| Time |
Event |
| 2:02a |
|
| 2:02a |
Billion-dollar extreme weather disasters
The US has seen seven different billion-dollar extreme weather disasters
in the first
four months of 2023.
This is not a record, but the only two years that had eight such
billion-dollar disasters were quite recent: 2017 and 2020.
|
| 2:02a |
Santos and his 13-count indictment
*George Santos Arrested on 13 Charges of
Wire Fraud, Money Laundering,
and More.*
While running for Congress, He lied about just about every aspect of
his life. These charges say he also lied to his supporters when
claiming to raise donations for his electoral campaign.
|
| 2:02a |
The irony of too much “safety.”
Arguing that youth today feel anxious because they are almost always
under the control of adults, and never learning to cope with autonomy.
The only way they can socialize and not have adults
watching is on
antisocial media.
This leads to the suggestion that the right way to protect youth from
antisocial media is by allowing and enabling them to socialize
together without the intermediary of online dis-services.
|
| 2:02a |
UK MPs urge minister to do more to free Hongkongers
Hong Kong is punishing people who emigrate to Britain by denying access
to their savings and pension funds in
Hong Kong banks.
The changed regulation would require them to return to Hong Kong
to get new ID cards, which would not be safe at all.
|
| 12:32p |
Airline passenger-compensation rules
*US proposes rules requiring airlines to compensate passengers for
flight delays.*
Flight delays and cancellations can't always be avoided.
But the problems they cause will be spread a lot more fairly
with these compensations.
In addition, in 2020 airlines often scheduled flights and cancelled them,
leading to suspicions that they were expecting to cancel those flights
when they announced them. With compensation requirements like this,
they would not do that.
|
| 12:32p |
Putins Zaporizhzhia card
Here's an example of how concern about Putin's threats against the
Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant get
spun into a demand
to give Putin
a victorious conquest.
Putin has frequently used his capture of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear
power plant in Ukraine for psychplogical warfare. There is a real
danger that it will lose external power and melt down. Putin has
chosen to magnify the danger by creating avoidable risk — by
brinksmanship.
In response to this brinksmanship, the article calls on the US to
impose a cease fire fast. The only way to get Putin to agree to that
is to make Ukraine cede to him all the territory that the Putin forces
now hold. (Maybe even that isn't enough to satisfy him.)
Is this what the author aims for? He does not admit it outright, but
I can't believe that he is not aware of it. It has been pointed out
many times. According to the author, the US should tell Ukraine,
"Surrender fast, so you can have peace!"
Putin says he demands the whole territory of the provinces of
Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Donetsk and Luhansk, in exchange for peace.
If the US were to take the desperate "Surrender, Ukraine" position
that the article recommends, Putin would take advantage of that.
If we want to avoid a nuclear disaster in the Zaporizhzhia plant, it
is easy to see how a local agreement could do this. If both sides are
willing, they can easily do it. Since Putin has refused, it can only
mean he does not want the plant to be made properly safe. But he
doesn't want a nuclear disaster either. He wants a threat to make to
set fools scurrying to demand giving him whatever he wants.
|
| 12:32p |
|
| 12:32p |
Biomarker-based sleep-hygiene test
If biometric tests are developed to detect sleepiness, and they are
used to stop professional drivers from driving, the financial loss
from being stopped occasionally
must fall on the companies
they work for, or on the state — not on the individual drivers.
This will lead us to a fight like the current one over
sick days for
train operator workers.
|
| 12:32p |
|
| 12:32p |
Book censorship, MO
Missouri has imposed
censorship on children and teenagers
using nearly
all libraries in the state. The rule would deny state funding to any
library that allows a library user under age 18 to see books that are
not "age appropriate", or to check out a book that per
parents would not approve of.
A large fraction of people of age 17 and 16 have had sex, but Missouri
doesn't want them to read about books that address issues of sex or
sexual relationships. "Heaven forbid they might learn something
pertinent to their lives."
|
| 12:32p |
|
| 12:32p |
Battery mfgs regulating themselves
"Battery passports" to
track the raw materials
used in making electric
car batteries are proposed as a way of enforcing environmental
regulations on mining world-wide. Critics question whether the system
gives the mining companies too much influence in the system, which
they could use to cheat.
