

    Wall Street Journal:

    The Pentagon is sending a third aircraft-carrier strike group and additional Marine Corps ships to the Middle East, according to U.S. officials, adding 9,000 to 10,000 more troops to the region as President Trump considers renewing strikes on Iran after the midterm elections.

  100. says

    Trump reportedly sought input from Musk’s AI chatbot on military strikes

    “This was almost certainly the first time in American history that a sitting president consulted an AI chatbot about a provocative foreign policy gambit.”

    Donald Trump has never demonstrated any meaningful understanding of technological developments. But the president has apparently become quite enamored with artificial intelligence of late, repeatedly insisting that public officials reject any industry guardrails or public safeguards.

    “Whoever wins AI, wins,” he has repeatedly said, while failing to finish the sentence and explain what, specifically, he believes the victor of the AI arms race will win.

    As for why he’s so impressed with the technology, there’s apparently an interesting backstory to keep in mind. Time magazine reported:

    Since returning to office, Trump has marveled at AI’s capabilities. He is increasingly in thrall to the tech executives courting him. In December 2025, Elon Musk returned to the Oval Office for a clandestine meeting. Trump spent hours asking Grok, Musk’s AI chatbot, questions about his presidency and legacy, according to an official present.

    At the time, Trump was ordering missile strikes against Venezuelan boats he alleged were smuggling drugs into the U.S. He asked Grok how Venezuelans would react if the U.S. captured [then-Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro]. According to the official present, the chatbot responded that Maduro was a repressive and deeply unpopular dictator and that many Venezuelans would likely celebrate his downfall. After Trump ordered the mission to seize Maduro, the following month, celebrations broke out in the streets. Trump, according to officials, came away thinking Grok was ingenious.

    […] The other thing that stood out for me about this is how easily impressed Trump is. At a moment’s notice, the president could have summoned members of his foreign policy team and State Department officials with vast expertise in South American affairs to offer him detailed guidance on the best way forward for U.S. policy in Venezuela. […]

    This was, in other words, less evidence of an “ingenious” chatbot, and more evidence of a program telling the president something that wasn’t exactly tough to figure out. Trump didn’t need AI; he needed the patience to sit through a meeting on foreign policy without falling asleep.

    As for the broader circumstances, let’s not brush past the fact that Trump continues to have “clandestine” interactions with a Republican megadonor [Musk] whose overt racism and antisemitism should make him politically radioactive, even if the White House apparently disagrees.

  101. says

    South Korea pushes back against Trump’s claims about Alaska investments

    “The White House announced a Korean investment in an Alaskan pipeline project. The boast unraveled less than a day later.”

    Donald Trump has spent much of his second term peddling outlandish boasts about foreign investments in the United States. Indeed, the president has struggled to keep his story straight about just how much money he believes is headed to American soil — depending on the day, he has said the total is $17 trillion, “$18 trillion,” “$19 trillion,” “$20 trillion” or “$21 trillion” — even as the White House’s own tally has shown a vastly smaller number.

    There have long been a variety of problems with Trump’s deceptive boasts, but at the heart of the matter is his willingness to pretend there’s no real difference between possible investments and money in the bank.

    This week offered a timely, and electorally significant, example of the phenomenon.

    It’s no secret that Republicans are deeply concerned about Alaska’s Senate race, and for good reason: Not only did former Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola outpace her Republican opponent, Sen. Dan Sullivan, in the first round of balloting, but recent polls suggest the incumbent has a real problem on his hands.

    With this in mind, the president announced this week that South Korea had agreed to invest $54 billion in a liquid natural gas pipeline project in Alaska, and Trump welcomed Sullivan to the Oval Office on Wednesday to tout the developments. The political motivations were unsubtle: This appeared to be a good-news story intended to boost the senator’s fortunes with time running out before Election Day.

    You can probably guess what happened next. Reuters reported:

    South Korea’s government, however, said the pipeline project would only ​go forward if certain commercial and legal conditions are met. […]

    South Korea will begin reviewing the Alaska LNG project to assess its commercial viability and compliance with legal procedures, Seoul’s industry ministry said in a statement.

    “No decision has been made on whether to invest or on the size of the investment,” the statement added.

    A report in The Washington Sun noted that Korean Industry Minister Kim Jung-kwan told reporters on Thursday that he had “lodged a strong protest” with the Trump administration over the White House’s announcement, which “went far beyond what was agreed.” Around the same time, South Korean President Lee Jae Myung said via social media that the commercial viability of the LNG project still needed to be confirmed.

    Maybe Trump knew all of this and hoped voters in Alaska wouldn’t know the difference; maybe he was simply confused about the relevant details. Either way, if this was intended to help Sullivan a few weeks before early voting begins, the White House’s gambit fell apart rather quickly.

  102. says

    Washington Post EXCLUSIVE

    “Trump […] diverts aid for Europe to Latin America instead”

    The diverted funds include tens of millions of dollars Congress approved for countries impacted by the war in Ukraine.

    The Trump administration, acting in defiance of top Democrats on the House and Senate foreign affairs committees, has stripped tens of millions of dollars in U.S. military assistance from European and Middle Eastern countries and will give those funds instead to conservative-leaning governments in Latin America, three U.S. officials told The Washington Post.

    The State Department notified Congress of its intentions in September, prompting Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-New Hampshire) and Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-New York) to place a hold on the diversion of funds.

    Late Wednesday, the administration quietly notified Congress it was defying the hold and moving ahead, diverting to Panama, Peru, Ecuador and Colombia $52 million that had been approved for Slovakia, North Macedonia, Tunisia and Iraq, the officials said. They spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss security matters.

    It is the latest move by the Trump administration to reduce U.S. spending or troop deployments in Europe and coincides with a Pentagon review that could result in a reduction and realignment of U.S. basing on the continent.

    It is also a continuation of President Donald Trump’s undercutting of the legislative branch’s spending powers, a core constitutional authority that Trump has challenged in ways big and small.

    […] Shaheen and Meeks called the move a breach of the hold they had put in place and a violation of statutory requirements about where the money could go. The diversion of funding for Slovakia and North Macedonia drew particularly strong opposition because that money was included in a Ukraine supplemental bill specifically for countries impacted by the war in Ukraine.

