| Time |
Event |
| 12:32a |
Urgent: Federal contractor Maximus, employment practices
US citizens: call on the Biden Administration to
investigate racial
inequity
at Maximus, a federal call center contractor.
The White House comments lines are
+1-202-456-1111
and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213.
If you phone, please spread the word!
|
| 2:32a |
Success of psychological crises intervention
Some city departments to send unarmed people with intervention
training to respond to psychological crises are effective, while
others are not.
|
| 2:32a |
Human population peak prediction
A new method of modeling predicts that the world human population
will peak at 8.8 billion before 2050, and then decline to 7.8 billion
by the end of the century.
This will help avoid disaster, but doesn't assure avoiding it. If
more people avoid reproducing in this decade, it will make the next
decade easier to get through without disaster and facilitate lower use
of fossil fuels. |
| 2:32a |
Redesigning cities to cope with increase in rain
Assorted ideas for redesigning cities to cope with the increasing
intensity of rain that global heating is now causing. |
| 2:32a |
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| 2:32a |
Minors searched by thugs in the UK
When minors in the UK are searched by thugs, black minors are far more
likely to be strip-searched than white minors.
The thugs violate the official rules meant to protect minor from
psychological trauma about half the time.
The article says "children", but I expect that means "minors" and that
most of the people searched are teenagers. |
| 2:32a |
German demand on EU directive
A plutocratist party in the German government demanded a change in
the nearly-agreed EU directive to ban sale of new cars made to use
fossil fuels after 2035.
Supposedly this is to encourage the future sale of new cars intended
to run on hypothetical future "synthetic fuels" made from CO2
extracted from the air. However, the proposed directive was already
written to permit that the continued sale of such those cars after
2035, provided they could not run on fossil fuels. It is clear that
the plutocratist demand aims to create an excuse in 2035 to continue
selling new cars that can run on fossil fuels. The excuse will be
to claim that these new cars are intended to run on synthetic fuels.
Why is that important to them? Based on the planet roasters' record
of repeated dishonesty, I speculate their plan is to claim that cars
are "intended" to run on the synthetic fuels, knowing that owners will
actually buy the fossil fuels instead, and that this will create
increased demand for fossil fuels, such that it is impossible to
discontinue them as planned.
It looks like the planet roasters won: the EU made the
demanded seemingly-small change in the directive. |
| 2:32a |
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| 2:32a |
Antibiotic-resistant bacteria
The antibiotic-resistant bacteria bred by feeding antibiotics to farm animals
are consumed by humans when meat is not cooked sufficiently. Then they
can get into the bladder and cause urinary tract infections. |
| 2:32a |
Sites snoop for TikTok
Lots of web sites snoop on their visitors for TikTok by containing its
"tracking pixels", just as sites do for Google or Facebook.
The browser IceCat blocks these tracking pixels, but it ought to be a
crime for a web site to try to use them. |
| 2:32a |
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| 2:32a |
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| 2:32a |
Tory members representing foreign company's interests
Tory members of the UK parliament, who were former ministers, agreed to represent a foreign company's interests for large sums of money — as much as 10,000
UKP per day. The company was a hoax and their assent was recorded.
For legislators to take pay to serve private interests is corruption
and it ought to be a crime. The most shocking thing to me is that in
the UK this is lawful. The UK has rules for it, and those elected
representatives followed the rules. |
| 2:32a |
Silicon Valley Bank bailout
Supposedly the US government refused to bail out the investors owner of Silicon
Valley Bank — but it seems to have done precisely that. The owner
was a holding company that had deposited money in Silicon Valley Bank.
By deciding to bail out all depositors, the US decided to bail out the
investors. |
| 3:02a |
How could the UK’s net zero plan involve new oil and gas? It’s mind-bogglingly stupid
The UK's "net zero" plan looks like it was designed to go in the
wrong
direction. |
| 3:02a |
Russia arrests Wall Street Journal reporter and accuses him of espionage
*Russia arrests Wall Street Journal
reporter on espionage charges.*
There is very little the US can do to stop Russia from using those laws
to arrest reporters who are not spies, but it can at
least drop the charges
against Julian Assange
to stop setting a bad example for other counties.