I support the system for that purpose — but if businesses start
offering to change out your car's battery as a quick recharge, it is
crucial that those businesses not be able to examine the number of
the battery that they get from you. That would become, in effect,
another system for tracking where you drive.
The same reasoning applies to ordinary charging systems for cars.
They must accept anonymous payment and they must be forbidden to get
any identifying data digitally from the car.
|
| 12:32p |
Loyalty-politics is stifling, Hong Kong
Many teachers in Hong Kong are quitting for fear they will say
something politically unacceptable and be punished. And many
school-age children are leaving
for free countries.
Escape is available only to a fraction of Hong Kongers; most can't
find a free country they can move to. I am sad for them.
|
| 12:32p |
Spyware throttles Democracy, rights, EU
The
European Parliament concluded
that the authoritarian governments of Hungary and Poland used spyware to monitor "enemies of the state"
such as journalists, politicians and activists.
|
| 12:32p |
Rising gang violence unbearable, Pusher St., Copenhagen
Christiania, the
anarchist town in the middle of Copenhagen,
has
allowed sale of marijuana by known local people for 50 years. Now
criminal gangs have moved in, taken control, and are fighting over
the "territory". It looks like they have ruined everything.
I think the existence of these powerul gangs is a consequence of
prohibition in the rest of the country and the world. Prohibition of
marijuana (or any drug) does not get rid of it, but helps the gangs
make lots of money.
|
| 12:32p |
|
| 12:32p |
|
| 12:32p |
Urgent: Sinclair local TV news content
US citizens:
call on the FCC
to require Sinclair's supposed "local news" TV stations to actually cover local news.
|
| 12:32p |
Urgent: Medicare for All Act
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to urge her to cosponsor
the Medicare for All Act when it is reintroduced in Congress on May 17.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are
+1-202-224-3121,
+1-888-818-6641 and
+1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
|
| 1:01p |
UK MPs urge minister to do more to free Hong Kongers
Hong Kong is punishing people who emigrate to Britain by denying access
to their savings and pension funds in
Hong Kong banks.
The changed regulation would require them to return to Hong Kong
to get new ID cards, which would not be safe at all.
|
| 1:01p |
Putin's Zaporizhzhia card
Here's an example of how concern about Putin's threats against the
Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant get
spun into a demand
to give Putin
a victorious conquest.
Putin has frequently used his capture of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear
power plant in Ukraine for psychological warfare. There is a real
danger that it will lose external power and melt down. Putin has
chosen to magnify the danger by creating avoidable risk — by
brinkmanship.
In response to this brinkmanship, the article calls on the US to
impose a cease fire fast. The only way to get Putin to agree to that
is to make Ukraine cede to him all the territory that the Putin forces
now hold. (Maybe even that isn't enough to satisfy him.)
Is this what the author aims for? He does not admit it outright, but
I can't believe that he is not aware of it. It has been pointed out
many times. According to the author, the US should tell Ukraine,
"Surrender fast, so you can have peace!"
Putin says he demands the whole territory of the provinces of
Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Donetsk and Luhansk, in exchange for peace.
If the US were to take the desperate "Surrender, Ukraine" position
that the article recommends, Putin would take advantage of that.
If we want to avoid a nuclear disaster in the Zaporizhzhia plant, it
is easy to see how a local agreement could do this. If both sides are
willing, they can easily do it. Since Putin has refused, it can only
mean he does not want the plant to be made properly safe. But he
doesn't want a nuclear disaster either. He wants a threat to make to
set fools scurrying to demand giving him whatever he wants.
|
| 1:01p |
Battery manufacturers regulating supply lines themselves
"Battery passports" to
track the raw materials
used in making electric
car batteries are proposed as a way of enforcing environmental
regulations on mining world-wide. Critics question whether the system
gives the mining companies too much influence in the system, which
they could use to cheat.
I support the system for that purpose — but if businesses start
offering to change out your car's battery as a quick recharge, it is
crucial that those businesses not be able to examine the number of
the battery that they get from you. That would become, in effect,
another system for tracking where you drive.
The same reasoning applies to ordinary charging systems for cars.
They must accept anonymous payment and they must be forbidden to get
any identifying data digitally from the car.
|
| 1:16p |
Urgent: Sinclair local TV news communications
US citizens:
call on the FCC
to require Sinclair's supposed "local news" TV stations to actually cover local news.
|