    “Both chambers of Congress provided these funds for a very specific purpose: supporting Ukraine and our European allies in the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion,” they wrote in the letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Post. “The Executive Branch does not have unlimited discretion to redirect these funds toward unrelated Administration policy priorities or countries.” […]

    Congress approved the funds in 2022 at the outset of the Ukraine war, as the Biden administration was pressuring European countries to provide weapons to Ukraine so Kyiv could defend itself. Washington at that time also was leaning on non-European countries to end their arms sales relationships with Russia in a bid to isolate the Kremlin.

    The goal of the bill, in addition to assisting Ukraine and its closest European neighbors, was to help foreign countries start buying U.S. military equipment instead of Russia’s, particularly those countries that provided their old weapons to Ukraine.

    Last month, Democratic staffers met with State Department officials to question how providing the funding to the Latin American countries could be interpreted as responding to the “situation in Ukraine” or going to countries “impacted by the situation in Ukraine,” as the language in the original bill states. […]

    Jeremy Shapiro, research director at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said European countries will assume this is a “harbinger” of how the Trump administration will prioritize world affairs.

    “It will heighten the sense that the Europeans could be abandoned if they don’t pass a loyalty test or do what the administration wants on Iran,” he said.

  103. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    birgerjohansson @95: “Is there a way for generals and admirals to get back their jobs”

    Not the ideal article, but adjacent.
    JustSecurity – Can the Secretary of Defense remove admirals from a promotion list?

    while the Secretary of Defense has enormous leeway in firing officers from existing positions—an authority Hegseth has exercised with extraordinary frequency—that authority does not necessarily extend without limit to removing officers from a promotion list. Indeed, removal from a promotion list is a different matter governed by different rules entirely.
    […]
    The Department of Defense is an agency within the meaning of the Administrative Procedure Act, […] within the meaning of administrative law. […] where plaintiffs allege that executive officials acted beyond statutory or delegated authority, courts have been willing to examine the legality of the process employed.
    […]
    Congress has already established a parallel administrative remedy that is independent of the Secretary of Defense. The Board for Correction of Naval Records (BCNR) has statutory authority […] to change any military record when necessary to correct an error or injustice. […] the BCNR could recommend corrective action to the Secretary of the Navy.

    There are ongoing lawsuits for banned trans officers.

  104. JM says

    @100 Lynna, OM: The LLM AIs also suit Trump’s personality. They are biased towards producing answers the person asking wants to hear, not accurate answers. The summarize data into plausible sounding reasons that lack depth or accuracy. They don’t have any concern with consistency or previous answers, if Trump wants to be pro-Putin on Monday and anti-Putin on Tuesday the LLM will agree with both positions being good ideas.
    To a good extent they are digital yes-men that don’t care how long or incoherent your question is.

  106. StevoR says

    YES! Phew! Tried a couple of times before with more words & don’t think any of them would be problematic -but it didn’t go through for some reason.

  109. JM says

    Politico: Judge rules Trump can’t fire court-appointed prosecutors

    A federal judge on Thursday ruled that President Donald Trump doesn’t have the power to fire court-appointed U.S. attorneys, rejecting a core tenet of the Trump administration’s approach to top prosecutorial jobs.

    Pretty straightforward ruling but I believe this is the first to say it so directly. If the judges in a district have selected their own prosecutor to fill in until one is approved by the Senate then the president can’t just fire them. He has to get somebody approved, then the interim prosecutor’s job goes away.
    The DOJ plans to appeal naturally and this case will make it’s way to the Supreme Court.

    In his ruling, Bastian not only restored Rogoff to the job, but also took steps designed to thwart any attempts by the Trump administration to undermine his authority or transfer it to someone else. Bastian ordered that the executive office of the president, Attorney General Todd Blanche and the Justice Department are barred from “any purported firing” or removal of Rogoff from his post, interference with his service in the role and from treating anyone other than Rogoff as the U.S. attorney.

    This is something that is only needed under the Trump administration. Other US administrations would not be happy about this sort of ruling but would abide by it. The judge has realized that the entire situation is an attempt to go around Senate confirmation and the administration has done it multiple times. So he needs to safeguard Rogoff’s job and the authority that goes with it. What Blanche will do now is an open question because Trump will be annoyed if Blanche works with Rogoff.

  110. Militant Agnostic says

    Reginald Selkirk @72

    Apparently you have forgotten about the German Wings crash where the First Officer deliberately crashed a plane full of people,

    The point being mad was that his intent was not to simply crash the plan by diving into the ground. In fact it now appears the the dive was initiated as we was being removed from the cockpit.

  111. says

    @69 Militant agnostic wrote: “This is not a major catastrophe because differential thrust from the engines can be used for yaw control.”

    As retired aerospace engineers and technicians, with over 50 calendar years of experience, we in our organization need to clarify that statement, based on wind tunnel experiments and real world experience we evidenced over many decades, differential thrust can only make Extremely Slight and very slow changes in direction of any multi-engine aircraft or rocket.

  113. birgerjohansson says

    ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^
    We should cherish villains like Thanos, who merely want to do mass murder. I recall the story ‘I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream’.

  115. Reginald Selkirk says

    An El Niño-Driven ‘Kelvin Wave’ Could Raise Bay Area Sea Levels and Flooding Risk

    Scientists warn that a deep ocean wave driven by El Niño conditions could raise Bay Area sea levels by up to a foot by the end of next month. That’s on top of sea levels already about 6 inches above predicted levels because of warm water along the West Coast.

    Researchers call it a “Kelvin wave” and said it will deliver even more warm water associated with El Niño.

    “Kelvin waves are a symptom of El Niño,” said Dillon Amaya, a professor at North Carolina State University who studies how climate change affects waters off the U.S. coast.
    …
    A Kelvin wave isn’t a surface wave like a tsunami or a “wall of water that’s moving up the coast or a wave that you can surf or that you’re going to see from the beach or from a boat,” Amaya said.
    …
    During an El Niño year, as many as six Kelvin waves can occur, and the temporarily high seas can last from three to six months. Amaya said a first Kelvin wave moved up the coastline in May and June. A second wave is traveling about 6 miles per hour northward from the Gulf of California. It could reach the Bay Area as soon as mid-October. Amaya said signs suggest a third wave is propagating around the equator. ..