Each country should stop prosecuting journalists for doing journalism.
|
| 3:02a |
Israel hasn’t been a democracy for a long time. Now, Israelis need to face this fact
*Israel hasn’t been a democracy for a long time. Now,
Israelis need to
face this fact.*
Democracy in Israel includes only the Jewish part of the population,
and a split in that part, mostly about how to treat the rest, is
making this partial democracy unstable.
|
| 3:02a |
Australia passes most significant climate law in a decade amid concern over fossil fuel exports
Australia's new climate defense bill requires Australia's total greenhouse
gas emissions to decrease steadily over time. There are provisions too
to
limit fossil fuel exports.
The Green Party pushed hard and improved the deal, thought it did not get
all it pushed for.
|
| 3:02a |
Fugitive Russian man whose daughter drew anti-war pictures detained in Belarus
Alexei Moskalyov's daughter drew anti-war drawings in school. He was
arrested and sentenced to two years in prison for her drawings, but he
tried to run away.
Alas, he has been caught.
|
| 3:17a |
Why Corporate America has grown silent on gun violence
US gun fanatics have won the battle of
competing pressures on US
business,
They have even passed state laws to boycott banks that
reject gun companies as clients.
|
| 3:17a |
Using artificial intelligence and archival news articles, this teen found that Black homicide victims were less humanized in news coverage
In news coverage of homicides in the Boston Globe, from 1976 to 1984,
stories where the victim was black were less likely to use language
that would encourage seeing the victim as a human being than
stories
about white victims.
This must reflect racism in some way or other. I'd be very interested
in whether it is the result of racism of the writers, or some sort of
systemic racism.
I am puzzled that the article says that this used "artificial
intelligence", but it doesn't say what that is meant to refer to. I
am dubious that something as complex as reasoning software or machine
learning was needed to categorize the stories.
|
| 3:17a |
The problem with artificial intelligence? It’s neither artificial nor intelligent
Evgeny Morozov: *The problem with artificial intelligence? It’s not
artificial or intelligent.*
That is true, about today's neural-network systems. However,
generalizing that into a prediction of impossibility for all kinds of
technology is likely to be mistaken. If something isn't impossible
for known reasons, the prediction that it can't be done is likely to
be falsified some day.
|
| 3:17a |
Rapidly Melting Glaciers Threaten Collapse of Crucial Ocean Circulation Systems: Study
Fresh water from rapidly melting Antarctic glaciers goes deep into the
ocean. There it tends to slow down deep-level currents. This could
cause
catastrophic sudden changes in climate.
|
| 3:17a |
Business Interests Dominate U.S. Trade Advisory System, Gain Access to Trade-Pact Texts Kept Secret from Public, New Economic Liberties Research Shows
*Business Interests Dominate U.S. Trade Advisory System, Gain Access
to Trade-Pact Texts
Kept Secret from Public.*
This is perhaps the mechanism that ensures so-called "free trade treaties" are
actually
business-supremacy treaties.
|
| 3:32a |
Republicans tried to delay release of US hostages to sabotage Carter, ex-aide claims – report
Former Texas governor Connally talked with Middle Eastern leaders in
1980 trying to convince Iran to hold on to the US embassy hostages, so
that
Reagan would win the 1980 election.
This is according to Ben Barnes, who worked for him and accompanied him
on the trip.
Officials of various countries have affirmed, over the years, that Reagan
made a deal with Khomeini to refuse to free the
US embassy hostages
before the 1980 presidential election.
Here is
Greg Palast's report on Ben Barnes.
It accuses him of a lot of nastiness, but doesn't answer
the questions it raises: why did Barnes not say this before,
and why does he say it now? But, it doesn't cast much doubt
on his recent statement.
As for calling "Dubya" a "draft-dodger". that term should not be used.
I rebuke Dubya for many wrongs, including the crime of starting a war
of aggression against Iraq. But there is nothing wrong in trying to
escape from being conscripted into an unjust war.
That includes the Vietnam War, which the US ramped up based on
fabricating the
fictitious "incident" in the Gulf of Tonkin.