  118. says

    Yet More …”, by Josh Marshall

    We’re seeing article after article now restating in slightly different ways the same basic point about the AI infrastructure boom: how will this level of investment ever be recouped?

    This new article in the Journal is entitled: Will America Spend 9% of Its GDP on AI? The Industry Is Counting on It. (It references the same Brookings study we discussed a week ago) This is more or less the same story as I flagged in that Bain report in last night’s post. A market of $6 trillion for AI by 2031; 9% of GDP in 2032. The numbers may be based on slightly different global modelings — just how much investment, rates of return, etc. But they’re mostly different ways of stating the staggering growth that will be required to cover current levels of capital expenditure. The Journal notes that 9% of GDP in 2032 (one year later than the Bain & Co report focuses on) will mean Americans are spending as much on AI as food, half as much as they will spend on health care. The Journal article reminds us that this isn’t simply about adoption and new products. You have to factor in what will likely be rapidly falling prices as well as competition from new entrants with possibly far lower sunk costs and debt.

    Getting into the particulars involves so many variables it’s hard make sense of it without an economic degree. But the overall story is the same as the one in the Bain study. Silicon Valley has committed the economy to unimaginable levels of investment in a very promising but still largely unproven technology. And now we have to go on a national crash course of maniacal innovation just to get out from under that spending overhang or the whole economy craters. Of course, if AI just does a million amazing things and makes all our lives happier and more fun … well, we’ll have to really thank them. But this seems uncertain.

    See also: Bain & Company Brainstorms Where The AI Revenue’s Gonna Come From

    A friend sent me this new Bain & Company study on the growth required to match the current levels of capital expenditure on AI, essentially breaking down the cost of the data center and other associated build outs. It’s an interesting document, not simply for the number-crunching and the predictions, but as a document in the more literary and analytic sense. Needless to say, Bain isn’t coming at this from any “boo capitalism!”/”this is insane lol” viewpoint. But the conclusions aren’t that far from the “this is insane lol” position. It’s very much, “hey! we can do this” but also, “um … wow, there’s quite a lot to do.”

    The broad stroke numbers are these. The study says that to keep up with the current levels of capital expenditures AI will need to become a $6 trillion dollar market by 2031. (To give some perspective on that number, a recent Gartner study predicted that global IT spending will be just under $6.4 trillion this year. So devices, hardware, software, services, kind of everything.) It then posits that we can see the beginnings of, with some level of out-year predictability, something on the order of a $1.5 trillion market — which would be made up of a greatly expanded consumer market (Claude apps, ChatGPT, etc.) of between $200 and $400 billion and then an enterprise market (software, sales, marketing, business optimization) of between $1 and $1.4 trillion. So we’re left with about $4.5 trillion to go. That’s where the crash course in innovation comes in. […]

    we’re not talking here about Star Trek time. Things that will transform society over decades or a century. This all has to happen by 2031, so five years from now. […]

  119. says

    In a move that smacks of retaliation, Federal Housing Finance Agency director Bill Pulte is moving to slash next year’s budget for the agency’s inspector general’s office by more than 60% — after it was involved in an earlier investigation of him.

    The surprise draconian cuts to the IG’s office would eviscerate its ability to conduct investigations, IG staff told Congress in a letter this week: “We will be forced to reduce staffing by approximately 70-80% in FY 2027, which will result in the discontinuance of essentially all criminal investigations conducted by our Office of Investigations.”

    (Senate Democrats sent a letter to Pulte yesterday demanding that he restore funding for the IG’s office and also demanded his resignation.)

    […] Pulte, who also serves as chairman of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, has had an unusually high profile in Trump II for someone in his position, largely because he led the charge to use bogus claims of mortgage fraud to retaliate against Trump foes, like Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Fed Gov. Lisa Cook. With ready access to the president and poster boards often in hand, Pulte offered Trump what he already wanted: a tool of retribution.

    Pulte’s mortgage fraud jihad resulted in an internal investigation of Pulte himself over whether he improperly obtained mortgage records of high-profile Democrats officials, including New York Attorney General Letitia James, the Wall Street Journal reported in November:

    Fannie’s ethics and investigations group had received internal complaints alleging senior officials had improperly directed staff to access the mortgage documents of James and others […] The Fannie investigators were probing to find out who had made the orders, whether Pulte had the authority to seek the documents and whether or not they had followed proper procedure […]

    That group elevated the probe about the James documents to the more senior Office of Inspector General for the Federal Housing Finance Agency, the agency that oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and that Pulte heads […] The acting inspector general then passed the report to the U.S. attorney’s office in eastern Virginia […]

    To summarize, Fannie Mae investigators found enough of concern to bring in higher-ups at the FHFA IG’s office, which took them seriously enough to forward the concerns to federal prosecutors pursuing James.

    […] You already know what happened next: James was indicted for mortgage fraud last October in the Eastern District of Virginia by then-acting U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan. The indictment was ultimately dismissed by a federal judge because Halligan was unlawfully appointed as U.S. attorney. Subsequent efforts by Halligan to indict James were rejected by two different grand juries.

    The fallout from that episode was swift and severe.

    Joe Allen, the FHFA acting inspector general who sent the internal investigation to prosecutors, was asked to step down, the WSJ reported. Around the same time, the administration fired about a dozen officials within Fannie Mae’s ethics and internal investigations unit.

    The pattern of retaliation is clear. But there’s a more recent wrinkle.

    Last week, the WSJ — which you can see has been all over the Pulte story for many months — reported that Pulte hadn’t just targeted Democrats’ mortgages.He’d also examined the mortgages of Todd Blanche!

    Blanche and Pulte have been nemeses, for reasons that seem pretty obvious even from the outside looking in. Pulte — a nonlawyer — was stoking Trump’s sense of vengeance with spurious promises of prosecutions that Blanche was stuck with having to try to make happen. […]

    As if that wasn’t enough, DOJ began its own inquiry into whether Pulte and other officials had “inappropriately shared information about the Justice Department’s investigation into Schiff with those who weren’t authorized to be part of it,” the WSJ reported.

    […] it’s quite a coincidence that Pulte is taking another retaliatory swing at the FHFA IG and basically trying to put it out of business.

    Link

  120. says

    Just hours after President Donald Trump praised himself for supposedly doing a near-perfect job with the economy, the monthly jobs report was released—showing an increase in unemployment and fewer jobs than analysts had expected.

    The Labor Department revealed Friday that the unemployment rate has risen to 4.2% and that only 29,000 jobs were added in September—a far cry from the 90,000 jobs that experts anticipated.

    Jobs numbers were also revised downward for previous months.

    During a rally in Texas Thursday night for failing Senate candidate Ken Paxton, Trump declared success on the economy.

    “The only thing we’re doing badly at is public relations,” he said. “In other words, we’re doing a phenomenal job.” [video]

    Public opinion polling has consistently shown that voters blame Trump and the GOP for the bad economy. Since retaking office, Trump has put in place terrible policies like tariffs—which have increased prices—and launched a war in Iran—which has restricted the fuel supply, causing gas prices to surge.

    But Trump argued at his rally, as he has in the past, that these concerns are fake and that the concept of affordability is simply made up by the left.

    “Remember they came up with the word ‘affordability,’” Trump said. “They always come up with these words: ‘Affordability.’ So the fake news starts using it, because they’re partners with the Democrats.”

    […] despite his rhetoric, the location of Trump’s reality-defying speech probably says more about the precarious state of his political future than anything else.

    Texas, one of the GOP’s most loyal states, is where his handpicked candidate Paxton has been flailing for months. Despite Trump’s comfortable wins in Texas in 2024, 2020, and 2016—as well as GOP dominance of the state for decades—Paxton is trailing Democratic candidate James Talarico.

    That Texas is in play is a testament to how Trump’s poor economic performance is resonating with voters.

    During his first term, Trump became the only president since the statistic has been recorded to see a net job loss. And in his second term, he has fulfilled the long-standing GOP tradition of underperforming on the economy.

    Trump can pat himself on the back and pretend that affordability is made up all he wants. But the data paints a far more accurate picture—and that is what Americans are paying attention to.

    Link

  121. says

    ProPublica link

    “Four Kids in One Faith-Healing Family Died. Authorities Could Do Nothing.”

    An exemption in Idaho law shields faith-healing parents from criminal prosecution for conduct that otherwise would be charged as neglect. It also keeps police and social workers from stepping in to protect a dead child’s surviving siblings.

    Emma Joyce was sick and vomiting for days until she stopped breathing in her parents’ arms, in a small gray farmhouse in rural Idaho. It was August 2009, and she was 3 years old.

    The following summer, Emma Joyce’s little sister got sick. Ava Joan wouldn’t eat or drink anything but a few grapes and some Sprite in a sippy cup. She was breathing hard and fast. And when she vomited, it came out black, the hallmark of internal bleeding. She died in her mother’s arms in July 2010 from a complication of untreated diabetes.

    Less than two years later, the girls’ toddler brother died from the same complication of untreated diabetes that killed Ava Joan.

    And nine years after that, another sibling died: a 4-year-old boy who’d suffered for weeks with similar symptoms.

    The parents told officers that they hadn’t taken the four children who died to the doctor because of their religion, the Followers of Christ, which considers the use of modern medicine a sinful lapse of faith in God. And Idaho exempts parents from faith-healing sects like the Followers from the legal duty to give their children lifesaving medical care.

    The sect had at least 15 avoidable deaths among children from 2015 through 2025, according to healthcare professionals who reviewed their records for ProPublica.

    Among them were children in five families […]

    Most of the siblings died of similar ailments, following similar patterns, that experts said could have been resolved with interventions as simple as insulin, antibiotics or a supply of oxygen. Experts were uncertain on only two of the sibling deaths, saying the death records lacked enough information to determine if the children’s lives could have been saved.

    Idaho’s child abuse laws contain such broad religious exemptions that authorities did not intervene — either before or after the deaths.

    The exemptions don’t just shield faith-healing parents from criminal prosecution for conduct that otherwise would be charged as neglect. They also keep police and social workers from stepping in to protect a dead child’s surviving siblings from suffering a similar fate, no matter how many of them die. […]

  122. says

    Washington Post link

    “The volunteer internet sleuths hunting down rogue AI agents”

    “Their findings revealed the tech industry has a bigger problem than it previously acknowledged.”

    Selena Zhang had a hunch.

    OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, had recently disclosed astonishing details about how its artificial intelligence agents had broken out of their systems, hacked into another company and tried to cover their tracks. Other researchers were hunting the agents online and finding traces of them on obscure message boards.

    Zhang, a 23-year-old researcher at nonprofit AI lab Transluce, thought there had to be more evidence to find. She imagined how the agents might act, and she set out one weekend in September to find where else they had left an online trail.

    Within days, she and a team of colleagues had found a network of online breadcrumbs with profound implications: Rogue AI agents were traversing the web much more widely than previously known. As Zhang and her Transluce colleague Conrad Stosz scanned a list of sites the agents had hacked or probed, one entry jumped out: In June, agents that appeared to be from OpenAI had broken into a website run by Australia’s public health service.

    “‘Conrad, the public needs to know about this,’” Zhang recalls saying.

    The nonprofit notified the Australian government of its findings and said it planned to make them public. Two days later, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese revealed the hack to the world in a news conference in New York, where he criticized OpenAI for waiting months before making its own disclosure to Australia, early in September. Transluce released its findings the same day, helping propel news of the hack around the world.

    Soon after that, the nonprofit revealed that it had also found evidence that OpenAI’s agents had probed U.S. government websites, including the Securities and Exchange Commission and Census Bureau.

    Zhang and her colleagues at Transluce are part of an informal network of hackers and researchers hunting rogue AI agents online, exposing new and surprising details about the misbehavior of technology that in some cases initially went undetected by the multibillion-dollar companies that created it.