And it includes Putin's invasion of Ukraine. We should support
Russians who are doing whatever it takes to avoid fighting in the
Putin forces.
|
| 3:32a |
(satire) Prisoner Given 10 Extra Years For Good Behavior To Serve As Role Model For Fellow Inmates
(satire) *Prisoner Given 10 Extra Years For Good Behavior To
Serve As
Role Model For Fellow Inmates.*
|
| 3:32a |
The CHIPS Act: What it means for the semiconductor ecosystem
The CHIPS act is intended to discourage US semiconductor companies
from outsourcing of chip manufacturing to hostile countries such as
China. A look at the details of how it is supposed to achieve this
shows the weakness and timidity of the US government in
dealing with
any sort of big business.
The US government hasn't got the gumption to prohibit US companies
from doing things that put the nation in danger, or even to penalize
them to discourage doing so. The best it can manage is to offer
subsidies if they avoid those actions.
For this reason and many others, making America great again starts
with slapping down the businesses that think they own it.
Here's the
White House statement lauding the law.
|
| 3:32a |
What the Oil Companies Really Knew, Part 2
Exxon scientists in the 1970s and 1980s presented executives with a
fairly accurate projection of what global heating caused by fossil
fuels might do to the world in a few decades.
But they presented it
as a possibility;
with all the gaps in the scientific knowledge of that time, they could
not determine whether those things would really happen.
By around 2000, the science had resolved the uncertainty and
fossil-fuel executives could not honestly deny the damage they were
going to cause.
|
| 3:32a |
Opinion: The cruel twist that harms women in the military
The Pentagon should include, in its planning for where to put military bases,
the predictable extra cost of putting the base in a
state which prohibits
abortion.
I'd go further. I'd suggest a policy of actively restationing units
and activities from abortion-restricting states to abortion-tolerant
states, with a goal of moving moving nearly all to the latter
in 10 years.
|
| 3:32a |
Wisconsin school district bans Miley Cyrus-Dolly Parton duet with ‘rainbow’ in title
Right-wing fanatics in Wisconsin ordered a first-grade class not to
sing the
song Rainbow land.
The song's words advocate tolerance instead of hate in a very general way,
but the word "rainbow" was more than the censors could stand for.
|
| 12:47p |
Restorative justice
Will we open our eyes to the past and its implications, or drown them out
by shouting?
*The campaign to "protect our [British] history," in other words, is about
protecting the past from historians — and protecting the present from
dangerous new ideas about how we got here. Because when an organisation
like the Guardian researches its own historical links to transatlantic
slavery — and then apologises and embarks on a substantial project of
restorative justice
— the newspaper is not primarily presenting a
different past, but its ambition for a different present.*
The article linked to just above displays symbolic bigotry by
capitalizing "black" but not "white". (To avoid endorsing bigotry,
capitalize both words or neither one.) I denounce bigotry, and
normally I will not link to articles that promote it. But I make
exceptions for some articles that I consider particularly important,
such as the one linked to above.
|
| 12:47p |
Data collection, principles
TikTok's
intense collection of data about each user
is a threat to Americans and to US national security.
As EPIC points out, TikTok is far from the only such.
The same is true for many other "social media" platforms, and school
education programs, and other proprietary programs. If you can't
modify the program to send whatever made-up data you want to send,
instead of true facts about you, it is not safe to use.
The ADPPA bill that EPIC recommends would reduce the existing massive
internet surveillance, but it starts with the usual mistake: systems
can collect data that is "reasonably necessary and proportionate to
provide or maintain a product or service". That is
too lax and will fail
to protect privacy.
My article, linked above, provides a key test. Does the rule prohibit
systems that charge for parking which make every driver enter per
car's license plate number? That practice is dangerous surveillance;
any law that fails to prohibit it is too weak.
The ADPPA's stricter rule for children and teenagers should apply to
everyone, but even that could be interpreted in a way that is too weak.
We can be sure companies will press for the weak interpretation.
This requirement must be bulletproof.
|
| 12:47p |
Distinguishing misinformation, Finland
Finland's schools
systematically teach how to identify misinformation
and ungrounded accusations of conspiracy.
I think this would be wise to adopt everywhere.
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| 12:47p |
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| 12:47p |
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| 12:47p |
Urgent: Climate Emergency
US citizens: call on Biden to
declare a climate emergency now.
This would give him powers he could use effectively without Congress.
The White House comments lines are
+1-202-456-1111
and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213.
If you phone, please spread the word!
|