    The people doing that work are mostly young AI-natives who work at small start-ups or nonprofits or who hunt for rogue AI agents in their spare time. Over the past several weeks, the community of researchers has found and exposed dozens of instances of AI agents leapfrogging around the web to probe and hack into a growing list of websites.

    […] “I should never be the one reporting any of this to anybody,” said Kenneth Russell DeGraff, a 42-year-old software engineer based in Los Angeles who uncovered instances of agents abusing link-shortening services run by universities. “It is wild that I am finding new and novel things, not as an employee of some, you know, federal agency run by experts.”

    […] Zhang belongs to the generation of young tech workers who have flocked to San Francisco in recent years to participate in the AI revolution. Transluce was founded to conduct independent research into the technology to help the public and policymakers understand how it impacts society.

    “We can study questions that … aren’t really commercially incentivized,” Zhang said. Before its researchers started hunting for rogue AI agents, Transluce’s most recent major report was a study of how AI models behave when engaging with users who are discussing suicide. […]

    Much more at the link. I snipped a lot of text.

  124. whheydt says

    Re: Reginald Selkirk @ #115…
    Something to remember is how “sea level” is defined. On the US East and Gulf Coasts, it is defined as “mean low water”. That is, the average of all daily low tides. However, on the US West Coast, it is defined as “mean lower low water”, the average of the lower of each daily low tide.
    This is a major reason why tides in SF Bay generally range from -2 ft to +7 feet. Even ignoring waves, this would mean that a Kelvin Wave raising the Bay by one foot would mean that anything with an official elevation of less than 8 feet is going to get wet at some point. If you add in a (potential) storm surge and/or a rapid spring snow melt in the spring, there could be another foot or two to worry about. All of this may put a severe strain on the–mostly poorly maintained–Sacramento/San Joaquin River delta levees.
    (Where I live–NE corner of the Bay–I’m around 40 to 50 feet above (nominal) sea level, so no expectation of a flooding problem.)

  125. Reginald Selkirk says

    Three reasons Middle East oil supply is nearly back to pre-Iran war levels

    The volume of oil flowing from the Middle East region has almost returned to pre-war levels, data shows, despite the continued restrictions Iran is placing on vessels attempting to travel through the Strait of Hormuz.

    Seven months after the US-Israel war with Iran led to the effective closure of the critical waterway, the maritime intelligence firm Kpler said that in the final week of September, daily oil flow from the Middle East reached 92% of its pre-war baseline.

    Analysts attribute the rebounding flow of oil to three key factors:

    Ships being escorted with US military assistance
    Using shuttle tankers through the strait for transfer to different vessels
    Bypassing the strait using pipelines

    But some experts have questioned the sustainability of these measures, given the risk of escalating Iranian attacks or a change in US policy…

  126. Reginald Selkirk says

    FDA finds potential source of cyclosporiasis outbreak linked to lettuce

    The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said on Friday it has found a potential source of the cyclosporiasis outbreak that was tied to lettuce over the summer.

    The agency collected samples during its onsite inspections of Taylor Farms de Mexico facilities, it said.

    Two samples tested positive for the parasite, Cyclospora, according to the FDA. One positive sample was from a tank that held outgoing wastewater from a processing facility, the agency said. The second positive sample was from a drainage ditch of an iceberg lettuce grower, it noted…

    This seems a couple months too late.

  127. Reginald Selkirk says

    Man charged with harassment in Philadelphia cheesesteak assault, police say

    PHILADELPHIA — A content creator was charged Friday after an employee at the famous Pat’s King of Steaks was assaulted, according to Philadelphia police.

    The suspect, whose name has not been released, turned himself in to police on Thursday after police said they were reviewing video of what appears to show the confrontation at the cheesesteak shop.

    Now, officials say he has been charged with harassment.

    In the video, a person can be seen throwing a cheesesteak at an employee.

    The creator said he reviews restaurants and throws the food at employees if he doesn’t like it…

    The modern trend of collecting evidence of your own guilt continues.

  128. says

    Chris Rufo often gets treated as a “respectable” conservative. His latest podcast episode — framing Indian-Americans as a problem in need of solving — is more evidence that he shouldn’t be.

    To the degree that a “respectable” or “moderate” right exists today in America, Christopher Rufo is considered part of it. He is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, the tony midtown think tank that holds black-tie galas; he recently enjoyed a polite sit-down interview with Ezra Klein on Klein’s massively popular New York Times podcast; and he has over 120,000 subscribers on Substack, a publishing platform whose owners have celebrated Rufo as one of their “best” political writers who readers can “trust.”

    This veneer of legitimacy has helped Rufo mainstream an arguably fascist agenda. The 42 year old, after all, largely masterminded the destructive, racist moral panics targeting “Critical Race Theory” and “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” (DEI) programs. He helped spearhead the spurious attack on “gender ideology” in public schools, smearing queer-supportive educators as “groomers.” He helped foment conspiracy theories about fraud at Somali daycare centers in Minneapolis, providing the pretext for ICE’s deadly incursion into the city. And he played a central role in spreading the ugly lie that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio were stealing and eating people’s pets.

    […] This past weekend Rufo introduced an alarming new term that feels like an escalation, even for him: the “Indian Question” — that is, what to do about the very existence of Indian people, citizens and noncitizens alike, in America? Rufo’s new phrase formed the title of the latest episode of “Rufo & Lomez,” the BlazeTV podcast he co-hosts with Jonathan Keeperman, a lesser known and less “respectable” proprietor of white nationalist talking points, who previously plied his trade anonymously, from behind the pseudonym “Lomez,” until he was unmasked in a 2024 Guardian exposé.

    The prompt for this discussion of the “Indian Question” was a viral, racist post by Bo French, the GOP candidate for Texas Railroad Commissioner. “I heard UT graduation this year looked like this. I didn’t believe it,” French wrote on X earlier this month, posting a photo of largely south Asian college students cheering on the University of Texas football team. “The problem is now obviously far worse than anyone imagined.” In a follow up post, French made the barely concealed subtext of his message more explicit: “Like body-cams exposed criminals, social media is exposing how many Americans have been displaced by foreigners,” he wrote. [social media post, with photo]

    As TPM’s Josh Kovensky noted, French’s tweet — an articulation of the white supremacist “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory — roiled the right, eliciting some rare, if tepid, denunciations from prominent Republican officials in Texas, and exposing faultlines in the GOP’s coalition over the exact boundaries of MAGA’s ethnonationalism. Are some non-white ethnicities more allowed than others? Are some immigrant groups more prone to being “assimilated” into white, Christian culture?

    Keeperman and Rufo’s “Indian Question” episode amounts to an hour-long defense of French’s post. Keeperman offered a tortured tautology about why the south Asian college kids cheering a comeback victory for the Longhorns — some of whom were wearing cowboy hats and throwing up the “Hook ‘em Horns” hand sign — were not properly “assimilated” into American culture: because he said so.

    “Successful assimilation is precisely that you wouldn’t notice it, we wouldn’t have anything to talk about,” he said. “The mere fact of us being able to notice that, no, this is not an assimilated group, this is just a bunch of Indians at the game, is itself sort of definitionally the case that they’re not yet assimilated.”

    Keeperman then explained that many white Americans, like French, simply have “this fundamental intuition” and a “preference” for “homogeneity” and “they wanna fight to preserve that” as the U.S. inches towards becoming a “majority-minority country.”

    […] Keeperman said French’s tweet might have been crude, but expressed something he and other white Americans have long been too scared to express: that they want to live around other white people. “[…] And they no longer care about these sorts of moral and social pieties that for so long have prevented them from expressing these preferences.”

    […] Rufo nods along with all of Keeperman’s arguments. When Keeperman expresses disgust for the phrase “diversity is our strength,” often used by liberals, Rufo excitedly agrees, saying it “sounds like a slogan from [George Orwell’s novel] ‘1984.’”

    It is notable that Rufo has decided to partner so closely with Keeperman, who the Guardian’s Jason Wilson has described as a “key player and influential tastemaker in a burgeoning proto-fascist movement.” He is indeed an extreme figure, heading up Passage Press, a publisher that Wilson noted reprints “out-of-print or public-domain books by historical fascist and reactionary writers,” including works “by radical German nationalist and militarist Ernst Jünger” and “Peter Kemp, who fought as a volunteer in Francisco Franco’s army during the Spanish civil war.”

    Hiding behind his “Lomez” account on X, Keeperman expressed violent rage at anti-racist protesters in 2020, and his support for Kyle Rittenhouse, the white teen who shot and killed two such protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin. “May a million Kyle Rittenhouses bloom,” Keeperman wrote at the time.

    He also once seemed to call for journalists to be murdered en masse. “The press are in fact the enemy,” he tweeted. “They are mewling midwit scum. Sniveling liars and desperate status junkies. My abiding contempt for them is only ever confirmed.” Among a list of “policy proposals” he posted online, Keeperman wrote, “lamppost the journos” — an apparent call for reporters to be hanged.

    […] Over 80 years ago, on January 20, 1942, SS General Reinhard Heydrich convened a gathering of 15 high-ranking Nazi officials at a villa in Wannsee, Germany to discuss “Endlösung der Judenfrage,” or “The Final Solution to the Jewish Question.”

    “The Jewish Question” — or “The JQ,” as modern white nationalists frequently call it — is the antisemitic worldview framing the very existence of Jewish people as a problem in need of solving. It’s one of history’s most infamous rhetorical devices; three words that instantly dehumanized an entire subgroup of people, helping provide the permission structure for genocide. Heydrich’s 1942 conference, after all, was where Nazi leadership discussed the nuts-and-bolts of implementing their answer to the “question”: extermination.

    That Keeperman and Rufo chose the phrase “the Indian Question” for this discussion reads as a deliberate, trollish nod to the “JQ” — a kind of shitpost meant to “trigger” the left, including reporters at places like Talking Points Memo, into hysterically comparing them to Nazis. The duo does not go as far to call for the extermination or genocide of people with Indian heritage in America, even if they do advocate policies of exclusion and expulsion that scholars have long noted can be precursors to even greater atrocities. [social media pos, with two videos]

    The pair’s “solution” to the “Indian question” is the forced deportation of Indian immigrants who aren’t assimilated, and a complete ban on all immigration. “That means cutting off the spigot right now, getting rid of anybody who’s only here temporarily, and encouraging — through remigration efforts — to compel people who don’t wanna go through that process of assimilation to go back to where they come from […],” Keeperman says.

    […] When it comes to the “process of assimilation,” neither Keeperman or Rufo articulate what precisely an immigrant in America will have to do to become fully assimilated, although Keeperman acknowledges that being a “coastal shit lib” would not meet muster.

    For Indian-American citizens or other Desi people otherwise allowed to stay in America, Keeperman advocates them being “subjected” to an “assimilation hazing process” that will include instances of “vulgar, defamatory racism” until they have sufficiently left parts of their Indian “identity behind.” […]

    “Indian Americans are not an ‘Indian Question’ to be solved,” Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL) posted on X. “Treating any American community as a problem because of their ethnicity is racist, xenophobic, and fundamentally un-American. We are a nation born of ideals, not bloodlines. No race, religion, or ancestry has a greater claim to America than another. Indian Americans are as American as anyone. This country belongs to all of us.”

    Rufo didn’t seem to acknowledge the online rancor his “Indian Question” episode with Keeperman had inspired, instead moving onto other propaganda campaigns, posting an article he wrote for the City Journal about how public housing in California is allegedly teeming with registered sex offenders. […]

  129. says

    New York Times link

    “Agency Diverted $1.4 Billion in Science Funds Mandated by Congress”

    “The move, affecting about one-fifth of the National Science Foundation’s primary research budget, is the latest sign of how the White House is asserting more control over grants.”

    The National Science Foundation, one of the biggest sources of federal research funding, withheld $1.4 billion that Congress had intended for research over the course of the past year, according to internal data reviewed by The New York Times.

    The extraordinary move — holding back about one-fifth of the N.S.F.’s primary research budget — is the latest sign of how the Trump administration is finding ways to work around Congress. […]

    Since the N.S.F. was founded over 75 years ago, the agency has spent nearly all of its budget on so-called basic research from a wide range of scientific fields, which has led to major advances in technology such as M.R.I.s, semiconductors and the internet.

    The White House wants to redirect the money to a limited set of administration priorities, including artificial intelligence and quantum computing, according to two people with knowledge of the administration’s plans.

    Congress appropriates money to the N.S.F. on two-year cycles, so the agency could still spend the held-over money in the new fiscal year, which began on Thursday.

    But Democratic lawmakers see the strategy as more of a political power grab by the White House.

    “The money should be granted as Congress intended, and essentially, they’re ignoring what Congress did,” said Representative Zoe Lofgren of California, the top Democrat on the Science, Space and Technology Committee. “It’s a dramatic attack on the science enterprise that has served us very well since World War II, when this whole system was set up,” Ms. Lofgren added.

    The White House and the N.S.F. said that diverting the money was allowed under Congress’s two-year appropriation.

    […] The Trump administration’s efforts to gain more power over grants have played out across the government, where funding decisions have historically been led by experts.

    Last month, the N.I.H. signed an agreement to collaborate with the Defense Department, drawing criticism from Democrats on Capitol Hill who warned that the plan could allow the Pentagon to go around Congress and gain access to billions of dollars meant for infectious disease research. The administration previously fired the N.S.F.’s independent oversight board. And it has canceled or delayed thousands of grants across both agencies as part of its quest to punish elite universities and eliminate spending President Trump and his aides view as “woke.”

    […] The plan to divert N.S.F. funding was reported earlier by Nature, a science journal.

    Several people with knowledge of the situation described confusion inside the agency as the staff complied with White House guidance to carry over money as funding deadlines neared. Some divisions had to pull back research proposals that were recommended for funding after peer review, these officials said.

    Altogether, the $1.4 billion carried over after the last fiscal year ended on Wednesday amounted to 19 percent of the N.S.F.’s primary research budget allocated by Congress. That is a far higher percentage than in either of the two prior fiscal years, when less than $175 million went unspent, according to internal data from the agency. […]

  130. says

    Followup to comments Followup to comments 62, 65, 77, and 82.

    Musk-led war commission triggers alarms in Pentagon

    “Two of the Defense Department’s biggest contractors will help lead a project that could directly benefit them.”

    Pentagon officials warn that Pete Hegseth’s plan for a pair of billionaire defense contractors to help steer the military’s future will produce conflicts of interest that threaten the long-term integrity of the department.

    The Defense secretary’s effort, dubbed Project Meridian, asks SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and Anduril founder Palmer Luckey — along with former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich — to “map the trajectory of future warfare.” They are supposed to report back in four months.

    The Pentagon revealed few details about the commission or the scope of its jurisdiction beyond the four-paragraph memo that authorizes it, and an insistence the U.S. needs to “dominate” the next generation of warfare. It’s unclear whether the initiative would give the executives the vast sway Musk enjoyed last year as leader of President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency. But both Musk and Luckey head companies that have contracts with the Pentagon worth billions of dollars — and nine current and former officials said any preferential access could allow them to funnel even more business their way.

    “This is entirely indicative of the decay and oligarchy that has taken over our government and, in many cases, directly through purchasing influence and power and authority, blatantly right in front of us,” said Wes Bryant, a retired Air Force master sergeant who until last year led the Pentagon’s civilian harm assessments. “They’re not even trying to hide it anymore.”

    The Pentagon said in a statement that the project will be led by MITRE — a nonprofit that manages federally funded research centers — with the added assistance of Emil Michael, the Pentagon’s chief technology officer. The nonprofit, the statement said, will be responsible for the analysis and recommendations and apply “appropriate conflict-of-interest and information safeguards.”

    The group has already held two meetings at the Pentagon, at least one of which included Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and Phil Hegseth, Pete Hegseth’s younger brother, who is serving as an adviser in the department.

    […] The role represents yet another potential seat of influence for Musk, whose aggressive bureaucracy-shredding operation last year axed spending, purged staff and spread chaos across the executive branch.

    “Of course it is a conflict of interest, and if anything comes of it it will be to the benefit of Elon Musk not the country,” said a former defense official, who, like others, was granted anonymity to talk about internal deliberations.

    […] “Forgive me if I’m skeptical of entrusting the future of American warfare to people with zero military experience who stand to financially benefit from the decisions they’re making,” said Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), a member of the Senate Armed Services panel, who has publicly feuded with Hegseth.

    […] Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), a senior member of the Armed Services Committee, called the commission an example of Hegseth “putting his political alliances ahead of our national security.”

    […] The department relies on SpaceX rockets to deliver key systems to orbit and has handed the company two multibillion-dollar contracts to start building out secret satellites constellations. Anduril holds several key Pentagon contracts for counter-drone systems, interceptors, electronic warfare systems and uncrewed fighter jet drones.

    […] “Musk and Luckey should be treated as vendors,” said Bill Hartung, a principal adviser at the nonpartisan Project on Government Oversight. “Not grand strategists.”

  131. Reginald Selkirk says

    Ladies, Lock Up Your DMs: Elon Musk Is Back on the Market

    Earlier this year, while under oath, Elon Musk referred to Shivon Zilis—a venture capitalist who, at the time, was his live-in girlfriend and mother to four of his children—as his “chief of staff” and “close advisor” rather than, you know, something like a loving partner. Consider it foreshadowing, as Zilis announced via X (the platform that Musk owns, as you might know) that she and the CEO of SpaceX were no longer romantically involved.
    …
    You can start with the fact that Zilis announced that breakup by quote-tweeting a post from BigTechAlert, an automated service that shows when major accounts in the tech space have followed or unfollowed one another, which showed Musk had unfollowed Zilis on X.

    Then take a look at how Zilis describes the breakup, stating that she had been “let go” like she was laid off from a job—which is fitting since, by her own description, it happened without warning, as corporations are wont to do when they furlough staff. (Though, again, it seems she’ll keep the job where she does actual labor under Musk rather than the role that required a lot of emotional labor.)…

  132. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    The Hill – Trump’s motorcade neared 100 mph

    from rallies in Texas to Oklahoma […] Typically, the president would’ve taken Marine One […] but stormy weather spurred the last-minute decision to drive. […] Trump showed up about two hours late in Durant, telling the crowd that he refused to cancel it entirely.

    Reckless driving between rallies that he shouldn’t be doing. Making the cultists wait for hours was a bonus.

  133. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    shermanj @111 to Militant agnostic @69:

    differential thrust can only make Extremely Slight and very slow changes in direction of any multi-engine aircraft

    NASA – Controlling crippled aircraft—with throttles (pdf, 1991)

    a preliminary study of the capability and techniques for emergency flight control. Included in the study were light twin-engine piston-powered airplanes, an executive jet transport, commercial jet transports, and a high-performance fighter. Piloted simulations of the B-720, B-747, B-727, MD-11, C-402, and F-15 airplanes were studied, and the Lear 24, PA-30, and F-15 airplanes were flight tested. All aircraft […] could be kept under control in up-and-away flight for an extended period of time. Using piloted simulators, landings with manual throttles-only control were extremely difficult. However, there are techniques that improve the chances of making a survivable landing. […] In all data shown, the flight control surfaces were not moved.
    […]
    the stabilizing effects of vertical and horizontal stabilizers are a function of dynamic pressure, which is proportional to the square of airspeed. As a result, the propulsion system control power increases as airspeed decreases. For example, at high airspeed, differential thrust develops a yawing moment that is small compared to the restoring moment produced by the vertical tail. Therefore, the sideslip is small and the roll rate resulting from differential thrust is low. At low speed, the differential thrust moment may be the same as at high speed. The aerodynamic restoring moment will be much smaller and larger sideslip will develop, producing higher roll rates. A similar effect occurs in the pitch axis

    Handling among planes varied considerably.

    The basic Lear 24 throttles-only roll control power is large. Roll rates in excess of 25 deg/sec can be obtained with full differential thrust, even with the yaw damper engaged. Time to bank from level flight to 30 deg was 4 sec.
    […]
    The roll control on the PA-30 [twin-piston] airplane is highly nonlinear. […] The linear response to differential thrust seen on other jet-powered airplanes was not present. Maximum roll rates were approximately 10 deg/sec
    […]
    The B-727 […] roll rates of 4 to 5 deg/sec were obtained. There was a 1-see lag before the roll rate was appreciable. […] This roll capability, while much less than the F-15 or B-720 airplanes, was surprisingly large considering the fuselage mounting of the engines.
    […]
    The B-747 […] Because of the large inertias, roll response is sluggish. With practice, however, it is possible to turn to and hold a heading and to fly an approach to a runway. Pitch control power is available, but again, large lags are present.

    [Video] Mentour Pilot – United Flight 232, a 1989 total hydrolic failure
    DC-10 maneuverability mentioned at 9:05 and 16:15.

  134. Militant Agnostic says

    CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain at 133

    What your quote is describing is using differential thrust in situations where the pilot has no control of yaw are roll. This using yaw to induce roll by making one wing fly faster than the other. The difference in lift then rolls the plane. It is like using only the rudder to turn the plane. A lot of Radio Control planes work this way because it requires on less servo. Also it is difficult to make coordinated* turns when the pilot is standing on the ground instead of sitting in the plane so there is little benefit to have roll control beyond the further effect of the rudder. Since the plane in the recent incident had working ailerons after the dive removed most of the rudder, the delay in roll response would not be an issue.

    in a coordinated turn the plane will feel level even though it is banked and the plane will be pointed in the direction is going.

  135. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Allison Gill (Mueller, she wrote):

    A while back, I sued DOGE (FOIA) to get Musk’s communications. DOJ argued that Musk wasn’t a govt employee anymore, BUT Hegseth just hired him again to work on a Pentagon warfare initiative called Project Meridian. So we noticed Judge Boasberg. My brilliant lawyer [Kel McClanahan] is doing this

     
    Militant Agnostic @134: I see. Thanks.

  136. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    TheVerge – Reddit says it has to cut back access

    Reddit recently started forcing users to log in to be able to use Old Reddit, but in the “next few months,” the company says that you’ll have to be logged in and have used Old Reddit within the last six months from when the change rolls out to be able to continue browsing the platform […] Reddit will stop supporting RSS feeds on November 13th
    […]
    The company has been waging war […] for some time, including blocking the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine to prevent AI scraping, suing Anthropic over alleged unauthorized bot access, and striking deals with Google and OpenAI to use Reddit data for training.

    Threadiverse alternatives (Reddit-style ActivityPub platforms)
    – BeeHaw instance of Lemmy despite the software’s problematic Lemmy devs
    – PieFed
    – Mbin (Sucessor to Kbin)

  137. StevoR says

    Mysterious vapours emerging from the ground near an ancient volcanic formation in northeast Syria have prompted scientists to investigate whether recent seismic activity disturbed the geology beneath the area. Videos from Jabal Kawkab, around 15 kilometres east of Hasakah, showed white vapour rising from cracks in the ground, alongside reports of subsidence in the surrounding area.

    The phenomenon sparked speculation on Syrian social media that the ancient volcano could be reawakening, particularly after an earthquake was felt across parts of northern Syria last week.But geologists have cautioned that there is currently no evidence of renewed volcanic activity, with several other possible explanations being investigated.

    .. (Snip)..

    ..One preliminary explanation being examined by Syrian geologists is that groundwater could be travelling through newly opened fractures and reaching warmer layers underground, producing vapour at the surface.

    Scientists are also investigating whether recent seismic activity contributed to the appearance of the cracks or altered existing underground pathways.

    …(snip)..

    He (Dr Abdul-Moneim Issa Hassan, geology lecturer, Homs University – ed) also pointed to possible non-volcanic explanations linked to the history of the site.The area around Jabal Kawkab includes an old rubbish dump and has previously been used for military purposes, meaning buried waste or other material could also potentially be responsible for the emissions.

    Determining the composition and temperature of the gases will therefore be crucial in establishing whether their origin is geological, environmental or linked to human activity.

    Source : https://www.newarab.com/news/syrias-ancient-jabal-kawkab-volcano-waking

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